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Kleist’s «Bombenpost»: The Subject, Place, and Power JOHN B. LYON Univ ersity of Pittsburgh Kleist’s essay «Nützliche Erfindungen,» which appeared in two parts in the Berliner Abendblätter of 1810, highlights a significant change in communications technology of his era, namely Samuel Thomas von Sömmering’s 1809 invention of an electro-chemical telegraph. 1 Prior to Kleist’s essay, there had been a number of experiments with electrical and electro-chemical telegraphs, but a universally accepted telecommunications system had not yet been established. 2 It took Samuel Morse’s 1837 patent of the electric telegraph to change this, with the first public telegraph in the United States implemented in 1841. 3 During the 1840’s, telegraph lines appeared in German lands too (although the Germans did not adopt Morse’s code at first), and by the end of the century, they stretched across Germany. 4 Kleist’s essay appears in the Berliner Abendblätter as electronic communications technology first emerges. In the first section of the essay, titled «Entwurf einer Bombenpost,» the editor lauds the speed of communication via telegraph, so that two friends in distant cities can respond to each other «ehe man noch eine Hand umkehrt» (Kleist 593). 5 He then bemoans the limitations of the medium; specifically that the telegraph can send only brief messages and cannot convey packages or large objects. To remedy this inadequacy he proposes a «Bombenpost,» for which one would place artillery stations at requisite distances from each other in a series, load packages into artillery shells, and then shoot them from one station to the next. The result, according to the editor, would be «den Verkehr auf den höchsten Gipfel der Vollkommenheit zu treiben» (594). In the second portion of the essay, an anonymous Berlin author responds to the proposed «Bombenpost» in a letter to the editor. He criticizes both telegraph and cannonball communication technology, suggesting that a speedy transfer of information would increase the amount of messages with negative or unwanted content. Instead he proposes an alternative postal service of oxen or foot messengers that, in slowing delivery, would increase the quantity of welcome news. The editor, reacting to the fictional reader’s letter, rejects the latter’s persiflage and irony and asserts in contrast his own desire to serve humanity in general and business interests in particular; shares of stock in his new invention will be available soon. CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 113 14.07.15 20: 41 114 John B. Lyon Kleist authors both sides of this exchange, 6 lending a theatrical quality to this debate: his piece performs the roles of both advocate and opponent of the new technology. Thus, the essay is as much about the performance of opposed arguments as it is about their content. Accordingly, one should not read Kleist as wholeheartedly advocating either a «Bombenpost» or an «Ochsenpost,» as some scholars have. 7 Instead, this exchange should be read as Kleist’s reflections on changes in communications technology and what these changes highlight about the relationship between language, thought, and the media that convey them. A careful analysis of these essays demonstrates Kleist’s keen awareness not only of the potentials and pitfalls associated with electronic media, but also of the changing status of humans and their relationship to power in an increasingly connected electronic world. As in all of Kleist’s texts, the subtleties of his language reflect important themes in the text as a whole. Whether in punctuation («Die Marquise von O…»), rhyme (Penthesilea), wordplay (Der zerbrochne Krug), or complex syntax («Der Zweikampf»), crucial details of the text often depend on linguistic nuances. And so it is surprising that previous analyses of this essay focus more on historical content than on Kleist’s language. I thus begin with an analysis of Kleist’s language in order to draw out issues that other analyses have overlooked. In particular, the pronouns in these essays reflect contrasting attitudes towards the new technologies. They emphasize the stakes in the debate over new communications technologies and the impact of these technologies on both the individual subject and its relation to a larger collective. On the one hand, the editorial voice of the Abendblätter (I refer to him as «the editor» hereafter) tends, as one might expect, either towards impersonal speech, as evidenced in the frequency of the impersonal pronoun «man,» or collective, authorial speech, as evidenced in the pronoun «wir.» Both extremes undermine the significance of the individual subject. For example, the first word of the initial essay, «Man,» refers to the inventor of the electro-chemical telegraph. This inventor, Samuel Thomas von Sömmering, is never named. Only in the second sentence of the text, after a first sentence of nearly one hundred words, does the editor refer to «dem Erfinder dieser Post,» but not by name, only by his function as inventor. The editor’s tendency to elide the personal and particular in favor of the collective and the general is evident throughout the remainder of the first essay, where the personal pronouns «wir,» for the editor, and «man,» for those who use the «Bombenpost,» predominate. The only exception occurs early in the opening sentence of the essay, where a first-person singular pronoun, «ich will sagen,» disrupts the editor’s collective, impersonal style. This is the only occurrence of the first- CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 114 14.07.15 20: 41 Kleist’s «Bombenpost»: The Subject, Place, and Power 115 person singular pronoun in the initial section, however, and by contrast it draws attention to the predominance of impersonal third-person pronouns and collective first-person plural pronouns. Similarly, when the editor describes an exchange via telegraph between two friends, he includes the second-person singular pronoun in the question, «wie geht’s dir? », but elides the first-person singular pronoun in the answer, «recht gut.» The pronouns in this first essay underscore the editor’s tendency to efface personality and individuality for the sake of impersonality and the collective. This tendency becomes clearer when contrasted with the second essay, the letter written by the anonymous Berlin author (referred to as «the author» hereafter). It begins with the address «Mein Herr! ,» asserting with its first-person singular possessive adjective a singular subject in contrast to an individual (the «Herr») who is addressed as an abstract or formal collective. The following sentence begins with the pronoun «Dieselben,» reasserting the formal plural. Yet the anonymous author of the letter returns to a firstperson singular subject with the pronoun «mir» not long thereafter. The author counters the impersonality and formality of the editor with a personal, immediate tone. This is evident in his description of the electronic messages. In contrast to the brief «recht gut,» void of any pronoun, offered by the editor as the friend’s answer to the inquiry «wie geht’s dir? ,» the Berlin author describes other potential answers that include personal pronouns and possessive adjectives: […] so, so! oder: mittelmäßig! oder: die Wahrheit zu sagen, schlecht; oder: gestern nacht, da ich verreist war, hat mich meine Frau hintergangen; oder: ich bin in Prozessen verwickelt, von denen ich kein Ende absehe; oder: ich habe Bankerott gemacht, Haus und Hof verlassen und bin im Begriff in die weite Welt zu gehen […]. (594) Not only does the content and tone of these responses differ («so, so! oder: mittelmäßig! oder: […] schlecht»), but the author also lists personal experiences attached to personal subjects. At least five first-person singular pronouns appear in these few lines, a striking contrast from the first essay in which only one appeared in the entire essay. And again, when the Berlin author describes the types of responses the same inquiry might elicit via a slower postal system (pulled by oxen or carried on the backs of foot messengers), he lists: […] je nun! oder: nicht eben übel! oder: so wahr ich lebe, gut! oder: mein Haus habe ich wieder aufgebaut; oder: die Pfandbriefe stehen wieder al pari; oder: meine beiden Töchter habe ich kürzlich verheiratet; oder: morgen werden wir, unter dem Donner der Kanonen, ein Nationalfest feiern […]. (595) CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 115 14.07.15 20: 41 116 John B. Lyon Again, singular first-person pronouns and possessive adjectives proliferate. The result is that this part of the second essay enacts what the first essay tries to elide, namely, the presence of the individual subject in the process of communication. At the end of the essay, however, as he proposes his «Ochsenpost,» the Berlin author transitions from the personal first-person singular to the more formal first-person plural «wir,» which the editor used in the first essay. The editor, in his response to the letter, likewise uses only the first-person plural. He concludes the essay with two sentences where the subject is first an abstract «es,» and then an impersonal «Prospektus» and a «Plan»: Auch in dem, Gott sei Dank! doch noch keineswegs allgemeinen Fall, daß die Briefe mit lauter Seufzern beschwert wären, würde es, aus ökonomischen und kaufmännischen Gesichtspunkten noch vorteilhaft sein, sich dieselben mit Bomben zuzuwerfen. Demnach soll nicht nur der Prospektus der Bombenpost, sondern auch ein Plan, zur Einsammlung der Aktien, in einem unserer nächsten Blätter erfolgen. (595) The «es» of the first sentence and the nonhuman subjects of the final sentence («Prospektus» and «Plan») resonate with the anonymity and impersonality at the beginning of the first essay («Man hat […] einen […] Telegraphen erfunden»). The editor returns to the impersonality and formality with which he began. In the course of these two essays, then, Kleist shifts not only between two speakers, but also between anonymity («Man hat»), individual subjectivity («ich will sagen»), a formal collective («schlagen wir […] vor»), back to subjectivity («ich»), a formal collective again («wir»), and impersonality. These shifts in pronouns suggest that Kleist finds more significant changes in the invention of the telegraph than just the speed of communication. For Kleist, the development of electronic communication and communication networks accompanies a shift in the relationship between the subject and society, between individual and collective. Stated differently, the violence intimated by the cannonball postal system is not coincidental. With the discussion of a «Bombenpost,» Kleist suggests that changes in communication technology change more than just the means of communication, that they also do violence to our experience of ourselves and of the world. Kleist’s brief text, then, serves as a bellwether of historical and cultural change and highlights three areas of significant transformation: the status of the subject, the relationship to place, and the nature of power. Rather than pass judgment on these changes, Kleist identifies the implications and complexities involved with each, foregrounding the tensions that are implicit in the new technology. CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 116 14.07.15 20: 41 Kleist’s «Bombenpost»: The Subject, Place, and Power 117 Kleist’s use of pronouns in these essays indicates that with the advent of electronic communication, the relationship between the subject and society is changing. Before the telegraph and specifically during the eighteenth century, postal communication - the letter in particular - became the guarantor of interiority and individuality. The letter was the genre par excellence for the personal narrative, as evidenced by the popularity of the epistolary novel during the eighteenth century in Europe. Goethe’s Werther and Sophie von La Roche’s Geschichte des Fräuleins von Sternheim, influenced by English and French precursors (i.e., Richardson, Montesquieu, and Rousseau), popularized this genre in Germany. Accordingly, Bernhard Siegert attributes the rise of literature in the eighteenth century to the postal system: „Das Schöne verdankt sich der postalischen Epoche. Im An(sich)halten und Prolongieren der Post gibt es Literatur« (Siegert 18). Literature in the eighteenth century, specifically literature based in personal narratives, created an aesthetics of individuality. Kleist recognizes that precisely this kind of literature is at risk with the development of the telegraph. For although the essays in «Nützliche Erfindungen» appear to dwell on the length of messages that can be sent by telegraph, closer inspection reveals that it is not only the length of the messages, 8 but also their content that is at issue. The editor, in describing the telegraph, portrays an exchange where one party asks «wie geht’s dir? » and the other responds, «recht gut.» It portrays communication as inquiring about and asserting a simple state of being. The editor would replace a literature based on personal narratives of becoming with a communication technology focused on states of being. The author of the letter, however, introduces complexity into this model of communication. In the passage cited earlier, he offers other possible responses, the first of which are states of being («so, so! oder: mittelmäßig! oder: die Wahrheit zu sagen, schlecht»). But he then shifts from describing states of being to relating brief narratives («oder: gestern nacht, da ich verreist war, hat mich meine Frau hintergangen; oder: ich bin in Prozessen verwickelt, von denen ich kein Ende absehe; oder: ich habe Bankerott gemacht, Haus und Hof verlassen und bin im Begriff in die weite Welt zu gehen»). The author describes actions that are temporal - each implies a longer narrative - and that would produce complex emotional states (betrayal, anxiety, and loss). In other words, the author reasserts subjective experience through narrative, thus countering the editor’s efforts to replace epistolary literature and the concept of subject that accompanies it. He not only counters the new technology of the telegraph with the older technology of an oxen postal service or foot messengers, but he also contrasts a mode of communication that CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 117 14.07.15 20: 41 118 John B. Lyon values narrative and subjectivity with one that conveys instantaneous snapshots of being and thereby eclipses a complex subject (as evidenced in the response «recht gut»). This new medium eclipses the subject not only in an abstract and literary sense, but also in a physical sense. For centuries the postal system in Germany relied on coaches that could carry both people and letters. The telegraph offered a medium, however, that conveyed only symbols, not people. As Bernhard Siegert writes: Vom 17. bis zur Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts wurde Zeichenverkehr portoökonomisch in der gleichen Weise an der Geographie gemessen wie Körperverkehr, einfach weil beide durch dasselbe Transportmittel ins Werk gesetzt wurden. Dieselbe Postkutsche konnte sowohl einen Brief als auch einen Schreiber unterbringen. Subjekt der Briefaussage und Subjekt der Briefäußerung fielen unter das Gesetz ein und derselben Verkehrsanstalt. (21) The advent of the telegraph separated signs from bodies. Language lost its physical aspect. There was neither written text on paper nor a speaker uttering sounds. The telegraph thus implies language distinct from speakers. The editor in Kleist’s essay notes: «so hat doch auch diese Fernschreibekunst noch die Unvollkommenheit, daß sie nur, dem Interesse des Kaufmanns wenig ersprießlich, zur Versendung ganz kurzer und lakonischer Nachrichten, nicht aber zur Übermachung von Briefen, Berichten, Beilagen und Paketen taugt« (Kleist 593). Telegraphic post thus lacks a physical component. The editor’s suggestion of an artillery postal system to remedy the inability to send packages indicates that this new system is incompatible with humans: one can shoot objects, but not people, along a relay of artillery stations. The author’s counterproposal of an oxen postal service or foot messengers, in contrast, reintroduces the possibility of human transport into the postal system. Humans could either carry or be carried by the post. Stated otherwise, the author reasserts the physical presence of the subject into communication precisely where the editor excludes it. The editor also excludes the individual subject by highlighting collectives. He speaks repeatedly of the benefits of this technology in terms of larger groups («das bürgerliche als handeltreibende Publikum» [593] and «das Heil des menschlichen Geschlechts» [595]). His endeavor overlooks the individual in favor of larger social and economic groupings. The author, in contrast, responds about the benefits «für einen solchen Mann» (594) and for «das Publikum» (595), where he refers not to a bourgeois and capitalistic public in general, but specifically to the public reading the Berliner Abendblätter, that is, a literary reading public. If the Berlin author asserts a collective, it is a collective united by literature; otherwise he speaks of individuals in relation CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 118 14.07.15 20: 41 Kleist’s «Bombenpost»: The Subject, Place, and Power 119 to the new and old technologies. The author asserts an individual, literary subject in opposition to the elided subject or the abstract collective proposed by the editor. The telegraph elides not only the subject, but also the subject’s relationship to place. For Kleist, the telegraph is a revolutionary medium, not only technologically, but also experientially. He thus presages the observations of contemporary media scholars and sociologists who highlight the impact of electronic media on our experience of place. As Edward Relph writes, mass communications «directly or indirectly encourage ‹placelessness,› that is, a weakening of the identity of places to the point where they not only look alike but feel alike and offer the same bland possibilities for experience» (Relph 90). And Joshua Meyrowitz writes that electronic media «lead to a near total dissociation of physical place and social ‹place.› When we communicate through telephone, radio, television, or computer, where we are physically no longer determines where and who we are socially» (Meyrowitz 115). Meyrowitz sees the invention of the telegraph as the first step in this dissociation: «The invention of the telegraph caused the first break between information movement and physical movement. For the first time, complex messages could move more quickly than a messenger could carry them. With the invention and use of the telegraph, the informational differences between different places began to erode» (116). Similarly, Marshall McLuhan notes that «Electronic media […] abolish the spatial dimension, rather than enlarge it. By electricity, we everywhere resume person-to-person relations as if on the smallest village scale» (McLuhan 255-56). Electronic communication also transforms political space. David Nye contrasts the reception of the telegraph in nineteenth-century America with its actual results. On the one hand, «the ‹universal communication› of the telegraph was celebrated as a force that would help realize ‹manifest destiny› and bind the nation together.» On the other, «the telegraph did not hinder the coming of the Civil War, and one might even argue that its rapid reports of events, such as John Brown’s raid, fanned the flames of sectarian conflict» (Nye 133). In other words, the telegraph represents a contradiction: on the one hand, it appears to connect people and point towards a more democratic society. On the other, it erodes the distinctions that establish place and heightens the distinctions between people, fostering conflict and revolution. With the term place, I draw on a distinction between place and space from phenomenology. In his monograph, Place and Space (1977), the geographer Yi-Fu Tuan states that «Place is a special kind of object. It is a concretion of value, though not a valued thing that can be handled or carried about easily; it is an object in which one can dwell.» He sees place as more than space. CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 119 14.07.15 20: 41 120 John B. Lyon Whereas «space is experienced directly as having room in which to move» (Tuan 12), place suggests human interaction and connection to a particular environment. As Tuan writes: «When space feels thoroughly familiar to us, it has become place» (73). Space is an impersonal setting for movement, but not relationship; place is familiarity, particularity, and the experience of connection to a locale. Such a notion of place is at risk during Kleist’s era. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, legal reforms in Prussia changed individuals’ relationship to place. These included the edict of 11 October 1807, expanded in 1811, that allowed Prussians the freedom to pursue most any profession (with the exception of the few professions that affected public welfare). This not only reduced the control of guilds over professions, but also did away with the distinction between rural and urban labor (Thienel 23). And an edict of 14 September 1811 began a reform process that culminated in the Prussian Agrarian Reform of 1850. These various reforms freed farmers from hereditary obligations of various types to landowners, allowed farmers with hereditary leases to acquire land for themselves, and others without hereditary leases to receive monetary remuneration for the land to which they had been bound. All other obligations to feudal lords and landowners - whether of service, corvée, or taxes - were done away with. All duties to land and to feudal lords were framed now in terms of money instead of heredity (24). The tendency of these reforms was to free workers from connections to a specific place and to make place a tradable commodity instead of an obligatory bond. Place was no longer a locus of connection, but was a space to pass through or a commodity to exchange. 9 The changing nature of place evident in these examples was linked to changing communications technologies. The development of the telegraph in the course of the nineteenth century connected people to each other while simultaneously loosening their connections to place. Speed and the overcoming of distance were the chief accomplishment of such technologies. For example, Kleist describes the magical impact of the telegraph, how with it, a person binnen Zeit eines halben Tages, gegen geringe Kosten von Berlin nach Stettin oder Breslau würde schreiben oder respondieren können, und mithin, verglichen mit unseren reitenden Posten, ein zehnfacher Zeitgewinn entsteht oder es ebensoviel ist, als ob ein Zauberstab diese Orte der Stadt Berlin zehnmal näher gerückt hätte […]. (Kleist 593) For Kleist, the speed of communication is like a magic wand that eclipses distance. The editor prioritizes time over space with the term «Zeitgewinn,» suggesting that the reduced time is more valuable than the lost experience of place. He ultimately effaces difference between places. Or as Wolf Kittler CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 120 14.07.15 20: 41 Kleist’s «Bombenpost»: The Subject, Place, and Power 121 writes, «er sah, dass ein Medium, welches Nachrichten mit Lichtgeschwindigkeit überträgt, den ganzen Globus in einen homogenen Raum verwandeln würde […]» (Kittler, «Bombenpost» 81). The telegraph threatens the differentiation between places by merging them together as if by magic. The telegraph overcame place for the sake of increased speed. Paul Virilio’s essay, Speed and Politics, written during the Cold-War era, analyzes this phenomenon through a discussion of high-speed military technology. Virilio traces the development of military technology, specifically nuclear missiles, towards pure speed, divorced from material space and a final geographic goal. Technology produces speed that lacks temporal reference and destination. With such weapons, geographic location and trajectory assume secondary importance in relation to «the speed of the moving body and the undetectibility of its path» (Virilio 135). As a result, the problem of speed falls back upon humans - the speed of reaction time and political decision necessary to send bombs (100) - and thus imprints the violence of speed on the human psyche. As Virilio asserts, «The danger of the nuclear weapon, and of the arms system it implies, is thus not so much that it will explode, but that it exists and is imploding in our minds» (150). For Virilio, it is no longer the weapons systems themselves that do violence as much as it is their speed that threatens violence. Their speed perpetrates a type of psychic violence on humans and changes how we experience the world. Kleist’s association of the telegraph with a «Bombenpost» resonates with Virilio’s discussion of speed in terms of weapons. The implication is that the focus on speed is inherently bound to a type of violence. Just as Virilio notes that speed of motion becomes an end in itself to the exclusion of any destination, so does Kleist observe that the speed of communication becomes an end in itself to the exclusion of significance and meaning in communication, and ultimately, of connection to place. Kleist’s representation of the telegraph recognizes the revolutionary potential of high-speed communications technology for literature and the subject. Yet he also recognizes that this new technology brings with it a wholesale transformation of the fundamental categories of experience. The telegraph changes our experience of place. Kleist’s editor reacts to this threat of displacement by pairing the militaristic «Bombenpost» with the telegraph; the author then posits the «Ochsenpost» or foot messenger as their retrograde counterpart. The «Ochsenpost» or foot messengers slow down communication to such a degree that one remains aware of the space the message traverses. The Berlin author’s alternatives to the telegraph are an effort to reassert a sense of connectedness and relationship to place that gets lost in the new electronic medium. CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 121 14.07.15 20: 41 122 John B. Lyon The conflict between the editor and the author is thus not only a conflict about technology, writing, and the subject, but is also a conflict about place. This is evident in the editor’s response to the author, where he writes: «Dem Einsender obigen witzigen Schreibens geben wir hiemit zur Nachricht, daß wir uns mit der Einrichtung seiner Ochsenpost, oder seines moralischen und publizistischen Eldorados nicht befassen können« (Kleist 595). The editor links the author’s proposed oxen postal and foot messenger systems to Eldorado, a legendary city of gold in South America. He thus suggests that the author’s arguments are bound to an idealized yet outdated notion of place. And so, in this essay, Kleist stages the conflict between two approaches to place, one that would hold on to a personal connection to place, a relationship that, however idealized, is based on differentiation experienced at a pedestrian speed, and an impersonal connection to place, where place is homogenized as an obstacle to overcome for the sake of time. With the changing nature of the subject and the changing nature of place comes a changing relationship to power. The proposal of a cannonball postal system evokes military power and war. By proposing the cannonball postal system as a complement to the telegraph, Kleist implies that violence and the telegraph belong together. Hans Magnus Enzensberger makes a similar observation when he asserts: «Das offenbare Geheimnis der elektronischen Medien […] ist ihre mobilisierende Kraft» (Enzensberger 160), that is, the power to mobilize a revolutionary populace. And Wolf Kittler argues that, Lange vor der Verlegung transatlantischer Kabel […] hat [Kleist] begriffen, dass der elektrische Telegraf den ganzen Erdball zu «einer Welt» verschaltet, in der das, was am Beginn des 19. Jahrhunderts als kleiner lokaler Guerilla-Kriege begann, sich zu Konflikten ausgeweitet hat, die zwar mit niedriger Intensität, aber in globalen und planetarischen Räumen ausgefochten werden. (Kittler, «Bombenpost» 100) Kittler connects the speed of communication to localized guerilla warfare and ultimately to global warfare. Enzensberger and Kittler, like Virilio, see the speed of electronic communications in military terms, and Kleist’s association of the «Bombenpost» with the telegraph suggests that he saw the same. Speed of communication threatens existing powers with the potential of a rapidly unified populace. This stands in contrast to the postal system, which began as an instrument of the state for official communication between regents. Even when the postal system was made available to regular citizens, it was done so in a way that would allow government oversight and control of communications. Although occasional directives such as the Prussian postal order of CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 122 14.07.15 20: 41 Kleist’s «Bombenpost»: The Subject, Place, and Power 123 10 August 1712 officially preserved postal secrecy, it was all too common to find «Schwarze Kabinette» that would violate this secrecy in the interests of the state. And as much as the postal system gave the power of self-expression and intersubjective communication to a broad public, the state also used this power to subject the same public to surveillance and control. Bernhard Siegert writes: Der Absolutismus stellt den Leuten Wörter und den Wörtern ein Medium zur Verfügung, um die Leute erstens von sich reden zu machen, zweitens ihre Reden kontrollieren zu können und drittens durch das auf ihre Reden erhobene Porto den Aufwand des Staates für diese Kontrolle finanzieren zu können […]. Institutionell heißt das, dass die Post dem Polizeywesen zugerechnet wird. (Siegert 14) Siegert asserts that the postal system offered individual expression in exchange for political control. Yet with the invention of the telegraph, the use of communications for political control encountered a new challenge. The speed of communication flattened hierarchies and undermined autocratic power. As Marshall McLuhan notes: There is a collapse of delegated authority and a dissolution of the pyramid and management structures made familiar in the organization chart. The separation of functions, and the division of stages, spaces, and tasks […] tend to dissolve through the action of the instant and organic interrelations of electricity. (McLuhan 247) And again: The natural dynamic of the book and, also, newspaper is to create a unified national outlook on a centralized pattern. All literate people, therefore, experience a desire for an extension of the most enlightened opinions in a uniform horizontal and homogenous pattern to the «most backward areas,» and to the least literate minds. The telegraph ended that hope. It decentralized the newspaper world so thoroughly that uniform national views were quite impossible […]. (257) Whether in organizational structures or in the mass media, electronic communications undermine hierarchies and subvert uniformity. And so the telegraph is a revolutionary medium, not only in Kittler’s and Enzensberger’s observations that it enables rapid communication among subversive individuals, but also insofar as it disrupts hierarchies and unifying power structures such as the nation. In this regard the «Bombenpost» functions as both a double compensatory mechanism for the telegraph: first to fill «eine Lücke» in conveying packages, but also, as a compensatory mechanism for the state, transferring power over electronic communications from a potentially revolutionary populace back to state authority. An extensive chain of artillery stations stretched across the countryside could fend off disruptions CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 123 14.07.15 20: 41 124 John B. Lyon to centralized power that the new technology might enable. It represents an implicit threat of violence to the populace. The nature of power that a telegraph or postal system would support is a fundamental subtext in Kleist’s piece. The editor and the author speak of two different organizations of power, each connected to artillery. The editor refers to a supranational power grounded in economic interests. This is evident at several points throughout his text. Nowhere does he refer to the nation or a political organization. Instead, he speaks of larger collectives («das bürgerliche sowohl als handeltreibende Publicum» [Kleist 593] and «das Heil des menschlichen Geschlechts» [595]) and geographical regions («innerhalb der Grenzen der vier Weltteile» [592] and «wenigstens innerhalb der Grenzen der kultivierten Welt» [593]). The unifying factor for these collectives and regions is financial, for the editor repeatedly asserts the needs of commerce: the telegraph is «dem Interesse des Kaufmanns wenig ersprießlich» (593), the Bombenpost will help with «Beschleunigung und Vervielfachung der Handelskommunikationen» (593), the Bombenpost would function «gegen geringe Kosten» (593), and even if the communications were filled with nothing but complaints, «würde es, aus ökonomischen und kaufmännischen Gesichtspunkten noch vorteilhaft sein, sich dieselben mit Bomben zuzuwerfen» (595). The artillery postal system serves commerce first. Its relationship to a political organization is unclear. In other words, for the editor, economic interests dominate political interests, and this primacy must be reinforced with the violence represented by the cannons. In contrast, the Berlin author also refers to cannons, first in rejecting the cannonball postal system, and second, when he lists the hypothetical contents of communications carried by the oxen post or foot messengers. One of these states: «morgen werden wir, unter dem Donner der Kanonen, ein Nationalfest feiern» (595). The author connects the contents of his proposed communications systems to a national celebration. This is somewhat incongruous in Kleist’s era, considering that Germany was not yet a nation and that a national structure comparable to that of other European states did not yet exist. Yet the author longs for a nation and associates artillery and force more with a nation than with economic purposes. He references «das Publikum» as the beneficiary of the oxen post or foot messengers, but he does not define this «public» in economic terms, in contrast to the author who spoke of «das bürgerliche sowohl als handeltreibende Publikum.» It is not certain to exactly which public the author refers: the reading public of the Berliner Abendblätter, the general Prussian populace, or some other definition of a «public.» But it is clear that he does not define that public in economic terms as the editor does. Instead, he indicates that this public would rather hear CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 124 14.07.15 20: 41 Kleist’s «Bombenpost»: The Subject, Place, and Power 125 news about national festivals, the marriage of one’s daughters, the successful overcoming of debt, and construction of a house («mein Haus habe ich wieder aufgebaut; oder: die Pfandbriefe stehen wieder al pari; oder: meine beiden Töchter habe ich kürzlich verheiratet» [595]), decidedly domestic concerns. In contrast to the editor’s appeal to a collective defined by ever-expanding business opportunities, the Berlin author responds with a national, even domestic alternative. Cannons celebrate a sense of national unity and domestic security, not financial interests that would transcend both local and national communities. The contrast between the editor’s and author’s positions reflects a conflict inherent to the new electronic communication technology, namely a conflict between a supra-national, economic-based view of power and a national power, grounded in domestic concerns. With this exchange in the Berliner Abendblätter, Kleist highlights the implications of electronic communications technologies. Because Kleist writes both sides of the exchange, it is difficult to identify either the editor or the Berlin author as exclusively his voice. On the one hand, the author’s playful tone is more endearing and easier to identify with than the editor’s earnestness and formality. On the other, the author’s resistance to technological innovation makes him seem more retrograde, even provincial. And so, in writing both sides of the exchange, Kleist aligns himself with neither, but instead, he stages the conflicts between these two positions, suggesting that these tensions are inherent in electronic communication technologies. He identifies these conflicts as pertaining to: the understanding of the subject - an individual, literary subject in opposition to the elided subject or the abstract collective; the experience of place - a personal connection to place based on differentiation experienced at a pedestrian speed, and an impersonal connection to place, where place is homogenized as an obstacle to overcome in order to save time; and the structure of power - a conflict between supranational economic interests on the one hand and domestic interests and the nation state on the other. Each of these conflicts resonated with significant transformations in German culture during the early nineteenth century: the literary vs. the political subject, transformations in place with the waning of feudal society, and the emergence of both capitalist and nationalist interests. Kleist’s essay points to these problems without proposing a solution. As such, his essay highlights the telegraph and, by extension, electronic communications as a site of unresolved tension. Electronic communications technologies both engender such tensions and offer a medium in which they can play out. Kleist’s essay of 1810 both describes and enacts the tensions inherent in burgeoning electronic communication technologies. CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 125 14.07.15 20: 41 126 John B. Lyon Notes 1 See Kittler, Die Geburt des Partisanen 395 and Kleist, Sämtliche Werke und Briefe (Vol. 3) 1181. Sömmering’s telegraph preceded Morse’s by at least two decades. 2 See Kittler, «Bombenpost» 92-96 for a more detailed discussion of the Chappe telegraph system. 3 See Winston 26-29 for a brief summary of the implementation of Morse’s telegraph. 4 For a thorough history of the development of the telegraph in Germany see Wessel. 5 Parenthetical references to Kleist cite Kleist, Sämtliche Werke und Briefe, Vol. 3. 6 See Kleist, An Abyss 247 and Kleist, Sämtliche Werke (Vol. 3) 1181. 7 At least one scholar maintains that Kleist’s proposal was wholly serious. See Kittler, Die Geburt des Partisanen: «Und auch sein Vorschlag einer Bombenpost war ganz gewiß kein Scherz» (396). 8 See Kittler, «Bombenpost» for a more detailed discussion of the length of telegraphic messages. 9 See Lyon 32-71 for a more detailed presentation of this argument. Works Cited Enzensberger, Hans Magnus. «Baukasten zu einer Theorie der Medien.» Kursbuch 20 (1970): 159-86. Kittler, Wolf. «Bombenpost.» Heinrich von Kleist: Style and Concept. Ed. Dieter Sevin and Christoph Zeller. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2013. 81-100. -. Die Geburt des Partisanen aus dem Geist der Poesie. Freiburg: Verlag Rombach, 1987. Kleist, Heinrich von. An Abyss Deep Enough. Ed. and trans. Philip B. Miller. New York: Dutton, 1982. -. Sämtliche Werke und Briefe. Vol. 3. Ed. Ilse-Marie Barth, Klaus Müller-Salget, Stefan Ormanns, and Hinrich C. Seeba. Frankfurt a.M.: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1990. McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. 2nd ed. New York: Signet, 1964. Lyon, John B. Out of Place: German Realism, Displacement and Modernity. New York: Bloomsbury, 2013. Meyrowitz, Joshua. No Sense of Place. The Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behavior. New York: Oxford UP, 1985. Nye, David E. «Shaping Communication Networks: Telegraph, Telephone, Computer.» Technology and the Rest of Culture. Ed. Arien Mack. Columbus, OH: The Ohio State UP, 1997. 125-49. Relph, Edward. Place and Placelessness. London: Pion, 1976. Siegert, Bernhard. Relais. Geschicke der Literatur als Epoche der Post. 1751-1913. Berlin: Brinkmann & Bose, 1993. Thienel, Ingrid. Städtewachstum im Industrialisierungsprozeß des 19. Jahrhunderts. Das Berliner Beispiel. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1973. Tuan, Yi-Fu. Space and Place. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1977. Virilio, Paul. Speed and Politics: An Essay on Dromology. Trans. Mark Polizzotti. New York: Semiotexte, 1986. CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 126 14.07.15 20: 41 Kleist’s «Bombenpost»: The Subject, Place, and Power 127 Wessel, Horst A. Die Entwicklung des elektrischen Nachrichtenwesens in Deutschland und die rheinische Industrie. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1983. Winston, Brian. Media Technology and Society. A History: From the Telegraph to the Internet. London: Routledge, 1998. CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 127 14.07.15 20: 41 Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH+Co. KG • Dischingerweg 5 • D-72070 Tübingen Tel. +49 (07071) 9797-0 • Fax +49 (07071) 97 97-11 • info@francke.de • www.francke.de JETZT BES TELLEN! JETZT BES TELLEN! Günter Butzer / Hubert Zapf (Hrsg.) Große Werke der Literatur XIII 2015, 264 Seiten €[D] 39,90 ISBN 978-3-7720-8544-4 Dieser Band setzt die Reihe von Interpretationen großer Werke der Literatur fort, die aus einer Ringvorlesung an der Universität Augsburg entstanden ist. Die Interpretation der Texte verbindet sich dabei mit der Frage ihres Status im literarischen Kanon, der immer wieder neu zu verhandeln und zu begründen ist. Gerade in einer Zeit intensivierter Kanondebatten und des Aufstiegs neuer Medien stellt sich die Frage nach der ästhetischen, historischen und gesellschaftlichen Relevanz von Texten, die ganz offensichtlich kulturprägende Wirkungen entfalten und der immer neuen Auslegung und Aneignung bedürfen. Der Band versammelt Beiträge von Kaspar H. Spinner (Äsop, „Fabeln“), Hanno Ehrlicher (Miguel de Cervantes, „Rinconete y Cortadillo“), Rotraud von Kulessa (Marie Leprince de Beaumont, „Le Magasin des adolescentes“), Helmut Koopmann (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, „Faust“), Thomas Schmidt (George Gordon Byron, „Written After Swimming from Sestos to Abydos“), Dennis F. Mahoney (Joseph von Eichendorff, „Ahnung und Gegenwart“), Martin Middeke (Emily Brontë, „Wuthering Heights“), Hubert Zapf (Herman Melville, „Bartleby, the Scrivener“), Matthias Mayer (Hugo von Hofmannsthal, „Elektra“), Christoph Henke (James Joyce, „Finnegans Wake“) Hans Vilmar Geppert (Bert Brecht, „Buckower Elegien“), Stephanie Waldow (Ingeborg Bachmann, „Malina“) und Katja Sarkowsky (Chinua Achebe, „Things Fall Apart“). CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 128 14.07.15 20: 41 Innocence, Interrupted: Bewusstsein and the Body in Heinrich von Kleist NOR A MA RTIN PET ER SON Univ ersity of Nebr a sk a-Lincoln Es sind die gestörten und erschwerten Situationen der Verständigungen, in denen die Bedingungen am ehesten bewußt werden, unter denen eine jede Verständigung steht. (Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode 361) Among his many unusual tropes, Kleist’s representations of the body are some of the most difficult to parse: the bodies in his texts often slip, produce ambiguous signs, and create startling contradictions. What consequences ensue when the flesh generates knowledge, then turns around and reverses or denies it? In this essay, I will explore Kleist’s textual bodies as problematic sites of knowledge that simultaneously produce and deny their own readings. In high-stakes questions of innocence or guilt, signs of the body defy any manifestation of truth, pointing instead to a more ambiguous relationship between the self and its consciousness. By openly manifesting, but never resolving, the extremes of innocence and guilt, Kleist’s bodies disrupt the hermeneutic possibilities of representation. In moments when the stakes are highest, I will argue, the body rebels against an inner, apparently evident truth to produce doubt in the face of certainty. In questions of truth and knowledge, Kleistian bodies point to the limitations of a merely dualistic reading. As Helmut Schneider writes, «Kleistian narrative […] holds itself up precisely by self-destructing» (Schneider 504). 1 The interruption of projected innocence reflects a pattern often found in Kleistian narrative; whenever one reading seems plausible, truth folds in on itself, threatening to collapse the entire textual endeavor. Die Marquise von O … (1808) and Der Zweikampf (1811) are two such meditations on the (non)legibility of the body. The former spotlights a woman whose body produces signs of pregnancy the Marquise is unable or unwilling to read; in the latter, the ever-shifting signs of the body indicate an unstable exchange between the signification of truth, knowledge, and the mechanisms that generate them. The term Bewusstsein, which Grimms Deutsches Wörterbuch glosses as Selbstgefühl, was only coined in the eighteenth century, but it was already widely used during Kleist’s time. 2 In a letter from August 1806, Kleist writes, «das Bewußtsein seiner selbst und die CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 129 14.07.15 20: 41 130 Nora Martin Peterson damit beginnende Herrschaft des Verstandes ist der Sitz des Übels» (qtd. in Skrotzki 13), suggesting that knowledge of the self is the root of all evil. 3 Kleist’s juxtaposition of wissen and selbst points to an affinity between the author’s usage of Bewusstsein and the one put forth by the Grimms. Tainted by the endless production of carnal signs, self-awareness impedes the self. No longer is self-consciousness a positive characteristic leading to self-understanding or knowledge. It is, rather, a «separation from self through consciousness» (Curran 419). 4 The multiplicity engendered by Kleist’s bodies privileges the production of meaning over the actual product of certainty. However, the paradoxes that emerge indicate that no one reading can ever be stable. 5 Scholars have long attempted to decode the conflicting messages of the Kleistian flesh. 6 Recently, some critics have focused on the fact that for Kleist, the body, rather than language, leads to truth. 7 This stance is rendered more complex by the proliferation of tropes that during Kleist’s time came to represent skill even in the absence of knowledge. In the eighteenth century, falsification and eloquence can coexist; bodies can produce ambiguous signs and still appear eloquent. 8 Recognizing the difficulty of making even the most tentative claims about truth in Kleist’s texts, many scholars have gone only so far as to suggest a connection between body language and one problematic certainty: the certainty of a problem. 9 While most current readings agree that Kleistian bodies generate some kind of truth, these truths are often unsettled, ambiguous, and troubling. 10 In a recent article about the problematic yet essential ‹middle› of Michael Kohlhass, Zachary Sng points to the challenges of a text that simultaneously builds itself up and breaks itself down: «This misfire points not to a flaw or deficiency in person but instead reveals the duplicity of a force that poses as positing force while secretly working as deposing one» (Sng 181). Scanning the body for truth and knowledge results in a «gesture of self-interruption that precipitates a narrative retracing and requires a hermeneutic doubling-back» (184). Whether or not this doubling-back results in any kind of definitive truth remains unclear. In both of Kleist’s texts, establishing innocence depends on the representations of the body that are both certain and, at the same time, called into question. In what follows I will explore the ways in which corporeal indiscretions factor into decisions between guilt and innocence, arguing all the while for an uneasy exchange between body and consciousness of the self. Whether it is the shocking beginning, or the series of twists that follow, Die Marquise von O … is one of Kleist’s most absurd and beloved stories. To any second-time reader of the text, the Count F. betrays signs of his guilt very early in the text, fervently insisting time and again that the Marquise CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 130 14.07.15 20: 41 Innocence, Interrupted 131 agree to marry him immediately. However, transparent though his motives may be to readers, first-time readers remain in the dark for quite some time, although perhaps not quite so long as the heroine, the Marquise herself. Armine Mortimer calls this hurdle «the cognitive dissonance stemming from the characters’ inability to know» (Mortimer 293); she proposes that «the novella, with its second story, requires a certain realism that calls for a devious reading» (297). It is true that throughout the text, the Marquise explicitly expresses an almost absurdly ignorant reading of her body. She is puzzled by the incomprehensible changes she has perceived in her body, but she does not follow them to their logical conclusion: [Die Marquise], sonst die Göttin der Gesundheit selbst, [fühlte sich] von wiederholten Unpässlichkeiten befallen, die sie ganze Wochen lang für die Gesellschaft untauglich machten. Sie litt an Übelkeiten, Schwindeln, und Ohnmachten, und wusste nicht, was sie aus diesem sonderbaren Zustand machen solle. (Kleist, Werke 3: 148; emphasis mine) A few months after the officer has convinced the Marquise to marry him, but before she has fully realized her predicament, her «symptoms» return with greater strength than before: Man hielt die Verlobung schon für so gut, wie abgemacht: als sich die Kränklichkeiten der Marquise, mit größerer Lebhaftigkeit, als jemals, wieder einstellten. Sie bemerkte eine unbegreifliche Veränderung ihrer Gestalt. Sie entdeckte sich mit völliger Freimütigkeit ihrer Mutter, und sagte, sie wisse nicht, was sie von ihrem Zustand denken solle. (Kleist, Werke 3: 160; emphasis mine) The Marquise’s body may be perfectly readable here, but the Marquise herself refuses to recognize the reading. The literal implications of «sie wisse nicht» stand in direct contrast to what her body does know; thus, bodily symptoms both perpetuate and impede the logical conclusions at which the Marquise should, at this point, be able to arrive. By refusing to consider anything other than her own innocence, the signs of (someone’s) guilt remain unnamed and unclaimed. Throughout the text, the Marquise is famously bad at reading herself, whereas the doctor and midwife diagnose her condition almost immediately. Thus, one must take care to distinguish between different kinds of reading. Readers of the text, too, quite quickly understand the implications of the Marquise’s ailments. Less interested parties (the doctor, the midwife, the reader) are able to understand the narrative of the Marquise’s body, since there is no personal involvement. The Marquise, on the other hand, is plagued by the impediment of her consciousness, which stands in the way of an accurate reading. Her lack of self-knowledge in the face of her body’s CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 131 14.07.15 20: 41 132 Nora Martin Peterson knowledge highlights the pitting of the self against itself to deny its own readings; her flesh produces meanings that the self energetically denies. The Marquise’s pregnancy «splits her body against itself and from her consciousness. The significance of the Marquise’s sexual ‹fall› lies in the heteronomy of her body, which throws her out of her social and normative bonds and endows her with a self-determination opposed to, rather than grounded on, her consciousness» (Schneider 513). The Marquise both knows and does not know, accepts and does not accept, the knowledge of her pregnancy. Still in the dark about her condition, the Marquise calls a doctor, an expert reader of the flesh, to diagnose her strange condition. When he immediately diagnoses her pregnancy, she reacts violently: «Sie warf sich in der größten Bewegung auf den Diwan nieder. Sie durchlief, gegen sich selbst mißtrauisch, alle Momente des verflossenen Jahres, und hielt sich für verrückt» (Kleist, Werke 3: 161). Although the Marquise is outraged by what she claims is a scandalous accusation on the part of the doctor, her first reaction is to think back on the previous year and consider its implications. In the face of certainty, the Marquise doubts what she knows to be true because of what her body is saying. She knows that she has never consciously had sex during the last nine months, a certainty compounded by the fact that, being a widow and mother of two children, she is certainly no virgin. On one significant point, the Marquise speaks true: she was unconscious during her rape. The juxtaposition of unconscious and conscious indicates a lack of self-knowledge in the former state. The Marquise had no control over her self - inner or outer - during the moments she was ravaged. And still, for a moment, she doubts the validity of her innocence. The Marquise’s hesitation in this moment stems from the flesh, which produces its own kind of knowledge. While her body does not feel or understand what has happened, it recognizes what state it is in, and what must have happened in order to bring about the pregnancy. 11 Just as the body’s production of symptoms creates doubt about her self-diagnosis, here, innocence is both perpetuated and impeded by two conflicting readings. After she throws the doctor out of her house, the Marquise’s body starts to produce a different kind of sign. She starts to tremble uncontrollably, her face burns bright red. Her body goes into convulsions. She loses consciousness, and trembles even more violently (Kleist, Werke 3: 161-62, 165). The slips of the flesh produced by her already transparent body have less to do with her pregnancy than with her consciousness. The disobedience of her body during these moments functions as a corporeal manifestation of selfknowledge. The Marquise’s flesh is out of joint with what she might want it to do, but in its disobedience, it produces signs that lead the Marquise to CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 132 14.07.15 20: 41 Innocence, Interrupted 133 give the doctor’s diagnosis more credence. Although she has sent him away, the Marquise asks her mother to send for a midwife, all the while assuring her that she is innocent. Now, her mother, too, begins to suspect. She exclaims, «ein reines Bewußtsein, und eine Hebamme! » (162-63). 12 Even if the Marquise’s body has announced the truth all along, it needs a female authority, professionally trained, to confirm what her body and, subsequently, her blushes, faints, and tremors have been communicating all along. 13 The Marquise asks ob die Möglichkeit einer unwissentlichen Empfängnis sei. - Die Hebamme lächelte […] , und sagte, das würde ja doch der Frau Marquise Fall nicht sein. Nein, nein, antwortete die Marquise, sie habe wissentlich empfangen, sie wolle nur im Allgemeinen wissen, ob diese Erscheinung im Reiche der Natur sei? Die Hebamme versetzte, dass dies, außer der Heiligen Jungfrau, noch keinem Weibe auf Erden zugestoßen wäre. Die Marquise zitterte immer heftiger. (165) Cohn has done some fascinating sleuthing into Kleist’s use of wissentlich as choice of words for carnal knowledge: Kleist is following Luther, who consistently uses the verb erkennen for carnal knowledge in his translation of the Bible. The only exception is the Annunciation scene, in which he chooses wissen (Cohn 136). At first glance, the passage implies a neo-immaculate conception, since readers know that she was unconscious at the time of the rape. The Marquise, one would assume, also knows that she did not know the officer carnally (erkennen), but her body has clearly known carnally (wissen), as evidenced by her pregnancy. Carnal knowledge, when used in the context of Kleist reading Luther, stands in for bodily knowledge. When she consults her conscience, the Marquise cannot find any knowledge of sexual behavior. However, when her body consults its own Wissen, it can read its own signs and deduce what must have happened. In a startling turn of phrases that could easily be overlooked, the Marquise lies to the midwife, sexually implicating herself for the first time. She tells the midwife in the passage above that she did receive a man knowingly. Although on the surface she is giving the logical explanation in order to find out ‹generally› if conception without knowledge is possible, her inquiry points to the possibility that on some level, the lie is not a lie at all. Her body’s surface, legible as a site of carnal fact, stands in tension with the knowledge and consciousness throughout the key passages of the text. There is the sense that the swan in the Count’s dream has realized its filthy state and has disappeared into the lake, but that it remains unknown whether or not it will reemerge. The stakes for the heroine’s reputation could not be higher. Upon hearing of her pregnancy her father throws the Marquise out of the family house, threatening even to take her children. Her body represents a truth she CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 133 14.07.15 20: 41 134 Nora Martin Peterson does not want to acknowledge, and seems to serve as irrefutable proof of her guilt. Both the Marquise and the Count displace the narrative of innocence and guilt into indirect speech and knowledge. These moments highlight their individual awareness of just how precarious the situation is at the same time as they highlight the challenge of locating knowledge in the text. The Count’s dream, referenced above, is the first of these displacements. Rather than emphasize the already quite transparent symbolism of the dream itself, readers might puzzle over the fact that the Count chooses to tell it to the Marquise at all, and that he specifically emphasizes that this dream reminds him of her (Kleist, Werke 3: 156-57). By shifting his knowledge about the rape onto the space of the dream, the Count simultaneously interrupts and displaces his guilt onto the realm of the nonknowledgeable. His indirect speech is both an expression and masking of his role in the affair. He communicates to the Marquise something that she does not yet know about her own body. By marrying him, the Count implies that his victim might regain the honor she does not yet know she has lost. If the swan incident highlights the displacement of knowledge onto the indirect space of the dream, the Marquise’s decision to place an ad in the newspaper transfers the rape into another indirect reading. It is the description of the advertisement that opens the story, although chronologically, it of course takes places after she hears the story of the swan: In M … ließ die verwitwete Marquise von O … durch die Zeitungen bekannt machen: dass sie, ohne ihr Wissen, in andre Umstände gekommen sei, dass der Vater zu dem Kinde, das sie gebären würde, sich melden solle; und dass sie, aus Familienrücksichten, entschlossen wäre, ihn zu heiraten. (143; emphasis mine) The Marquise’s textual displacement of the rape complements the Count’s telling of the dream; the Marquise, not knowing what happened, displaces her innocence into the realm of public knowledge. The absurdity of the ad underscores her innocence in the face of public humiliation, and it appeals, albeit without her knowledge, to the guilt of the Count. Separating herself from any guilt by denying her role in the pregnancy, at the same time as she publicly broadcasts knowledge of her body’s condition, the Marquise blurs the boundaries between interior and exterior knowledge. From the very first sentences of the text, readers encounter a body perplexed by what it knows (and does not). Convinced of her innocence, the Marquise is unable to relate to the Count’s story of the swan. And yet, by the time she places the ad, her body has come to know what her mind has not yet understood. Despite the progression of her pregnancy, references to ‹not knowing› abound. The Marquise’s pregnancy announces itself on the space of her body - it becomes CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 134 14.07.15 20: 41 Innocence, Interrupted 135 the site of carnal knowledge - but the Marquise does not acknowledge it. She still cannot (or will not) understand the analogy of the swan’s tarnished innocence. The more explicitly her body exclaims its pregnancy, the more emphatically the Marquise recoils from it. The puzzle of knowing and feeling culminates when the officer visits the Marquise in her exile. He insists on an audience with her, presumably to admit to his crime. She turns him away emphatically, exclaiming, «ich will nichts wissen! » (171; emphasis in original). The Marquise is sending mixed messages. Clearly, the length of time it takes her to figure out that she is pregnant, along with her insistence on remaining in the dark, indicates a reluctance to unite body with consciousness. According to Cohn, «[that] frantic shutting out of knowledge from the self paradoxically betrays the presence of the knowledge within the self» (Cohn 133). Together with the lie she has told the midwife, her emphatic denial of knowledge at this point indicates that she already knows the truth. 14 In order for the truth of the body to unite with knowledge, the Marquise must open her consciousness to the absurdity of what has happened. Along the path to truth, the Marquise’s body slips, she lies, and she refuses knowledge. The result begs readers to question the function and utility of self-consciousness in a subject so insistent upon denying the truths her body produces. In order to regain the innocence of the swan, the Marquise must concede to the interruptions of her body and accept the knowledge of what has happened. She must accept marriage with the officer, but before she can come to love her perpetrator, she must come to terms with the various readings she has had of him. Just as dashes and other punctuation marks stop the flow of speech throughout the text and fill it with what Mortimer calls «blank center[s]» (Mortimer 299), the body stops the flow of reading and interpretation. It is, however, vitally important to the way in which the Marquise comes to knowledge. Producing signs that make her doubt innocence and suspect a hermeneutic gap that can only have been caused by her own unconscious rape, the Marquise must accept the paradoxical fruitfulness of opposites. This goes beyond Mortimer’s implication that the first and second stories dialogically complement each other until readers, and the Marquise, realize the truth; rather, the body and the self, as well as innocence and guilt, continually interrupt each other. The Marquise’s final explanation of her shock at learning the truth about the Count’s paradoxical embodiment of both innocence and guilt highlights her own journey from one to the other at the hands of her body: «er würde ihr damals nicht wie ein Teufel erschienen sein, wenn er ihr nicht, bei seiner ersten Erscheinung, wie ein Engel vorgekommen wäre» (Kleist, Werke 3: 186). CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 135 14.07.15 20: 41 136 Nora Martin Peterson Following the plot and searching for the truth in Kleist’s Der Zweikampf feels a bit like walking through a labyrinth without a map. The issue of Graf Rotbart’s alibi (his claim to have slept with the chaste Littegarde during the time his brother was murdered) overshadows the main plot; the resolution of the murder seems almost like an afterthought when it resurfaces at the end of the text. During the duel, meant to manifest God’s judgment of the truth in the matter, Herr Friedrich is wounded mortally, whereas Graf Rotbart is merely scratched. But Herr Friedrich does not die. Over the course of the next few weeks, his wounds magically begin to heal. Graf Rotbart’s scratch, on the other hand, literally eats away at him until he confesses the truth. Each manifestation of so-called ‹truth› postpones actual understanding; wounds, supposedly signs of God’s truth, point to one meaning, then its opposite. The inner truth clashes with the topical message of the wound. No assertion of truth seems complete; a new confusion of the plot lies around every corner. Herr Friedrich does not know that Littegarde is innocent. And until a certain point, Graf Rotbart believes that he really did sleep with her, since Littegarde’s chambermaid disguises herself and replaces her unknowing mistress in bed. Knowledge in Der Zweikampf is held up by the refusal of the body to function according to a duel supposedly set up to represent God’s will. Readings of the body here cross each other in a «labyrinth of apparently irreconcilable contradictions» (Demeritt 38). Although the wounds initially point to innocence and guilt, their readings switch by the end of the text, thus calling into question the significance of trying to interpret them at all. Reading the wounded body in Der Zweikampf leads from one riddle to another. The final sentence, proclaiming that dueling will continue to be used in matters of contention, but that it will only result in truth «wenn es Gottes Wille ist» (Kleist, Werke 3: 349), indicates that signs of the body point either to what they signify, or to their opposite, or to nothing at all. The exterior body produces signs and invites, even demands, interpretation, but the readings it yields are not always accurate. Kleist’s playful, yet urgent, deferral of resolution in the text gestures towards his overall awareness that truth comes from a clash between body and self that cannot easily be resolved. 15 Irmela Krüger-Fürhoff has pointed out that the study of wounds proliferated during the time Kleist wrote Der Zweikampf (Krüger-Fürhoff (1998) 24). One might speculate that Kleist found in wounds an ideal manifestation of his interest in troubled bodies and empty truths. The violence of a wound is reflected in the violence always implicit in Kleist’s texts. Graf Robart’s wound begins as a minor one; it is described as having merely scratched the skin, but it slowly begins to eat away at the body: «ein ätzender CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 136 14.07.15 20: 41 Innocence, Interrupted 137 […] unbekannter Eiter, fraß auf eine krebsartige Weise, bis auf den Knochen hinab im ganzen System seiner Hand um sich […] sein ganzer Körper [löste sich] in Eiterung und Fäulnis auf» (Kleist, Werke 3: 342-43). The external wound eats away - literally - at the body until the interior truth is exposed. 16 Whereas the Marquise’s pregnancy begins on the inside and works its way out, wounds in this text begin on the exterior and press inwards, divulging the truth by means of the persistent body. Here, on the other hand, the wounds themselves seem less to be sites of knowledge than starting points for a long hermeneutic struggle. As Rotbart’s wound eats away at him, cancer-like, it gets under his skin, forcing a hermeneutic clash of interior and exterior and betraying, albeit slowly, his interior guilt. 17 In Grimms Deutsches Wörterbuch, a wound is defined as «eine gewaltsame durchtrennung der körperoberfläche» (qtd. in Krüger-Fürhoff (2003) 36). Emmert’s Lehrbuch der Allgemeinen Chirurgie writes that a wound begins «bald von der Oberfläche des Körpers, [ist] sichtbar und dringt nach innen» (qtd. in Krüger-Fürhoff (2003) 36). In line with these definitions, Krüger-Fürhoff observes that «[d]ie Körper in Kleists ‹Zweikampf› besitzen […] eine höchst fragile Oberfläche, die von zahlreichen Verletzungen gezeichnet wird» (Krüger-Fürhoff (1998) 27). Offering deeper insight into the psychological and physiological status of the human skin than any other modern thinker, Didier Anzieu posits in The Skin Ego (1974) that the skin serves as a frontier that provides a ‹double-feedback› between interior and exterior. «The skin,» he writes, «together with the tactile sense organs it contains […] provides direct information about the external world» (Anzieu 105). According to Anzieu’s logic, Graf Rotbart’s wound, though only a scratch, opens up the pathway to the truth by means of the skin. Herr Friedrich’s injury, by the same token, though seemingly mortal, feeds on the truth to the opposite effect. A reading of the wounds as a de facto clash between interior and exterior is possible, but it does not take into account some of the complexities of the text. If wounds stand in for the truth, then why do these truths seemingly change? 18 Why do they not (seem to) express the divine verdict that they were meant to? Looking at Littegarde’s status in the text sheds light on the murky workings of truth in Der Zweikampf. As pieces of the truth start to emerge, Littegarde experiences a moment of doubt similar to the Marquise’s self-suspicion. When Friedrich comes to visit her in her cell, she exclaims, «Schuldig, überwiesen, verworfen, in Zeitlichkeit und Ewigkeit verdammt und verurteilt! » (Kleist, Werke 3: 338). Although she does not explain for several pages the true sequence of events, or her exact role in the intrigue with Rotbart, the outburst is enough to convince Friedrich of her guilt, and CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 137 14.07.15 20: 41 138 Nora Martin Peterson the ambiguity of the passage implies that she herself believes it. Hearkening back to the Marquise’s moment of reflection, trying to remember if she might have slept with someone over the past year, Littegarde here doubts her own innocence after the signs produced by the duel prescribe a certain hermeneutic truth. The flesh that represents Littegarde is separated from the consciousness contained within her body. Just as the Marquise doubts her own innocence during the doctor’s examination of her body, Littegarde, having displaced her own innocence onto Friedrich, starts to doubt her own role in the affair based on the signs of his skin. Rather than believe the knowledge of what she experienced, Littegarde gives the truth of the affair over to mediation; she takes a passive role in the discernment of her own body’s truth. Just as the Marquise places an ad in the local newspaper, putting truth in the hands of an external source, Littegarde’s innocence hinges on others’ readings - not of her body - but of her mediator’s. Friedrich serves as her skin and as the pathway to her innocence, but in the process, they both become unsure of the signs of his body. Once Littegarde ‹confesses,› Friedrich reinvests his wound with the meaning assigned by the rules of the Zweikampf. Because she has displaced her own innocence onto Friedrich, who represents her, Littegarde believes she must read the outcome of the duel as it appears on his body. The next few paragraphs double back on the (albeit absurd) truth Littegarde seems to have revealed and confirm that she did not, in fact, sleep with Rotbart. The deferral of truth, while providing another clue in the overarching narrative, shuts out the possibility of a definitive reading. Moments of doubt in Der Zweikampf complicate the solving of the mystery for the characters in the text as well as the reading of the text itself. When the exterior signs of the body are deemed unreliable, and when the text itself produces signs of uncertainty, the problem truth gets handed over to mediation. In the end, restoring innocence requires a return to convention. Rather than settling on a definitive hermeneutic explanation of the wounds, the conflict is resolved by confession, another longstanding legal and social tradition. When Rotbart realizes the imminence of his death, he is seized by guilt, and hurries to the site where Friedrich and Littegarde await their execution. He then pleads for their release: «Unschuldig», versetzte [Rotbart], indem er sich gestützt auf den Prior, halb darauf emporrichtete: «wie es der Spruch des höchsten Gottes, an jenem verhängnisvollen Tage, vor den Augen aller versammelten Bürger von Basel entschieden hat! Denn er, von drei Wunden, jede tödlich, getroffen, blüht, wie ihr seht, in Kraft und Lebensfülle; indessen ein Hieb von seiner Hand, der kaum die äußerste Hülle meines Lebens zu berühren schien, in langsam fürchterlicher Fortwicklung den CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 138 14.07.15 20: 41 Innocence, Interrupted 139 Kern desselben selbst getroffen, und meine Kraft, wie der Sturmwind eine Eiche, gefällt hat. Aber hier, falls ein Ungläubiger noch Zweifel nähren sollte, sind die Beweise.» (Kleist, Werke 3: 347) Because of the exteriorization of bodily signs proves unreliable, Rotbart’s verbal confession finally produces the much sought-after truth. Like the body, confession is inscribed in a long religious and legal tradition, and the two work together here to produce truth and knowledge. 19 The wounds of the body, while certainly saying something about interior and exterior, repeatedly and permanently multiply their own meanings, resulting in a textual maze of possible readings. Consciousness and knowledge both matter and do not, and innocence seems to be simultaneously everywhere and nowhere. The stakes are high in both texts: innocence must be found. The fact that at the end of Der Zweikampf, the more accurate reading of signs is assigned to the verbal, not the bodily, realm, indicates a distrust in the body’s capacity to signify, and it places authenticity in the hands of verbal, rather than bodily, confession. It implicates the instability of the body in its relationship to the self. Although the body cannot reliably resolve the mystery in Der Zweikampf, one must keep in mind that privileging the verbal over the physical in matters of confession is by no means an easy matter, since words can be just as easily falsified as the body can evade a clear reading. The last line of the text calls into question whether or not the Zweikampf model, or God’s supposed judgment therein, matters at all: from henceforth, by official decree, truth will only be found in a duel «wenn es Gottes Wille ist» (349). Even after the resolution of this particular mystery, ultimate truth is deferred into textual infinity. 20 Textual mediation proves just as unreliable as the reading of exterior signs; the body becomes enmeshed in a series of hermeneutic peccadilloes. Self-knowledge interferes with what previously seemed certain, as in the Marquise. The higher the stakes in Kleist’s texts, the more the readability of the body fluctuates and is deferred. The so-called authority of the body can cause uncertainty in seemingly clear-cut situations. The text defies reading extremes such as innocence and guilt in any evident way. Rather, Kleist’s narrative insists on interrupting such extremes, blurring boundaries between feeling and knowledge, and calling into question the ability of reading to signify anything at all. By pitting the knowledge of the body against self-knowledge in Die Marquise von O… and Der Zweikampf, Kleist shows that the intricacies of one word can serve as a perfect manifestation of imperfect truths. CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 139 14.07.15 20: 41 140 Nora Martin Peterson Notes 1 The reader might recall, among others, «unendliches Bewusstsein» vs. «gar keines» in Über das Marionettentheater, angel vs. devil in Die Marquise von O …, guilt vs. innocence in Der Zweikampf, or «Küsse» vs. «Bisse» in Penthesilea. 2 Kleist’s usage of Bewusstsein in many ways corresponds more to the English term selfconsciousness than to its German counterpart. When the prefix selfwas attached to consciousness in English beginning in the seventeenth century, it took on the sense of shame and self-awareness that simply never took hold in German usage. In modern German, to be selbstbewusst is a positive thing; it is to be confident. Though they do not correspond exactly, I will use the English terms consciousness for Bewusstsein and selfknowledge for Selbstgefühl throughout this article. 3 Scholars have persuasively, though not conclusively, argued for Kleist’s problematic stance vis-à-vis the Enlightenment in light of his so-called «Kant-Krise.» See, for example, Phillips, Borkowski, and Mehigan. 4 Schneider suggests that «religious and metaphysical symbolism underscored this essentiali-zation of the vertical human posture, the most portentous example being […] the biblical fall» (Schneider 504). 5 This recalls Schlegel’s Athenäum-Fragment 116, in which he writes that Romantic poetry can «multiply [reflection] in an endless succession of mirrors.» The subject can only be defined by the reflection that results from endless multiplications following each fall. The significance of the problems raised by consciousness and subjectivity in the eighteenth century and beyond was central not only to German thinkers and writers, but to those throughout Europe. In his historical analysis of the narrative of the fall, Jenny writes that «every fall involves the removal of the subject» (Jenny 61; translation mine). This is somewhat reminiscent of the removal of consciousness in Kleist’s texts. Jenny’s trajectory highlights the development of original sin from a negative «fall» to a positive manifestation of the body and the subject. Much like Kleist, he sees the fall as an infinite expression of the subject: «the human body expresses an infinite repetition of falling, and lingers, as though enveloped, in the very moment of the fall» (94). 6 Skrotzki’s Die Gebärde des Errötens im Werk Heinrich von Kleists (1971) dissects each instance in a manner reminiscent of positivism and of eighteenth-century attempts to scientifically decode the wounded body. While his exhaustive work is very helpful in identifying some of the ways in which Kleist uses the body as a marker for trouble, it does not allow for the ambiguity inherent in Kleist’s texts. 7 As Stephens writes, «die Wahrheit [bei Kleist] scheint nicht in der Sprache selbst […] sondern vielmehr in der Eloquenz der Körperzeichen enthalten zu sein» (Stephens 74). Moments later, however, Stephens follows his observation with the disclaimer that «[Körperzeichen] können irreführend oder gar verfälscht werden» (74), thereby suggesting that even (or especially) the organic candor of bodies can multiply hermeneutically. 8 Eloquenz, Beredsamkeit, and Rhetorik, to name a few. Many scholars have accounted for these and other rhetorical tropes. I will mention only one major representative from each. For a good history of Eloquenz, see Potkay. For Rhetorik, see Guerrini. For an analysis of Beredsamkeit and the body, see Geitner. 9 Schneider, who writes about the trope of falling in Kleist’s oeuvre, observes that «Kleist makes ample use of emotional body language like crying, blushing, or blanching, but only to challenge sentimentality’s assumption that these ‹natural signs› of the soul ex- CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 140 14.07.15 20: 41 Innocence, Interrupted 141 press an immediate, unadulterated truth» (Schneider 503). Gelus uses the example of laughter; she writes that «For Kleist, laughter usually appears in association with - and serves a similar function to - blushing, outbursts of anger, disintegration or even total loss of language, talk of dreams or intoxication or madness, fainting, and, finally, actual madness. […] [E]ach one signifies some level of danger or distress […]. Laughter in Kleist’s world, then, is almost always a sign that something is wrong. Sometimes it affords the character a temporary defense against fears and trouble; in other instances, it is simply a token of incongruity that marks the onslaught of unknown forces» (Gelus 452, 470). 10 Butler’s notion of «troubled» bodies might serve as a subtext for the generation of bodily truths in Kleist. In her preface to Gender Trouble, she argues that identity is «constituted through discursively constrained performative acts» (Butler xxxi). Butler seeks to destabilize the «presumed universality and unity» of fixed constructions of gender (6), positing that gender «proves to be performative - that is, constituting the identity it is purported to be. In this sense, gender is always a doing […]» (34). Kleist’s bodies, and the multiplicities they represent, seem to put Butler’s theory of destabilization into action. The inconsistencies inherent in many of his texts perplex our readings; one is aware of a certain performativity at the same time as one is not sure what, exactly, is being «troubled» or constructed in the process. 11 See Mortimer 298 and 300 for apt analysis of the paradoxes faced by characters and readers alike in trying to reconcile the extremes put forth by the text. 12 Cohn has remarked on Kleist’s privileging of Bewusstsein (over, for example, Gewissen, which would seem more appropriate in this passage). During the rape, too, the Marquise is «völlig bewusstlos» (Kleist, Werke 3: 145). Gewissen, on the other hand, contains wissen, or knowledge, whereas Bewusstsein is more interested in the self and in an awareness of the self. In both cases, the Marquise is out of touch with her selfknowledge. Her body tries to communicate its carnal knowledge, but, still opposed to her self-consciousness, the Marquise denies it. After the various slips of her body, and the opinions of two professionals, the Marquise faints. But here, Kleist uses Ohnmacht - without power - which suggests that while she no longer has the power to control her body, she has read its message. 13 Smith claims that the midwife «draw[s] out indirectly what she [the Marquise] already knows» (Smith 207). While this is true, I insist on the previous knowledge of her body as site of the pregnancy, easily readable to most, and on the development of her consciousness leading up to this moment. 14 Mortimer discusses at greater length the question of who knows what and identifies the Marquise’s mother as the most discerning reader of the Marquise’s body (Mortimer 298-300). 15 Krüger-Fürhoff believes that part of Kleist’s struggle with how to depict the body stems from the divergence between various conceptions of the body beginning in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (Krüger-Fürhoff (2003) 39). Her claim resonates with Bakhtin’s investigation of the relationship between the carnavelesque body and the self. Michel Foucault also famously pinpoints the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century as a moment of epistemic shift in The Order of Things. 16 The visual image of the body eating away at itself here evokes another link to Martin Luther, who repeatedly refers to the body after original sin as leprous. The Oxford English Dictionary defines leprosy as «[a] disease causing scaliness, loss of pigmentation, or scabbiness of the skin,» frequently «causing loss of sensory and motor function CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 141 14.07.15 20: 41 142 Nora Martin Peterson (esp. in the limbs) resulting in destruction of tissue and deformity of the affected parts of the body in severe untreated cases.» (OED Online, s.v. leprosy). It stands in for the disconnection between interior and exterior, until it has worked away enough of the flesh to reveal the truth. 17 Schüller writes, «[D]ie Körperwunde verwandelt sich zum Zeichen, das allegorisch die Subjektivierung artikuliert: Der traumatische Schnitt eröffnet die Möglichkeit des Sich-Selbst-Erkennens im Interpellieren des Anderen» (Schüller 26). 18 Sng writes that «the Kleistian strike is […] not an agent of beginnings or endings, but a purveyor of endless mediation - which is to say, of im-mediation» (Sng 181). In Zweikampf the im-mediation consists of the oscillation between guilt and innocence: each time the readers thinks to have found proof, truth is deferred by a new interpretation of the signs previously thought to be readable. 19 Interestingly, Kleist situates this story at the end of the fourteenth century, a time in which legal systems were beginning to be more highly developed. Sacramental confession had also gained significance in the years following the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), and again following the Council of Trent (1545-63). See the first volume of Foucault’s History of Sexuality for an extensive account of how the structures of power and knowledge in confession produced and built up truths and individuals. 20 Sng writes that «A middle or medium is supposed to hold a place open and therefore make available the possibility of future arrival. Instead, what ends up happening is more like a permanent deferral and foreclosure of arrival» (Sng 176). Works Cited Anzieu, Didier. The Skin Ego. New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 1989. Bakhtin, Mikhail. Rabelais and his World. Trans. Helene Iswolsky. Bloomington, IN: Indiana UP, 1984. Bentzel, Curtis C. «Knowledge in Narrative: The Significance of the Swan in Kleist’s ‹Die Marquise von O…›» German Quarterly 64.3 (1991): 296-303. «Bewusstsein.» Deutsches Wörterbuch von Jacob Grimm und Wilhelm Grimm. Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2012. Web. 1 Aug. 2012. Borkowski, Heinrich. Kleist und Kant. Königsberg: Gräfe und Unzer, 1935. Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge, 1990. Cohn, Dorrit. «Kleist’s ‹Marquise von O…›: The Problem of Knowledge.» Monatshefte 67.2 (1975): 129-44. Curran, Jane V. «Bodily Grace and Consciousness: From the Englightenment to Romanticism.» Body Dialectics in the Age of Goethe. Ed. Marianne Henn and Holger A. Pausch. Amsterdamer Beiträge zur neueren Germanistik 55 (2003): 409-20. Demeritt, Linda C. «The Role of Reason in Kleist’s Der Zweikampf.» Colloquia Germanica 20 (1987): 38-52. Foucault, Michel. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. New York: Random House, 1970. -. The History of Sexuality. Vol. 1. Trans. Robert Hurley. New York: Vintage, 1978. Gadamer, Hans-Georg. Wahrheit und Methode: Grundzüge einer philosophischen Hermeneutik. 2nd ed. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1965. CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 142 14.07.15 20: 41 Innocence, Interrupted 143 Geitner, Ursula. «Die ‹Beredsamkeit des Leibes›: Zur Unterscheidung von Bewusstsein und Kommunikation im 18. Jahrhundert.» Das Achtzehnte Jahrhundert 14.2 (1990): 181-95. Gelus, Marjorie. «Laughter and Joking in the Works of Heinrich von Kleist.» German Quarterly 50.4 (1977): 452-73. Guerrini, Anita. «The Eloquence of the Body: Anatomy and Rhetoric in the Early Eighteenth Century.» Sustaining Literature: Essays on Literature, History, and Culture, 1500 -1800: Commemorating the Life and Work of Simon Varey. Ed. Greg Clingham. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell UP, 2007. 271-87. Kleist, Heinrich von. «Die Marquise von O-… .» Heinrich von Kleist: Sämtliche Werke und Briefe. Vol. 3. Ed. Ilse-Marie Barth, Klaus Müller-Salget, Stefan Ormanns, and Hinrich C. Seeba. Frankfurt a.M.: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1990. 143-86. -. «Der Zweikampf.» Heinrich von Kleist: Sämtliche Werke und Briefe. Vol. 3. Ed. Ilse-Marie Barth, Klaus Müller-Salget, Stefan Ormanns, and Hinrich C. Seeba. Frankfurt a.M.: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1990. 314-49. Krüger-Fürhoff, Irmela Marei. «Auslegungskünste: Zur Lektüre körperlicher Wunden bei Heinrich von Kleist.» Der Deutschunterricht 5 (2003): 34-42. -. «Den Verwundeten Körper Lesen: Zur Hermeneutik physischer und ästhetischer Grenzverletzungen im Kontext von Kleists ‹Zweikampf›.» Kleist Jahrbuch 1998: 21-36. Jenny, Laurent. L’Expérience de la Chute: de Montaigne à Michaux. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1997. «Leprosy.» OED Online. Oxford UP, 2014. Web. 16 Nov. 2014. Mehigan, Tim, ed. Heinrich von Kleist und die Aufklärung. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2000. Mortimer, Armine Kotin. «The Devious Second Story in Kleist’s ‹Die Marquise von O … ›» German Quarterly 67.3 (1994): 293-303. Phillips, James. The Equivocation of Reason: Kleist Reading Kant. Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 2007. Potkay, Adam. The Fate of Eloquence in the Age of Hume. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1994. Schlegel, Friedrich. Friedrich Schlegel’s Lucinde and the Fragments. Trans. Peter Firchow. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1971. Schneider, Helmut J. «Standing and Falling in Heinrich von Kleist.» MLN 115.3 (2000): 502- 18. Schüller, Marianne. «Wunde und Körperbild. Zur Behandlung der Wunde bei Goethe und Kafka.» BildKörper. Verwandlungen des Menschen zwischen Medium und Medizin. Ed. Marianne Schuller, Claudia Reiche and Gunnar Schmidt. Hamburg: LIT, 1998: 19-38. Skrotzki, Ditmar. Die Gebärde des Errötens im Werk Heinrich von Kleists. Marburg: N.G. Elwert Verlag, 1971. Smith, John H. «Dialogic Midwifery in Kleist’s Marquise von O and the Hermeneutics of Telling the Untold in Kant and Plato.» PMLA 100.2 (1985): 203-19. Sng, Zachary. «Poetics of the Middle in Kleist’s Michael Kohlhaas.» Germanic Review 85.3 (2010): 171-88. Stephens, Anthony. «Kleists Szenarien der Wahrheitsfindung.» Heinrich von Kleist und die Aufklärung. Ed. Tim Mehigan. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2000. 73-91. CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 143 14.07.15 20: 41 Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH+Co. KG • Dischingerweg 5 • D-72070 Tübingen Tel. +49 (07071) 9797-0 • Fax +49 (07071) 97 97-11 • info@francke.de • www.francke.de JETZT BES TELLEN! JETZT BES TELLEN! Eva Hoffmann Die Weissagungen des Bakis aus Goethe enträtselt „Schlüssel liegen im Buche zerstreut ...“ 2015, 135 Seiten, €[D] 24,80 ISBN 978-3-7720-8562-8 In den Wirren der napoleonischen Kriege um 1800 schlüpft Goethe in das Gewand des weisen Sehers Bakis, um in der Form verschlüsselter Weissagungen Zeitgenossen und künftige Leser anzuregen, über Gegenwartsprobleme sowie allgemeine Fragen des Lebens nachzudenken. Diese Texte in einem Zyklus von 32 Doppeldistichen geben bis heute Rätsel auf. Mit literarischem Spürsinn werden erstmals - konsequent aus Goethe und aus seinem Leben - alle Distichen erschlossen und so Wege zur Gesamtdeutung des Zyklus eröffnet. CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 144 14.07.15 20: 41 Of Mothers and Lovers: Social and Maternal Conflict in Kleist’s Penthesilea ELIZA BETH SCHR EIBER-BY ER S Duk e Univ ersity Whether familial or erotic, normative cultural assessments of love identify it as a ubiquitous, typically positive, emotion. One need only look at the primacy of the mother-child bond in most psychoanalytic theories of development, as well as many anthropological studies of kinship, to understand the centrality of maternal love. Moreover, the longing to experience erotic love seems to permeate every aspect of social interaction outside the nuclear family. The social construction of appropriate partners and appropriate modes of «loving» pervade discussions of literature, culture, and the interpersonal. However, love is culturally specific and takes on greater or lesser importance depending on its value within a specific culture. Such is the case that we encounter in Heinrich von Kleist’s Penthesilea, when we begin to consider the differences in the conceptions of love between the Greeks and the Amazons. Kleist establishes a rich and complex set of cultural values for the Amazons, in which the significance of motherhood and love may be located in customs and mythology. We cannot read Penthesilea through the lens of normative conceptions of love, because they are fundamentally different from love as constructed in Kleist’s Amazon culture, which is deeply tied to the origins of their society. In creating such a culture with a profoundly foreign worldview, Kleist emphasizes the construction of meaning and modes of social control and the difficult role of the individual to assert him/ herself within society. Analyses of Penthesilea often depict the drama’s central conflict as the title character’s attempt to come to terms with her erotic and romantic love for Achilles, a love that ultimately leads to their mutual destruction. 1 These analyses fail to account for the social construction of love within Amazon culture and the role that motherhood plays in Penthesilea’s desires for Achilles. Additionally, while the importance of war in Amazon culture has been a significant focus of scholarly attention, the role of motherhood in this society has been either taken for granted or considered with a less critical eye. Feminist readings of the drama have tended towards an absolute veneration of Amazon culture and Penthesilea herself as representative of feminine strength in opposition to the masculine tyranny of the Greeks. Most no- CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 145 14.07.15 20: 41 146 Elizabeth Schreiber-Byers tably, Hélène Cixous’s reading of the play suggests that Penthesilea’s love for Achilles is indicative of the purity and strength of Amazon emotion and its triumph over the domination that the Greek culture represents (Cixous 114). However, by conflating feminine utopia with Kleist’s Amazon culture, Cixous and many other scholars fail to account for some of the culturally specific values of the Amazons, ones that align with their mythology as constructed in the drama. While these scholars ascribe a nascent feminism to Kleist, a characterization that Ricarda Schmidt has pointed out is unwarranted (Schmidt 374 -75), they do not take into account all aspects of cultural construction of subjectivity in Amazon culture, specifically the difference in their construction of love and the value placed on motherhood, thereby imposing their own conceptions of motherhood and love onto Penthesilea, both the drama and the character. As I will demonstrate, the cultural values of the Amazons cannot be viewed through the lens of the cultural norms of the reader or those of Greek culture; rather, they must be considered on their own terms through an examination of the founding myths of the Amazons. First, through his modifications to the established mythology Kleist has Amazon cultural values identify motherhood as significant to the lives of the Amazons. This is most evident in his emphasis on the concept of motherhood as represented by the breast that the Amazons retain as well as the Rosenfest, a celebration of conception and future motherhood. Second, in Kleist’s play the Amazon concept of love varies significantly from that of the Greeks, as evidenced by the way that love and terms of endearment are used both amongst the Amazons and with outsiders. Third, when viewed in light of Amazon connotations of motherhood and love, specifically the emotions Penthesilea feels for her recently deceased mother and the conflict between her social and maternal obligations, we can better understand Penthesilea’s desire, her feelings of «love» for Achilles. Indeed, Otrere’s deathbed message to Penthesilea, when read against the background of Amazon constructions of motherhood and love, provides a powerful context for understanding Penthesilea’s actions throughout the drama. Ultimately, her supposed attraction to Achilles can be seen as a desire to reestablish the mother-daughter bond through transference of emotion rather than a simple case of infatuation. Kleist’s Amazon mythology draws on a number of sources, but the modifications he makes to these sources are of particular importance to my analysis, especially his alterations to the conclusion of the battle between the Amazons and the Greeks and the origin of Amazon society. Michael Chaouli emphasizes that Kleist’s intervention in the mythology is located in the modifications he makes to the ending: Benjamin Hederich’s Gründli- CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 146 14.07.15 20: 41 Of Mothers and Lovers 147 ches mythologisches Lexikon (1770), like the ancient texts upon which it is based, shows Penthesilea being defeated at Achilles’s hands - an outcome that Kleist reverses (Chaouli 126). This reversal of Penthesilea’s fate is critical as it is bound up - as we shall see later - with her relationship to Achilles. Doris Borelbach’s research on mythology in the works of Kleist identifies a French source as the origin of the Amazon society; a source which describes Scythian women killing their conquerors. Borelbach notes that this version of the Amazon mythology does not depict Tanaïs’s rise to prominence, her self-mutilation through the removal of her right breast, and her subsequent naming of their society (Borelbach 54). Instead, this is another detail specific to Kleist’s (re)constructed Amazon mythology. Tanaïs baptizes the society in the name of a lack: «Die Amazonen oder Busenlosen» (15.1989), 2 a detail emphasized by both Chaouli and Simon Richter. Richter posits that the «mastectomy at the origin of the Amazon state, the elaborate myth of Kleist’s invention» is ultimately central to this understanding of Kleist’s drama (Richter 228). He further argues that «[t]he dilemma is posed in terms of their breasts: full breasts - arguably a sign of maternity - crowd the movement of their arms and prevent the effective spanning of the bow» (230). By naming their society around their lack of breasts, the Amazons construct an identity characterized by only half of their social values. Richter’s focus on the missing breast, however, ignores the remaining breast which presumably continues to stand as a sign of maternity. Though he argues that the Amazon stands for a longing for her breast and maternity, I submit instead that she is an embodiment of both the lack and the full maternal breast. Amazons are warriors, but they are also female warriors who know that they must continue to procreate in order to maintain their culture. Their name seems to serve as a signifier for how they wish to be perceived by their enemies, but within their community they preserve the breast which supports their role as mothers, just as many of their rites revolve around motherhood and fertility. Their battles and cultural ceremonies are bound up with their rites of procreation in order to replenish their population. First, the Rosenfest and the rites that surround it represent a transition in the life of an Amazon woman. Prior to the Rosenfest, the virgins are selected for the «blühnden Jungfraun Fest.» Penthesilea describes the women selected for the rite: Marsbräute werden sie begrüßt, die Jungfraun,- Beschenkt mit Waffen, von der Mütter Hand,- Mit Pfeil’ und Dolch, und allen Gliedern fliegt,- Von ems’gen Händen jauchzend rings bedient,- Das erzene Gewand der Hochzeit an. (15.2056 -60) CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 147 14.07.15 20: 41 148 Elizabeth Schreiber-Byers These women go from being anonymous Amazon virgins to becoming brides of Mars, the god of war, complete with bridal dress, which simultaneously serves as battle armor. This is not a wedding ceremony familiar to Kleist’s readers or their Greek opponents, but rather a preparation for battle. Once they defeat their mates, they bring them to the temple of Diana to begin the Rosenfest, which, by penalty of death, only the participating virgins may see. Thereafter, the women celebrate the «Fest der reifen Mütter» (15.2081) and send the men home. Each ritual aligns with milestones familiar to the reader, but the meaning constructed by the Amazons is in keeping with their social goals and their cultural origins: the transition from adolescence to adulthood, from virginity to maternity, and from flower-gathering initiate to full Amazon warrior. Just as these rites and social values are foreign to the reader of Kleist’s drama, so too does the Amazon identity seem impenetrable to the Greeks within the text. In the first scene, Antilochus asks what the Amazons want and why they are attacking the Greeks (1.13). Though he receives several answers, none of them has anything to do with the mythology of the Amazons. Instead the Greeks impose their own cultural meanings on the actions of Penthesilea, suggesting either that she is completely irrational, or that she holds a personal hatred toward Achilles (1.160-62). They appear to be unaware of the Amazon social rites and values. This is confirmed later in scene fifteen when Penthesilea describes Amazon cultural rites, historical tradition, and law to Achilles. Descriptions of Amazon tradition can be read both as a means of educating others about Amazons, as well as a means of socialization. Penthesilea begins her explanation of the Rosenfest by detailing the annual census that precedes it: «So oft, nach jährlichen Berechnungen, / Die Königin, was ihr der Tod entrafft, / Dem Staat ersetzen will, / ruft sie die blüh’ndsten / Der Fraun, […]» (15.2033-36). Distracted by Achilles, she interrupts the story but then resumes, repeating these lines word for word. Achilles seems unfamiliar with the precise history of the Amazons or their rites, reinforcing the Greeks’ earlier confusion and unfamiliarity with the Amazon Rosenfest. The anonymous Greek men assume that they are being lead to the «Schlachtbank» but when they are informed that they will be lead to Artemis’s temple where «Entzücken ohne Maß und Ordnung wartet,» they are dumbfounded and think they must be dreaming (6.980-85). When she mentions the requirement that she must defeat him on the battlefield, he inquires: «Und woher quillt, von wannen ein Gesetz, / unweiblich, du vergiebst mir, unnatürlich, / Dem übrigen Geschlecht der Menschen fremd? » (15.1902-1904). He also confesses that though he has heard stories of the Amazon origins and CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 148 14.07.15 20: 41 Of Mothers and Lovers 149 breastlessness, he has taken the stories to be myths. Only through learning the history and laws of the culture from an Amazon or personally experiencing the Amazon rites do these sagas assume an air of authenticity for the Greeks. It is critical that Penthesilea, a perceived voice of authority within Amazon culture, introduces both the audience and Achilles to the foundation myths about the Amazons. By presenting the myth of Amazon origins through an Amazon character, and the queen no less, this mythology is not tainted by the Greek view of the Amazons, except by Achilles’s interjections. The authenticity is, however, ambivalent, particularly when one considers the tone of Penthesilea’s recitation. It is as though Penthesilea has had to learn the history by rote. This careful construction of the story shows its importance in Amazon socialization, a socialization that Penthesilea is in the process of undergoing. In some ways, though she is the best source of information about the Amazons, as their queen, she is also an unreliable source because she has not yet been fully initiated into her society and, never having participated in the Rosenfest, she is only able to describe it as it has been described to her. However, such is the case with all of the social values and descriptions of the Amazon origins told by Penthesilea. Penthesilea’s descriptions of the importance of war and battle to the Amazons show fundamental differences between Greek and Amazon society and social values. We learn from the stories Penthesilea tells Achilles that Amazon society was founded through an act of violence in response to the atrocities of war. This does not seem to indicate a significant difference between Greek and Amazon culture, since both seek conquest in their victories. The Greeks, however, appear to primarily focus on waging war, expanding their territory, or seeking revenge. The Trojan War, fought by the Greeks and Trojans, is a war of revenge; even Achilles’s attack on and dismemberment of Hector, which Penthesilea mentions and of which Achilles boasts, is an attack of revenge. The Amazons, too, are described as taking revenge at the foundation of their society. As Kleist appropriates the French source identified by Borelbach, he describes how they sharpened their bracelets into knives and murdered their captors. Thereafter, however, they take up arms to protect themselves and to ensure the continuing existence of the society as evidenced by the Rosenfest. This key difference explains why the Greeks do not comprehend the Amazons, and it is critical to understanding the difference between the external perception of the Amazons and their internal values. While the Greeks perceive the Amazons as breastless warriors, focusing on the lack to which Richter draws attention, the Amazons know that their breastless bellicosity is but one half of their social identity which protects their dual identity as mothers. CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 149 14.07.15 20: 41 150 Elizabeth Schreiber-Byers In her psychoanalytic approach to Penthesilea, Ursula Mahlendorf points to the breast imagery throughout the play as proof that the «fears and needs» addressed in the play «are those generated in the infant’s development before he/ she has attained a clearly delimited sense of self and is still bound in symbiotic relationship to the mother» (Mahlendorf 257). Indeed, though many critics point to the metaphors of eating, hunting, and battle that recur in the story, the words «Brust,» «Busen» or «Brüste» are used over seventy times in the play in various contexts. Given that Kleist’s work depicts his version of the Amazon culture and that his specific contribution to the Amazon foundational myths is the violent mastectomy by Tanaïs, it is not surprising that breasts are a focal point to the story. The breasts - both the one that remains, and the absence or lack of the other - can be mapped to the dual responsibilities of the Amazon: that of warrior and mother. For Penthesilea, the only Amazon who seems to maintain a bond with her biological mother, this connection with the remaining breast is particularly strong. One final aspect of Kleist’s construction of Amazon mythology that demonstrates the importance of this dual identity is the centrality of the high priestess of Diana, the goddess of both the hunt and childbirth, to their cultural rites. The Rosenfest, held as an offering to Diana, serves as a central point in the drama and as a festival celebrating the coming of age for Amazon women. Though one might assume that Athena, the goddess of wisdom and warfare, would be critical to Amazon culture, she does not appear to be central to Amazon rites and is mentioned only three times in the drama: by Odysseus in the first scene (1.48); as a «Schwester» goddess to Diana and Medea in the sixth scene (6.948); and by Achilles in a comparison between Penthesilea and Athena (15.1878). If women, marriage, and birth were meant as the core of the Rosenfest, then Hera, the goddess of the hearth, might have been a more suitable patron for such a rite, but Kleist’s ceremony is dedicated entirely to Diana, who represents both sides of the Amazon society equally. Just like the goddess of the hunt, the Amazons take pleasure in the spoils of their battles at the Rosenfest, but the double meaning of Diana’s aspects as a goddess cannot be ignored. As the goddess of childbirth, the dedication of the Rosenfest to Diana is suggestive of the importance of procreation and childbirth. By inventing these origins for the Amazons, and thereby drawing a connection between the original «mother» of the Amazons and the goddess of the hunt and childbirth, Kleist constructs a culture that is equally dedicated to birth and the hunt. Fundamental to our understanding of the social constructedness of Penthesilea’s actions is the significance of motherhood to the Amazons as portrayed by Kleist. Reflecting on the Amazon foundation myths and the cen- CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 150 14.07.15 20: 41 Of Mothers and Lovers 151 tral rites, like the Rosenfest, one sees that it is not enough to just be a woman, nor even to be a great warrior, for full membership in Amazon society; motherhood is essential to completing one’s transition into full membership within the community as well as to ensure its future. But while Penthesilea strives to obtain this level of participation in her state, her attempts to fulfill her multiple roles as queen, daughter, and mother lead to both her personal destruction and the collapse of the state. While cultural value is placed on childbirth as a means of procreation and an additional means of protecting their society and the Amazons retain one breast to symbolize the importance of the breast in feeding and raising children, the only mother-daughter bond that seems to matter in Kleist’s drama is the one between Otrere and Penthesilea. The fact that this is the only mother-daughter bond of note indicates its significance in the conflict between Penthesilea’s social and personal obligations as well as her culturally constructed and biologically determined identities and emotions. There are certainly other mothers mentioned in the drama. The first is the high priestess of Diana, for whom the Rosenfest is offered (6.881). The second is Tanaïs, who is described as the «Völkermutter» by Penthesilea in her explanation of the Amazon origins (15.2047). In addition, various Amazons refer to the high priestess as «heilige Mutter,» - Prothoe even falling into the high priestess’s breast exclaiming «O meine Mutter! » (24.2711), and throughout the sixth scene the high priestess mentions the collective mothers of the young women preparing for the Rosenfest as «Mütter.» The priestess does not mention any of these mothers by name and never in the singular. The final mother mentioned in the drama is Otrere, who, while she was the Queen of the Amazons, was also Penthesilea’s biological mother. Moreover, all references by Penthesilea to her mother are to Otrere, not to the priestess as is the case with the other Amazons. While the other Amazons place value on the mother of their people, and revere the queen of the Amazons for her position, they do not maintain the kind of relationship with their mothers that Penthesilea and Otrere share. Amazon social values of procreation and battle, as presented in Kleist’s drama, come into conflict with the authority represented by Penthesilea’s mother. As queen of the Amazons, Otrere represents the social order of Amazon society but is also Penthesilea’s biological mother. Her parting message to her daughter serves as the impetus for all of Penthesilea’s actions, even if the readers are unaware of this motivation until well into drama. Penthesilea explains her mother’s expectations for her future: CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 151 14.07.15 20: 41 152 Elizabeth Schreiber-Byers Doch sie, die würd’ge Königinn, die längst Mich schon ins Feld gewünscht - denn ohne Erben War, wenn sie starb, der Thron und eines andern Ehrgeiz’gen Nebenstammes Augenmerk - Sie sagte: «geh, mein süßes Kind! Mars ruft dich! Du wirst den Peleïden dir bekränzen: Werd’ eine Mutter, stolz und froh, wie ich -» Und drückte sanft die Hand mir, und verschied. (15.2133-40). Otrere’s will serves simultaneously as the voice of the queen, the law of the Amazon state, and the desire of the protagonist’s mother to maintain her royal lineage. This produces conflicts between the authority of mother and queen; that is, between the biologically maternal and the social state, played out through Penthesilea as she becomes queen and must reconcile her duties to her mother and her people. Examining this pivotal struggle between Penthesilea’s relationship to her people and her mother through the lens of the socially specific notions of love and family sheds new light on Penthesilea’s interaction with Achilles. 3 Penthesilea’s relationship to her mother provides the reader with the best motivator for her actions. As mentioned earlier, Otrere is the only biological mother of importance in the drama. Penthesilea’s relationship with her mother is exceptional in a society that mentions no other «actual» mothers but is centered on birth and procreation, consistently evoking the mother of the nation in its mythology. On her deathbed, in the above quoted lines, Otrere conveys her final requests for her daughter. Penthesilea describes her mother having long wished for her daughter to go onto the battlefield. Kleist’s choice of the past participle of «wünschen» shows that this was an ongoing desire, not something which was coming to light on her deathbed. This statement, properly understood by Penthesilea, is a typical desire for Amazons and would likely have been Penthesilea’s future regardless of her mother’s wishes. Her second statement, that Penthesilea would crown Achilles, seems almost like a prophecy rather than a command that Penthesilea should undertake. The use of the future tense expresses that this is something that will happen, not that she simply desires it to happen, thereby reinforcing the prophetic meaning. Finally, Otrere tells her daughter to become a mother using the imperative of «werden» to articulate her desire, thus suggesting that her final wish for her daughter is that she become a mother and bear a child, in keeping with aspects of Amazon culture critical to their future. She is not commanding her daughter to love and rise to the throne with Achilles by her side. Accepting Achilles as a sort of heteronormative lover and king is a fundamental misunderstanding of Otrere’s words. Though romantic CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 152 14.07.15 20: 41 Of Mothers and Lovers 153 love is something Penthesilea understands, she appreciates that, in her role as Amazon queen, romantic love is not an acceptable emotion. Otrere does not indicate that Penthesilea should seek out Achilles, in contravention of Amazon law, but that he will be the one whom she would defeat, and thus would be the father of her child, thereby carrying on her lineage and the future of her people. Why then, if Penthesilea seems to understand the laws, mores, and culture of her people, and wants to follow through with her mother’s desires, does she distort these desires so fully throughout the course of the drama? Penthesilea holds her mother and her mother’s commands in high esteem in a society where the women are all described as sisters, and where no one mother appears to be valued over another. She does this not because Otrere is queen, but because she is Penthesilea’s biological mother. In asserting her subject position to seek out Achilles as her partner on the battlefield, rather than mate with one of the many men she defeated, Penthesilea simultaneously defies and reinforces the Amazon state: by defying the letter of the law and following the spoken commands of her own mother. The two laws seem to be at odds in what Clayton Koelb posits is a desire to «conform to the script written by her dying mother.» He goes on to suggest that «[t]he authority of all maternal speech is, from Penthesilea’s point of view, the source of all the state’s authority to begin with» (Koelb 74). By following her mother’s wishes, Penthesilea is not only abiding by the authority of the state as represented by her mother as queen, but also fulfilling the dying wishes of her mother by defeating Achilles. Only once does Penthesilea explicitly declare her love for any individual. After describing her mother’s death, Penthesilea says to both Prothoe and Achilles «Ich liebte sie» (15.2172). Though she uses the past tense to describe her love for her mother, her mother is still very much in her thoughts when Odysseus describes Penthesilea’s first encounter with Achilles at the Olympic Games. Odysseus reports that Penthesilea utters the following words: «solch einem Mann, o Prothoe, ist / Otrere, meine Mutter, nie begegnet! » (1.89-90). Though this has been read purely as an expression of desire for Achilles, there is also an attempt to relate her encounters with Achilles back to her mother and express a longing or desire for a connection to her, which is now impossible. Additionally, prior to telling Achilles about her love for her mother, she explains how it was «als ob die Mutter mich umschwebte» as she grasps the bow of Tanaïs; nothing seems more holy «[a]ls ihren letzten Willen zu erfüllen.» She then rides into battle, the battle prior to the Rosenfest, «Mars weniger, / Dem großen Gott, der mich dahin gerufen, / Als der Otrere Schatten, zu gefallen» (15.2161-69). Even as queen of the Amazons, CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 153 14.07.15 20: 41 154 Elizabeth Schreiber-Byers Penthesilea is more concerned with her mother’s love and the desires Otrere has expressed for her than about her fellow Amazons. Several critical analyses of Penthesilea have addressed the importance of love. In their Lacanian reading of both this drama and Das Käthchen von Heilbronn, Chris Cullens and Dorothea von Mücke suggest that love serves as a counterpoint to social expectations that ultimately reinforce the patriarchal order of the Greeks (Cullens/ von Mücke 463). 4 Their analysis, while compelling, fails to account for Kleist’s deliberate construction of alternate ideals of love within the matriarchal Amazon society. Seán Allan suggests that the love «which we see in the mother-daughter relationship of Otrere and Penthesilea and in the ‹sisterly› love of Prothoe for Penthesilea» is ideal, selfless, and without «self-interest, possessiveness and compulsion» (Allan 154). He posits that Kleist’s portrayal of Amazon order is more «advanced» than that of the Greeks and that their concept of love leaves them «vulnerable to exploitation by more ruthless natures» - namely the Greeks (154). Allan seems to echo Cixous’s assessment of Amazon culture as somehow better than that of the Greeks, more evolved. However, Kleist’s text consciously constructs differing conceptions of love in Amazon and Greek societies, which must be understood both independent of one another and in their moments of intersection. Furthermore, Penthesilea’s personal conflict exposes the contradictions in Amazon interpretations of love. Kleist’s works are often about confronting social expectations and attempting to redefine and reconsider the norms of society. As such, the love that is attributed to Penthesilea by others throughout the drama can be defined neither through the Greek cultural construction of love nor the reader’s expectations. While love in Amazon culture is different than that among the Greeks, there is little indication that this Greek love is somehow better than love in the Amazon culture. Allan contends that the Rosenfest represents the closest similarity to the Greek construction of conquest and love, which is always inflected with sexuality, and that the bonds that form during this rite lead to more emotional bonds (Allan 154). The words of the high priestess in relation to this are more ambivalent. As the preparations for the Rosenfest commence, the high priestess turns to the Amazon warriors and tells them to begin the festivities. While they wait for Penthesilea to return from the battlefield she impatiently chastises them for delaying saying: «Nun? Wollt ihr eure Gäste nicht erheitern? / - Steht ihr nicht unbehülflich da, ihr Jungfrau’n, / Als müßt’ ich das Geschäft der Lieb’ euch lehren! » (6.950-52) Though she refers to the act of sex with the men as «Liebe,» there is a sense that by «Geschäft der Liebe» she is referring to sex with the Greek captives. In this case, «Liebe» appears to be the act of procreation. The jux- CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 154 14.07.15 20: 41 Of Mothers and Lovers 155 taposition of Geschäft and Liebe indicates that this is a task that they must undertake, and that this is not a pleasurable type of love but a chore that must be undertaken: a Geschäft that is critical to the Amazon society. This heterosexual erotic love is consciously marked as a different type of love than that which is found in Amazon culture between its denizens. As indicated by the statements of the high priestess, there is a sense within Amazon society that the Geschäft der Liebe is different both from the emotion of Liebe and from the god Liebe, better known as Cupid or Amor. Furthermore, mythology common to both Greek and Amazon cultures is valued differently between them. In the seventh scene, when an Amazon captain reports that Penthesilea has been struck by «Amors Pfeil,» there is still no mention of any emotion of love associated with this arrow (7.1075- 76). Instead the high priestess expresses disbelief and describes Cupid’s infectious strike as a sort of poison. What the Greeks would consider to be romantic love, is dangerous, even deadly, in Amazon culture. When Penthesilea describes the feelings she has for Achilles, she likewise describes them with a reference to Cupid. She explains: «Der Gott der Liebe hatte mich ereilt. / Doch von zwei Dingen schnell beschloß ich Eines, / Dich zu gewinnen, oder umzukommen: / Und jetzt ist mir das Süßere erreicht» (15.2219-22). In referring to the God of Love we are reminded of the captain’s negative association with Cupid. While Penthesilea does not say that his arrow has struck her, she does suggest that he overtakes her, or triumphs over her. Her choices under his control are to either win over Achilles or to die. Her perceived defeat of Achilles allows her to not only be seen as a strong leader of her people, but it also fulfills her mother’s deathbed desires. Regardless of her emotional attachment to Achilles, her actions are counter to Amazon law and cultural norms. It is not that the Amazons do not experience love - the verb lieben and the adjective geliebt are used within the context of Amazon culture - but that these terms do not hold the same meaning as they might from the perspective of the audience or the Greeks. Kleist uses the term Geliebte throughout the drama to describe the relationships between various individuals and particularly in relation to Penthesilea. For example, in the relationship between Prothoe and Penthesilea, Geliebte is the term most often used to describe the relationship between the two women. Upon returning from the battlefield for the first time, Penthesilea expresses her disappointment to Prothoe. In her attempts to comfort Penthesilea, Prothoe reponds «Geliebte, ich beschwöre dich -» and is cut off by Penthesilea who will hear none of her comforts or attempts to get her to think rationally about the situation with Achilles (5.634). Later, when Penthesilea decides to go into battle, Prothoe implores her again «Geliebte! Wir CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 155 14.07.15 20: 41 156 Elizabeth Schreiber-Byers beschwören dich -» this time with the support of the rest of the Amazon army (9.1174). She then directs Penthesilea to speak when she considers her prospects on the battlefield, again calling her «Geliebte» (9.1341). This is not, however, a one-sided expression of formality on the part of the Amazons. Penthesilea tells Prothoe: Ich weiß, ich weiß - Nun, meines Blutes bess’re Hälft’ ist dein. - Das Unglück, sagt man, läutert die Gemüter, Ich, du Geliebte, ich empfand es nicht; Erbittert hat es, Göttern mich und Menschen In unbegriff’ner Leidenschaft empört. (14.1684-89) By calling Prothoe her better half, and referring to her as «Geliebte,» Penthesilea’s language demonstrates the type of love between Amazons. Prothoe seems to be her closest confidante, and the terms of endearment that Penthesilea uses to refer to her mimic what we might expect from lovers. The emotional bond between Prothoe and Penthesilea might be described as one of love - a type of almost familial or homosocial love. This sentiment is central to Amazon and therefore Penthesilea’s understanding of love. When Achilles uses this same term, however, he does so from the perspective of the Greek cultural construction of love. Achilles declares his love for Penthesilea, albeit to Prothoe, stating: Sag’ ihr, daß ich sie liebe. [...] Wie Männer Weiber lieben; Keusch und das Herz voll Sehnsucht doch, in Unschuld, Und mit der Lust doch, sie darum zu bringen. Ich will zu meiner Königin sie machen (13.1520-24) As a representative for the Greek culture on neutral ground under the oak tree following his defeat of Penthesilea, Achilles references a heteronormative conception of love that Protoe and Penthesilea do not understand, but that seems to coincide with the final wishes of Penthesilea’s mother Otrere. This is reaffirmed in scene fifteen, when Achilles expresses shock and horror that Amazons cut off their breasts. As he presses his face to her chest he says: «O Königin! / Der Sitz der jungen lieblichen Gefühle, / Um eines Wahns, barbarisch -» (15.2012-13). He seems to be referencing feelings of love, likely the romantic love, with which he is familiar. Penthesilea responds: «Sei ganz ruhig. / Sie retteten in diese Linke sich, / Wo sie dem Herzen um so näher wohnen. Du wirst mir, hoff’ ich, deren keins vermissen. -» (15.2014-17). Penthesilea hopes that Achilles will find this love sufficient for the bond that they seem bound to pursue. She seems to recognize that her idea of love is CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 156 14.07.15 20: 41 Of Mothers and Lovers 157 something distinct from what Achilles means as she does not express her emotion toward Achilles in the same way. Though Cullens and von Mücke suggest that Penthesilea holds an «intense love» for Achilles that «would make even a bear or panther harmless and approachable,» the passage they cite in reference to this says nothing of love (Cullens/ von Mücke 469). Instead the term Penthesilea uses to describe her emotion is Regung: Mir diesen Busen zu zerschmettern, Prothoe! - Ist’s nicht, als ob ich eine Leier zürnend Zertreten wollte, weil sie still für sich, Im Zug des Nachtwinds, meinen Namen flüstert? Dem Bären kauert’ ich zu Füßen mich, Und streichelte das Panthertier, das mir In solcher Regung nahte, wie ich ihm. (9.1177-83) She has no name for the emotion she feels, because the only type of love she can identify and name is the love between mother and daughter or a filial love between Amazon sisters. Though Penthesilea can be described as harboring feelings for Achilles, the question remains whether these feelings can rightly be called «love.» Chaouli has suggested that «Penthesilea does not desire Achilles but ‹Achilles,› a name passed on to her by her dying mother in contravention of Amazon law» (Chaouli 137). His focus on the metaphorical role of Achilles in the drama establishes him as a place holder or an ideal, and not as a person whom Penthesilea desires. The meaning he embodies must be considered separate from a desire for him as an individual, and instead as a desire for what he represents. Richter argues that Achilles stands in for the missing Amazon breast in his Kleinian reading of the drama (Richter 233). He focuses on Achilles as representative of the breast that has been removed in formation of the Amazon state. Based on the cultural construction of love in Kleist’s Amazon society and the mythology of the breast he constructs, I suggest instead that Achilles might be seen as representative of the breast that remains. The love Penthesilea is capable of feeling is the love she harbors in her left breast, the breast she associates with her mother. For Penthesilea, Achilles is the culmination of her mother’s desires and a means reuniting with her. Though Penthesilea willingly goes against Amazon law to recapture this maternal bond, there is no sense in her actions and statements that she is interested in taking Achilles as a king which would be a further violation. While she gives Achilles a golden ring to explain who she is and to mark him as belonging to her, this ring, rather than taking the place of a wedding ring, is a means of shackling Achilles to her (15.1810-40). In this context she speaks several times of the brides at the Rosenfest, but there is CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 157 14.07.15 20: 41 158 Elizabeth Schreiber-Byers never once a mention of a groom or «Bräutigam.» In fact, she quickly replaces the aforementioned ring with «eine andre Kette,» namely the Rosenkranz she has made him as a symbol of the Rosenfest, where she will procreate with him (15.1832). Finally, she expresses no interest in becoming his queen. Once she believes that she has captured Achilles, she insists that they return to Themiscyra. When it is revealed that Achilles is the one who defeated her, she is troubled and announces that she would rather die than leave with him. In her cannibalistic act against Achilles, Penthesilea attaches herself to his breast. Penthesilea’s attachment is not only a means of defeating him, but also of reuniting with her mother: «Den Zahn schlägt sie in seine weiße Brust, / Sie und die Hunde, die wetteifernden, / Oxus und Sphynx den Zahn in seine rechte, / In seine linke sie […]» (23.2670-73). About this scene Mahlendorf suggests: «It is significant that she attacks his left breast, the breast intact with her, for in attacking him she attacks herself» (Mahlendorf 254). Rather than attacking the self, Penthesilea instead attempts to reunite with her original source of love and connection by suckling at her mother’s breast. She identifies her own remaining breast with that of her mother’s, the breast upon which she nursed as a child, again simultaneously devouring and kissing her mother. Because of the strong identification with and love for her mother, Penthesilea attempts to reconstitute this relationship and does so through attachment to Achilles. His breast then stands in for her mother’s and enables her to believe that she has reestablished her original maternal bond. This reading also suggests an alternative understanding of oral references in Kleist’s drama. If Achilles serves as a means of reincorporating the body of her mother, whom he represents to Penthesilea, the many mentions of eating, chewing, and kissing, among many others, can then be read as gesturing to the maternal signification of the breast as central to the Amazon culture, not necessarily as destructive tendencies. 5 This reincorporation ultimately fails, however, because this is a false breast; it cannot lead to a reunion with her mother. Though he metaphorically stands in for the mother he is a poor substitute, and only represents her rhetorically, not physically. Finally, Penthesilea’s death and the destruction of the Amazon state may be seen as a final reunion with her mother. After devouring Achilles, a catatonic Penthesilea returns to her Amazon sisters who narrate her approach. Penthesilea and her actions are now just as foreign to her own people as they were to Odysseus and the Greeks. After Achilles has been laid at the high priestess’s feet, she demands that Prothoe take Penthesilea away. Prothoe is distraught and as a means of commanding her to get a hold of herself the priestess says: «Fass’ dich. - Sie hatte eine schöne Mutter. / - Geh, CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 158 14.07.15 20: 41 Of Mothers and Lovers 159 biet’ ihr deine Hülf’ und führ’ sie fort» (24.2743-44). This mention of her mother shows that the high priestess recognizes the bond between the two. Although Chaouli suggests such references to the beautiful are an attempt to counteract the aesthetic representation of disgust in the drama, the high priestess attempts to replace Penthesilea’s attack on Achilles with the memory of her beautiful mother, just as Penthesilea attempts to replace her mother with Achilles. In addition to commenting on Penthesilea’s mother, the first Amazon queen, Tanaïs, is alluded to as Penthesilea reawakens out of her catatonic state and drops her bow - the bow that Tanaïs both took up and similarly dropped when she assumed control of the Amazons. As the bow falls the Amazons describe how it «taumelt - / Klirrt, und wankt, und fällt - ! / Und noch einmal am Boden zuckt - / Und stirbt, / Wie er der Tanaïs geboren ward» (24.2770-72). Tanaïs is not only the mother of the Amazon people, but also a connection to Penthesilea’s maternal bloodline and a reminder of the Amazons’ bloody origins, to which Penthesilea has returned through her murder of Achilles. The mention of these two «mothers» shows that although the Amazons neither condone nor accept Penthesilea’s actions, she embodies the conflict at the core of their society, the conflict between the individual and the social, the subject and the state, the biological and the culturally constructed. The battle between rational law and emotion is Penthesilea’s internal struggle. She must decide between love for her mother and obedience to Amazon rule. While Penthesilea’s sense of duty to her people leads her to desire to abide by Amazon law, the emotional connection to her mother provides incentive to act counter to these rational tenets. In the end, Penthesilea renounces her throne and her role as queen before killing herself. She tells Prothoe: «Ich sage vom Gesetz der Fraun mich los, / Und folge diesem Jüngling hier» (24.3012-13). She chooses to follow the law established by her mother’s deathbed instructions rather than the Amazon state, of which she is now the matriarch. Additionally, by saying she is following Achilles, she also chooses to follow her mother into the afterlife. After failing to fulfill her mother’s wishes, Penthesilea chooses to die rather than compromise her individual desires to Amazon laws, which are not supported by all Amazons. What we see in Penthesilea is a queen of a culture «married» to Mars, the god of war, who is just participating in her first battle; a virgin leading a people who worship at the altar of Diana, the goddess of childbirth; and a daughter who privileges the relationship with her mother within a society that honors motherhood but not the individual mother-daughter bond. Her subject position is continually at odds with her society, and yet she knows nothing but the values and teachings of her culture. CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 159 14.07.15 20: 41 160 Elizabeth Schreiber-Byers When Kleist explained to his cousin Marie in 1810 that his «innerstes Wesen liegt darin, und Sie haben es wie eine Seherin aufgefaßt: der ganze Schmutz zugleich und Glanz meiner Seele» (Kleist, Werke 4 398), he suggested that this drama offers a mirror of his soul. While many analyses of the drama focus on Kleist’s own romantic life as fodder for Penthesilea and Achilles’s tragic love story, this investigation has sought to consider the work on its own terms beyond the biographical connection. Alongside the romantic aspects of Kleist’s drama there is a tension between the individual desires and social norms that Penthesilea embodies. By taking a broader view of the drama, away from the romantic relationship between Penthesilea and Achilles, and focusing on Kleist’s construction of love, emotion, and motherhood, we are able to see that Penthesilea occupies a space of tension in the text. That Kleist claims such a close connection with the work and the character suggests he identifies not only with the romantic aspects of the drama, but with the other subject positions that Penthesilea defines for herself within and against her socially constructed roles. Reading the text as symbolic of the complex relationship between the individual and the cultural, the biological and the social has moved us away from an interpretation focused strictly on erotic, romantic love and towards a more complex understanding of the culturally constructed meanings that Kleist sought to interrogate. Notes 1 Ursula Mahlendorf’s article provides an excellent early synopsis of secondary literature on love as it relates to Penthesilea. For more recent scholarship see Allan and Cullens/ von Mücke. 2 All citations of Penthesilea come from the Erstdruck version of the work in volume two of Kleist’s collected works published by the Deutscher Klassiker Verlag. Quotations are cited with scene and line numbers. 3 This analytical focus on Amazon social construction of meaning is indebted to Amber Jacobs’s analysis of the absence of maternal law in contemporary psychoanalytic readings of myth. Though the theoretical core of this paper does not utilize the categories of the Lacanian real, imaginary, and symbolic and is not based on the work of Melanie Klein or Luce Irigaray (on whom Jacobs focuses), Jacobs’s suggestion that the maternal be read back into understandings of mythology was critical to the formulation of my approach. 4 For other psychoanalytic readings of the drama see Mahlendorf and Richter. 5 Koelb has suggested that this theme of literal reincorporation through eating is a theme that is found elsewhere in Kleist, such as in Michael Kohlhaas. CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 160 14.07.15 20: 41 Of Mothers and Lovers 161 Works Cited Allan, Seán. The Plays of Heinrich von Kleist: Ideals and Illusions. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996. Borelbach, Doris. Mythos-Rezeption in Heinrich von Kleists Dramen. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 1998. Chaouli, Michel. «Devouring Metaphor: Disgust and Taste in Kleist’s Penthesilea.» The German Quarterly 69.2 (1996): 125-43. Cixous, Hélène and Catherine Clément. The Newly Born Woman. Trans. Betsy Wing. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1986. Cullens, Chris and Dorothea von Mücke. «Love in Kleist’s ‹Penthesilea› and ‹Käthchen von Heilbronn.›» Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte 63.3 (1989): 461-93. Jacobs, Amber. «The Potential of Theory: Melanie Klein, Luce Irigaray, and the Mother-Daughter Relationship.» Hypatia 22.3 (2007): 175-93. Kleist, Heinrich von. Sämtliche Werke und Briefe in vier Bänden. Vol. 2. Ed. Ilse- Marie Barth and Hinrich C. Seeba. Frankfurt a.M.: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1987. -. Sämtliche Werke und Briefe in vier Bänden. Vol. 4. Ed. Klaus Müller-Salget and Stefan Ormanns. Frankfurt a.M.: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1997. Koelb, Clayton. Inventions of Reading: Rhetoric and the Literary Imagination. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1988. -. «Incorporating the Text: Kleist’s ‹Michael Kohlhaas.›» PMLA 105.5 (1990): 1098- 1107. Mahlendorf, Ursula. «The Wounded Self: Kleist’s Penthesilea.» German Quarterly 52.2 (1979): 252-72. Richter, Simon. Missing the Breast: Gender, Fantasy, and the Body in the German Enlightenment. Seattle: U of Washington P, 2006. Schmidt, Ricarda. «Performanz und Essentialismus von Geschlecht bei Kleist: Eine doppelte Dialektik zwischen Subordination und Handlungsfähigkeit.» German Life and Letters 64.3 (2011): 374-88. CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 161 14.07.15 20: 41 Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH+Co. KG • Dischingerweg 5 • D-72070 Tübingen Tel. +49 (07071) 9797-0 • Fax +49 (07071) 97 97-11 • info@francke.de • www.francke.de JETZT BES TELLEN! JETZT BES TELLEN! Eva Kaufmann Die Lesekrise zu Beginn der Pubertät Ursachen der Lesekrise und ihre Manifestationen bei Jugendlichen mit Deutsch als Zweitsprache 2015, 426 Seiten €[D] 78,00 ISBN 978-3-7720-8560-4 Internationale Bildungsvergleichsstudien wie PISA und PIRLS zeigen, dass die Lesefreude und Lesehäufigkeit der Kinder und Jugendlichen mit zunehmendem Alter sinkt. Daten, die den Abbruch der Lesekarrieren belegen, stammen jedoch fast ausschließlich von Jugendlichen mit Deutsch als Muttersprache (DaM), Daten und Ergebnisse zu Kindern, deren Erstsprache nicht Deutsch ist, sind marginal bis gar nicht vorhanden. Diese Lücke in der Forschungslandschaft soll durch diese Arbeit geschlossen werden. Im Zentrum der empirischen Untersuchung stehen zentrale Faktoren der Lesekrise und die Frage, inwieweit sich das Leseverhalten und die Leseeinstellung von DaM-Kindern und Kindern mit Deutsch als Zweitsprache (DaZ) unterscheiden und im Altersverlauf verändern. Außerdem wird untersucht, ob sich im Verlauf der Lesekrise und somit in den Lesegewohnheiten der DaZ-Kinder unterschiedliche Ausprägungen in Erst- und Zweitsprache ergeben. CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 162 14.07.15 20: 41 Investigating the Unexplained: Paranormal Belief and Perception in Kleist’s «Die heilige Cäcilie» and «Das Bettelweib von Locarno» HOLLY A. YANACEK Univ ersity of Pittsburgh The young Heinrich von Kleist (1777-1811), influenced by eighteenth-century Enlightenment views, was mistrustful of superstition and religious ceremony. In a letter to his sister, Ulrike von Kleist, dated May 1799, Kleist writes: «Etwas muß dem Menschen heilig sein. Uns beiden, denen es die Zeremonien der Religion u. die Vorschriften des konventionellen Wohlstandes nicht sind, müssen um so mehr die Gesetze der Vernunft heilig sein» (Kleist 491). Rather than supporting religious rituals and conventions that may have appealed more to the emotions, the young Kleist favored reason, as the above excerpt reveals. As scholars have long pointed out, however, reason for Kleist became unsettled two years later after his encounter with Immanuel Kant’s philosophy in 1801. This is not to say that Kleist completely abandoned reason, but he began to question its nature as well as the perception of sensory phenomena: is truth really truth or does it only appear so to a particular subject? In Kleist’s novellas, occurrences rarely turn out to be how they are first perceived. The entrance of supposed supernatural events into the world of causality, as well as the differences in perception of and belief in these phenomena, complicates the situations further. One example precedes the frequently cited rape scene marked by the dash in «Die Marquise von O-…» (1808). At first, it appears that the Russian Officer steps in to rescue the Marquise from the seizure and assault by the enemy riflemen. Immediately before the Marquise sinks to the ground and collapses in a dead faint, her perception of the Russian Officer resembles a type of hallucination: «Der Marquise schien er ein Engel des Himmels zu sein» (Kleist 105). Later it is revealed that a paranormal or divine encounter did not occur; the novella provides more closure, calling the initial perception and belief of the Marquise and the narrator into question. Along similar lines, mysterious events occupy the center of Kleist’s «Das Bettelweib von Locarno» (1810) and «Die heilige Cäcilie oder die Gewalt der Musik (Eine Legende)» (1810), but in these two narratives, the phenomena retain their shrouds of mystery even at the end. Critics tend to treat these two narratives separately in Kleist schol- CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 163 14.07.15 20: 41 164 Holly A. Yanacek arship or even dismiss «Das Bettelweib von Locarno» as an anecdote less worthy of critical study. Although the narrative development and thematic content of «Das Bettelweib von Locarno» and «Die heilige Cäcilie» differ, both narratives focus on the investigation of non-rational events and reveal much about Kleist’s understanding of belief and perception. The reader might interpret the recurring noises in «Das Bettelweib von Locarno» as an auditory apparition linked to the beggar woman’s death, yet Kleist does not flesh out this phenomenon or leave any alternative interpretation other than coincidence. «Die heilige Cäcilie,» with its «Stimmengewebe» or multiple narrative voices, provides contrasting accounts of the same event (Stephens 90). Recent scholarship on «Die heilige Cäcilie» has examined its polyphonic narrative style and reached different conclusions: Lisa Beesley reads the narrative as a critique of institutional religion and David Pan argues that it shows the challenges involved in determining legitimate political authority (compare Beesley 302; Pan 151, 155-56). When read together, however, «Das Bettelweib von Locarno» and «Die heilige Cäcilie» bring the problem of signification and the apprehension of non-rational phenomena to the fore. This essay demonstrates that a parapsychological approach connected to the romantic science of Gotthilf Heinrich von Schubert (1780-1860) gets to the heart of the unexplained phenomena in «Die heilige Cäcilie» and «Das Bettelweib von Locarno.» A parapsychological approach to these narratives draws the reader’s attention to perception (both visual and aural) and belief in paranormal experience and investigation. These insights encourage a reexamination of how Kleist prompts his readers to take part in the supernatural investigations within the texts, to struggle with the issues of perception and belief, and to attempt to explain the inexplicable. I do not suggest that Kleist was a prophet of paranormal studies due to his interest in Schubert’s «Nachtseite der Naturwissenschaft» or the presence of paranormal investigations in his narratives. There is, however, evidence to suggest that paranormal phenomena are used here as a narrative technique, even as an allegorization of Kleist’s philosophical theory of perception. Kleist’s literary treatment of these ideas shows that he was aware of the puzzles of subjectivity and perception that continue to be explored in contemporary psychology, cognitive science, and parapsychology. The traditional apparition or ghost motif was used frequently in early modern German literature, even symbolically by rationalists who dismissed the validity of supernatural phenomena (Jennings 560-61). During the early nineteenth century, one finds many literary approaches to what we today call «paranormal phenomena,» especially by the German Romantics who CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 164 14.07.15 20: 41 Investigating the Unexplained 165 were generally more tolerant of the supernatural or of beliefs in a higher reality. The unexplained or paranormal suggests the possibility of multiple realities, that is, something that exists beyond human reason. Schauerromantik or Schwarze Romantik in the works of Ludwig Tieck (1773-1853) and E. T. A. Hoffmann (1776-1822) is often interpreted psychologically, that is, as grounded in the subject. Kleist, on the other hand, does not use the «dark side of natural science» to illustrate an alternate reality or simply a fascination with the supernatural, but rather to deal with issues of perception and philosophical questions, such as Immanuel Kant’s famous «Was kann ich wissen? » Kant’s question «What can I know? » also became a central one for Kleist, particularly after his readings of Kantian philosophy in 1801. Kleist’s literary works and letters show a preoccupation with the limits of human knowledge, as evidenced in the famous passage from Kleist’s letter to his fiancée, Wilhelmine von Zenge, on March 22, 1801: Wenn alle Menschen statt der Augen grüne Gläser hätten, so würden sie urtheilen müssen, die Gegenstände, welche sie dadurch erblicken, sind grün - und nie würden sie entscheiden können, ob ihr Auge ihnen die Dinge zeigt, wie sie sind, oder ob es nicht etwas zu ihnen hinzuthut, was nicht ihnen, sondern dem Auge gehört. So ist es mit dem Verstande. Wir können nicht entscheiden, ob das, was wir Wahrheit nennen, wahrhaft Wahrheit ist, oder ob es uns nur so scheint. (Kleist 634) This image of the green glasses avoids the abstractions of philosophical discourse, that is, it provides an «allegorization of theory,» to use Andrew Webber’s term (25). These eyes take the place of reason and demonstrate that perception is subjective and colored by belief, experience, and interest. It may also be gathered from the aforementioned excerpt that Kleist recognized the difficulty or impossibility of reaching truth or knowledge that is both objective and absolute. Kleist’s literary works address this problem of signification, which is especially evident in «Die heilige Cäcilie» and «Das Bettelweib von Locarno» since the narratives end without revealing the truth surrounding the mysterious phenomena. Contemporary studies in cognitive science and psychology recognize the important role that belief plays in paranormal perception. In a 2008 study by Peter Brugger and Christine Mohr, parapsychological beliefs are largely resistant to education and still widely found in the normal population today (1293). Attribution of normal or anomalous human experiences to paranormal phenomena has been found to be dependent on whether or not parapsychological beliefs are compatible with faith (i.e. religious ideology) and other belief systems (Brugger and Mohr 1293-94). Ursula Thomas reached a similar conclusion decades earlier in her study of the suggestibility of the CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 165 14.07.15 20: 41 166 Holly A. Yanacek human mind evident in Kleist’s early and later dramas: «The human mind is unreliable. It receives only those aspects of sense perceptions which it is predisposed to receive; and once the human being has seized upon a notion, it is very difficult with reasonable proof to rid him of it» (253). The above findings are important because 1) they call for a more critical analysis of belief in normal and anomalous experiences and 2) they resist the over-generalizing association of so-called paranormal perception with madness. One could easily argue that the Marquise’s vision of the «angelic» Russian officer, the musical ecstasy of the brothers in «Die heilige Cäcilie,» and the auditory apparition in «Das Bettelweib von Locarno» are simply signs of the figures’ mental instability, but that would ignore the central issues of belief and perception in the narratives. It is first necessary to differentiate between paranormal and normal experiences. According to the current definition by the American Parapsychological Association, paranormal phenomena are «apparent anomalies of behavior and experience that exist apart from currently known explanatory mechanisms that account for organism-environment and organism-organism information and influence flow» (Irwin and Watt 1). An individual might report that something paranormal has happened even though there could also be a non-supernatural explanation for the occurrence. Believing that one has experienced a paranormal event sometimes results from misinterpretations of normal or anomalous experiences. Anomalous experiences include anything from hallucinations to sleep paralysis and a sense of presence, among others (see Brugger and Mohr 1292). Contemporary studies recognize the important role of belief in paranormal perception, but this idea is not new. It also has its roots in German romantic science, particularly in the work of Gotthilf Heinrich von Schubert, the German natural scientist and philosopher. In Ansichten von der Nachtseite der Naturwissenschaft (1808), Schubert discusses animal magnetism and other phenomena traditionally deemed unworthy of scientific examination and relegated to the belief in miracles (Schubert 2; Bryson 246). Rather than dismiss these phenomena or let them remain unexplained, Schubert set out to answer some of these questions, as he states in the following passage: «Wir werden nämlich in diesen Abendstunden, jene Nachtseite der Naturwissenschaft, welche bisher öfters außer acht gelassen worden, mit nicht geringerem Ernst als andre allgemeiner anerkannte Gegenstände betrachten, und von verschiedenen jener Gegenstände die man zu dem Gebiet des sogenannten Wunderglaubens gezählt hat, handeln» (Schubert 2). For Schubert, states of madness pointed toward the possibility of heightened perception achieved through a transcendental reality and were not necessar- CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 166 14.07.15 20: 41 Investigating the Unexplained 167 ily attributed to a psychopathological condition, as noted by Nigel Reeves (291). He argued that, by studying these phenomena, it becomes «possible to demonstrate how all of nature derives from a single source, a sense of unity that has been lost because of man’s attempts to investigate and control nature» (Bryson 245). Schubert and others among his contemporaries, including Kleist, recognized that the influence these phenomena can have upon a subject depends on the level of trust and faith of that subject (Bryson 246; Thomas 252-54). Although Schubert’s thirteenth chapter of Ansichten focuses predominantly on animal magnetism or mesmerism, the fact that he studied phenomena that were typically disregarded by the other natural sciences relates his work to contemporary studies in psychology, cognitive science, and parapsychology. Psychological studies have argued that modern paranormal belief is likely associated with animal magnetism due to the blurring of three binaries in each: 1) the living and non-living; 2) the physical and mental; and 3) the self and non-self (Brugger and Mohr 1293). As a field, parapsychology is still highly controversial today and typically held to be more closely related to religion and metaphysics than the natural sciences (Williams 4). Recent studies in cognitive neuroscience recognize the important role of belief in paranormal perception, but, when examining Schubert’s and Kleist’s treatments of non-rational experiences as they understood them at the beginning of the nineteenth century, these findings hardly appear new. Soon after Kleist advocated the laws of reason («Gesetze der Vernunft») in his letter of May 1799, he acquired a familiarity with the non-rational phenomena of human nature. He made the acquaintance of Gotthilf Heinrich von Schubert during his Dresden years between 1807 and 1809. In his autobiography, Schubert mentions Kleist in his comments about animal magnetism: «Namentlich für Kleist hatten Mittheilungen dieser Art so viel Anziehendes, daß er gar nicht satt davon werden konnte und immer mehr und mehr derselben aus mir hervorlockte» (228). Schubert’s recollection here provides evidence for Kleist’s preoccupation with the non-rational phenomena of nature, including animal magnetism, but it does not prove that Kleist believed in the reality of these experiences. In her discussion of the mutual influence between Kleist and Schubert, Thomas argues that Kleist had already been familiar with many of these ideas before he met Schubert. She proposes that Kleist and his friends (including Adam Müller, for one) even helped Schubert formulate his ideas about animal magnetism and the occult, theories that were published later, in 1808 (Thomas 260). Whether or not Kleist actually influenced Schubert’s work published in Ansichten, one thing is clear: non-rational phenomena were a source of amusement and re- CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 167 14.07.15 20: 41 168 Holly A. Yanacek flection for Kleist at this time, and investigations of such events found their way into his narratives. Like Schubert and some of his contemporaries writing during the early nineteenth century, Kleist foregrounds non-rational phenomena of nature in «Das Bettelweib von Locarno» and «Die heilige Cäcilie.» Kleist does not seem to fully subscribe to the metaphysical optimism of Schubert’s romantic science, however; his writing demonstrates a healthy dose of skepticism. He never elucidates the mysterious phenomena in each narrative; it becomes the reader’s task to find a logical explanation for each. As is typical for Kleist, however, his works strongly resist a single, all-inclusive interpretation and instead provide a study of perception, belief, and suggestibility. In Kleist’s works, the influence these phenomena can have upon a subject depends on the level of trust and faith of that subject, a conclusion also reached by Thomas (252-54). It was not until the late nineteenth century when similar discoveries about the human mind emerged, including the theory that suggestibility (being a believing and willing subject) determines the success or failure of hypnotism (Thomas 254). The unexplained events in «Das Bettelweib von Locarno» and «Die heilige Cäcilie oder die Gewalt der Musik» fit the contemporary definition of paranormal phenomena provided by the American Parapsychological Association. An auditory apparition in «Bettelweib» and the brothers’ mysterious religious conversion and ascetic behavior in «Die heilige Cäcilie» are the central anomalous events. Lee B. Jennings has noted that, when compared to other real or symbolic tales of the supernatural, «Bettelweib» may be considered a more realistic account of paranormal experience (563). Michael Niehaus interprets the recurring noises in «Bettelweib» as a response to the first event, the death of the beggar woman: «Es muß als Form einer Bestrafung lesbar sein. Und weil es sich um einen Vorfall handelt, der auf dieser Welt nicht justiziabel ist, springt eine höhere Macht oder eine jenseitige Gewalt ein, um die gestörte Ordnung wiederherzustellen, um für ausgleichende Gerechtigkeit zu sorgen» (233). Although readers may attribute the enactment of retributive justice to a vengeful spirit or symbolic auditory apparition, Kleist does not flesh out this phenomenon. A similar case is found in «Die heilige Cäcilie.» According to the beliefs of the characters and narrator, the conversion of the ex-iconoclasts is a direct result of either divine intervention (God or St. Cecilia) or the power of music, a dual possibility reflected in the narrative’s title. Does Kleist provide any clear, rational alternatives to the assumptions that something paranormal has occurred in both narratives? Both texts deal with the belief in the supernatural, paranormal experiences, as well as the perception and investigation thereof. An analysis of key pas- CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 168 14.07.15 20: 41 Investigating the Unexplained 169 sages and anomalous events in both narratives provides insight into Kleist’s understanding of similar phenomena. The anomalous event in «Das Bettelweib von Locarno» (1810) is an unexplained sound that repeatedly manifests itself at midnight [«mit dem Schlage der Geisterstunde»] in the guest room of the Marquis’s castle (Kleist 197). This noise bears an uncanny resemblance to the sound of the old beggar woman walking across the floor, slipping, crying out in pain, and dying in the space assigned to her behind the oven. At first, the narrator provides little indication that this haunts the Marquis’s conscience a break in the narration occurs after the description of the incident and the narration resumes with the visit of a knight who intends to purchase the castle several years later [«mehrere Jahre nachher»] (196). Kleist offers no plausible alternative to the interpretation of the noise as an auditory apparition linked to the beggar woman’s death. The Marquis, whose command makes him responsible for the tragic outcome, is not the only one to experience the noise. Neither is he the first one to witness the auditory apparition; instead, the visiting knight first witnesses the unexplained sound: «Aber wie betreten war das Ehepaar, als der Ritter mitten in der Nacht, verstört und bleich zu ihnen herunter kam, hoch und teuer versichernd, daß es in dem Zimmer spuke» (Kleist 196). The knight knows nothing about what transpired in the guest room of the castle years before, yet he is horrified by what he witnesses. He fears the unknown and hears a disembodied sound, which he describes to the Marquis and the Marquise as follows: «etwas, das dem Blick unsichtbar gewesen, mit einem Geräusch, als ob es auf Stroh gelegen, im Zimmerwinkel aufgestanden, mit vernehmlichen Schritten, langsam und gebrechlich, quer über das Zimmer gegangen, und hinter dem Ofen, unter Stöhnen und Ächzen, niedergesunken sei» (Kleist 196). In the same manner, this disturbing noise is heard every night and scares away other prospective buyers who visit the castle. All of the other visitors describe the acoustic phenomenon in the same manner, a description which again reminds the Marquis (and readers) of the death of the beggar woman. In her study of music and noise in Kleist’s works, Helga Kraft notes: «Es ist trotzdem sehr gut möglich, dass diese Geräusche dennoch eine ganz harmlose Ursache besitzen und nur ganz ‹zufällig› denen ähneln, die von der Bettlerin verursacht wurden» (97). Coincidence or not, however, the uncanny similarity of the noise to the sounds made by the beggar woman before she died points to a possible paranormal origin of the phenomenon. After first hearing about the knight’s encounter with the unexplained noises, the Marquis is not fully aware of the reason for his state of shock: «Der Marquis CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 169 14.07.15 20: 41 170 Holly A. Yanacek erschrocken, er wußte selbst nicht recht warum, lachte den Ritter mit erkünstelter Heiterkeit aus» (Kleist 197). Even if he is only partially conscious of it at first, the Marquis senses an ominous force, something that reminds him more and more of the incident that he had long since repressed. To complicate matters, the experience of the auditory apparition is not limited to the perception of human observers. Following the testimonies of the guests and the resulting rumors of the haunted room in the castle, the Marquis conducts three separate investigations: first by himself in the room, then with the Marquise and a servant, and finally with the Marquise and their dog. The dog also bears witness to the paranormal event, revealing that the phenomenon is not just the product of an active human imagination: «und mit dem ersten Schritt: tapp! tapp! erwacht der Hund, hebt sich plötzlich, die Ohren spitzend, vom Boden empor, und knurrend und bellend, grad als ob ein Mensch auf ihn eingeschritten käme, rückwärts gegen den Ofen weicht er aus» (Kleist 198). Although all figures experience the auditory phenomenon, both human and canine alike, only the Marquis, despite his attempts to investigate and refute the rumored haunting, is affected deeply enough to commit suicide at the end of the narrative. What does Kleist reveal about paranormal events, perception, and belief in «Das Bettelweib von Locarno»? First, it is interesting that all figures who happen to be in the guest room at midnight hear the noise. Each of these individuals, beginning with the first visiting knight, claims that something is haunting the room [«daß es in dem Zimmer spuke»]. A rationalist would try to find a non-paranormal explanation for the anomalous phenomenon, but the characters in «Bettelweib» are open enough to the idea of apparitions and other non-rational phenomena of nature. This openness to belief in the paranormal then affects the characters’ perception of the phenomenon. The Marquis and the Marquise recognize the similarity of the noise to the beggar woman’s movement across the floor, while the others are simply scared away by what they perceive to be disembodied human sounds. Helga Kraft’s analysis speaks to a pattern in Kleist’s work: «Kleist kommt es jedoch darauf an zu zeigen, das der Mensch ständig allen Phänomenen eine Bedeutung zumisst, die seinem Erfahrungsbereich bzw. seinem Gefühl entstammen» (97). Rather than dismissing the existence of non-rational phenomena of nature as Wunderglauben, Kleist, like Schubert in Ansichten, draws attention to these events. He recognizes the role of human experience, emotion, and belief in perception, especially in the perception of the so-called paranormal. In the case of «Bettelweib,» all of the figures experience the fear of the unknown, but the Marquis’s experience and feelings of guilt affect his perception and set him apart from the others. CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 170 14.07.15 20: 41 Investigating the Unexplained 171 Second, as Thomas argues in her discussion of Kleist’s dramas, «Das Bettelweib von Locarno» also demonstrates that Kleist recognized the role of suggestibility on the unconscious human mind and in the experience of the occult or non-rational phenomena, although the evidence here is not as strong as that which we find in «Die heilige Cäcilie.» Before the Marquis undertakes his own first investigation of the phenomenon, the knight and the numerous other visitors to the castle insist that something is haunting the room. These reports by independent observers are convincing because they all report the same thing and claim that the room is haunted. But is the Marquis perhaps suggestible and merely influenced by the guests’ assumptions? Later, the Marquise also asserts that an unknown presence is in the room, though this occurs only after listening to her husband’s report from his first investigation. «Bettelweib» deals with the suggestibility of the human mind and explores how beliefs and emotions, in this case, guilt, influence human perception. The ending of «Bettelweib» contrasts with «Die heilige Cäcilie» because the narrative only offers two possibilities an auditory apparition or a coincidence while the narrator in « Die heilige Cäcilie» presents many differing perspectives. Similar to «Das Bettelweib von Locarno,» «Die heilige Cäcilie oder die Gewalt der Musik» revolves around the investigation of an unexplained event, a mystery that remains unresolved at the narrative’s conclusion. Even the duality of the narrative’s title provides evidence for this apparent irresolution. Due to the conflicting testimonies of the witnesses in the narrative, I choose to read the «or» in the title as one of contrast rather than equalization; the conversion of the ex-iconoclasts is attributed to either divine intervention or the power of music. Over three-fourths of the narrative is devoted to interpreting various recollections of the event on Corpus Christi during the mother’s visit to Aachen, which occurs six years after the incident originally takes place (see Birrell 72). Four different accounts are provided, details that appear to equal a coherent whole on the surface so much so that the mother, «deren Anwesenheit in Achen gänzlich nutzlos war, ging […] nach dem Haag zurück, wo sie ein Jahr darauf, durch diesen Vorfall tief bewegt, in den Schooß der katholischen Kirche zurückkehrte» (Kleist 228). The case of the brothers’ sudden conversion is puzzling, but equally interesting and important are the circumstances of the mother’s conversion. It appears that she is sufficiently impressed by what she hears and sees in Aachen. She attributes the emotions she feels and the power behind the conversion to something specifically related to the Catholic Church. For the reader, however, there is yet another mystery: the narrator reveals that the convent was secularized some sixty years later. No music or divine forces are able to save CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 171 14.07.15 20: 41 172 Holly A. Yanacek the convent the second time. Since this information is revealed in the first pages of the narrative, the reader must question whether or not divine providence or some supernatural force was really responsible for the conversion. According to Birrell, «Die heilige Cäcilie» can be viewed as the prototype of the detective story; in this case the mother plays the role of the detective who becomes the next victim (73). Birrell’s analysis mentions two important aspects of the narrative the mother’s investigation and the two conversions that occupy the center of the «Die heilige Cäcilie.» He suggests that the only way that the mother can come to terms with her sons’ fate is to «reenact» their conversion by subjecting herself to it as well, but another way to interpret the two conversions is to focus on paranormal perception and belief in the narrative. The intrusion of supposed paranormal phenomena in «Die heilige Cäcilie» underlines the incomprehensibility of experience and demonstrates the difficulty in separating belief from perception. Paranormal or not, the actual reason for the brothers’ conversion appears to be of lesser importance than the conflicting ways in which the various witnesses retell the story of the mysterious event. At first, the brothers’ conversion from enthusiastic Protestant iconoclasts to Catholic ascetics seems unlikely given their initial conviction and carefully organized plans for the riot. The brothers gather about 100 to 400 supporters, make elaborate plans to destroy the convent, and are «entschlossen keinen Stein auf dem andern zu lassen» (Kleist 216). As we remember, however, the brothers have weak family ties, no professions (all are students except for the predicant), i.e. no «grounding.» Birrell argues that this lack of grounding makes room for instability, allowing the brothers to be susceptible to the effects of the intense music, a sound that, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, was thought to induce magnetic sleep (74, 77). Birrell’s argument is convincing but risks reducing the narrative to a literary illustration of animal magnetism and magnetic sleep. The idea of a lack of stability or grounding is helpful, though, in evaluating the brothers’ beliefs and perception. In both cases, the brothers’ beliefs take the form of religious fervor, first as Protestant iconoclasts before the conversion and then as Catholic ascetics. This zeal makes the brothers more inclined to be emotionally moved by any power (e.g. divine intervention or the sublime music). Read from this angle, the narrative suggests that such experiences of non-rational events are only possible with absolute trust and faith of the subject. Even more revealing is an analysis of the paranormal beliefs and perceptions of the other figures in the narrative. The mother’s conversion occurs one year after she hears the testimonies provided by the four informants. Unlike the three of the four ex-iconoclasts who are not yet established in CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 172 14.07.15 20: 41 Investigating the Unexplained 173 their careers or personal lives, the witnesses who recount the event that took place on Corpus Christi are characterized by their professions: the asylum warders, Veit Gotthelf (a textile dealer), the innkeeper, and the Abbess. Each of the figures provides his or her own explanation of the mysterious event that is highly influenced by unique personal experiences and belief systems. The mother first hears the testimony of the asylum warders, whose interpretation is the most scientific and distinct from the others. When one considers that their profession most likely influences their perception, their skeptical view appears logical and predictable. Rather than supporting or dismissing religious or paranormal belief, the warders recall: «daß sie bloß in der Verherrlichung des Heilands begriffen wären, von dem sie, nach ihrem Vorgeben, besser als andre, einzusehen glaubten, daß er der wahrhaftige Sohn des alleinigen Gottes sei» (Kleist 220). The syntax is especially important here, revealing information about the perception of both the brothers and the asylum warders. Through «nach ihrem Vorgeben» and «einzusehen glaubten,» it is apparent that the brothers’ understanding of the world in their religious ecstasy is inseparable from their new beliefs. At the same time, the distance achieved in the asylum warders’ report through the use of the subjunctive [«begriffen wären»] underlines their skepticism and assumption that the brothers’ behavior is not the response to some absolute knowledge about God and the world, but pathological. Although they assert that the brothers have been leading this ghostly existence [«dies geisterartige Leben»] for six years, the warders agree that the four are physically healthy (Kleist 220). Later it becomes more apparent that the warders confirm the brothers’ madness: «sie, wenn man sie für verrückt erklärte, mitleidig die Achseln zuckten, und daß sie schon mehr als einmal geäußert hätten» (Kleist 220). Their assessment of the brothers’ mental health is defined by their education and experience in dealing with madness. In contrast to the other characters, they do not try to persuade the mother that her sons’ behavior is a result of divine intervention, demonic possession, or supernatural phenomena. Veit Gotthelf is the second informant who tells the mother about the event on Corpus Christi. In contrast to the warders’ report, Veit Gotthelf’s version of the story is emotionally inspired. He and his friends ask themselves after the incident, «was ihnen in aller Welt Schreckliches, fähig, ihr innerstes Gemüt dergestalt umzukehren, zugestoßen sei» (Kleist 222). He appears to come to his own conclusion in his description to the mother and compares the intonation of the «Gloria in excelsis Deo» to the chanting of «ewig verdammter Sünder, aus dem tiefsten Grund der flammenvollen Hölle, jammervoll um Erbarmung zu Gottes Ohren heraufdrang, aufzusuchen» (223). CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 173 14.07.15 20: 41 174 Holly A. Yanacek Veit Gotthelf also directly reveals how he first perceived the conversion: «der Himmel selbst scheint das Kloster der frommen Frauen in seinen heiligen Schutz genommen zu haben» (221). Walter Müller-Seidel points out that contradictions and errors in perception or differentiation often underlie Als- Ob structures in Kleist’s work and are associated with the verbs «scheinen,» «erscheinen,» and «vorkommen» (126-27). From Veit Gotthelf’s story, we can see how difficult it is to separate belief and experience from perception. For him, divine providence intervened through the sublime music, a view that is also supported by the narrator earlier in the text. The «Gloria» movement of the oratorio suggests a sublime, if not violent, power of music; the narrator recalls that it was «als ob die ganze Bevölkerung der Kirche tot sei» (Kleist 219). Neither the narrator’s nor Veit Gotthelf’s reports, then, are completely reliable and free from the influence of belief. The innkeeper’s story, though not heard directly, is recounted through Veit Gotthelf. Perhaps more superstitious than Veit Gotthelf, the innkeeper views religion as based upon fear and believes that the brothers have been punished for their actions. We recall that the brothers never move beyond their criminal intent, however; the music begins and they are thus deterred from carrying out their plans for the iconoclastic riot. In any case, the innkeeper asks the authorities to remove the brothers, «in welchen ohne Zweifel der böse Geist walten müsse» (Kleist 224). The use of indirect discourse in this passage stresses that readers learn of the innkeeper’s account from another source, namely, from Veit Gotthelf six years after the incident. Due to the conspicuous presence of «ohne Zweifel» in this testimony, this account of the story becomes even more suspect. In the case of the innkeeper, religious belief is inseparable from perception, but self-serving interest also plays a role in his actions and petition to have the brothers removed from his property. This evidence is untrustworthy as well due to the innkeeper’s selfserving insistence on the brothers’ demonic possession and the fact that we do not hear this account directly. Finally, the Abbess is the last person whom the mother meets in Aachen. As one might assume, the Abbess’s story is shaped by her beliefs and life experiences, namely, her religious vocation. According to the Abbess, «Gott selbst hat das Kloster, an jenem wunderbaren Tage, gegen den Übermuth eurer schwer verirrten Söhne beschirmt» (Kleist 227). While the mother is suggestible, the Abbess is also influenced herself. Her belief that God himself intervened and protected the convent is soon replaced by the decree of the pope and the Archbishop of Trier who explain, «daß die heilige Cäcilie selbst dieses zu gleicher Zeit schreckliche und herrliche Wunder vollbracht habe» (Kleist 227). The juxtaposition of «schreckliche» and «herrliche Wun- CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 174 14.07.15 20: 41 Investigating the Unexplained 175 der» reminds the reader of the numerous contradictions in the narration of the mysterious conversion. None of the four contrasting assertions can be proven with evidence that is free of emotions, personal interests, or beliefs. In each of these cases, the mother appears more and more moved by the testimonies. When she glances at the open score of the «Gloria» lying on the music desk, she recalls Veit Gotthelf’s explanation of divine intervention through the power of music and wonders if this music was truly responsible for her sons’ condition. Is there actually a divine force at work here, or is the mother simply impressionable? Although a reading of the narrative yields many possible explanations (e.g. sublime music, God, Saint Cecilia, animal magnetism) for the mystery of the brothers’ conversion, the mother associates the musical score directly with whatever caused the conversion of her sons on that fateful day. She cannot read the musical notation of the ancient Italian Mass, yet she attributes divine power to these unknown symbols: «Sie betrachtete die unbekannten zauberischen Zeichen, womit sich ein fürchterlicher Geist geheimnißvoll den Kreis abzustecken schien […]. Es war ihr, als ob das ganze Schrecken der Tonkunst, das ihre Söhne verderbt hatte, über ihrem Haupte rauschen daherzöge; sie glaubte, bei dem bloßen Anblick ihre Sinne zu verlieren…» (Kleist 226-27). This passage describes the mother’s confusion or overwhelming sensory experience, as if the musical score, as a signifier, momentarily allows her to reenact her sons’ destruction. The reader cannot overlook the presence of «als ob,» «scheinen,» and «glauben» in the passage, however. This scene calls to mind hypnotism or animal magnetism, which require the suggestibility and absolute trust of the subject. The mother, a believing and willing subject, allows herself to be influenced by the testimonies of the others, and these beliefs alter her perception, producing the illusion that something «paranormal» has also happened to her. A reader who pays attention to the language in this passage will only be frustrated by the «basic inability to link a sign to a metaphysical signifier,» which Pan also sees as the premise of Kleist’s work as a whole (153). Kleist gives us two narratives about the investigation of anomalous events: «Die heilige Cäcilie» and «Das Bettelweib von Locarno.» Although each differs in its structure and subject matter, both treat what we may call the paranormal or non-rational and offer different examples of how belief and experience influence perception of the unexplained, something for which there might be many different perspectives. The reader cannot say with complete certainty if the paranormal forces were responsible for the mysterious events; in «Das Bettelweib von Locarno» it seems that this is the only interpretation aside from coincidence, while in «Die heilige Cäcilie» we are CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 175 14.07.15 20: 41 176 Holly A. Yanacek left with a number of possible reasons for the conversion and ascetic behavior of the brothers. Rather than indicating a single explanation for the event in «Die heilige Cäcilie,» the reports prove to be contradictory and speculative: madness, divine intervention, the power of music, demonic possession, God’s grace, and Saint Cecilia’s intercession. Readers must take into consideration the credibility of all informants, including the narrator. Each perspective is determined by the personal experiences and religious faith of the individual, showing the difficulty of removing belief from perception or, as Kleist might phrase it, the impossibility of removing our green glasses that color the way we view the world. From the examples provided in «Das Bettelweib von Locarno» and «Die heilige Cäcilie,» we see that Kleist was familiar with the ways experience and belief alter perception, as well as the necessity of belief in animal magnetism or paranormal experience. Perhaps Kleist, through these narratives that allegorize differences in the perception of paranormal phenomena, is encouraging readers to examine their own perception and beliefs in each case. What explanations would we accept for the seemingly inexplicable phenomena in the narratives and what might that say about our experiences, belief, and level of suggestibility? How do our beliefs and experiences influence our perception of normal and anomalous events, shaping the way we view the world? The open quality of Kleist’s endings means that there is no conclusive explanation for the phenomena at the center of the investigations. Here, Kleist permits the entrance of the non-rational or paranormal into the world of causality. Schubert tries to make the paranormal scientific, but even this scientific basis is problematic and affected by belief. Kleist’s focus on the investigation of these mysterious events and the «Nachtseite der Naturwissenschaft» demonstrates the limits of human understanding and the difficulty in achieving absolute knowledge that is truly objective. Although Kleist never became a philosopher like Kant, his insight into the relationship between belief and perception as applied to the interpretation of both normal and anomalous phenomena, is well worth revisiting because these ideas are still relevant today. Much like Kleist’s awareness of the «gebrechliche Einrichtung der Welt» mentioned at the end of «Die Marquise von O-…», our experience of the world is inherently imperfect or impaired, always perceived through our green-colored glasses and based on our individual experiences and beliefs (see Kleist 143). If belief or the non-rational «innerstes Gefühl» is unreliable, then reason is equally suspect. Kleist’s arched gate, which stands «weil alle Steine auf einmal einstürzen wollen,» although it has no supports, is a useful image CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 176 14.07.15 20: 41 Investigating the Unexplained 177 for this idea because it questions the possibility of achieving absolute truth (Kleist 593). Through parallels drawn between the narrative divergence in «Die heilige Cäcilie» and the gospel narratives of the four evangelists, Beesley has shown that Kleist’s narrative questions the doctrines of Christianity. Yet we also know that Kleist longed for certainty of belief and expresses the desire for such religious-aesthetic experience in his letter to Wilhelmine on May 21, 1801: «Nirgends fand ich mich aber tiefer in meinem Innersten gerührt, als in der katholischen Kirche, wo die größte, erhebendste Musik noch zu den anderen Künsten tritt, das Herz gewaltsam zu bewegen. […] - Ach, nur einen Tropfen Vergessenheit, und mit Wollust würde ich katholisch werden» (Kleist 651). But for Kleist, this kind of absolute truth or belief is impossible in a post-Kantian world. By allowing readers to participate vicariously in the investigations of the unexplained, Kleist’s narratives «Das Bettelweib von Locarno» and «Die heilige Cäcilie» provide readers with the opportunity to experience what Friedrich Theodor Vischer would later call «poetic belief» («poetischen Glauben») in his philosophical essay «Das Symbol» (162). The aesthetic realm permits one to engage in poetic belief, that is, to enjoy the power of symbols (e.g. a ghost, St. Cecilia, the Mother of God) and what they represent in art and literature even if one lacks actual belief. In «Die heilige Cäcilie,» however, readers are confronted with contradictory explanations, all of which are colored by individual beliefs and special interests, making it impossible to establish stable links between a symbol and its referent. For Kleist’s readers, then, the experience of poetic belief in the paranormal, like the existence of the Convent of St. Cecilia in Kleist’s narrative, is only temporary. Works Cited Beesley, Lisa. «That’s the Gospel Truth: Narrative Divergence in Kleist’s ‹Die heilige Cäcilie oder die Gewalt der Musik.›» Heinrich von Kleist: Style and Concept. Explorations of Literary Dissonance. Ed. Dieter Sevin and Christoph Zeller. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2013. 301-12. Birrel, Gordon. «Kleist’s St. Cecilia and the Power of Electricity.» German Quarterly 62.1 (1989): 72-84. Brugger, Peter, and Christine Mohr. «The Paranormal Mind: How the Study of Anomalous Experiences May Inform Cognitive Neuroscience.» Cortex: A Journal Devoted to the Study of the Nervous System and Behavior 44.10 (2008): 1291-98. Bryson, Liane. «Romantic Science: Hoffmann’s Use of the Natural Sciences in ‹Der goldne Topf.›» Monatshefte 91.2 (1999): 241-55. Irwin, Harvey J., and Carolina A. Watt. Introduction to Parapsychology. 5th ed. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2007. CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 177 14.07.15 20: 41 178 Holly A. Yanacek Jennings, Lee B. «Hoffmann’s Hauntings: Notes toward a Parapsychological Approach to Literature.» The Journal of English and Germanic Philology 75.4 (1976): 559-67. Kleist, Heinrich von. Sämtliche Werke und Briefe. Vol. 2. Ed. Helmut Sembdner. Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 2008. Kraft, Helga. Erhörtes und Unerhörtes: Die Welt des Klanges bei Heinrich von Kleist. München: Fink Verlag, 1976. Müller-Seidel, Walter. Versehen und Erkennen. Eine Studie über Heinrich von Kleist. Köln: Böhlau, 1961. Niehaus, Michael. «Ausgleichende Gerechtigkeit? Zum ‹Bettelweib von Locarno.›» Ausnahmezustand der Literatur. Neue Lektüren zu Heinrich von Kleist. Göttingen: Wallstein, 2011. 226-45. Pan, David. «Aesthetic Truth and Political Action in Kleist’s Die heilige Cäcilie.» Wissensfiguren im Werk Heinrich von Kleists. Ed. Yixu Lü, Anthony Stephens, Alison Lewis, and Wilhelm Voßkamp. Berlin: Rombach, 2012. 151-66. Reeves, Nigel. «Kleist’s Bedlam: Abnormal Psychology and Psychiatry in the Works of Heinrich von Kleist.» Romanticism and the Sciences. Ed. Andrew Cunningham and Nicholas Jardine. New York: Cambridge UP, 1990. Schubert, Gotthilf Heinrich von. Ansichten von der Nachtseite der Naturwissenschaft. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1967. -. Der Erwerb aus einem vergangenen und die Erwartungen von einem zukünftigen Leben: Eine Selbstbiographie. Vol. 2. Erlangen: Palm & Enke, 1855. Stephens, Anthony. «Stimmengewebe: Antithetik und Verschiebung in ‹Die heilige Cäcilie oder Die Gewalt der Musik.›» Kleists Erzählungen und Dramen: Neue Studien. Ed. Paul Michael Lützeler and David Pan. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2001. 77-92. Thomas, Ursula. «Heinrich von Kleist and Gotthilf Heinrich Schubert.» Monatshefte 51.5 (1959): 249-61. Vischer, Friedrich Theodor. «Das Symbol.» Philosophische Aufsätze. Leipzig: Fues’s Verlag, 1887. 153-93. Webber, Andrew J. The Doppelgänger: Double Visions in German Literature. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996. Williams, Carl. «Metaphor, Parapsychology and Psi: An Examination of Metaphors Related to Paranormal Experience and Parapsychological Research.» Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research 90 (1996): 174-201. CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 178 14.07.15 20: 41 Review Essay: The Fate of the Martial Sublime: Studies of War in the German Lands JOSEPH D. O’NEIL Univ ersity of K entuck y Books reviewed: Michael Gratzke, Blut und Feuer: Heldentum bei Lessing, Kleist, Fontane, Jünger, and Heiner Müller. Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 2011. Krimmer, Elizabeth and Patricia Anne Simpson, eds. Enlightened War: German Theories and Cultures of Warfare from Frederick the Great to Clausewitz. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2011. Krimmer, Elizabeth. The Representation of War in German Literature: From 1800 to the Present. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 2010. Why war now? The answers might seem too obvious and perhaps refer to the same phenomenon: trans-Atlantic remilitarization after the end of the Cold War, culminating in the response to the attacks of September, 2001, and the attendant anxiety provoked in citizen-subjects and observers of the regimes participating in military adventures in Afghanistan, Iraq, around the Horn of Africa, and the other theaters of the diffuse «war on terror.» «From Plato to NATO,» the popular title of the old Western Civilization course at some US universities, is perhaps more apt than we thought during the conflicts over the Western canon in the early 90s. Now, the cannons are part of the canon, and the revived interest in war attested to in these three recent studies of war in the German context does not fail to roll out the German literary-historical arsenal, including Lessing, Goethe, Schiller, Kleist, Kant, Fontane, Böll, Grass, and Handke, but with the unsurprising addition of well-studied but less dominant figures such as Ernst Jünger and Heiner Müller, alongside Frederick the Great and Carl von Clausewitz, these last better known for real or theoretical cannonades than for literary representations of warfare. Women are also announced, in one case (Krimmer and Simpson), under the rubric «War and Gender»: Angelica Kauffmann, Elfriede Jelinek, and Therese Huber. (By one standard, these volumes also achieve gender parity, as the twelve pieces in the anthology Enlightened War are evenly divided among male and female authors.) In what follows, I attempt to do justice to the breadth of these contributions while emphasizing CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 179 14.07.15 20: 41 180 Joseph D. O’Neil selectively the currents that define a discourse of war across these three volumes and thirteen authors: the focus on sublime experience, the question of the medium (in the broadest sense) of war or peace, and the idea of a position beyond conflict, whether as a moral law, a language of peace, or a «queer» space or time in which an ideal beyond the sublime virtues of the warrior can be imagined. The approaches in the three studies I shall discuss here range from Gratzke’s more straightforward literary-historical approach to the theme of war through Krimmer’s more theoretically nuanced monograph with the same historical reach, from the 18 th to the 21 st century, to the Krimmer and Simpson anthology incorporating many different perspectives on war in philosophy, cultural theory, gender studies, and the visual arts in a focus on problems of the late eighteenth and earlier nineteenth centuries. Even so, essays by Ute Frevert and Wolf Kittler do not fail to update the earlier discourse, respectively in terms of conscription and inclusion around 1900 and the US Army/ Marine Corps field manual on counterinsurgency of 2007. Each of these volumes offers a compelling survey of war in terms of history, representation, and subjectivity. Taken together, they are an indispensable manual of critical approaches to war in literature. In what follows, I shall examine each briefly and then identify some points of comparison in order to problematize the question of reading war and wanting peace. Ultimately, it is the desire to understand war through the category of the aesthetic, implicit in the desire most clearly articulated by Krimmer for a culture and texts of peace, that withdraws the matter of war and peace from the world of real conflict and inscribes both as categories of consciousness. Perhaps such a withdrawal is only a condition of the literary and literary-critical approach to questions of war and peace. It would be only fitting since Krimmer’s study in particular examines the notions of guilt, complicity, and agency as they can be read in textual spaces. Nonetheless, this seems to imply that, beyond the representation of reality (or its sheer distortion), there is a standpoint from which to evaluate such representations. Finding this standpoint is the task of many of the essays and of key moments in these two monographs. Michael Gratzke looks for a third way of heroic conduct or Haltung beyond the Romantic and sacrifical approaches to heroism. Elizabeth Krimmer finds the poetics of peace an elusive goal, and several of the contributors to Enlightened War posit either a solid third position or a model of enduring conflict with no clear resolution. The central question behind this poetics of war and peace might therefore be whether such a third position is tenable or whether conflict, latent and potential or visible and real, is the only medium in which to think about war and peace. CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 180 14.07.15 20: 41 The Fate of the Martial Sublime 181 This is the premise on which I want to read these works, and it will account for my own lopsided standpoint in taking these texts together as a constellation of Fragestellungen about conflict, a sort of martial symposium. War is not only a historical or cultural phenomenon. As Immanuel Kant sees it in the Kritik der Urteilskraft, war is an example of where moral subjectivity meets the outside world that endangers the very life of the subject. «Selbst der Krieg, wenn er mit Ordnung und Heiligachtung der bürgerlichen Rechte geführt wird, hat etwas Erhabenes an sich, und macht zugleich die Denkungsart des Volkes, welches ihn auf diese Art führt, nur um desto erhabener, je mehreren Gefahren es ausgesetzt war, und sich mutig darunter hat behaupten können» (Kant 10: 187). 1 Either this statement is banal - if das Volk survives, it has a more sublime mentality, or it doesn’t survive at all - or it is a version of the gambler’s fallacy: winning one battle makes it more likely to win the next one, a version of Machiavelli’s maxim that fortune favors the bold. The feeling of the dynamic sublime, the belief in one’s own power to overcome even the greatest opposition in fidelity to the moral law, is temporalized here as the increase of that belief each time it seems to be empirically confirmed, an intrusion of the empirical into the absolute only to strengthen the absolute. Kant’s transformation of war into an instance of the sublime is not based on the same experience of the «Grausen» and «heiliger Schauer» that the spectator experiences before the phenomena of nature (Kant 10: 195), as if the spectator were the army, but in the conversion of the courageous actor into the object of the spectator’s attention: A «Gegenstand der größten Bewunderung» is «ein Mensch, der nicht erschrickt, der sich nicht fürchtet.» The army in the field is only a collective instance of this case, as «vorzügliche Hochachtung für den Krieger» is morally edifying as well, and not just the feeling of the sublime in the spectator who knows himself to be greater - morally, at least - than the adversity he faces (Kant 10: 187). This passage informs or describes persistent modes of thinking about the relationship between war, subjectivity, morality, and judgment, whether in the quest for a heroic ideal as the object of the proper sort of admiration in inevitable defeat (as in Gratzke’s study) or in the belief that the warrior with the moral good on his side will triumph against all odds, or indeed that the nation fighting for the right will prevail. These three ideas are prevalent either in affirmative or negative versions throughout the critical discourse on war in the German lands. In spite of their being centered on the decades circa 1800, the studies in the Krimmer and Simpson volume offer the broadest range of material and perspectives, and not just for their lack of a single authorial voice or program. This collection is coherent and illuminating, examining topics from broadly CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 181 14.07.15 20: 41 182 Joseph D. O’Neil literary and gender studies to the theory and reality of Prussia’s wars. The premise of this collection and thesis of the editors’ introduction is that «Enlightenment discourse not only was developed during but responded to and was profoundly shaped by a period of prolonged European warfare» from the Seven Years’ War to the Napoleonic Wars (2). In an essay entitled «War, Anecdotes, and the Backsides of Reason,» Galili Shahar cites the above passage from Kant as an example of how the subject of Enlightenment is also a «subject of violence» requiring courage to attain the state of mind required by Kant’s practical philosophy (116). The «Sapere aude! » of the «Beantwortung der Frage: Was heißt Aufklärung? » of 1784 is now a property of the warrior, but is Kant, for all that, «not a philosopher of war» (116)? After all, Kant goes out of his way in the above-cited section of the third Critique to condemn the effects of a «long peace» that conduces to «den bloßen Handelsgeist, mit ihm aber den niedrigen Eigennutz, Feigheit und Weichlichkeit herrschend zu machen und die Denkungsart des Volkes zu erniedrigen pflegt» (Kant 10: 187). In any case, even Kant’s liberal optimism seems to require a Kleistian correction. Shahar sees Kleist’s «backsides» as islands of exception to dominant reason, a writing practice that is a «pure gesture of resistance, a principle of negation, an experience of revolt» (Krimmer and Simpson 108), troped as an «anal poetics» (117). Kleist «declared war […] against war itself» in making his protagonists «war machines,» «naked reflections of ‹practical reason›» as the bodies that reason denies (103-104). (This is exactly the sort of position with which Gratzke will take issue, seeing in Friedrich von Homburg an alternative to the exposure or abjection of the body.) Framing Kleist’s authorial voice through his protagonists, for example Michael Kohlhaas, and in term strongly reminiscent of Gilles Deleuze’s and Félix Guattari’s conception of the «war machine» in their A Thousand Plateaus and Mathieu Carrière’s Kleist: Für eine Literatur des Krieges, Shahar overlooks what Wolf Kittler, among others, has stressed: the production of spontaneity through institutional practices. Prinz Friedrich von Homburg, for example, acts not just on a «spontaneous and inner movement» (107) but because he has been programmed in the sleepwalking scene to act upon his dream of glory and associate military laurels with the movements of his heart. The Kantian suspension of inclination (Neigung) in moral judgment is here not circumvented but attached to the sublimity of particular cues: a glove, a laurel wreath, the name Natalie. 2 The end of the Prügelstrafe means only the beginning of another kind of obedience. As it turns out, the Deleuzian «war machine,» a «microorganism of violence that moves against the political order on ‹paths of escape› [i.e., lines of flight] and irony» (111) is only an infinitely more fun- CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 182 14.07.15 20: 41 The Fate of the Martial Sublime 183 gible and re-territorializable version of the self given over to the force of the sublime. If the actions of Kleist’s heroes are motivated by their Gemüt, it is also in part thanks to Kant’s institutionalization of this Gemüt precisely on the military terms Kleist evokes in «Französisches Exercitium, das man nachmachen sollte,» the anecdote of the French artillery captain who positions the artillery by ordering the cannoneers, «Hier stirbst du! » (Kleist 3: 362). 3 Of course, as in Kant’s account of the sublime, no one dies. The transformation of the sublime into the counterintuitive aspect of such «unwahrscheinliche Wahrhaftigkeiten» only makes the problem of war, moral agency, and critique more acute. Elisabeth Krimmer’s essay in this volume, «‹Schon wieder Krieg! Der Kluge hörts nicht gern›: Goethe, Warfare, and Faust II,» underscores the contradiction between the culture of genius in Clausewitz, on which political decision-making acts as a check, and Goethe’s version in Faust II, which admits of no such check. Goethe extends the «blind force of nature» as which Clausewitz saw war into a general anthropology, the infamous «Faustian personality.» This indicates skepticism about war, a skepticism that cultivated people perhaps shared but, as Krimmer points out in the case of the philosopher J.G. Fichte, could give way in the struggle against Napoleon to an absolute enthusiasm for unconditional freedom. More to the point, the question might be whether, as Clausewitz suggests, any single discourse needs to be seen as in tension with others. The stirrings of modern sociological analysis of self-sustaining and self-perpetuating discourses, as Clausewitz sees war, and the control of such autonomous discourses by a higher governmental instance also points to the notion that the sublime, the unrepresentability of absolute war, or the genius of the commander, is a matter of technical success and failure but that the political command is not of a technical nature. The positive side to this is that war, its use, its development and extent is subject to interference from a sphere subject to public scrutiny, one that has and has to articulate goals not simply given by the technical possibilities of warmaking. In his essay «Agamenon on the Battlefield of Leipzig: Wilhelm von Humboldt on Ancient Warriors, Modern Heroes, and Bildung through War,» Felix Saure contrasts Wilhelm von Humboldt’s (as he sees it) liberal Hellenism, which focuses on the individual as citizen and soldier, with Romantic militarization of the people as a national organism and with Ludwig August von der Marwitz’s conservative desire to maintain the semi-feudal structures of hierarchy and dependence that were the basis for military and social life in Prussia before the reforms of the early 1800’s. These other social models look at war on the basis of its agent and the purpose dictated by that notion of agency: the citizen-soldier (the poet Körner, in Humboldt’s case) who ex- CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 183 14.07.15 20: 41 184 Joseph D. O’Neil emplifies the virtues of a noble character; the trans-historical and biological essence of the nation fighting against another national entity; and the battle of tradition against modernity (only a brief note in Saure’s article). These forms of enmity are addressed in Sara Eigen Figal’s cogent take on Frederick the Great’s «military enlightenment»: «The Point of Recognition: Enemy, Neighbor, and Next of Kin in the Era of Frederick the Great.» She points out that warfare on this basis need not be seen in the polarized form of universal tolerance and harmony versus destruction of a monstrous other. Based on a reading of Frederick’s Political Catechism, Eigen emphasizes the idea of limited war as a rivalry between brothers, not utter destruction of one qualitatively unlike us. From another perspective, the two terms of the polarity she resists, a universal harmony versus a monstrous or satanic other, entail each other, as Carl Schmitt shows. While Schmitt attained notoriety for his legal work on behalf of Franz von Papen and his affiliation with the Nazi Party as a theorist of the absolute state, his Concept of the Political and his postwar work are based on a similar insight: that parity among different parties and the treatment of war as a political, not a moral or anthropological, conflict are necessary in order to limit its scope. War in the name of humanity or morality makes the enemy inhuman, immoral, or monstrous. Schmitt’s figure of the partisan appears in Galili Shahar’s essay, albeit miscontrued as the application of an already existing theory. Schmitt’s historical point in Theorie des Partisanen is that the practice of partisan warfare in Spain was not theorized there and that the Prussians who did theorize it later could not implement the theory. 4 Patricia Anne Simpson’s essay «Recoding the Ethics of War in Grimms’ Fairy Tales» finds postwar reconstructions of masculinity in the second volume of the Grimms’ Kinder- und Hausmärchen, published in 1815. In three of these tales, she reads a common motif: soldiers who find redemption after making a pact with the devil. Whether as deserters who abandon the war or soldiers somehow abandoned by the war and left to their own devices, the men in these stories survive by their wits and ingenuity while demonstrating military virtues such as the cohesion of the unit or courage in the face of danger while at the same time challenging military hierarchy. Two of the stories end with marriages, and in each case the soldiers enjoy a comfortable private life courtesy of the devil. This reaffirmation of masculinity runs counter to the premise that war disrupts gender identities (to which effect Simpson cites her co-editor, Krimmer), but these tales are about the restoration after the war, in which transgressive women who refuse the soldiers sexually are punished and military morality invades civilian life. The moral of the tale here CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 184 14.07.15 20: 41 The Fate of the Martial Sublime 185 seems to be that the poverty and wildness of these soldiers challenges both the idea of a non-militarized civilian life and the idea of a new professionalization of the army evident in Prussia’s military reforms. Inge Stephan’s examination of Therese Huber’s novel Die Familie Seldorf («On Gender Wars and Amazons: Therese Huber on Terror and Revolution») treats this horrific tale of the French Revolution as paradigmatic for the alternatives faced by women in the revolutionary age. Her essay, Waltraud Maierhofer’s consideration of the art of Angelika Kauffmann, and Ute Frevert’s study of general conscription and the questions of citizenship and exclusion it raises make up the third section of Enlightened War, on war and gender. On Maierhofer’s reading of these gender relationships («Angelika Kauffmann’s War Heroes: (Not) Painting War in a Culture of Sensibility»), both the sentimental allegories of Angelika Kauffmann’s paintings and Kauffmann’s own maintenance of an apolitical celebrity status as an independent artist in Rome (with many women patrons as well) allowed her to juxtapose women and war in a way that was safe but fated to give way to a search for masculine national heroes, starting with Napoleon, as sentimental Classicism yielded to Romantic nationalism. Both Huber and Kauffmann treat situations in which women who were not supposed to address questions of politics, revolution, and war cross the gendered boundary of martial discourse and art. While Huber depicts war more vividly, as Stephan claims, than any of her contemporaries, Kauffmann uses the culture of sensibility, so Maierhofer argues, to transfer the scene of conflict inward to «scenes of emotional struggle and loss» related to war, presenting women in relation to war as heroic (194). Stephan transforms the anxiety over the revolutionary woman as hyena or Amazon into a gendered perspective that is the obverse of that of the French proto-feminist Olympe de Gouges, who demanded liberty and equality, «the rights of man,» for women as well in relation to men. Huber’s own revolutionary political convictions and her standpoint as the ex-wife of Mainz revolutionary Georg Forster allows her to produce a fictional revelation of the «so-called dark side of the male struggle for freedom» (184) in the terror of war and revolution and in the fate to which her heroine succumbs, even as Huber’s text maintains an internal gender distinction between women who are fully depraved and those like the protagonist Sara who are frustrated by gender and circumstance from a fulfilled life of whatever sort. Frevert’s historical outline of conscription laws and the education of men for the nation («Citizen-Soldiers: General Conscription in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries») sees the decline of the gendering of national service as male since the 1950s but a slower growth in the ability of women to CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 185 14.07.15 20: 41 186 Joseph D. O’Neil take part in military service. This is a drastic transformation in any case from the situation around 1800. Like the unmanly virtues that, for Kant, are remedied by a properly martial courage in the performance of moral duty, reformers in Prussia believed that the imposition of a military culture on the male population would be a response to the French challenge of universal conscription, the levée en masse. This dream of a nation in arms followed republican aspirations in the nineteenth century , in which military service becomes the vehicle of citizenship and a cohesive bourgeois national identity. While not mentioned specifically in Frevert’s outline beyond its theorization by Carl Theodor Welcker in the context of the republican-nationalist Hambach Festival of 1832, the role of the Bürgerwehr in the uprisings of 1848 is striking for its enabling of an armed confrontation between the politicized, urban bourgeoisie and the armies of Prussia, Hesse, Austria, and other large territorial units. The prestige of the Prussian and German army after 1871 and the importance of the officer class in Prussian society contributed to a stricter, illiberal militarization that made soldiering the province of unmarried men and schooled recruits against political dangers from the Left while embodying a distrust of Jews even as many Jews aspired to military service as a gateway to civil acceptance. Now that mandatory military service has been suspended while remaining legally in force, the ideal of a military path to citizenship, liberal or illiberal, seems distant enough, but the apparently bygone power of abstraction to militarize itself is apparent enough in the essays in the next section. Theory always lags behind history, and so, aptly enough, three essays on «War and Theory» close this volume. The first essay in this set, David Colclasure’s «Just War and Perpetual Peace: Kant on the Legitimate Use of Political Violence,» supplements Kant’s On Perpetual Peace, with its arguments for transparency and comity in international relations, with the notion of international intervention where human rights are massively threatened. Unfortunately, Colclasure falls back into an undercomplex Habermasian model that relies on the same paradoxes that Sara Eigen Figal’s essay seems to challenge. He takes the notion of intervention one step beyond Habermas by arguing not just for a right but for the duty of intervention on behalf of a «global community» with the assent of «world citizenry» (my emphasis). The nominal adherence to democratic norms here - the consent of the governed and so on - is impressive, but one also has to ask what it means for a global community to intervene militarily in the affairs of any member of that community unless not every state is a member of this global community, a res publica that wants to enforce norms from Kant like the philosopher king of Plato with the means available only to NATO. Rather than parity among CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 186 14.07.15 20: 41 The Fate of the Martial Sublime 187 fellows or even pragmatic or urgent intervention for a specific, politically determined goal (a Clausewitzian limit on absolute war), a trans-political standard of the most individualistic, liberal sort of autonomy as moral a priori authorizes its own permanent global policing. On more empirical grounds, one might ask whether «the sovereign state has» in fact «traditionally served» as «guarantor of the rights of the citizen, the securing of the autonomy of the individual,» as Colclasure claims (250). If this guarantee of autonomy in the Kantian, liberal vein - an autonomy Kant hoped to reach, in the essay on Enlightenment as in On Perpetual Peace, by a gradual process of negotiation and progress - is now to be achieved, wherever that autonomy is violated, on behalf of the moral authority of a «global public sphere» apparently devoid of all particular interests, this is through another sort of militarization of the sublime: neither one that treats «universal legislation» of the categorical imperative as a test for the autonomous subject, so that one’s maxim could become the principle of universal laws; nor one that attends to the character, mentality, or feeling of the subject in order to guarantee that he or she can act morally (Kant’s concern in the section of the Critique of Judgment on the dynamic sublime); but instead, one that makes cosmopolitanism a matter of legislation of positive law for all who are in fact included in this global public sphere. In this sense, it is only fitting that this compulsory liberation in practice (in the name of «the expansion of freedom in all the world,» as George W. Bush called it in his second inaugural address, for instance 5 ) uses gender as the fulcrum of its militarization, making women’s rights a reason for new culture wars and geopolitical conflict (refusing, said Bush, the idea «that women welcome humiliation and servitude»), liberating, as Kant put it in his Aufklärung essay, «das ganze schöne Geschlecht» from its guardians (Kant 11: 53) rather than attending to the status of women, of ethnic and cultural minorities, of historically oppressed and disadvantaged groups, of working people (etcetera) at the heart of these sovereign states that can hardly guarantee the moral and material autonomy of their own citizens. 6 The problem with an absolute, global, and moral standard is that there is no wiggle room for the hypocrisy that is sometimes implied even in the most necessary policies and measures. It is no wonder, then, in spite of abstract considerations of public morality and duty, that the question of war - the means proposed by geopolitical humanitarianism - takes place in a medium other than that of justification and moralization. As Arndt Niebisch points out in his essay «Military Intelligence: On Carl von Clausewitz’s Hermeneutics of Disturbance and Probability,» war takes place in a medium that makes everything more difficult. While the use of the concept of friction in English translations of Clausewitz CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 187 14.07.15 20: 41 188 Joseph D. O’Neil seems to make this a factor that can be reduced or eliminated, for Clausewitz it is simply an «erschwerendes Mittel» that is everywhere in war and cannot be isolated (259). This medium has been read by theorists Niebisch calls «postmodern» in terms of battlefield communication and intelligence, and Niebisch extends this reading to the information theory of Claude Shannon, which accounts for «noise» in the communication channel as a positive source of information. The massive amount of information on the battlefield and not, as one might expect for this era, its scarcity because of technical limitations, has to be filtered, and war in the eighteenth century, it turns out, runs on its own sort of information economy. While the discussion of this process in the postmodern context is complex and covered mostly in summary considerations of information and game theory, Niebisch shows that Clausewitz and his rival Antoine Henri de Jomini are still a relevant pair for considering the technical side of war-making today. What happens when the expansion of humane and democratic freedoms does not sit well with those in whose countries those values are introduced? This is the central problem of the phenomenon of insurgency, and Wolf Kittler’s essay evokes both its origins in the Spanish partisans who fought against occupation by Napoleon’s armies and its present and future in military counterinsurgency doctrine, particularly that authored by General David M. Petraeus. As a figure of the warrior, the partisan embodies the telluric identity of a nation, bound to the earth and its national territory. In the essay that closes this volume, «Host Nations: Carl von Clausewitz and the New U.S. Army/ Marine Corps Field Manual, FM 3-24, MCWP 3-33.5, Counterinsurgency,» Kittler examines the dynamic implied in the US counterinsurgency manuals for the Army and Marine Corps as they attempt to bring such figures under control after attempts to spread democracy are not welcomed euphorically. Kittler’s text revolves around a key term in its title: «host nation.» He underscores the ambivalence in the language of friend and enemy that makes this nation both a host and a hostis, an enemy. This ambivalence marks other theoretical situations in Clausewitz as well, with similar effects. The idea that political decision-making should guide war is inverted in the situation of counterinsurgency, as nation-building and the restablishment of political legitimacy in the «host country» (Petraeus; qtd. Kittler 299) make politics an extension of war. Of course, this process only makes sense from a perspective such as that articulated by Colclasure: the invading, occupying, or «advising» force knows what international norms are and seeks to establish or reestablish them in the «host» nation. That this does not preclude obstinate enmity is proven by the history of the American and British occupa- CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 188 14.07.15 20: 41 The Fate of the Martial Sublime 189 tion of Iraq. While Kittler is «not convinced by the attempt to turn Clausewitz into a precursor of complexity theory» (304), one might conclude from Niebisch’s and Kittler’s essays that the same grasp of complex causality and communication is required to negotiate the «host» relationship as the nexus where the ideal and empirical reality meet notions of legitimacy, justice, enmity, and conflict. Similarly complex is Elizabeth Krimmer’s search for a language of peace in her study The Representation of War in German Literature: From 1800 to the Present. The question of the medium in which war and peace are made visible or thinkable animates this volume, which is divided into four parts covering four conflicts, from the Napoleonic wars to the conflicts in Yugoslavia and Iraq just before and after 2000. In 13 brief chapters, each dedicated to an author, Krimmer examines the vicissitudes of the representation of war in terms of aesthetic, narrative, linguistic, and historical discourses. A survey of great breadth and critical insight, ranging from Heinrich von Kleist to Peter Handke, this study seeks to establish at least negatively, by considering the poetics of war, the chances for a poetics of peace, a «Friedenstext» in which peace is a «language that possesses its own grammar, its own body of rules, kit of constitutive elements, and, most of all, its own tradition of stories» (202). The search for this language begins with another medium, known from Clausewitz as friction. Krimmer suggests that writing about war and peace inverts Clausewitz’s dictum that «Friktion ist der einzige Begriff, welcher dem ziemlich allgemein entspricht, was den wirklichen Krieg von dem auf dem Papier unterscheidet» (qtd. in Krimmer 2). As much as real war is marked by the medium of friction, war on paper is marked according to Krimmer by the «formal and thematic aporiae that demarcate the limits of war representations» (2). Krimmer offers four forms of friction that characterize the texts she reads, forms that address the text as a rhetorical construct via metonymic slippage from violence to fantasies of transcendence in the experience of the sublime, a notion she ties to Kant’s third Critique once more in the idea that reason is beyond all bodily, empirical determinations. While exonerating Kant from a fascination with or an advocacy of war (in spite of the many echoes of the above passage in another passage she cites from the third Critique that is punctuated with a «vielleicht»), Krimmer reads the relationship between the military and the political in Schiller as a hybrid, a progressive «amalgamation of national and transcendental warfare» (36) between the Wallenstein trilogy and Die Jungfrau von Orleans. If the former is a pure example of the self-reproduction of military logic, as in Clausewitz’s theory without the political guidance (in this case from the Emperor), the latter, Joan of Arc, is also Carl Schmitt’s example of the «telluric partisan» CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 189 14.07.15 20: 41 190 Joseph D. O’Neil who fights for the idea of the nation, also beyond petty empirical determinations like the actual sovereign or questions of dynastic legitimacy. Krimmer compares the situation in Kleist’s Hermannschlacht with the invasion of Iraq: an imperial power seizes hegemony over natural resources but faces an insurgency that neglects all worldly goods in favor of absolute resistance. Kleist therefore replaces Kant’s sublime with terror in the readiness to lose everything; only under those conditions can the insurgent win (Krimmer 49-50). If Die Hermannschlacht is «an intellectual’s omnipotence fantasy» played out on the female body and requiring sacrifice for the foundation of the German nation (53-4), his Penthesilea demonstrates the escape of war from any form of rational control, and a regression to the «pre-symbolic world» of «mute violence» (60). This is a familiar story with many variations, but it seems here to present the semiotic corollary to Clausewitz’s linkage of war and politics: there is no guidance of one thing by another, no split of symbolization between signified and signifier, as Krimmer puts it (60). While this does not necessarily add to the discussion of Kleist and war, it certainly marks an important step in the overall argument of this study: the transformation of sublime capacity into a destructive absolute, which in Penthesilea is gendered feminine and conflated with savagery (198). Krimmer’s two chapters on the First World War cover the odd couple of Ernst Jünger and Erich Maria Remarque. Writing of «transcend[ing] the representation of war toward a grammar of peace,» Krimmer doubts that texts of the Materialschlacht can overcome the focus on the powerlessness and lack of agency of the warrior who simply endures (67). Agency is necessary for peace to be achieved politically, but both Jünger’s subordination of heroism to cosmic cycles and Remarque’s abjection of the body undermine that agency (70). Jünger harks back to Schiller both in the connection to the sublime and in the scheme of self-improvement through the nation, but both he and Remarque are caught in the political dilemma of representation itself: that celebrations of heroism can reveal the horror of war and that professions of anti-war sentiment can so thorougly victimize the subject (here, the soldier) that the notion of opposition itself becomes impossible. Both Krimmer and Gratzke emphasize this double bind, to which Gratzke offers an alternative gestural economy of self-sacrifice, as I shall discuss below. Krimmer’s interest is in the articulation of a positive program of peace, poetic or political, and so her constant questioning of the hinge between representation and a position on conflict needs to preserve agency in the face of its reduction to what she identifies in Remarque: individual and collective victim discourse where the German past is concerned. CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 190 14.07.15 20: 41 The Fate of the Martial Sublime 191 A more complex topic is the representation of memory in the case of the Second World War. Much of this memory invokes the victim discourse learned, says Krimmer, from the representation of the First World War. She addresses the translation of «moral and political concerns» into «questions of aesthetic form and narrative structure» (111) through Heinrich Böll and Günter Grass. She usefully distinguishes both the complexity and elusiveness of Böll’s radical critique combined with compassion and Grass’s invective against any accommodation of Germans as victims even where this is implicit in narrative structures, as Krimmer implies is the case with Im Krebsgang. If Böll maintains through poetic means the complicity of many German victims, Grass uses irony and an acknowledgement of the impossibility of narrating German victimhood (148). While these two chapters on the workhorses of postwar German literature are largely summary and skirt some of the issues other critics might raise about Grass’s depiction of a war in which he was involved as a combatant or his status as a moralische Instanz - perhaps an important factor in looking for the hinge between representation and reality or between a moral discourse of guilt and victimhood and political, programmatic action - Krimmer’s focus remains on the poetic problems of war and peace. This focus becomes difficult to sustain in the following section on the Austrians Peter Handke and Elfriede Jelinek and their treatments of the wars in Yugoslavia and Iraq, respectively. While Jelinek combats the tyranny of media as producing a simulacrum of conflict on terms that obscure real conflicts, so one might conclude from Krimmer’s discussion, Handke searches for a «Friedenstext» by means that reiterate or perhaps unintentionally parody the tensions between reality and representation, war and peace in the foregoing chapters. After all, here is an author who, as Krimmer frames his critical reception, could be «an elitist poet-priest in the tradition of German Romanticism» or an avant-gardist who combines experiment with popular culture (153), but in the 1990’s decides to return to his maternal roots, the former Yugoslavia, and defend the national character of the Serbs in what also seems to some critics, as Krimmer duly notes, a kind of Blut-und-Boden literature. Inverting Böll’s approach, Handke’s empathy with those accused of being perpetrators of genocide involves a pattern of equivocation, prevarication, and insult as well as an aestheticization of the Serbian nation in an attempt to redeem it of responsibility for a genocide that Handke never acknowledges or treats except as an invention of non-Serbian outsiders and large media outlets. Is producing a Friedenstext, as is Handke’s «declared intention» (153), a serious endeavor, or does «peace» here simply mean the refusal to represent war and conflict in favor of an idyllic national culture? I want to dwell on the CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 191 14.07.15 20: 41 192 Joseph D. O’Neil problem of Handke’s Friedenstext for a moment because it encapsulates the question of finding an adequate literary medium for war or peace, a question that is implicit or explicit in all three of the volumes I consider here. In «Eine Winterliche Reise zu den Flüssen Donau, Sava, Morawa, und Drina,» Handke covers over scenes of genocide with scenes of nature and folk culture, particularly in the context of his parallel apologetics for the Serbian and Bosnian Serb leadership. His long essay and travelogue was originally entitled «Gerechtigkeit für Serbien» when it appeared in the Süddeutsche Zeitung in January, 1996, and bore the main title only as its subtitle when it appeared later in book form. Nonetheless, the original, polemical title with its reference to the sphere of justice seems to describe better the content of the book. This polemical dimension and Handke’s legal gloss on this landscape, which frames it as an indictment of international policy and of failures to understand South Slav history, obscure in his text even the connections that Krimmer draws between war and the sublime that persist in Handke’s search for a «Friedenstext.» This search seems to be enabled by the simple neglect of war and violence, the obverse of the international human rights discourse that wages war in the name of peace. Handke’s critique of NATO and Western media also marks the text in ways to which Krimmer does not entirely do justice. It is not just a matter of criticizing the critics - for Handke, center and center-left German and French media (particularly Der Spiegel and Le Monde) and French nouveaux philosophes such as André Glucksmann and Bernard-Henri Lévy, apostles of an international interventionist liberalism verging on neo-conservatism - but of proclaiming the virtues of immediate observation as superior to the distorting «Spiegel» (mirror) of Der Spiegel, for instance (see Handke 13). Handke’s linking together the authenticity of the Serbian countryside, its purification from Western influence through the popular reaction to NATO bombings, and his observational method enable «the transformation of Serbia into a land of essence» (Krimmer 163), but this pastoral aesthetic is linked essentially to Handke’s own apolitical position (167). It should not be surprising then that this «project of peace is addressed to one party only,» the Serbs as victims (167), since Serbia is in Handke’s writing a fantasy that, according to Krimmer, comes close to reconnecting war with the sublime. If peace is really as uninteresting as much of war literature seems to say it is, then Handke’s text perhaps evinces its own irrelevance, at least as that which it claims to want to be. Like the search for philosophical grounds enabling «humanity» to intervene in a part of itself that commits crimes against the whole, both the irenic text on the scene of genocide and the militant language of liberal pacification indulge a paradox that undermines their central claims. CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 192 14.07.15 20: 41 The Fate of the Martial Sublime 193 That Handke’s «decision to elide the plight of the Muslims» «depopulate[s]» his text, leaving only nature and the folkways of a highly literate and mostly harmless Serbian nation, or that he refers to Muslims, particularly women and girls, as «kopftuchliebe Kleinmenschen» (qtd. in Krimmer 170) also runs counter to any professed concern with a Yugoslav identity for Bosnia-Herzegovina, since the territory is polemically particularized here in terms of a struggle between Islam and the West, another beloved theme of the nouveaux philosophes and of European Islamophobia today. If «[t]he scandalous effect of Handke’s Yugoslavia essays is rooted not in the author’s oblivion to facts or his withdrawal from history, but in his attempts to harness history for his enterprise of utopian mythification» (Krimmer 159), then the ideological overdetermination of the images in the Winterliche Reise in ready-made Serbian nationalist discourse is hardly a cunning aesthetic project. A «performance of uncertainty» and the dissolution of a single authorial or narrative viewpoint (173) might also incorporate different voices or possibilities, or it might engage in a consideration of historical and political complexity. However, one might add to Krimmer’s critique that Handke’s response to the question of Serbia’s identity, territorial integrity, and relationship to its neighbors - even Handke’s maternal Slovenia - echoes only too predictably the official and quasi-official Serbian nationalism of the decade before the First World War. 7 If, «[i]n Handke’s works, history is the handmaiden of myth, and myth guides the way toward peace» (159) or his works are indeed «harbingers of peace» (174), it is not clear what the term «peace» means anymore except as an irony at the heart of the idea of war. 8 This problem is especially acute if, in Kleist or Jelinek, as Krimmer concludes, peace is depicted as stabilizing war, as its continuation by other means. As «a force in its own right» for Grass or Handke, it «emerges as a language that possesses its own grammar, its own body of rules, kit of constitutive elements, and, most of all, its own tradition of stories» (202). If it is indeed more than the absence of war, however, then what is it, exactly, except the projected space beyond war, which exists only as the foil to really existing and potential conflict, whether in the most chaotic, bloody, and violent of conflicts or in the other scene of the Balkans where it can simply disappear into a clash of media and observation, leaving behind only an idyll with no traces of the war. All in all, this search for peace inside war seems to suggest that a «text of peace» plays off of the moral imperative that creates the noble character of the warrior by reducing conflict to vital and immediate aesthetic experience: Kant versus Kant, so to speak. Krimmer does not fail to track what one might call a split in the sublime across martial discourses in literature, with the CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 193 14.07.15 20: 41 194 Joseph D. O’Neil merger of self and law on the one side and of nature and myth on the other. Whether this split is a mirroring of peace and war or locating peace within the aestheticized and moralized conception of war as its product (and not, for instance, in the real-world medium of war that goes under the rubrics of complexity and friction), it seems that peace is only enabled by violence, and that the medium that would be a language or a text of peace is still that of war. Michael Gratzke notes this coincidence in Blut und Feuer: Heldentum bei Lessing, Kleist, Fontane, Jünger, und Heiner Müller. He asserts a gestural economy of dynamic tension as an alternative to the abstractions induced or supported by the sublime, whether of peace or war (86-87). This permanent tension between two poles involves terms that shift among leaderto victim-hero (Führerheld/ Opferheld); endurance and expression (Aushalten/ Ausdruck); duty and inclination (Pflicht/ Neigung); obedience and rebellion (Gehorsam/ Auflehnung); courage and cowardice; and state and individual. In the course of elaborating these binaries, he manages to infuse the tired evocations of tension between similarly opposed terms in Kleist, the notorious arch - «Es steht weil alle Steine aufeinmal einstürzen wollen» (letter to Wilhelmine von Zenge, 16 November, 1800; Kleist 4: 159) or the gestural language of standing and falling in Kleist’s plays with a productive capacity that informs the dynamic of heroism and sacrifice. Taken in historical and textual context in terms of the former set, Gratzke can read this tension as shaping the dynamics of representation specific to the authors of his subtitle. The organizing dimension of his readings is the idea of «queer» times and places borrowed from Judith Halberstam as joining heroism and resistance, creating «Zeit und Ort des Heldentums als potenziell widerständige Kategorien» (20). For Gratzke, this is a model of a «good death» that resists the economical and future-oriented imperatives of the bourgeois good life in favor of a kind of masculinity - following queer theory, one not limited to those born male - of heroism with which bourgeois society is paradoxically infatuated (27-28). Rather than a satisfaction with virtuous consciousness, Kant’s morally sublime «Denkungsart,» the hero is for Gratzke constituted by the suffering manifested in the symptom or symbol of the wound (177). With this turn away from the sublime cancellation of embodiment and inclination in favor of abstraction and duty, Gratzke redefines what Kant’s «vorzügliche Hochachtung für den Krieger» might mean by taking the physicality of the warrior as a symbol not of the respect for the moral law in Kant’s definition of duty 9 but a symbol of the tension between action and sacrifice. Gratzke confines his exposition to questions of textual interpretation, but this tension could be expanded productively (and beyond the stoic model) to address questions of political theory and action. CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 194 14.07.15 20: 41 The Fate of the Martial Sublime 195 For Gratzke, queer socialization («queere Vergesellschaftung» 88) stands as an alternative to the previous critical emphasis upon the bodily rebellion or self-expenditure in Heinrich von Kleist and marks Gratzke’s alternative scenario, here a «Traumzeit» in which for Kleist an alternative Prussia is possible. Kleist’s own self-expenditure in the refusal of the «Ökonomie des guten Lebens» (89) in his suicide with Henriette Vogel contrasts with this ideal and underscores Gratzke’s initial claim that such figures of sacrifice as they are presented in Kleist, Schiller, Heiner Müller, and Ernst Jünger do not attain the ideal but only perform the groundlessness of identity (21). This ideal is adumbrated in his first chapter, on Lessing, Gleim, and Ewald von Kleist. The elder von Kleist of German literary history, Heinrich’s greatuncle, represents here a forgotten bourgeois-melancholic ideal of patriotism, one that has been refunctioned for the «performativity» of society rather than lingering upon the original figure of the poet, mortally wounded at the battle of Kunersdorf. The tension in Kleist’s work as in Lessing’s between the intimate communication of Empfindsamkeit and the attempt to mask a personal void by seeking another, non-intimate identity in patriotism create the tension between the hollow interior and the mask, which Gratzke expresses throughout in terms of «stigma management» and the «personal front» taken from the psychologist Erving Goffmann. Heinrich takes up the performativity of the hero’s body in similar terms, as the Prince of Homburg falls and is caught and held by Hohenzollern as he joins the battle cry «In Staub mit allen Feinden Brandenburgs! » (Kleist 2: 644). Heroic Prussian masculinity is also the theme of Gratzke’s chapter on Fontane, whom he interprets as seeking to remedy the ills of the present with the evocation of an upright manly ethos (it is «standhaft» and static, demanding «gute Haltung»), including the principled choice to rebel against authority, that has to give way to an ethos of resignation (102). Fontane chooses to reconstitute a utopian space of fantasy in Brandenburg not only as melancholy but as a meaningful union of Romantic notions and practical, domestic life and productivity. He does so on Gratzke’s account by integrating older Prussian virtues while penetrating the façade of soldierly bravado, a condition one might compare to Frevert’s sociological analysis of the prestige of the military in Wilhelmine times as a place for an imagined bachelor masculinity. Since Fontane takes Frederick the Great’s supposed lover Lieutenant von Katte as Fontane’s foil in criticizing this sort of homo-oriented masculinity, it is not entirely clear how this utopian fantasy of domestic bliss in Fontane squares with the homosocial spaces of Empfindsamkeit or the queerness of queer sociability, which are here unresolvable contradictions that mark the Prussian character whether in obedience or rebellion. CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 195 14.07.15 20: 41 196 Joseph D. O’Neil Rather than articulate the standard of a search for peace within or beyond war in Jünger, as Krimmer does, Gratzke treats Jünger’s narrator in In Stahlgewittern as the subject of Empfindsamkeit, particularly at the one spot where the narrative perspective changes to that of his brother. Jünger’s falling and getting up again marks the gestural tension between sacrifice and courage or between duty and feeling, and the absolution from personal guilt by the higher agency of the state does not remove the affective burden of mourning. Gratzke does not let Jünger off the hook entirely, as Jünger redirects the trajectory of Prussian poetic-soldierly Empfindsamkeit from Ewald von Kleist to Fontane toward the self-stylization of fin-de-siècle artistic decadence. The soldier Jünger is ultimately a dandy. Nonetheless, he seeks in his other work (Gratzke discusses Das abenteuerliche Herz, Der Arbeiter, and Afrikanische Spiele, among others) to develop the tension between nature and sentiment, on the one hand, and modernity and machines on the other. By virtue of a «stereoscopic» gaze, Jünger manages to reconcile these while preserving some space for sentimentality. Gratzke’s thesis is thus an implicit answer to the question posed by the «Kant vs. Kant» situation I sketch above. The imperative of radical self-abnegation brought on by the modernization of war parallels the refusal of inclination (Neigung) and the abjection of the individual, as Jünger sketches it in Der Arbeiter, and the wild heart with its own categorical imperatives, as Jünger also puts it (qtd. in Gratzke 140). But this stereoscopy does not hold, especially, for Gratzke, because Jünger’s hero has no inner core of conviction that would allow him, like Lessing’s Philotas, to go voluntarily to his death. The simple maintenance of life masks this inner lack, which Heiner Müller fully subjects to the outside forces that would assimilate or annihilate the subject. One version of the thesis of Gratzke’s study can be found in Müller’s comment on his LEBEN GUNDLINGS that three characters, the young Frederick the Great, Kleist, and Lessing, are to be played by one actor as «drei Figurationen eines Traumes von Preußen, der dann staatlich abgewürgt wurde» (Müller, Krieg ohne Schlacht, qtd. in Gratzke 164). These figures represent Müller’s own dream of another path for the German Democratic Republic and appear as intractable figures who nonetheless fail to shape that future. Now, it is not the heroic gesture so much as individual pathology («Symptom») that marks this intractability and represents the last point of refuge for Müller’s artist figures (173), as an «unverwertbaren Rest von Individualität, der sich der Dienlichkeit für den Staat verweigert» but is still ready to sacrifice itself for something beyond individual happiness or social harmony. Where this leaves the reader is perhaps in a now politicized space of «queer» aesthetics and conduct as Haltung. If not ex- CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 196 14.07.15 20: 41 The Fate of the Martial Sublime 197 actly the iconography of Saint Sebastian as a beautiful male body sacrificed in martyrdom, the figural result of this negative principle seems to be not one idea or image but a spectrum ranging from tension between two poles to an incomplete surrender as the pole of sacrifice takes over from that of survival. That this sublime quantum of individuality, to which Jünger refers as a «kategorische[s] Imperativ des Herzens» (qtd. Gratzke 140), represents the real object of admiration rather than the struggling body of the warrior constitutes a reduction of the sublime, but not its elimination. The possibility of sentimental, empathetic, or Romantic identification with this symptom is the last element in the chain that began with other versions of Kant: the moral law as political imperative to wage war (Colclasure), the subversive anality of practical reason (Shahar), or the search for a poetics of peace as included in one of war (Krimmer, Representations). In offering a critical summary of the impressive collection Enlightened War and the equally compelling monographs by Krimmer and Gratzke, I have attempted to indicate how persistent this sublime quantum is. Whether in the service of the state, of morality, of aesthetic objectivity or the intimate communication of nonconforming sensibility, the transmigration of the sublime from one model to another seems to define the possibility and the persistence of conflict even in the dream of perpetual peace. Notes 1 I cite Kant by volume and page from the Werksausgabe, ed. Wilhelm Weischedel; my emphasis. 2 Fritz Breithaupt has also shown how the drunken soldier who disobeys the order not to drink and fails to carry out his errand does so not as subversion but in fact because of successful programming at a deeper level: the Schläge (strokes/ strikes) of the bell are like the physical discipline of the Prussian army. See Breithaupt, «Wie Institutionalisierungen Freiräume schaffen.» 3 I cite Heinrich von Kleist in the four volume edition: Heinrich von Kleist, Sämtliche Werke und Briefe, ed. Ilse-Marie Barth et al. 4 «The Prussian Army and the German army led by Prussia from 1813 through the early part of World War II furnished the classic example of a military organization that had repressed radically the idea of the partisan» (Schmitt, Theory of the Partisan 33). 5 http: / / avalon.law.yale.edu/ 21st_century/ gbush2.asp 6 Wendy Brown’s Regulating Aversion studies the ideological dynamic of such positions. William Rasch takes apart the notion of the just war that is used by advocates of hard and «soft» power following Habermas. See Rasch, Sovereignty and Its Discontents, 57. 7 In the first chapter of The Sleepwalkers, Christopher Clark presents a detailed account of the evolution of Serbian national ideology and how it fed into the situation that ultimately brought about the First World War. CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 197 14.07.15 20: 41 198 Joseph D. O’Neil 8 Like other forms of aestheticization of political and historical discourses, this irony serves here as a point of retreat from the polemical and litigious discourse that Handke practices when his critics take up the gauntlet and meet his media critique and claims of fact with the same. In a study of Handke’s various accounts and literary representations of incidents and episodes in and concerning Bosnia and Kosovo, Theodore Fiedler cites Handke’s treatment of the journalist Lawrence Weschler, particularly Weschler’s essay on the work of the Hague Tribunal and his interview with a judge who sought relief from horrors of which witnesses testified by visiting a museum and looking at Vermeer paintings, with their idyllic motifs created in the aftermath of the Thirty Years’ War and in another time of war. Among other of Handke’s caricatures of the process and personnel of the tribunals judging accused war criminals from the former Yugoslavia, this one is striking because Handke transfers the journalist’s discussions of art and history onto the judge and treats the very idea of «inventing peace» as the work of «artists» onto the Tribunal itself as a body that fabricates the illusion of a neutral third point from which to judge (Fiedler 310-13). 9 Kant defines duty in the Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten as follows: «Pflicht ist die Notwendigkeit einer Handlung aus Achtung für das Gesetz» (Kant 7: 26). Works Cited Breithaupt, Fritz. «Wie Institutionalisierungen Freiräume schaffen: Kleists Marquise von O…, Die heilige Cäcilie, und einige Anekdoten.» Kleist Lesen. Ed. Nikolaus Müller-Schöll and Marianne Schuller. Bielefeld: Transcript, 2003. 209-42. Brown, Wendy. Regulating Aversion: Tolerance in the Age of Identity and Empire. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton UP, 2006. Bush, George W. Second Inaugural Address of George W. Bush; January 20, 2005. The Avalon Project at Yale Law School. http: / / avalon.law.yale.edu/ 21st_century/ gbush2.asp. 30 October, 2014. Clark, Christopher. The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914. New York: Harper Perennial, 2014. Fiedler, Theodore. «A Question of Justice? Peter Handke and the Hague Tribunal.» Crime and Madness in Modern Austria: Myth, Metaphor and Cultural Realities. Ed. Rebecca Thomas. Cambridge, England: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008. 304-42. Handke, Peter. Eine winterliche Reise zu den Flüssen Donau, Save, Morawa, und Drina, oder Gerechtigkeit für Serbien. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1996. Kant, Immanuel. Werkausgabe. 12 vols. Ed. Wilhelm Weischedel. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1977. von Kleist, Heinrich. Sämtliche Werke und Briefe. Ed. Ilse-Marie Barth et al. 4 vols. Frankfurt am Main: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1991-1997. Rasch, William. Sovereignty and its Discontents: On the Primacy of Conflict and the Structure of the Political. London: Birkbeck Law Press, 2004. Schmitt, Carl. Theory of the Partisan. Trans. G.L. Ulmen. New York: Telos Press, 2007. CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 198 14.07.15 20: 41 Besprechungen / Reviews J. M. R. Lenz: Remarks Concerning the Theatre. Anmerkungen übers Theater. German and English. Translated and with commentary by Norman R. Diffey and Hans-Günther Schwarz. German Texts in English Translation. Vol. 1. Munich: Iudicium, 2012. 95 pp. € 19,00. Early reviewers of Anmerkungen übers Theater who were taken aback by its associative organization and rhetoric of fits and starts could not have been surprised when, less than three years after it appeared, its author began drifting into mental illness. Today, of course, it is on every German MA reading list, and Lenz is hailed as a precursor of Grabbe, Büchner, Wedekind, and Brecht. Some see him, moreover, as a writer who sensed the winds of modernity like few others of his generation. Finally the essay is available in English, appearing as the first volume in a new series that is set to offer parallel editions of previously untranslated German texts. The 1774 Weygand edition appears on the recto pages together with the 66 footnotes that Hans-Günther Schwarz provided for the Reclam edition in 1976, and on the verso side is Norman R. Diffey and Schwarz’s English translation of the text and notes. An additional 73 notes, written especially for this edition, are provided at the end. The book begins with a concise introduction by Diffey and concludes with a provocative afterword by Schwarz, followed by a list of suggested readings. The translators do a fine job of conveying Lenz’s impromptu-sounding style and the playful tone he adopts with his imagined audience. A few sentences are slightly expanded so that the English is as clear as the German, and there are some changes in the punctuation, but very little is altered, and the quirkiness of the original comes right through. All this adds up to a short course on Lenz’s best-known essay, and its author in general, and the volume should be useful to a wide range of teachers and scholars, not just those working in Lenz and Sturm und Drang, but across the humanities. Perhaps most important, it will give non-readers of German a clearer understanding of the origins of modern epic theater. Lenz, who had read Mercier and Beaumarchais, realized that neoclassical theater could not illustrate real life and depict people in their full glory, as free and independent beings. But in Shakespeare (his translation of Love’s Labour’s Lost was published along with Anmerkungen übers Theater) he saw a path to a new kind of tragedy, the kind he thought his age deserved - one that ignored the Aristotelian unities and instead simply found its own adequate form; that subordinated plot to character; and that eschewed myth and ideals in favor of heightened attention to concrete life. If tragedy is to contain a truly compelling depiction of humanity, Lenz argues, then the plot must be «a series of actions which follow one another like bolts of lightning, support and lift each CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 199 14.07.15 20: 41 200 Besprechungen / Reviews other, and must flow together into one whole which eventually reveals no more, no less than the main character.» Taking this approach, he asserts, we should be able to write realistic plays in which «the hero is the key to his own fortunes» and not locked into a fate cast beforehand in heaven. The latter may have satisfied the ancients, he says, but now it’s time for us to see people determining their own lives, and this requires paying closer attention to the world. The playwright he envisions «takes his standpoint - and from there connects as he must» - a technique that requires not just workmanlike reproduction, but a new kind of mimesis, an active, intelligent penetration to the core of one’s subject. In this age when we no longer need to pay homage to the gods, artists should dare to act like gods themselves and strive to uncover the kinds of facts and connections that divine beings might see if they conducted an honest review of our situation here on earth. Lenz’s own plays («comedies,» not the character-driven tragedies he envisions in this essay) provide at least a partial answer to this call for a new theater: they reject tight architectonic structure in favor of a montage of scenes, of whatever number and length needed to tell the story. Of course, he never wrote a play that answered his own call for a hero who turned the whole machine of the play, but he did at least demonstrate how open form and close attention to one’s surroundings can create another kind of stage - one where we don’t see heroism, ideals, and traditional beauty, but virtually the opposite: passive characters crushed by sick societies and - often comically - by their own contradictions and poor choices. We might not be able to identify with these people, but as we now know because of writers like Lenz, a detached audience can often see things more clearly. What Lenz depicts is misery, and though he doesn’t lay the blame on one particular class, his anti-neoclassical approach helps us see things that were once easily overlooked. One of the best things about this book is that it shows Lenz to be not just a groundbreaking theorist of drama, but also a humanist warring against the regimented culture of his day. No other writer associated with Sturm und Drang painted such vivid pictures of stifled aspirations and suffocating determinism. In other work as well, like his review of Goethe’s Götz von Berlichingen, he saw that already when we are young, social forces can join with our biological urges to make us satisfied living like a cog in a machine, rotating, as he says, in place like all the other cogs. Likewise, in Anmerkungen übers Theater, where he famously admonishes, «Or are you afraid, gentlemen, of seeing a human being? » it is a question not just about the new kind of hero he wants to see on the stage, but about the human condition in general. As Schwarz and Diffey point out, Lenz felt that the spoken and unspoken rules of his culture were killing the human spirit, and they suggest that this essay is not just a manifesto for a new theater, but «a manifesto for a new kind of humanity» - and a text that points forward not just to Schiller but also to Nietzsche. «Overarching his theory as well as his writings, not only in theatre but also in the other genres,» Schwarz writes, «is a revolutionary concept of man as a ‹free-acting independent creature› - a concept which, interestingly enough, has yet to be realized» (93). The editors show how this essay is relevant for a whole spectrum of modern concerns. To cite one example: they compare and contrast Lenz and Georg Lukács with CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 200 14.07.15 20: 41 Besprechungen / Reviews 201 regard to their theories of literary realism. Both saw literature as an active, inquiring force that could lay bare connections and show how the world worked and how it might be improved, but while Lukács thought that the nineteenth-century novels he loved could offer a grand, objective look at an entire culture, Lenz’s aims are less ambitious and, arguably, more «concrete»: he merely asks writers to choose a particular standpoint and look deeply into what is observable from that one place. In providing their translation and commentary, Diffey and Schwarz give Lenz his due in several areas, including literary expressionism, genre theory, and broader questions of aesthetics (Patrizia C. McBride, for instance, has argued that in Lenz’s self-interrupting, self-undermining style there is an early acknowledgement of the futility of all rational discourse about art). Finally, since key texts by Lenz, Klinger, and Wagner (naturally also Goethe and Schiller) are already translated into English, the appearance of this edition means that nothing stands in the way of offering an English-language course on the Sturm und Drang. I am optimistic enough to believe that there are universities where that course would make. I do have one suggestion for future runs of this book (and other volumes planned for the series): they should be published with a longer list of recommended secondary literature, and should include not just more English language criticism, but also some of the best German-language material, since many potential users of an edition like this will likely know at least some German. University of Louisville Alan Leidner Volker Neuhaus: Günter Grass: Schriftsteller - Künstler - Zeitgenosse. Eine Biographie. Göttingen: Steidl, 2012. 460 pp. € 19,80. There can be no doubt that biographer Volker Neuhaus, prominent Grass scholar and editor of the writer’s collected, annotated works, greatly esteems the Nobel laureate’s literary accomplishments as well as his endeavors in other fields when he explicitly - and not without justification - compares Grass to two eminent predecessors in the realm of German letters: «Seine frühen Erfolge und seine lange Lebensdauer lassen Grass jetzt die Jubiläen seiner frühen Welterfolge miterleben, wie einst Goethe 1825 fünfzig Jahre Werther und Thomas Mann 1951 im Exil fünfzig Jahre Buddenbrooks gefeiert haben» (446). Indeed, Die Blechtrommel (1959), the first - and presumably the most famous as well as notorious - of these «Welterfolge» has withstood the test of time and has become an almost canonical work. But, as the title of the biography indicates, Neuhaus does not only analyze Grass’s literary work; in particular, he delves into the various phases of Grass’s private life, from his youth in Danzig to his current abode in the vicinity of Lübeck via Düsseldorf, (West) Berlin, Paris, and again (West) Berlin, to mention only some of the important venues of his activities. Neuhaus also devotes considerable attention to Grass the artist and to Grass the politically engaged «Zeitgenosse» who labored predominantly in support of Willy Brandt and the SPD. (The voluminous correspondence between Grass and Brandt was published in May 2013: Willy Brandt und CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 201 14.07.15 20: 41 202 Besprechungen / Reviews Günter Grass - Der Briefwechsel. Ed. Martin Kölbel. Göttingen: Steidl.) In view of Grass’s manifold activities and endeavors, curiously among them a very brief moment of happiness when Grass played with Louis Armstrong in a quartet during the latter’s brief stay in Düsseldorf in 1959, Neuhaus declares Grass to be not only a «Zeitzeuge» but also the «Repräsentant eines Jahrhunderts» (12) whose narratives in Mein Jahrhundert (1999) he considers a «facettenreiche[ ] autobiographische Quelle» (376). After an introduction of moderate length, Neuhaus proceeds chronologically with the possible exception of an «Exkurs» devoted to Grass, the graphic artist. Unsurprisingly, the reader familiar with Grass’s work and activities will not encounter startlingly new revelations; rather, the strength of the biography rests on a fairly detailed account of Grass’s life from his childhood in Danzig to his present status as the grand old - albeit still controversial - man of letters who, apart from his literary pursuits, engages in a wide range of activities. Yet justifiably, Neuhaus’s major attention is devoted to mostly succinct but informative analyses of Grass’s literary works, which have achieved international acclaim among readers as well as among Grass’s colleagues such as John Irving and Salman Rushdie, and their reception. Unsurprisingly, Neuhaus tends to take a dim view of critics who indulge in censuring, attacking, or denigrating Grass. However, he does not shy away from occasionally faulting Grass when, for example, during the presidency of Ronald Reagan the writer adopted a stance that amounted to anti-Americanism. But apart from the initial uproar about Grass’s first novel Die Blechtrommel, which was characterized by Hans Magnus Enzensberger as provoking «Schreie der Freude und der Empörung» (168), it is particularly critics’ reaction to the post-unification novel Ein weites Feld (1995) that arouses Neuhaus’s indignation. He does not mince words when he refers to the treatment of the novel on the part of critics as a procedure more akin to «Zerreißen» rather than «Besprechen» and terms the entire reception process, perhaps not without resorting to hyperbole, «eine Skandalgeschichte ohne ihresgleichen in der Literaturgeschichte» (357). Notably star critic Marcel Reich-Ranicki played a significant role in disparaging the novel and its author when he was shown on the cover of Der Spiegel (21 August 1995) tearing apart a copy of Grass’s novel and condescendingly addressing the author in an open letter as «Mein lieber Günter Grass, […].» As is well known, the controversies involving Grass and his literary activities did not cease after the fierce debate about Ein weites Feld had subsided. Especially when the writer, prior to the publication of his autobiographical narrative Beim Häuten der Zwiebel (2006), publicly admitted for the first time that as a youth he had been a member of the feared Waffen-SS, an «unvorstellbare[r] Sturm der Entrüstung» (430) followed that aimed at nothing less than to muzzle Grass: «[er sollte] mundtot gemacht werden» (431), Neuhaus claims. Yet in one of the rare instances of a modicum of disapproval Neuhaus, in citing Manfred Durzak, expresses his wishful thinking regarding the lack of a brief explanation on Grass’s part as to what precisely had constituted the «Verführungskraft» (429) of Nazi ideology for the future writer who, to judge by his physical appearance, by no means would have qualified as a «Mustergermane» (428). CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 202 14.07.15 20: 41 Besprechungen / Reviews 203 To be sure, the reception of the two subsequent autobiographical texts of «Trilogie der Erinnerung» (424-44), consisting of Die Box. Dunkelkammergeschichten (2008), an imagined «Selbstporträt» from the perspective of Grass’s numerous children, and Grimms Wörter. Eine Liebeserklärung (2010), presumably the writer’s last prose work, was far less controversial. As the title of the latter text suggests, it is a narrative about the gargantuan task Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm engaged in when they began compiling and editing the Deutsches Wörterbuch once they had lost their professorial positions at the University of Göttingen owing to their «Verfassungspatriotismus» (442). Perhaps unsurprisingly, Grimms Wörter also includes a pronounced autobiographical component that serves Grass to look back on his activities in the political realm. Yet there was no end of polemics. Grass’s poem «Was gesagt werden muß» (first published in SüddeutscheZeitung on 4 April 2012; then included in the collection Eintagsfliegen. Gelegentliche Gedichte, 2012) again resulted in a «Skandal sondergleichen» (450), which was fuelled, Neuhaus claims, by the «fanatischen Vernichtungswillen» (458) of the writer’s opponents, among them Durs Grünbaum. Indeed, the scandal - to which Neuhaus devotes approximately nine pages - assumed an international dimension in that the «Anti-Kriegsgedicht» (457) was perceived as a critique of Israel’s secretive atomic weapons program; the entire discussion resulted not only in the charge of Grass’s presumed anti-Semitism but also in his being officially barred from visiting Israel. Despite Neuhaus’s tendency to dismiss criticism of Grass as either excessive or caused by less than honorable motives, the biography is eminently readable and offers a wealth of pertinent information. In addition, the text is supplemented by several brief sections devoted to photos of Grass, his family, and his work. However, in view of the numerous (undocumented) quotations from Grass’s writings and those of his critics, it would have been desirable to facilitate readers’ access to the biographer’s sources by including an index of names and works cited as well as a bibliography and/ or annotations to facilitate readers’ orientation. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Siegfried Mews David Scrase: Wilhelm Lehmann. Biographie. Übertragung aus d. Engl. v. M. Lehmann. Mainzer Reihe N. F. 10. Göttingen: Wallstein, 2011. 438 pp. € 34,00. Wohl als Resonanz auf die 1982 begonnene und 2009 abgeschlossene Werkausgabe des Lehmannschen Oeuvres hat sich in den letzten acht bis zehn Jahren eine wissenschaftliche Lehmann-Renaissance abgezeichnet, zu der die vorliegende Biographie entscheidend beiträgt. Rein äußerlich beruht der Band, von dem der erste Teil bereits 1984 in den USA erschienen ist, auf einer Übertragung aus dem Englischen, um in dieser Form bei einem größeren deutschen Leserkreis das Interesse an Lehmann zu wecken. Vom Aufbau her beruht die Darstellung auf zwölf Kapiteln, die jeweils drei Hauptaspekte behandeln: Die konkreten Fakten von Lehmanns Lebenslauf, seine Bezie- CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 203 14.07.15 20: 41 204 Besprechungen / Reviews hungen zu Personen, die im menschlichen oder literarischen Bereich für ihn von Bedeutung waren, und die Analyse von Lehmanns eigener literarischer Tätigkeit. Die Erarbeitung von Lehmanns äußerer Biographie basiert sowohl auf Lehmanns autobiographischer Schrift Mühe des Anfangs von 1952, seinen Tagebucheintragungen und seiner umfangreichen Korrespondenz als auch auf zeitgenössischen Berichten und Interviews. Dadurch erhält der Leser zum einen Einblick in die kleinbürgerlichen Verhältnisse, in denen Lehmann Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts aufgewachsen ist, und in den einengenden Konformismus seiner Mutter, mit dem diese das unsolide moralische und finanzielle Vermächtnis des Vaters bekämpfen zu müssen glaubte. Zum anderen lässt die genaue Darstellung von Lehmanns äußeren Lebensumständen die Bedeutung erkennen, die vor allem sein Bruder, Moritz Heimann, Oskar Loerke und Werner Kraft für seine emotionale und literarische Entwicklung hatten, da sie einen Gegenpol zum mütterlichen Konformismus und allgemeinen Philistertum darstellten, wovon er sich zu befreien suchte. Das Gleiche gilt für seine umfangreiche Lektüre nicht nur deutscher, sondern auch besonders englischer und irischer Literatur. Außerdem kultivierte Lehmann, der zum Einzelgänger und Außenseitertum direkt prädestiniert schien, die von Scrase zurecht betonte sehr frühe Neigung, «seinem Dasein den größten Sinn zu geben […], wenn er allein durch die Natur streifte» (60). Dagegen trifft dieser Befreiungs- und Emanzipationsaspekt auf die Beziehung zu seinen Ehepartnern, wenn überhaupt, nur bedingt zu. In der Ehe mit Martha Wohlstadt, die um fünfzehn Jahre älter war, hatten sich die Partner nach wenigen Jahren auseinander gelebt; dagegen war die Ehe mit Frieda Riewerts, einer ehemaligen Schülerin, wesentlich glücklicher, obwohl Lehmann ihr gegenüber seine Ansprüche als schöpferischer Autor sehr geltend machte und seine stundenlangen Wanderungen in der Landschaft grundsätzlich ohne sie unternahm. Ähnliches gilt für seinen Beruf als Lehrer, der ihm ironischerweise als beste Verdienstmöglichkeit blieb, obwohl er als Schüler keine guten Vorbilder kennengelernt hatte und später als Lehrer besonders in den administrativen Aspekten des Lehrberufs eine Beeinträchtigung seines dichterischen Talents sah. Letztendlich ist es die poetische Versprachlichung des Naturerlebnisses, die Lehmann zu einer Selbstbestätigung verholfen hat. Deshalb ist es für die Beurteilung von Lehmanns Werk wesentlich, dass Scrase den Nachweis erbracht hat, dass sowohl Lehmanns fiktionales Werk, Romane und Gedichte, als auch das Bukolische Tagebuch autobiographische Begebenheiten zum Anlass gehabt haben, aber, was die Romane betrifft, nicht als Schlüsselromane eingestuft werden können oder, im Falle der Gedichte, als simple Naturpoesie. Gerade an dem Grad der Poetisierung der autobiographischen Vorlagen lässt sich Lehmanns dichterische Entwicklung ablesen, die in sprachmagischen Manifestationen gipfelt, für die Scrase auf T. S. Eliots Begriff «objective correlatives» verweist: «Die kulturellen Entsprechungen Wilhelm Lehmanns beschwören die mystische Zeitlosigkeit einer Einheit mit der Natur herauf. Sie sind der Beitrag des Geistes und statten die Natur mit einer bewußten Identität, mit bleibender Dauerhaftigkeit aus» (329). Allerdings vermeidet es Scrase, über diese Ebene des Referierens hinauszugehen und zumindest an einigen von Lehmanns bedeutendsten Gedichten deren Durchbruch ins Sprachschöpferische und damit das sie Auszeichnende vorzuführen. Eine ent- CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 204 14.07.15 20: 41 Besprechungen / Reviews 205 sprechende Sonderstellung nimmt auch das Bukolische Tagebuch als Beispiel für ein schöpfungspoetologisches Tagebuch ein. Außerdem hätten die Essays mehr als kursorische Verweise verdient, da sie nicht nur der Präzisierung von Lehmanns Wirkungsintention dienen, sondern auch die Kriterien der Kunstprosa als spezifischer literarischer Gattung erfüllen. Diese Bemerkungen sind als Anregungen für die zukünftige Lehmann-Forschung zu verstehen und schmälern keineswegs das Verdienst des Autors, mit seiner Biographie nicht nur eine Lücke in der Lehmann-Forschung zu schließen, sondern auch einen der bedeutendsten, aber in Vergessenheit geratenen deutschen Dichter des 20. Jahrhunderts ins allgemeine und wissenschaftliche Gedächtnis zu rufen. Rice University, Houston, Texas Klaus Weissenberger Katharina Mommsen: «Orient und Okzident sind nicht mehr zu trennen» - Goethe und die Weltkulturen. Reihe: Schriften der Goethe-Gesellschaft 75 (Ed. Jochen Golz). Göttingen: Wallstein, 2012. 480 pp. € 28,00. This volume gathers twenty-five essays by the eminent Goethe scholar Katharina Mommsen. The individual pieces are based on keynote addresses and reprints of previous publications spanning many years of the author’s study of Goethe’s relationship to the East. In them Katharina Mommsen shows the diverse ways that the poetry, religion, and art of the East became a decisive resource for poetic inspiration and cultural renewal throughout Goethe’s life. Mommsen introduces her collection with an expression of admiration for Goethe’s ability to open himself up to encounters with otherness. In this respect she draws particular attention to Goethe’s great love and emulation of Hafez when he was already sixty years old, resulting in the West-östlicher Diwan, and his equally astounding openness to Chinese culture in his late seventies and early eighties when he studied Chinese poetry and wrote the Chinesische Tageszeiten. In both cases, according to Mommsen, Goethe assumes the speaking/ writing position of a poet - the Islamic mystic or the retired Mandarin bureaucrat - situated in the other culture. Mommsen points out that Goethe’s unique respect for other cultures and religions and his eagerness to be inspired by the great artists of these cultures was in turn recognized and celebrated by many cultures. She sees this confirmed by the fact that some of Goethe’s works have been translated into numerous languages, the most translated being Werther and Faust. The volume begins with two introductory essays touching on the issue of orientalism. Mommsen briefly mentions Edward Said’s influential study but sees her contribution primarily in singling out Goethe and some other German authors, such as Wieland, Lessing, Herder, Rückert, Georg Forster, and Alexander von Humboldt, as being free of an attitude that would glorify the West and vilify the East in the service of a colonialist agenda. (See p. 45). In many of the essays in this volume, Katharina Mommsen assumes a position similar to the one she praises in Goethe. She approaches the other, non-Western, non-Christian culture with much CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 205 14.07.15 20: 41 206 Besprechungen / Reviews respect, singling out classical or contemporary writers or poets to whom she calls attention as exemplary in their ability to bridge cultural divides. For it is this capacity to overcome cultural and religious difference that Mommsen considers the enduring message of Goethe and his Persian counterpart Hafez. It is this ethos that she captures in the title of the volume «Orient und Okzident sind nicht mehr zu trennen,» which is a citation from Goethe’s Faust and which constitutes a recurring refrain throughout the collection of essays. At the end of the volume, the reader can find a chronological list of the author’s lectures and interviews, a list of the illustrations, an index of names and works, as well as an index of Goethe’s works. The individual, frequently quite short essays of the volume are grouped thematically under these headings: «Orientalische Poesie,» «West-östliche Versammlung,» «Türken, Bagdad, 1001 Nacht,» and «Unterschiedliches zum Ausklang.» While the individual textual examples that Mommsen works with suggest a strategy of assimilation, she offers no overarching explicit argument as to how we are to imagine Goethe’s creation of this cultural bridge. What makes it possible to postulate such an identity or communality between such different and distinct cultures? And why do cultural differences matter? Mommsen comes closest to engaging these big questions in the essays grouped under the title «West-östliche Versammlung.» Here she draws attention to Calderón, especially Calderón’s El principe constante, and Goethe’s reception of Calderón as a playwright who recognized the indebtedness of the West to the East, which he reflected in his plays. According to Mommsen, it is in Calderón’s approach to Islam that Goethe found a model for how we are to read and relate to Hafez. In the same group of essays she also discusses Goethe’s relationship to the genres of wisdom literature and didactic literature as well as Goethe’s relationship to calligraphy in order to approach the question as to how the poet deals with the mediation between cultural differences. The final grouping, however, does not reflect on whether and how cultural differences matter but rather it seems to indicate something along the lines of «miscellaneous.» The strength of this volume lies in the many precise textual references and cross-references within Goethe’s work where he engages with specific texts and figures from the non-European cultures. Ultimately, the individual essays stand all very well on their own. Columbia University Dorothea von Mücke Paul Bishop (Ed.): A Companion to Friedrich Nietzsche: Life and Works. Rochester: Camden House, 2012. xii + 449 pp. $ 90.00. As indicated in its title (and underscored often enough by Nietzsche himself), this collection of essays by established European and American scholars emphasizes the intimate connection between the philosopher’s life and works - or, in editor Paul Bishop’s own words, «the reciprocity of biography and creativity» (6). In keeping with the continually growing Camden House Companion series, the volume is addressed to both beginning and advanced readers of Nietzsche. The bookends CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 206 14.07.15 20: 41 Besprechungen / Reviews 207 of its fifteen chapters are formed by an initial overview of Nietzsche’s early writings, from juvenilia to academic publications in classical philology, and a final essay on the complicated issue of his Nachlass; in between, each of his major works receives individual scrutiny. (Nietzsche’s musical compositions are understandably left out of the immediate discussion, though readers are given some helpful guidance for further study.) Beyond the commonality of interweaving Nietzsche’s life and œuvre, the chapters tend to differ slightly in approach: some offer immanent readings of the work in question while others proceed in more intertextual fashion, whether by incorporating additional writings of his or expanding the focus to include outside authors (e.g., Goethe, Schopenhauer, Dostoyevsky, et al.) that have a crucial bearing on his philosophy. Overall, this voluminous companion is distinguished by a fluid and cohesive narrative thanks to: (1) the biographical «links» that the editor provides to each work (rather than, say, packing all this information into the introduction); (2) some reiterative rather than merely repetitive introductory and concluding overlap in each essay; and (3) the emphasis in most chapters on the continuity of Nietzsche’s thought. This third point emerges as perhaps the most surprising: his thinking from precocious youth to premature mental invalid proves to be remarkably consistent despite his vaunted principle of self-overcoming and traditional scholarly tendencies to categorize his philosophy in distinct phases, e.g., his early romantic Schwärmerei for Schopenhauer, Wagner, and Greek tragedy; his middle period of scientific-positivistic sobriety; and his later rampage in the cause of revaluation. Rather than give cursory if not perfunctory nods to each chapter, let me highlight the best ones in an effort to do them some semblance of justice. Adrian Del Caro presents a brilliant and nuanced reading of Die Geburt der Tragödie, showing how the Apollonian, the Dionysian, and what one might with some allowance call the «Wagnerian» inform Nietzsche’s view of tragedy and furthermore anticipate later aspects of his thought. Del Caro neatly ties all of these conceptual strands together into a coherent elucidation that newcomers to Nietzsche will surely profit from and specialists can duly learn from - namely how to write a straightforward yet solid interpretation of a Nietzschean text that engages all audiences. Keith Ansell-Pearson’s examination of Die fröhliche Wissenschaft is also straightforward and solid. As he demonstrates in his eloquent analysis, this refreshing work breathes a general sense of cheerfulness and convalescence; more specifically, it introduces the all-important notions of eternal recurrence and the death of God. Michael Allen Gillespie and Keegan F. Callanan offer a no-nonsense close reading of Zur Genealogie der Moral. Much in accord with the work itself, the argumentative flow here is tight and the analytical tools are as sharp as the ones Nietzsche himself employs. Paul Bishop’s take on Ecce homo is much different, though no less illuminating. Also in accord with its object of investigation, his chapter relies on the tools of contextualization and intertextuality in order to get at the textual - rather than (f)actual - Nietzsche that arises from this «exercise in self-narration» (364). Bishop brings the radically self-constructed narrator of Ecce homo into dialogue with Goethe, Schopenhauer, Spinoza, Pindar, Helvétius, and Jung, in the process painting a rich portrait of this hyperbolic autobiography that asserts life over truth. Alan D. CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 207 14.07.15 20: 41 208 Besprechungen / Reviews Schrift explores the many problems associated with Nietzsche’s vast Nachlass, with special consideration of Der Wille zur Macht, which ultimately remains more a philological Machwerk concocted by dubious scholars than a philosophical Macht- Werk created by the author himself. Schrift’s overview of the work’s genesis and editorial history will be especially instructive for many readers, who tend to have preconceptions about it as Nietzsche’s magnum opus. Even if much of this chapter covers familiar territory for insiders, its concluding deliberations on the value of these posthumously published texts are revealing for all. As Schrift points out, they afford insight into Nietzsche’s experimental workshop; constitute a kind of intellectual diary; are philologically important for their variants of aphorisms and other passages that later become finalized in publication; and they have given rise to some of the most original exegeses of his philosophy, above all in postwar France. Finally, they problematize the very practice of interpretation, forcing judicious scholars to relativize and prioritize their respective approaches. Indeed, there is plenty of such relativization and prioritization throughout this companion. To be sure, all of Nietzsche’s published texts - even his poetry - undergo chapter-long treatments, but within each of these chapters the interpreter of course has to pick his or her methodological battles. This is particularly true in the case of heterogeneous texts like Menschliches, Allzumenschliches I and II, Morgenröte, and Jenseits von Gut und Böse. And here readers do in fact hit some rough ground and may at times find themselves more befuddled than enlightened. Nevertheless, most of the essays in this well-orchestrated volume serve as excellent accompaniment to Nietzsche’s generically diverse and thematically wide-ranging oeuvre. As suggested above, the most admirable quality of any scholarly compendium of this sort is that it appeals to a broad spectrum of readers, whether neophytes or so-called experts. Leaving aside the greater question whether all sincere readers of Nietzsche cannot but remain lifelong neophytes and continue to make new discoveries when rereading his works, it is safe to say that Paul Bishop delivers to all parties a well-balanced assessment, one that is both informative to digest and enjoyable to read. University of Missouri Sean Ireton CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 208 14.07.15 20: 41