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Band 54 Heft 2 Harald Höbus ch, J oseph D. O ’ Neil (Hr sg.) C O L L O Q U I A G E R M A N I C A I n t e r n a ti o n a l e Z e it s c h r ift f ü r G e r m a n i s ti k Die Zeitschrift erscheint jährlich in 4 Heften von je etwa 96 Seiten Abonnementpreis pro Jahrgang: € 135,00 (print)/ € 172,00 (print & online)/ € 142,00 (e-only) Vorzugspreis für private Leser € 101,00 (print); Einzelheft € 45,00 (jeweils zuzüglich Versandkosten). Bestellungen nimmt Ihre Buchhandlung oder der Verlag entgegen: Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH + Co. KG, Postfach 25 60, D-72015 Tübingen, Fax +49 (0)7071 97 97 11 · eMail: info@narr.de Aufsätze - in deutscher oder englischer Sprache - bitte einsenden als Anlage zu einer Mail an hhoebu@uky.edu oder bessdawson@uky.edu (Prof. Harald Höbusch oder Prof. Rebeccah Dawson, Division of German Studies, 1055 Patterson Office Tower, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY 40506-0027, USA). Typoskripte sollten nach den Vorschriften des MLA Style Manual (2008) eingerichtet sein. Sonstige Mitteilungen bitte an hhoebu@uky.edu © 2022 · Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH + Co. KG Alle Rechte vorbehalten/ All Rights Strictly Reserved Druck und Bindung: CPI books GmbH, Leck ISSN 0010-1338 Inhalt Literary Realism Reconsidered from an 18 th -Century Perspective Jan Oliver Jost-Fritz und Christian P. Weber � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 293 Out of Ruin: Goethe’s Poetic Realism as a Method of Constructive Inquiry Christian P. Weber � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 305 The Reality of Battle: Realism in the Context of Goethe’s War Experience Christine Lehleiter � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 337 Epistemology, Imagination, and History in Romantic Realism Jan Oliver Jost-Fritz � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 369 Stifter, Schleiermacher, and the Vision of a Higher Realism Daniel DiMassa � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 393 Stifter’s Realism and the Avant-Garde: Affect and Materiality in “Kalkstein” Robert E. Mottram � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 411 Addresses � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 433 BAND 54 • Heft 2 Gastherausgeber: Jan Oliver Jost-Fritz und Christian P. Weber Literary Realism Reconsidered from an 18th-Century Perspective 293 Literary Realism Reconsidered from an 18 th -Century Perspective Jan Oliver Jost-Fritz und Christian P� Weber East Tennessee State University and Florida State University Realism as a literary movement of the nineteenth century is governed by aesthetic premises that are considered in strict opposition to the classicist ideas on art and literature� Accordingly, Erich Auerbach famously traces realism in genres of the middle style, rather than in the grand style supposedly favored in classicist aesthetics. “However different medieval and modern realism may be, they are at one in this basic attitude” - and this attitude is characterized by the desire to constitute a close proximity to the experience of reality, as an “imitation of life” (Auerbach, Mimesis 554—55)� Beyond this shift in terms of style, realism was associated with the emergence of ‘things,’ the transient and consumable objects of everyday life that fill luxurious apartments in Paris, just as much as working class dwellings in London, or cluttered attics in Adalbert Stifter’s Waldviertel, as Peter Brooks recently demonstrated in Realist Vision � This focus on the material conditions of the protagonists’ life comes with an increasing appreciation of description as “a visual inspection of the world of phenomena and a detailed report on it” (Brooks 16). In France and in England, the realist novel was eminently political, exploring and exposing the new class divisions generated by the socioeconomic dynamics unleashed by nineteenth-century capitalism� In contrast, the German-speaking contemporaries of Dickens, Thackeray, Balzac, or Flaubert - Stifter, Droste-Hülshoff, Keller, Gotthelf, Storm, Raabe, and Fontane, to name just the most prominent - are commonly labeled under the rubric “poetischer Realismus” (literary realism) or “bürgerlicher Realismus” (bourgeoise realism), without, however, forming a coherent literary group with a distinct aesthetic program. In the excellent introduction to his edition of contemporaneous statements to a Theorie des bürgerlichen Realismus , Gerhard Plumpe notes a remarkable discrepancy between a sober realism in German politics (Bismarck’s so-called “Realpolitik”) as well as, one should add, in the sciences (note, for example, von Helmholtz’s and du Bois-Reymond’s debunking of Goethe’s Theory of Colors as unscientific) on the one side and the continued reverence for the speculative idealistic aesthetics in the vain of Schil- 294 Jan Oliver Jost-Fritz und Christian P� Weber ler, Schelling, and Hegel: “Der literarische Realismus war die Kompensation des politischen Realismus” (Plumpe 16; see also Preisendanz 68—91). As a result, the novels and novellas of German realism of this time are still driven by the idealist impetus to create an entire literary cosmos of harmonious relations governed by the poetic spirit - often represented by an intra-diegetic narrator. In the words of Otto Ludwig’s characterization of “Der poetische Realismus,” arguably the most programmatic statement of this literary ‘movement’: Es ist eine ganze Welt; in Geschlossenheit so mannigfaltig, wie das Stück wirklicher Welt, das wir kennen. […] Eine Welt, die in der Mitte steht zwischen der objektiven Wahrheit in den Dingen und dem Gesetze, das unser Geist hineinzulegen gedrungen ist, eine Welt, aus dem, was wir von der wirklichen Welt erkennen, durch das in uns wohnende Gesetz wiedergeboren. […] Dem Naturalisten ist es mehr um die Mannigfaltigkeit zu tun, dem Idealisten mehr um die Einheit� Diese beiden Richtungen sind einseitig, der künstlerische Realismus vereinigt sie in einer künstlerischen Mitte. (qtd. in Plumpe 149) From an eighteenth-century perspective, as we shall discuss later, this definition of “literary realism” is problematic, because already Goethe and the Romantic writers experienced reality itself as ‘poietic,’ that is, consisting of a variety of dynamism governed by intrinsic laws. But if, for now, we consider realism in general with Ludwig as a form of writing that aims for a mimetic representation of ‘reality’ (or life, in Auerbach’s sense) between the tension-filled poles of materialism and idealism, the German realism of the nineteenth century certainly leans more toward the latter side of this pairing. This is also the case with another fundamental dialectic at work in realism between aisthetic perception and poietic construction. Accordingly, there exist two basic types of realism. As a first point of orientation, we discuss a paradigmatic literary example from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century for each type� Already a generation or two before the term “literary realism” was coined, Goethe, the self-defined “arch-realist,” struggled throughout his poetic (and scientific) career to find a balanced vantage point from which to implement a realist poetics. In the “Vorspiel auf dem Theater” of Faust , for instance, the jester articulates a realist position that merges the poet’s idealist vision with the archetypical theater manager’s material interest in a spectacle for the masses: Drum seid nur brav und zeigt euch musterhaft, Laßt Phantasie, mit allen ihren Chören, Vernunft, Verstand, Empfindung, Leidenschaft, Doch, merkt euch wohl! nicht ohne Narrheit hören. (FA 7/ 1: 16; ll. 85—88) Greift nur hinein in’s volle Menschenleben! Literary Realism Reconsidered from an 18th-Century Perspective 295 Ein jeder lebt’s, nicht vielen ist’s bekannt, Und wo ihr’s packt, da ist’s interessant. In bunten Bildern wenig Klarheit, Viel Irrtum und ein Fünkchen Wahrheit, So wird der beste Trank gebraut, Der alle Welt erquickt und auferbaut. (ll. 167—73) These are, no doubt, defining lines also for Goethe’s realist poetics, so that we may, provisory, characterize his realist attitude as one that engages with the world in a direct manner, one that finds greater interest in ‘colorful images’ than in an abstract truth, that mobilizes all human faculties in an attempt to grasp the fullness of human life, and that strives to emulate the attractive forces of love for the creation of a poetic representation that, in turn, is authentic, exemplary ( musterhaft ), colorful and interesting enough to both please and edify a captivated audience. When Goethe, however, closes his Faust by conceding the merely allegorical character of the historical world while evoking the creating force in the “Unzulängliche” and “Unbeschreibliche” (ll. 12104—111), he explicitly ends on the note that true progress and creation (the “exemplary” work) can be expected only from a point inaccessible to us, echoing his Romantic contemporaries; thus, the “volle Menschenleben” is a necessary but not sufficient condition for poetry� Goethe, in Faust as well as in his entire career as a writer, instead seems to point to what Schelling posited as the point of indifference between subject and object ( Indifferenzpunkt ) as the origin of poetic creation� His metaphor of the ‘Augen des Geistes’ points to the productive event that cannot be sufficiently explained and represented - neither by a materialist and idealist nor by a plain realist poetics� Providing an example for the second type of poetic realism at the intersection between aisthetic perception and poietic construction, Goethe’s poem “Maifest” (FA 1: 129—30) performs with theoretical acuity and poetological reflexivity the processual transformation of an aesthetic experience into the poetic event embodied by the poem itself. At the beginning, the lyric speaker expresses the immediacy of this aesthetic experience in a joyful exclamation: “Wie herrlich leuchtet / Mir die Natur! ” But these opening lines are ambivalent; the lyrical voice seems to feel simultaneously elated (“ wie herrlich leuchtet / Mir die Natur” - as if the lyrical subject has been chosen by nature) and overwhelmed (“wie herrlich leuchtet / [m]ir die Natur ” - the noun subject dominates grammatically the dative pronoun). This results in an internal tension: the male speaker feels now hard-pressed to make himself heard and express how he feels as he experiences the awakening of spring nature at the sunrise, the general festive mood of the songs and dances at the May celebration, and specifically the love for a 296 Jan Oliver Jost-Fritz und Christian P� Weber girl with whom the speaking subject is participating in this action, apparently dancing with her. (The poem’s prosody mimics the rhythm of the folk dances popular at these village spring festivities.) He is certainly lacking concepts and literally gasping for words - as the enumeration of nouns coupled with interjections (“O Erd’, o Sonne! / O Glück, o Lust! ”) makes evident - to articulate precisely how magnificent this May festival is in his experience� Only the complete poem in its entirety documents how the affected subject has come to terms about the love he feels at that moment: “Wie ich dich liebe” / “Wie du mich liebst! ” But how , precisely, can the charged reality of the spring awakening and blossoming mutual love be transfixed by dead letters without fading away; how can the subjective emotions and aesthetic experiences be mediated through language into a poetic event? This mystery is revealed in the enigmatic center of the poem, in the fifth out of total nine stanzas, which seems to be superfluous in terms of action but marks the very act of literary transposition: “Du segnest herrlich / Das frische Feld, / Im Blütendampfe / Die volle Welt.” Without venturing into a detailed analysis - for example determining the referent of the suddenly appearing “Du” that may be relating back either to the evocation of “love” in the lines before, or foreshadowing the “girl” addressed in the next stanza, or represent the spirit loci as a cumulative poetic genius emerging from the totality of this experience -, this stanza enacts the moment of poetic (re)creation: the “You” performs the benediction over a “fresh field” that has emerged from the chaos of impressions and the turmoil of expressed emotions; it suddenly lies in front of the lyric subject like a clean sheet of white paper, ready to be inscribed by the “vapor of blossoms,” an ethereal, fluid medium into which the concrete physical, yet aesthetically charged reality of the “full world” has dissolved for the beginning of another creation - or, rather, transfiguration - through the poetic spirit. (This interpretation obviously favors the third of the presented options to identify the “You.”) This spirit captures the aesthetic atmosphere and mood (“Stimmung”) and manifests itself as poetic by employing performative verbs of dynamic action (“leuchten,” “glänzen,” “lachen,” “dringen,” “segnen,” “lieben”) and emotionally charged, increasingly abstract nouns (“O Erd’, o Sonne! / O Glück, o Lust! / / O Lieb’, o Liebe! ”); by creating harmonious sound patterns through rhythm and rhymes; by evoking the idea of cosmic unity and identity through constructive analogies and similes (“ So liebt die Lerche […] Wie ich dich liebe”); last but not least by arousing a sense of endless potentiality through ambiguously polyvalent words like the mentioned “Du” in the stanza at the poem’s center. All these poetic means mimic the specific quality of aesthetic sensations and sentiments that lie far beyond the regular capacity of expression in the language’s use of conceptual representation or discursive argumentation� Literary Realism Reconsidered from an 18th-Century Perspective 297 Both examples, the short poem of 36 lines and the epic drama of more than 12,000, employ literary strategies of realism with their ambition to represent the “volle Welt” at the May Festival or the “volle Menschenleben” of a tour de force through human history that expands “vom Himmel durch die Welt zur Hölle” (l. 242) in the panoramic vision of Faust . Both literary works transgress the accountable ‘factual’ reality either by exploring intuitively the (contingent) potentialities of past and future events or by reconfiguring poetically the transcending qualities of an aesthetic experience; at the same time, however, they remain grounded in whatever reality they have emerged from, although the original concrete life situation or experience is enhanced and (trans)formed by the mediating poetic spirit of the artist. As such, both poetic works maintain an implicit character of realism beyond the formal subjectivism (or dogmatic idealism) with which the artist rendered them. (Another striking example presents Auerbach’s reading of the Commedia as a work of realism in Dante als Dichter der irdischen Welt .) Their inherent transparency make these works of literary realism accessible for the experiences of other subjects, which explains their general popularity with readers: Faust’s inner struggles represent the conditionedness of modern humans in general, and any reader will be easily transported into the very epicenter of the aesthetic experience from which the “Maifest” has emerged. Literary realism presents changes in the world and transformations within the subject as more ‘real’ as they could have been observed in the factual, conceptual reality of social history or experienced by an ordinary individual� These two very different, yet still similar examples of literary realism from Faust and “Maifest” by the same author suggest that it is not sufficient to define the realism of a particular time period and to distinguish it then from other varieties of realism. In fact, when we speak of realism around 1800, we do not aim to denote a specific aesthetic program but rather wish to point out that, beginning with the 1770s, many different realisms have emerged that served different functions vis-à-vis different fields of reality without ever disproving or making ultimately obsolete other preceding or competing approaches to realism. When it comes to the modes in which writers constituted reality and thus realism, a strict historiographic distinction between Classicism, Romanticism, and Realism is misleading, even though the overall constitution and function of poetry certainly differed substantially in 1850 from what the later eighteenth century conceived of as the purpose of literature. Against this backdrop, Dirk Göttsche and Nicholas Saul, for instance, recently demonstrated the “continued fascination of Realist writers […] by the uncanny and supernatural, and the legacy of Romantic motifs, characters, themes, narrative devices - and even arguments - in Realist narrative” (Göttsche and Saul 11). Hence, we do not wish to restrict the use of “poetic realism” to denote just a certain (and only vague- 298 Jan Oliver Jost-Fritz und Christian P� Weber ly defined) realist style of German novelistic writing between 1840 and 1900. Instead, poetic realism, as it turns out, can be made a very productive term for describing Goethe’s poetic and scientific epistemology, as Christian P. Weber’s contribution demonstrates� Following the recent example of Veronika Thanner, Joseph Vogl, and Dorothea Walzer (esp. 9—11), we suggest broadening the field of literary/ poetic realism as a term that comprises a wider range of literary responses to a ‘reality’ that has become problematic, ever since the Enlightenment took hold. Realism always refers to reality of some kind and explores various poetic strategies to represent at least certain aspects of it� Since reality is conceived of as increasingly dynamic and complex, consisting of simultaneous actions and triggering events of eternal change, any observer can only assume a relative viewpoint from which they have to determine what is essential enough to record. Consequently, a literary narrator must decide how to represent things and actions within the conflicting parameters listed above. This certainly has prompted various theories of poetic mimesis throughout the ages, but at a time when reality itself was conceived of more as an open context rather than as something guaranteed and disclosable (Blumenberg 52), the problem became particularly prevalent� In this regard, it is no coincidence that both the literature of the Age of Goethe and Realism proper - and one certainly could add Modernism in this list as well - were preoccupied with the blurriness of perception and principles of uncertainty (Thanner et al. 10), as it is here that the transient natures of both perceiving subjects and perceived objects intersect� Although it was not uncomplex from Antiquity through the Middle Ages, the concept of reality for many centuries at least was grounded in ontological, metaphysical, and theological principles that to some extent allowed for predictable and authoritative claims of truth; gradual differences of completion and perfection did not contradict the conviction of a unified nature. Hence, reality itself, the physical existence as it appears to the senses, was generally not doubted - everything belonged to (the same) being/ Being. With the transcendental Kantian revolution, however, reality has become a double and thus problematic; no longer just the objects that stimulate the senses to perceive, reality was now conceived an activity of the subject, a quality of cognition as the product of both sense perception and conceptual recognition. As Kant poignantly phrases: “Ohne Sinnlichkeit würde uns kein Gegenstand gegeben, und ohne Verstand keiner gedacht werden. Gedanken ohne Inhalt sind leer, Anschauungen ohne Begriffe sind blind” (KrV, B 75). This cognitive reality excludes an objective and exhaustive recording of things because all sense perceptions are preconfigured by the forms of intuition (time and space) and processed a priori according to innate faculties (categories and principles) of the human mind; consequently, Literary Realism Reconsidered from an 18th-Century Perspective 299 humans have no access to ‘things as such.’ Conversely, cognitive reality cannot be entirely subjective, because everything imagined derives to some extent, at least, from intuition and thus has a material foundation� Instead, humans shape reality first and foremost based on the pure concepts of the mind but then also based on the concepts of experience and accumulated knowledge. Kant’s notion of reality is thus a dynamic arrangement of a world that individuals are constantly rearranging by adjusting concepts to the changing conditions of their senseand world-making. This epistemic shift, along with subsequent shifts implemented by Romanticism and Modernism, had an enormous impact on realist literature because its object, reality, is now marked by a similar dialectic between perception and conceptual application as in the endeavors of literary representation between mimetic description and poietic narration/ construction. Reality, as a product of the understanding and a historical amalgam of cultural self-understanding, becomes itself a domain with agency. It presents itself, then, as something intrinsically dynamic. As a mimetic literary strategy, realism must reconcile with this greatly enhanced potentiality of reality� In fact, the end of the eighteenth century has witnessed the emergence of multiple realities. It is not just the human mind that constructs cognition through an “epigenesis of pure reason” (KrV, B 167); many other entities are discovered to have creative potential and display dynamic agency as well. The fact that Kant borrows the concept of epigenesis - promoted first by the physiologist Caspar Friedrich Wolff in 1759 as a generative alternative to the preformationist theory of organic development - from the discourse of the newly emerging life sciences as an analogy for the inherent dynamism of his transcendental conception of human cognition, indicates the acknowledgment of the existence of other forces and separate agents with the capacity to form and develop autonomous systems. Kant seems to conceive of them as homologous within a common ontology, as this analogy suggests. Another field or system of reality that emerges in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries directly affects one of the two founding pillars of cognition, namely sense perception. Was perception for Kant primarily, as his privileged term “Anschauung” suggests, visual perception, his student Herder ventured out to challenge the hegemony of sight in favor of touch� In the treatise “Plastik” (1778), Herder distinguishes the specific qualities of these two senses, subordinating sight under touch: “In allen diesen Fällen ist das Gesicht nur eine verkürzte Formel des Gefühls � Die volle Form ist Figur , die Bildsäule ein flacher Kupferstich worden. Im Gesicht ist Traum , im Gefühl Wahrheit ” (250). Prior to Herder, Lessing distinguished in his seminal treatise on Winckelmann’s interpretation of the Laocoon statue between the specific capacities of the eye to see images simultaneously and of the ear to hear sounds synchronously� Based 300 Jan Oliver Jost-Fritz und Christian P� Weber on this semiotic distinction, Lessing implemented a clear separation between painting, which should focus on the descriptive representation of the pregnant moment in a scenery, and poetry, which is meant to narrate the consecutive action of a plot with only as little injections of description as absolutely necessary. Consequently, the ‘realities’ of a painting and a poem or play must differ fundamentally because the prior is geared toward an acoustic and the latter toward a visual reception. Lessing’s great influence can be studied in the poem “Maifest,” for example, which is all action and almost no description. Goethe takes the idea of an autonomy of the senses or, rather, of one single sense organ another step further, now with direct implication for Kant’s transcendental epistemology� In his Farbenlehre , Goethe shifts the focus of examination and experimentation from the physics of light to the physiology of the eye. For him, the retina is the “Organ des Sehens überhaupt” (“Das Auge”; FA 23/ 2: 268), and he is mostly interested in phenomena that do not concern the recognition of objects, namely the merely subjective afterimages and optical illusions� In these non-referential phenomena Goethe detects the eye’s very own “interne[n] und elementare[n] Verarbeitungsprozess” (Vogl 115) which distinguishes it from the older conception of visual perception modeled after the reflective principle of the camera obscura . Goethe thus detects and explores “ein empirisches Feld vor oder jenseits aller Empirie,” one in which, in the words of his collaborator Purkinje that would prove Herder wrong, “auch der Schein zur Wahrheit wird” (Vogl 118). Johannes Müller formulates later, based on Goethe’s and Purkinje’s studies, the idea that each sense organ owns a specific energy and life with specific laws of processing sense data that are then compounded into more comprehensive schemas of intuition by the imagination. “Realismus,” Elisabeth Strowick comments in a recent study that makes this “uncanny” scientific approach productive for an interpretation of the many specters and ghosts that haunt many novellas of poetic realism proper, “macht sich gerade in der Trennung von Wahrnehmung und Referenz geltend. Realität ist Wahrnehmungseffekt, Effekt des ‘Eigenlebens’ der Sinne, die den grundsätzlichen Simulakrum-Charakter des Wirklichen artikulieren” (4). This is, of course, only one way to conceive of reality and thus realism around 1800� The Eigenleben of each of the senses (not to mention the multiple instruments of optical media with the ability to manipulate human vision like the microscope and telescope that were made productive in Romantic tales such as Hoffmann’s Der Sandmann ), of the cognitive impulse, and of the various life forces in the physical domain forms in each instance only one possible reality out of many; still more poietic fields of reality have emerged during the eighteenth century. We can address these only cursorily here but will provide more elaboration at concrete literary examples later� Literary Realism Reconsidered from an 18th-Century Perspective 301 The imagination, the reproductive and productive faculty of the human mind, stands at the center of his transcendental-philosophical project, unfettered from theological constraints and accused of acting rampant, before the judge of reason that wishes to dictate the laws in order to contain it. Kant’s first two Critiques are concerned with the making and legitimacy of these laws, whereas the third Critique of the Power of Judgment grants the imagination in its poetic, schematizing capacity some liberty to play freely with the conceptual understanding in acts of reflective judgment, themselves triggered by aesthetic experiences. Romantic philosophy - inspired by Spinoza’s concept of natura naturans ; Schiller’s dialectics of a rational “Formtrieb” and a sensuous “Stofftrieb” synthesized by a poietic-aisthetic, essentially ‘realistic’ “Spieltrieb”; and particular Fichte’s notion of a self-positing ego - identified the faculty of the human imagination with creativity per se, as if it were a cosmic force of creation. For Novalis, Friedrich Schlegel, and Tieck, as Jan Oliver Jost-Fritz’s contribution shows, the imagination is the constituting factor of (any) reality; the genius artist, in analogy to God Creator, is the one who can (trans)form (a) reality according to the idea motivating him. In the Romantic artwork, this idea should shimmer through as an ideal that can never be reached or fulfilled so that this intrinsic poesy perpetually stimulates the imagination to aesthetic reflections. The Romantics considered such an artwork the most realistic of all because it contains and reflects the very poetic conditionedness to which it owes its existence, like any other thing that is truly ‘real’ through its capacity to form its own reality. Objects of ‘reality’ par excellence in this Romantic sense were the ruins and fragments of antiquity that archeologists unearthed and art historians, Winckelmann being the first and foremost among them, attempted to make sense of by (re)constructing the idealized context of ancient Greek or Roman culture. These ruins and the associated agencies of their reconstruction developed their own historical dynamism by shaping visions of a golden past, turning into utopian imperatives to reform the cultures at home according to these models (see the article by Christian P. Weber). The old “Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes” was fought particularly fervently during the eighteenth century, which was also an age of revolutions. Particularly the French Revolution with outrageously horrible acts of terror between the Ancien Regime and Napoleon’s unprecedented rise to power who won, like a force of world history, battle after battle in indescribably violent Revolutionary Wars, posed incredible challenges to reckon with this out-of-order reality to any observer. As Christine Lehleiter’s contribution shows, perhaps none struggled more with these ruptures than the arch-realist Goethe who, returning from his Italian journey in 1788, thought to have figured out the intrinsic laws of physical nature, ancient arts, and hu- 302 Jan Oliver Jost-Fritz und Christian P� Weber man society. Daniel DiMassa’s contribution can show in his reading of Stifter’s novella “Bergkristall” along the lines of Schleiermacher’s early theology that even religion and the idea of God underwent existential vitalization and dynamization� Later, the nineteenth century added other domains of reality: the capitalist industrialization of the economy, technological inventions and innovations, and nationalist/ socialist movements led to large-scale social and societal changes that are the topic of many realist European and American novels of this time� We find many of these changes and transformations already addressed in the works of the late Goethe, especially in Faust. Part II and Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre � But the fragmentary form of both literary texts indicates that these enormous transformations of the human living conditions can no longer be contained and represented within an organicist whole. Accordingly, Hegel rejected literature’s or any other artwork’s claim to be still able to capture ‘reality’ in this functionally differentiated modern world, culminating in the thesis of the “end of art” (see Plumpe 9—10). Perhaps the major difference between the literary realism of the eighteenth and the one of the nineteenth century lies in the continued ambition of the latter to conceive of these newly emerging realities still as homologous entities that remain compatible within an overarching ontology - be this Christianity or Humanism - and to deal with them in one work or project, like Goethe’s Faust , whereas the former deals with them largely separately and within a national, sometimes regional or even local context� Authors of the nineteenth century still indebted to this eighteenth century realistic attitude, like Stifter, can adhere to the (now) lofty goal of human universalism only at the expense of actively repressing the ‘monstrosities’ of the new realities creeping up and disrupting old living habits. By doing so, Stifter nonetheless engages with the reality of new realities in an allegorical gesture of rejection that foreshadows modernist attitudes, as Robert Mottram shows in his interpretation of “Kalkstein.” In the following considerations, we trace some of these poietic tendencies to circumscribe the increased complexity of the playing field “reality” around 1800 to which literary realism responds by developing new or rediscovering old rhetoric devices and poetic strategies for a mimetic representation that aims to do justice to the dynamization, multiplication, and ambiguation of reality� By presenting some interpretative vignettes of literary responses to the new fields of reality emerging in the later eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, we aim to demonstrate that authors commonly not associated with Realism, authors from Winckelmann and Goethe to Tieck and Stifter, share a common aesthetic approach to reality for which the label “realism” applies (at least) just as well as for the group of the nineteenth-century novelists commonly known by this Literary Realism Reconsidered from an 18th-Century Perspective 303 designation� We propose a reconsideration of realism as a literary practice of minute and patient observation combined with imaginative, even experimental techniques of writing. This realism is propelled by the aim to reconcile the complications of an ever more complex reality with the poetic challenge of a more adequately mimetic representation which affects all literary genres� All realistic literary endeavors from the late eighteenth century onwards have in common a reflection on the status of their own poetic reality in the wider context of the epistemological foundation and historical situation outlined above� Works Cited Auerbach, Erich� Mimesis. The Representation of Reality in Western Literature. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2013� ---� Dante als Dichter der irdischen Welt. With an afterword by Kurt Flasch. Berlin/ New York: De Gruyter, 2001. Blumenberg, Hans. “Wirklichkeitsbegriff und Möglichkeit des Romans.” Ästhetische und metaphorologische Schriften . Ed. Anselm Haverkamp. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 2001. 47—73. Brooks, Peter. Realist Vision . New Haven: Yale UP, 2005. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang� Sämtliche Werke. Ed. Hendrik Birus et al. Frankfurt a. M.: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1985-2010. [FA] Göttsche, Dirk, and Nicholas Saul, eds. Realism and Romanticism in German Literature � Bielefeld: Aisthesis, 2013� Herder, Johann Gottfried� Werke in zehn Bänden. Vol� 4: Schriften zu Philosophie, Literatur, Kunst und Altertum 1774 - 1787 . Ed. Jürgen Brummack and Martin Bollacher. Frankfurt a. M.: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1994. Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim� Werke und Briefe in zwölf Bänden. Vol 5/ 2: Werke 1766 - 1769. Ed. Wilfried Barner. Frankfurt a. M.: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1990. Kant, Immanuel. Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Ed� Jens Timmermann� Hamburg: Meiner, 1998. [KrV] Müller, Johannes. “Ueber die phantastischen Gesichtserscheinungen. Eine physiologische Untersuchung (1826).” Johannes Müller, der große rheinische Physiologe. Ed� Ulrich Ebbecke. Hannover: Schmorl & von Seefeld Nachf., 1951. 77—191. Plumpe, Gerhard, ed� Theorie des bürgerlichen Realismus. Stuttgart: Reclam, 1997� Preisendanz, Wolfgang� Wege des Realismus. Zur Poetik und Erzählkunst im 19. Jahrhundert. Munich: Fink, 1977. Strowick, Elisabeth. Gespenster des Realismus. Zur literarischen Wahrnehmung von Wirklichkeit. Paderborn: Fink, 2019. Thanner, Veronika, Joseph Vogl, and Dorothea Walzer, eds. Die Wirklichkeit des Realismus. Paderborn: Fink, 2019. Vogl, Joseph. “Bemerkung über Goethes Empirismus.” Versuchsanordnungen 1800. Ed� Sabine Schimma and Joseph Vogl. Zurich/ Berlin: Diaphanes, 2009. 113—23. Out of Ruin: Goethe’s Poetic Realism as a Method of Constructive Inquiry 305 Out of Ruin: Goethe’s Poetic Realism as a Method of Constructive Inquiry Christian P� Weber Florida State University Abstract: This contribution defines poetic realism as a specific method of inquiry and representation rather than understanding it in terms of poetic genre or literary style. Goethe’s work engages with the invisible formative forces and transitions in organic nature and the deforming ruination of ancient artwork by natural and historical forces, showing that they exceed the capacity of observation and require the complement of the constructive or reconstructive imagination� In this context, poetic realism performs a series of oscillations between the observed object and the imagining/ thinking subject in a joint venture process of (re)constructing a virtual object in the mind. This epistemological mode of reflection and the dynamic versatility of the resulting schematic phenomena are essentially poetic and therefore demand poetic means of representation. Goethe’s poem “Der Wandrer,” his scientific discovery of a metamorphosis of plants and its poetic rendition in the elegy “Die Metamorphose der Pflanzen” (1798), and finally his reflections on the representation of the human body in ancient statues are introduced as supreme achievements of poetic realism� Keywords: Realism, poetic realism, Goethe, “Der Wandrer,” metamorphosis of plants, “Die Metamorphose der Pflanzen,” antiquity, statues, Winckelmann Sometimes poetry is deceiving, and its fiction mistaken for reality. This misunderstanding happened to Felix Mendelssohn, who claimed to have discovered the original location of Goethe’s poem “Der Wandrer” in a letter to Goethe’s friend Zelter from Naples in 1831� Mendelssohn assumed that Goethe had composed this poem during his sojourn in Italy between 1786 and 1788 in the de- 306 Christian P� Weber scribed set of a landscape littered with ruins, located only a few miles away from the ancient town of Cumae. In fact, the poem had been written much earlier in the early 1770s (Eibl’s commentary in FA 1: 935). This curious incident is instructive by illustrating what “poetic realism” does not mean, namely an imitative representation of a real event, thing, person, time or place with the objective of verisimilitude; at the same time, however, Mendelssohn’s misidentification is useful because it refers to “Der Wandrer,” a poem that could be called the primal scene of Goethe’s poetic realism. I will return to it later to explore the central antagonism between nature and art as the generative core of this method and to survey some of its individual implications and effects as illustrated by this early poetic example� But first, general remarks are in order to clarify and justify the introduction of the concept of poetic realism to Goethe scholarship and what it contributes to the Realism debate. Goethe, although a self-declared “arch-realist,” is commonly not associated with literary realism. His major literary works, except perhaps Die Wahlverwandtschaften , show a too-high degree of abstraction, too little direct engagement with social issues, and too many obvious markers of fictionalization to be counted among the canonical texts of this genre or style. Nonetheless, it could be argued, based on the conception of poetic realism promoted here, that these literary works belong to realism as much as any of the canonical European novels of the nineteenth century. But my contribution will not pursue this argument� To the contrary, rather than a literary genre or style, I conceive of poetic realism as a specific method of inquiry and representation that transgresses the boundaries commonly drawn between scientific and poetic modes� Realism for Goethe, I argue, is grounded in the experience of something objective and real, which begins with the gift of life: “Das Höchste was wir von Gott und der Natur erhalten haben ist das Leben, die rotierende Bewegung der Monas um sich selbst, welche weder Rast noch Ruhe kennt” (“<Aphoristisch>”; FA 24: 531). Beyond this primordial motion, “life” becomes real only in a second step when the “monad” manifests itself in the “surroundings of the external world” and realizes itself in acts of engagement. 1 Realism in general then means the effort to come to terms about the process of how life is realizing itself: “Über dieses Erlebte können wir, obgleich Anlage, Aufmerksamkeit und Glück dazu gehört, in uns selbst klar werden” (“<Aphoristisch>”; FA 24: 531). As we shall see in the following, Goethe’s intuitive genius, his attentive discipline, and last but not least also the good fortune to be in the right place at the right time while encountering supportive people contribute to what I call his method of poetic realism� Out of Ruin: Goethe’s Poetic Realism as a Method of Constructive Inquiry 307 There exist, of course, self-descriptions of his realist methods of inquiry under headings such as “zarte Empirie” or “gegenständliches Denken.” Both terms offer valuable insights to Goethe’s theory and practice of cognition but highlight only certain, though crucial, aspects of his methodological engagement with the real. The term “delicate empiricism” stresses the priority of the object and the gentle attitude with which the observer should approach his/ her subject matter; if the observer makes him-/ herself transparent, the object will be able to impress on him/ her its qualities so that the subject ideally becomes identical with the object. 2 We shall later identify the place of this synchronization within the larger complex of poetic realism� Another, similar key element of poetic realism is the concept of “gegenständliches Denken” (objective thinking), a term coined by the psychologist Johann Christian Heinroth to characterize Goethe, “den Schöpfer des echten wissenschaftlichen Verfahrens” (FA 24: 1124), and which the recipient recites approvingly in his Hefte zur Morphologie : “daß mein Denken sich von den Gegenständen nicht sondere, daß die Elemente der Gegenstände, die Anschauungen in dasselbe eingehen und von ihm auf das innigste durchdrungen werden, daß mein Anschauen selbst ein Denken, mein Denken ein Anschauen sei…” (FA 24: 595)� Again, the emphasis is on a cognitive process that is directed by the perceived object rather than the observer’s subjective imagination� Nonetheless, the imagination remains in play once it has been programmed by empirical observation to a point of saturation: “[Ich] fand daß mein ganzes Verfahren auf dem Ableiten beruhe; ich raste nicht bis ich einen prägnanten Punkt finde, von dem sich vieles ableiten läßt, oder vielmehr der vieles freiwillig aus sich hervorbringt und mir entgegen trägt, da ich denn im Bemühen und Empfangen vorsichtig und treu zu Werke gehe” (FA 24: 598). In other words, when the mode of reproductive observation has been fully processed through deductive thinking in the creation of an idea, all of the sudden one could say, perhaps, at a dull yet enriched moment the productive imagination turns on� 3 The imagination operates then strictly on the basis of this deduced idea and creates (virtual) images that may not contradict this idea and therefore possess an intrinsic lawfulness. Consequently, the fantastic creativity of the imagination cannot go astray and will always operate within the limits of the natural forms of reality, whatever fantastic images and shapes the imagination may produce� A key example that Goethe mentions himself is the metamorphosis of plants: “Welche Reihe von Anschauungen und Nachdenken verfolgt ich nicht, bis die Idee der Pflanzenmetamorphose in mir aufging! ” (FA 24: 597). When he reported the moment of this discovery to Herder from Italy, Goethe emphasized the creative and poetic impact of the “Urpflanze”: 308 Christian P� Weber Mit diesem Modell und dem Schlüssel dazu [i.e., der Metamorphose], kann man alsdann noch Pflanzen in’s Unendliche erfinden, die consequent sein müssen, das heißt: die, wenn sie auch nicht existieren, doch existieren könnten und nicht etwa malerische oder dichterische Schatten und Scheine sind, sondern eine innerliche Wahrheit und Notwendigkeit haben. Dasselbe Gesetz wird sich auf alles übrige Lebendige anwenden lassen. (FA 15/ 1: 346) One could call the outcome of this process, which is embodied in the elegy “Die Metamorphose der Pflanzen” and to which we shall return in greater detail, a real ideal (wirkliches Ideal) , because it is an abstraction that, derived from the reality of nature, maintains its intrinsically productive character in an idealized poetic form. The process of creating such phenomena of real ideality makes up one side of what is called here poetic realism. The other side is essentially the same process in reverse and results in what Goethe has called an object of “ideal reality” ( “ideale Wirklichkeit” ; FA 19: 183), namely the representation of the human body in ancient statues� The inverse directions of both processes are due to the different nature of the original object. Whereas the realm of plants is characterized by its great diversity of species and greatly differing appearances at various stages of their development, - all creating a chaos of sensuous impressions that calls for a scientific model of unity -, the human body presents itself in its greatest beauty at the early stage of mature development when it has reached a complete and well-rounded form. Art’s task is therefore to preserve and highlight the beautiful ideal of this real object against the nature of reality itself, that is, the aging process and the detrimental impact of other external forces. However, for Goethe, as I will argue in the final section of this contribution, the ideal artworks of ancient human statues gain in status as real objects precisely when they have been impacted by external forces and are encountered in a state of decline and ruin� It is only at this point that they turn into objects of a realist inquiry, yet this time not to study the metamorphic laws of nature but to restore the work of the human spirit at the peak also of its cultural development in ancient Greece. Poetic realism thus describes a dual cycle of lavish natural creation, scientific deduction, and poetic (re)creation on the one hand and of artistic creation, its destruction over time, and hermeneutic reconstruction on the other� Both processes are driven by the central conflict between nature and art and thus both belong to poetic realism, but they must be described separately for reasons that become clearer once we have obtained a better understanding of the complicated relationship between the general creativity of nature and the specific one of the human genius. Out of Ruin: Goethe’s Poetic Realism as a Method of Constructive Inquiry 309 The Poetic Realism of “Der Wandrer” The conflict between these two creative domains, nature and art, is programmatically staged in the poem that I mentioned in the beginning, “Der Wandrer.” An exhausted wanderer at first notices only glimpses of a landscape’s topography as he climbs, guided by a woman he encountered, a dusty path through rugged terrain. He suddenly detects ruins under overgrown vegetation: Spuren ordnender Menschenhand Zwischen dem Gesträuch -! Diese Steine hast du nicht gefügt Reich hinstreuende Natur […] Von dem Moos gedeckt ein Architrav! Ich erkenne dich. Bildender Geist, Hast dein Siegel in den Stein geprägt. (FA 1: 208—14; ll. 27—30, 32—34) The poem juxtaposes two forces of creation that manifest themselves in their products as natural vegetation (plants) and human artifacts (pillars and statues of a temple), for Goethe the preferred objects for his specific method of study and inquiry� He largely dismisses, for example, historical events or other human artifacts such as tools and commodities. In the lines cited, he draws a clear distinction between these two agents of production. Whereas nature scatters its products widely (“reich hinstreuend”) in a seemingly indifferent manner, the carved stones capture the wanderer’s attention because they were obviously once ordered, structured, and inscribed by the human hand of a formative spirit� Nature and art obviously operate here as antagonistic forces, similar to Goethe’s characterization of this relationship in an early review: “Kunst ist gerade das Widerspiel” against the permanent transformations of nature’s manifold seeds and “entspringt aus den Bemühungen des Individuums sich gegen die zerstörende Kraft des Ganzen zu erhalten” (FA 18: 99). During his classical period, Goethe appears to have changed his attitude owing to the encounter with ancient artworks during his sojourn to Italy. He realized that they have been produced according to the same natural principles that he had (re)discovered in his morphological studies. 4 One finds hints at a unity between nature and the arts already in “Der Wandrer.” At the sight of the woman’s cabin, built in and from the ruins of the previous “temple” (l. 53), for instance, the wanderer marvels about nature’s “motherly” care for her “children”: swallows build nests in the architrave, caterpillars form cocoons for their offspring in winter (as well as for their own metamorphosis), and so do humans erect shelters to protect themselves and their children (ll. 127—40). This enu- 310 Christian P� Weber meration integrates humans in the cycles of organic life and natural seasons and thus reaffirms a continuity of procreative activities that connect all living beings. Furthermore, the wanderer identifies the temple as the “Meisterstück” of a “Genius” (ll. 57—59) yet also associates it with the work of nature: “Schätzest du so Natur / Deines Meisterstücks Meisterstück? ” (ll. 78—79). Combined, these two factors form a physical and spiritual bond to link the two dynamisms of nature and art so that poetic realism can be applied to both as one method of phenomenological inquiry and description� But an attentive reader can also detect implicit reservations against the identification of one with the other: First, the cabin is not a temple! For the wanderer, it is a sacrilege that the temple’s fragments have been repurposed for profane use; it is not by coincidence that he bids farewell to the woman at the moment of this discovery (ll. 140—41). 5 Second, although the wanderer identifies the genius of the temple’s original builder as a rare masterful creation of nature, he leaves no doubt about their fundamental difference: “genius” still “weaves glowingly” over the ruins of “his grave” (l. 56) and is as such “immortal” (l. 60), whereas nature “insensibly demolishes” “her sanctuary” (ll. 80—81), the masterpiece of her masterpiece. The bridge between nature and art thus remains a rather weak one; both meet only on the grounds of nature being essential to life or in very rare, highly exceptional artworks that have emerged from a deeper insight into natural processes than nature possesses herself. (Both realms thus need further mediation about which I will say more in the conclusion.) Subsequently, Goethe continues to emphasize the fundamental difference between nature and art and the different attitudes of study required for their understanding in the comments of his translation of Diderot’s “Versuch über die Malerei” (1799): Die Natur organisiert ein lebendiges, gleichgültiges Wesen, der Künstler ein totes, aber ein bedeutendes, die Natur ein wirkliches, der Künstler ein scheinbares. Zu den Werken der Natur muß der Beschauer erst Bedeutsamkeit, Gefühl, Gedanken, Effekt, Wirkung auf das Gemüt selbst hineinbringen, im Kunstwerke will und muß er das alles schon finden. (FA 18: 563—64) What the works of nature possess in abundance, life and reality, artworks lack; vice versa, artworks contain thought, emotional depth, and meaningfulness which are all absent in natural phenomena. To compensate their mutual deficiencies is the double agenda of poetic realism: On the one hand, this method must make sense of nature by deducing from its rich abundance of appearances scientific ideas, through which nature is elevated to the status of a great artist; on the other hand, poetic realism must bring artworks to life and instill them with a reality that only natural objects have; it must animate art by providing the artwork with the distinctive qualities Out of Ruin: Goethe’s Poetic Realism as a Method of Constructive Inquiry 311 of living beings. Poetic realism’s first task is therefore to break down these ‘natural’ barriers and to mediate between these autonomous domains. Otherwise, nature remains just real and art just ideal: Hier ist wieder die Lebenswirkung der organischen Natur, die sich in allen Störungsanfällen, obgleich oft kümmerlich genug, in ein gewisses Gleichgewicht zu setzen weiß, und dadurch ihre lebendige, produktive Realität auf das kräftigste beweist, der vollendeten Kunst entgegengesetzt, die auf ihrem höchsten Gipfel keine Ansprüche auf lebendige, produktive und reproduktive Realität macht, sondern die Natur auf dem würdigsten Punkt ihrer Erscheinung ergreift, ihr die Schönheit der Proportionen ablernt, um sie ihr selbst wieder vorzuschreiben. (567) Nature possesses reality because of its ability to regenerate living organisms in the case of damage, to reproduce after an individual’s death, and to restore an equilibrium among living entities if a certain balance has been disturbed� Nature propagates with complete indifference for other formations like, for example, the deserted temple in the poem. But it lacks consciousness of the laws that govern its actions and the forms of its manifestations; only human minds can deduce these from natural phenomena and processes through attentive observation and experimentation� Vis-à-vis nature , the function of poetic realism therefore amounts mostly to the scientific task of gaining a deeper understanding of the reality nature puts on display� 6 Poetic realism complements and advances the sciences by representing dynamisms within and interrelations among living entities that remain invisible or beyond the scope of the human eye by crafting corresponding figures of speech and creating fictional totalities that simulate this reality. In this regard, poetic realism is constructive � Conceiving of this scientific-poetic process in terms of poetic realism allows us to suspend the strict distinction generally drawn between poetry (subjective fiction) and science (objective fact). Within the framework proposed here, both Goethe’s essay Versuch die Metamorphose der Pflanzen zu erklären (1790) and the later poem “Die Metamorphose der Pflanzen” (1798) belong to this same method of inquiring and representing nature� The same applies to the heterogenic corpus of text types in the Heften zur Morphologie (1817-1824), in which both essay and poem constitute integral parts� Eva Geulen’s recent attempt of a thick description of the Hefte attests to the problem of assigning a genre to this “kaleidoscopic” arrangement of texts that seems to vacillate between science, philosophy, and literature, and between form and non-form (see esp. 123—52). She therefore pleads for “die möglichst lange Suspendierung einer Fixierung der Morphologie auf den Wissenschaftsfeldern” (98). In the same vein, my contribution aims to define Goethe’s poetic realism as a method of inquiry operating 312 Christian P� Weber beyond the binary of either science (morphology) or poetry (for example, the genres of didactic poetry or the “Bildungsroman”). Instead, I propose a flexible epistemological schema of processing data from phenomena oscillating between object and subject, observation and imagination, in which both fields come into play simultaneously� Vis-à-vis the arts , poetic realism can animate artworks in two ways: One prioritizes process over product already in the making of the object, which means that the artwork must display traces of and poetologically reflect its own coming into existence. A prime example for this approach would be Goethe’s poem “Maifest” as shown in the introduction of this collection. Alternatively, process is added to the product after its creation, when the artwork is exposed to the natural forces of decay. While nature is intruding and ruining the artwork, it also charges it with life and reality, as the example of the temple in “Der Wandrer” shows. Poetic realism then becomes the hermeneutic task of reconstructing the perfection that has been lost and of regaining an understanding of the idea and the ideal that informed the making of the artwork. This latter method is especially suitable for the total, hermetically closed artwork like a statue. Whereas the human observer of natural processes must instill thought and imagination into a dynamic system that is lacking an identifiable spirit yet appears to be spiritual in some of its phenomena, the great artwork is saturated, to the contrary, with a surplus of spirit. Any artwork is the product of another human artist who has applied certain ideas, forms, and norms to the production of the work and thereby transformed a material (marble, paint, or language) into a specific shape, charging matter with specific meaningfulness. Regardless of its actual state, there will always remain traces of this (trans)formative spirit in any artwork. But the problem with autonomous artworks is often that its form corresponds to the individual ideas of its maker so completely that it shuns inquiry; the mind of the onlooker cannot enter and explore the work by the means of his/ her own hermeneutic imagination, so that it appears to him/ her almost lifeless. For poetic realism it is therefore advantageous if the artwork is not or no longer hermetically sealed in a well-rounded form but rather imperfect, or, better even, perfect but ruined as described above. The task of the real connoisseur of art is then to reconstruct or restore the artist’s thoughts and ideas that went into the work’s construction process based on its appearance in the present state. In the case of the wanderer in Goethe’s poem, we find indications of familiarity with the original artwork, since the wanderer is able to decipher the seal in the stone and identify the temple's dedication to Venus along with the no longer recognizable muses and graces (cf. l. 36—50; see Weber, Die Logik der Lyrik 387—411). In general, however, the exegete of an artwork must often draw Out of Ruin: Goethe’s Poetic Realism as a Method of Constructive Inquiry 313 also from scientific knowledge (for example anatomy or art history) to gain a thorough understanding of the studied artifact� Another example for Goethe’s poetic realism vis-à-vis an artifact is his imaginative, yet exact reconstruction of the façade of the Strasbourg Munster in his essay Von deutscher Baukunst (1772; FA 18: 110—18) and later again in Dichtung und Wahrheit (FA 14: 417—20). To the surprise of some local people, Goethe proved after repeated observation that the existing tower must have been executed differently from the original plan, which Goethe recreated with his mind’s eyes but got to see in material form only after he had figured out the deviation: “Aber so sollte es mir immer ergehn, daß ich durch Anschaun und Betrachten der Dinge erst mühsam zu einem Begriffe gelangen mußte, der mir vielleicht nicht so auffallend und fruchtbar gewesen wäre, wenn man mir ihn überliefert hätte” (FA 14: 544). Based on what has been stated thus far we may generalize: For both nature and art applies that the subject matter of inquiry per se is not just material but essentially also spiritual - though only implied (‘as if ’) and projected onto the object by the observing subject in nature’s case� Furthermore, poetic realism is not just processing given objects but essentially also co-(re)creating them in this process. In short, poetic realism is dealing with phenomena, and its method is phenomenological both in terms of inquiry and the representation of outcomes, often resulting in the creation of new artistic phenonema. Consequently, poetic realism is not about the transmission of knowledge and therefore can neither be founded on nor establish traditions� It is grounded in lived experience, not factual knowledge. 7 Yet poetic realism produces another, its own kind of knowledge in acts of mediation between an imagining/ thinking subject and a perceived object of study. This mediation constitutes an embodied co-presence of the subject with its object in a ‘joint venture’ to construct or reconstruct a dynamic schematic copy of the object� 8 Strictly speaking, these virtual objects only last for as long as the cooperative, productive oscillation between the imagining subject and the reflecting object is maintained. In this regard, the produced knowledge remains fleeting and entirely subjective; it is aesthetic and can be shared only as intersubjective experience. Hence, to communicate this aesthetic knowledge, it must be articulated in a poetic mode or apply poetic elements in scientific discourse, because only poetry allows a reader to reexperience the original experience of mediation and (re)constructive cooperation between subject and object. In fact, all of Goethe’s works and fictional characters are phenomenal products of his realist method. In his “Zueignung” in Faust , Goethe appropriately characterized the figures or shapes that have (re)emerged in his imagination when resuming the work on this lifelong project - in a different literary context, 314 Christian P� Weber of course, but nonetheless as composite figures of the experience and memory - as “schwankende Gestalten.” In the second introductory essay to the Heften zur Morphologie, Goethe goes even further and rejects the term “Gestalt” altogether (see also Geulen’s chapter on “Schwanken,” 65—76), since he finds: daß nirgend ein Bestehendes, nirgend ein Ruhendes, ein Abgeschlossenes vorkommt, sondern daß vielmehr alles in einer steten Bewegung schwanke. Daher […] dürfen wir nicht von Gestalt sprechen; sondern wenn wir das Wort brauchen, uns allenfalls dabei nur die Idee, den Begriff oder ein in der Erfahrung nur für den Augenblick Festgehaltenes denken. / Das Gebildete wird sogleich wieder umgebildet, und wir haben uns, wenn wir einigermaßen zum lebendigen Anschaun der Natur gelangen wollen, selbst so beweglich und bildsam zu erhalten, nach dem Beispiele mit dem sie uns vorgeht. (FA 24: 392) The metamorphic shapes or figures that poetic realism (re)produces are therefore realistically transient and fluctuating only in a second or even third degree, since the objects of the inquiry, the phenomena of nature or the phenomenal works of art, themselves display elusive qualities; additionally, the sense organs and mental faculties that enable our experience and process understanding are equally elusive entities� For this reason, Goethe suggests in the explications of his so-called “gegenständliche Denken” that “jeder neue Gegenstand, wohl beschaut, ein neues Organ in uns auf[schließt]” (FA 24: 596). Such an “organ” can be, as Friedrich Schlegel proposed in his plea for a “neue Realismus” in the Gespräch über die Poesie (published in 1800), only poetic. 9 I will argue later that Goethe’s elegy “Die Metamorphose der Pflanzen” (published just a year prior to Schlegel’s statement) can be regarded a phenomenal “organ” not just of Goethe’s morphological studies of vegetal nature but also of the method of poetic realism� In the moments of oscillation between observation and imagination, the (re)constructing mind is in a poetic mode, for which Goethe often employs the weaving metaphor, 10 as illustrated in these verses of “Der Wandrer”: “Glühend webst du über deinem Grabe / Genius! ” (ll. 56—57). 11 At this point it has become indistinguishable whether this weaving genius refers to the formative spirit of the past, that is, the master who built the temple, or the formative spirit of the wanderer who is reconstructing the temple out of ruins with his mind’s eyes (and who may be addressing himself here). Once the wanderer opened himself entirely to the original spirit of the contemplated artwork, he has become, literally, ‘in-spired’; both the spirits of the past and of the present are operating now synchronously in the same creative manner so that it is no longer necessary to differentiate between the two. In the act of recreation, the wanderer is simulta- Out of Ruin: Goethe’s Poetic Realism as a Method of Constructive Inquiry 315 neously poetic (imaginatively constructive) and hermeneutic (reconstructively inspired). As such he exemplifies Goethe’s method of poetic realism. Another important condition for poetic realism to occur is the presence of the object under investigation. For the artwork or a natural object to speak to an observer, it must be there, or rather, ideally, the observer must be where the work/ object is situated and encounter it in the context of its genuine environment. In the poem, “genius” is weaving/ fluttering over its own grave, marking it as a genius loci . Goethe himself experienced “das Gefühl, de[n] Begriff, die Anschauung dessen, was man im höchsten Sinne die Gegenwart des klassischen Bodens nennen dürfte” (FA 15/ 1: 489) only at the ancient sites of Rome, yet neither in the books that he had studied in his youth, nor in his poetic imagination of “Der Wandrer.” For a revelation (“Offenbarung”) to occur, the subject must seek out certain objects. Not by accident is the lyrical subject of many of Goethe’s poems a wanderer; thus the homo viator is for Goethe not an individual but a flexible and adaptable (“beweglich und bildsam”) mode of existence of heightened awareness and increased porosity that comprehends the forms of nature or artworks “aus ihrem Mittelpunkt, ihren notwendigen Bedingungen” (W. v. Humboldt about “Goethes zweiten römischen Aufenthalt”; Werke 2: 406, my emphasis)� 12 Poetic realism, in other words, aims for the representation of the inner dynamism(s) and necessities that have brought the studied objects into existence; for this, the inquiring subject needs to reconstruct and relive in the imagination their construction process and ideally become identical with it. (This is a slight yet important modification to our discussion of “zarte Empirie” above. Identity is not desired with the object itself, but with the dynamic processes that brought it into existence�) To achieve this level of permeation, the subject must prepare for the encounter with the object. For poetic realism’s scientific validity, the empirical attention given to the object and the recognition of its context/ environment must precede any liberally imaginative musings of the inquiring subject� Goethe conceived of his Italian experience as a purification process for such sensual perception: “Meine Übung, alle Dinge wie sie sind zu sehen und abzulesen, meine Treue das Auge Licht sein zu lassen, meine völlige Entäußerung von aller Prätention, kommen mir einmal wieder recht zu statten und machen mich im Stillen höchst glücklich.” He adds that the overall impression of Rome with its many great artworks and ruins forms “ein Ganzes, das man sich lange denkt und träumt, nie mit der Einbildungskraft erreicht” (FA 15/ 1: 144). Yet prematurely imagined things lag behind the perceived real objects. Goethe’s program of “pure vision” therefore aims at getting rid of any preconceived notions and concepts and ideally even operates without the interference of other cognitive faculties (see the introduction) to obtain empirical data that is as “pure” as possible. 316 Christian P� Weber To this end, Goethe implemented a rigorous, ascetic method of observation that eliminates the overhasty imagination from the process of inquiry by operating in repeated, only slightly varied experimental settings. Otherwise, he feared, the slightest transitions and intimate relations between individual phenomena could be overlooked and impede the overall results of the research. Goethe’s scientific ambition was to collect all outcomes of rigorous observation and to process them in “eine Reihe Erfahrungen der höheren Art.” Only once this is accomplished can the faculties of the imagination, understanding, and reason be allowed to contribute and form out of these deduced higher experiences “ein Ganzes […], das der menschlichen Vorstellungsart überhaupt mehr oder weniger bequem und angenehm sei” (“Der Versuch als Vermittler von Objekt und Subjekt”; FA 25: 35—36). Operating with purified real phenomena, the productive imagination can no longer cause any harm to nature� If systematically applied to a wide range of phenomena, this objective method promises and offers a solid realistic, scientific basis from which humanity can set out to change the reality of social and cultural conditions without the dangers of relapsing into anti-natural ideological regimes of the past (first and foremost the theological doctrine of original sin, which Goethe contests for instance in “Die Metamorphose der Pflanzen”) or of venturing into revolutions motivated by illusory utopian visions� As we shall see in the following paragraphs, the decisive insights of the “metamorphosis of plants” were, however, not (just) the result of systematic research. Goethe often associates the various stages of this idea’s genesis and its different modes of representation either with fortunate events, such as the coincidental reading of Homer in the public garden of Palermo or the eminent encounter with Schiller in Jena, or with situations of personal crisis. Yet Goethe also intentionally inserts autobiographical accounts of disappointing and disillusioning episodes in his scientific writings to mark these setbacks’ creative impact. Such setbacks inspired Goethe to look deeper into the subject matter and challenged him to experiment with new, increasingly poetic means of representation. Especially vis-à-vis the phenomena of nature, such drawbacks must first shatter the subjective persona of the observer so that the dynamic processes of nature can enter the human mind just as the grass and thistles of the wanderer poem grew into the stones of the temple and thus made their presence felt� Vis-à-vis the ruins of antiquity, however, a reverse process must be applied. Here, as a second example of Goethe’s admiration for fragmented ancient statues and Winckelmann’s reconstruction efforts will show, the imaginative spirit of the observer must reconquer the artworks that were ruined by nature and reanimate the individual spirit of the original artist as well as the Greek (or Roman) culture from which they have emerged. To accomplish this, Goethe Out of Ruin: Goethe’s Poetic Realism as a Method of Constructive Inquiry 317 believes, the art historian must not just be informed about the cultural history of ancient times but also by anatomical and physiological knowledge of the human body as well as by the humanistic ideals and virtues of his/ her own age. In this regard, poetic realism also performs a mediation and translation between various ages and cultures in human history� The final antagonism between art and nature with which we began remains still unaddressed: Can an oscillation also occur between these poles? Could poetic realism bring both into play simultaneously? The following inquiry will hint in its conclusion to how a mediation between them could be accomplished. In general, however, the strict separation of these two creative domains must be maintained because, according to Goethe, both nature and art exist as autonomous dynamisms and manifest themselves as real only within this antagonism. Each must withstand the force of the other. This mutual resistance drives them to permanent creation, which makes each of them real first and foremost. Poetic realism must acknowledge both domains on their own terms and not confuse them. Hence, this article deals with nature and art separately, even though the general method of poetic realism applies equally to both� The Real Ideality of “Die Metamorphose der Pflanzen” Ever since Wolff’s generative theory of vegetable growth and reproduction called “epigenesis” was published in 1759, the sciences became increasingly convinced that living beings and even geological structures are no static products of a divine creator but the always transient manifestations of autonomous self-organizing forces in ever-ongoing processes of formation and deformation� This paradigm shift from mathesis to dynamism resulted in two new major problems: First, these organic driving forces (akin to gravity, electricity, magnetism, etc�) remain invisible since no material basis can be detected for them� Consequently, they remain, ultimately, an affair of speculation; only the effects of these forces can be studied as phenomenal changes and developments in the shapes of certain objects� This leads to the second problem of determining the relation between force and form. How force turns into form remains a great mystery that cannot be solved but, at best, contained through the coinage of new metaphors. Examples are Bergmann’s “Wahlverwandtschaften” (elective affinities) mainly for chemical processes and Blumenbach’s “Bildungstrieb” ( nisus formativus , drive of formation) as a name for the vitalist principle that integrates the processes of generation, incorporation of nutrients, and reproduction and guarantees for the specific form of each species of plant or animal. Goethe’s morphology, based on the principle of “metamorphosis,” falls under the same category of a hybrid concept� He argues for the existence of a mal- 318 Christian P� Weber leable archetypical and “ transcendental ” organ, which is the leaf and of which all plant organs are real modifications. In the process of metamorphosis, the “leaf ” can undergo various transformations and bring forth an endless variety of leaf shapes and plant species, partially depending on environmental conditions� The “metamorphosis of plants” thus amounts to a flexible and dynamic schema for the generation of plants as such� The metamorphosis is an intuitively and experientially deduced real form of the imagination that can explain the various appearances of real plants and even invent new imaginary ones. As such, metamorphosis differs from the previously mentioned metaphorical concepts because it does not aim to bring the conflict between force and form to a standstill by merely stamping a name on the blind spot� Instead, metamorphosis is a dynamic and flexible principle of change that has itself undergone significant change over the course of Goethe’s practice of poetic realism� Goethe’s ‘idea’ of a “metamorphosis of plants” developed in a process of continued observations, descriptions, drawings, and dreaming of plants over a period of many years, generating spontaneous moments and levels of insight� Three passages from his Italienische Reise beautifully illustrate the oscillation between imagination and observation that triggered this idea� Initially, Goethe set out to find an actual “Urpflanze” which was supposed to be an archetypical, primordial plant from which descended, as he assumed, all other existing plant species. By the time of his sojourn in Italy, however, Goethe must have grown disillusioned about this ambition. He now calls this seemingly impossible quest a “Gespenst” and “alte Grille” (FA 15/ 1: 286). Yet the specter of the “Urpflanze” haunts him again during repeated visits to a public garden in Palermo. At first, the garden strikes him as “der wunderbarste Ort der Welt” due to the various and strange shapes of plants, intense color impressions, and especially the “starke Duft,” which makes everything appear even more wonderfully. This fantastic place with its mystic-aesthetical atmosphere triggers Goethe’s poetic imagination; it reminds him of the “Wundergarten” of the Phaeacians in Homer’s Odyssey and inspires him to compose a new play based on the “Nausicaa” episode (April 7, 1787; 258—59). During another visit just ten days later, however, the “Wundergarten” has transformed into a “Weltgarten.” The genius loci now triggers a different response, and the tone of Goethe’s report turns more scientific: “Die vielen Pflanzen, die ich sonst nur in Kübeln und Töpfen, ja die größte Zeit des Jahres nur hinter Glasfenstern zu sehen gewohnt war, stehen hier frisch und froh unter freiem Himmel und, indem sie ihre Bestimmung voll erfüllen, werden sie uns deutlicher” (April 17, 1787; 285—86). Evidently, once the initial spell has vanished, the garden demands closer observation� Consequently, the focus of inquiry changes as well: Goethe no longer hopes to identify one archetypal Out of Ruin: Goethe’s Poetic Realism as a Method of Constructive Inquiry 319 plant from the great variety of plants in this “Weltgarten”; instead, he ventures to examine “worin denn die vielen abweichenden Gestalten von einander unterschieden seien,” although he still finds “sie immer mehr ähnlich als verschieden” (285—86). These two initial steps, the aesthetic inspiration to poetic creation and subsequent call for closer inspection and proto-scientific comparison, are followed by a third step that fuses both into one vision� A month later, Goethe reports to Herder his breakthrough from Naples: Ferner muß ich Dir vertrauen, daß ich dem Geheimnis der Pflanzenzeugung und Organisation ganz nahe bin und daß es das einfachste ist, was nur gedacht werden kann. […] Die Urpflanze wird das wunderlichste Geschöpf von der Welt, um welches mich die Natur selbst beneiden soll. (May 17, 1787; 346) Here, the crucial step is made from observing to thinking (“was nur gedacht werden kann”). For Goethe, as he explains elsewhere, the forming of a “lebendige Bund” between the “Augen des Leibes” and the “Geistes-Augen” is necessary for the advancement and elevation of the sciences (FA 24: 432). Accordingly, he now calls the transcendental vision of this virtual object, which differs greatly from the “Urpflanze” he had originally imagined, a “most whimsical creature,” because it is really two things in one: a “Modell” or type deduced from manifold appearances of natural plants and a dynamic schema of the imagination which provides the “Schlüssel” of metamorphosis. When both “model” and “key” operate in unison, the poetic mind can “Pflanzen in’s Unendliche erfinden, die consequent sein müssen” because, although they are only virtually real, they nonetheless possess “eine innere Wahrheit und Notwendigkeit” (FA 15/ 1: 346). At this neuralgic point of his argument, Goethe recites Aristotle’s formula of realism according to which a poetic work must demonstrate “inner truth(fulness) and necessity” for support. In the same entry Goethe mentions yet another key-player and ally. Again, it is the author of the epic about the shape-shifting hero Odysseus, Homer, whose descriptions and similes “uns poetisch vor[kommen] und doch unsäglich natürlich [sind] […]. Selbst die sonderbarsten, erlogenen Begebenheiten haben eine Natürlichkeit, die ich nie so gefühlt habe als in der Nähe der beschriebenen Gegenstände” (FA 15/ 1: 345). This statement is crucial for poetic realism because it emphasizes the necessity of the objects’ presence and the subject’s emphatic response to them as decisive factors for their understanding and successful representation. Goethe evokes Homer and Aristotle, these two towering figures of ancient poetry and philosophy, to receive their legitimatizing blessing for his agenda of a constructive and (re)inventive poetic realism which aims to challenge the prevailing realism conceptions of his time� 13 320 Christian P� Weber Without doubt, the self-inscription of Goethe’s discovery of the metamorphosis of plants into the great ancient tradition, the enthusiastic tone of his reports, and the perhaps exorbitant claim that endlessly new plants could be invented based on his schematic model attest to Goethe’s elated state of mind in Italy� Yet, this period of success, joy, and feeling of world expansion is soon followed by a period of disappointments, great despair (“Verzweiflung”; FA 24: 414—15), and forced concentration when he returns to Weimar. In the same breath that he complains about the deprivation (“Entbehrung”) of his senses from “dem herrlichen Kunstelement,” he stresses how he composed himself and how his “spirit awakened” and wove together all “previous threads” of his botanical research into one theory that deduces “die mannigfaltigen, besondern Erscheinungen des herrlichen Weltgartens auf ein allgemeines, einfaches Prinzip” (415—16). But more disappointments follow: Göschen, the publisher of Goethe’s collected poetic works, rejects the printing of the Versuch die Metamorphose der Pflanze zu erklären , which eventually appears with a minor publisher in 1790. And instead of praise, the aspirational essay - organized in 123 sections that intend to spell out the ABC of organic formation as a new propaedeutics for the sciences - receives mostly ridicule. Goethe laments how his poetic reputation prevented a more serious scientific reception: “Man vergaß, daß Wissenschaft sich aus Poesie entwickelt habe” and “man bedachte nicht daß […] beide sich wieder freundlich, zu beiderseitigem Vorteil, auf höherer Stelle, gar wohl wieder begegnen könnten” (420). Yet again, however, Goethe succeeds in transforming his personal disillusion about the scientific community into productive energy. To prove the point that science and poetry belong together, he translates the uninspiring ‘dead’ letters of his scientific pamphlet into “die lieblichen Bilder” and “das lebendige Gleichnis” (423) of an elegy by the same name: “Die Metamorphose der Pflanzen” (1798). The episodic manner in which Goethe narrated the history (and decidedly his story) of his scientific-poetic discovery of “the metamorphosis of plants” in Italy, the concept’s discursive publication in an academic essay, and finally its poetic regeneration in the form of an elegy, make evident that both the positive Italian and the negative German periods equally contributed to its genesis� Goethe wished to mark the polar-opposite states of elation and despair, expansion and concentration, in order to highlight that this/ his story itself should be perceived as living and metamorphotic in accordance with his theory of rhythmically pulsating polarity and intensification (“Polarität und Steigerung”), and as such, as a real event� The process of metamorphosis has reached its climactic culmination point with the creation of the elegy. As an accumulative product of Goethe’s Italian and Weimar experiences, it contains all in one: joy and pain, love and despair, the threat of separation and reunification, observations of nature and Out of Ruin: Goethe’s Poetic Realism as a Method of Constructive Inquiry 321 philosophical reflection, realism and idealism. In short: The “Metamorphosis” is truly a wonderfully whimsical poem, a “Wundergebild” (l. 40) of poetic realism. Being far more than merely a transposition from scientific discourse to poetry, the elegy aspires to be nothing less than the (re)creation of an organic lifeform in the medium of language� As such it presents a symbol of poetic realism par excellence. Brimming with meaningfulness beyond comprehension under a single idea, the full complexity and potential of the specific meanings it contains cannot be hermeneutically realized all at once� For that reason, Goethe republished the elegy in various contexts over a period of almost forty years since its first publication in 1798. Herein, he deliberately followed the model of nature: Fernerhin bei Darstellung des Versuchs der Pflanzen-Metamorphose mußte sich eine naturgemäße Methode entwickeln; denn als die Vegetation mir Schritt für Schritt ihr Verfahren vorbildete, konnte ich nicht irren, sondern mußte, indem ich sie gewähren ließ, die Wege und Mittel anerkennen wie sie den eingehülltesten Zustand zur Vollendung nach und nach zu befördern weiß. (FA 24: 442) Within each of the altogether four transmission contexts - 1798 in Schiller’s Musen-Almanach für das Jahr 1799 devoted to idylls, 1800 under the rubric “Elegies II” in Goethe’s edition of Neue Schriften , 1817 within the essay “Schicksal der Druckschrift” as part of the Hefte zur Morphology , and finally 1827 among a series of philosophical poems arranged under the heading “Gott und Welt” for the Ausgabe letzter Hand - this versatile text actualizes or “reveals” (“enthüllt”) another layer of its potential meaning with every publication, a layer which is “eingehüllt” in the text like in the seed of a plant. 14 Over the course of the listed transmissions, the poem seems to develop its very own poetic dynamism and to pursue an intrinsic teleology with a necessity and consequence comparable to that of a natural living being� To further enhance the lively and lifelike representation of his teaching of metamorphosis, Goethe employs innovative poetic means and rhetoric devices that become more evident when compared to Albrecht von Haller’s “Die Alpen,” a very successful didactic poem first published in 1722 and reissued many times since. If Goethe was a scientific poet, Haller was a poetic scientist. A comparison between both texts also highlights the shift in the sciences: Haller’s poem represents nature according to the Linnéan taxonomic paradigm, that is, the classification of plants in species, families etc. based on the different shapes of sexual organs and their spatial arrangement in a hierarchical order� In contrast, the Goethean paradigm of metamorphosis emphasizes temporal change and draws developmental analogies across the divides between species. Goethe’s poetic innovations must therefore be seen as a response to this new dynamic paradigm and the need to develop adequate means of representation for it� 15 322 Christian P� Weber As a consequence of this paradigm shift, the immense popularity of Haller’s “Alpen” faded. Lessing contributed to this work’s obsolescence through his poetic criticism in the programmatic essay Laokoon (1766). He used the lines from Haller’s work rendered below as a negative example to explain his own semiotic theory, according to which poetry should present a progressing action in narrative sequence instead of indulging in painterly descriptions� Dort ragt das hohe Haupt am edlen Enziane Weit übern niedern Chor der Pöbel-Kräuter hin; Ein ganzes Blumen-Volk dient unter seiner Fahne, Sein blauer Bruder selbst bückt sich und ehret ihn. Der Blumen helles Gold, in Strahlen umgebogen, Türmt sich am Stengel auf und krönt sein grau Gewand; Der Blätter glattes Weiß, mit tiefem Grün durchzogen, Bestrahlt der bunte Blitz, von feuchtem Diamant; Gerechtestes Gesetz! daß Kraft sich Zier vermähle; In einem schönen Leib wohnt eine schönre Seele. Hier kriecht ein niedrig Kraut, gleich einem grauen Nebel, Dem die Natur sein Blatt in Kreuze hingelegt; […] Dort wirft ein glänzend Blatt […]. (Haller 18—19; ll. 381—92, 394) Evidently, Haller’s description of the meadow follows the static epistemological model of a topological ordering system (see Breidbach, Metamorphosenlehre 72—77): here is a plant of this species, there is one of another kind, there yet another etc. However, as much he differentiates among plants, Haller still blurs the limits between inorganic minerals and the decisive distinctions within organic beings (plants, animals, humans) to secure a complete representation of nature, for example in the phrase “der Blumen helles Gold.” But then, in a contrary move, Haller utilizes his painting of alpine nature as an allegory for the hierarchical structure of the Swiss society that distinguishes the noble individual (“edlen Enzian”) from the majority of subservient “Pöbel-Kräuter” by a principle of the “gerechteste Gesetz.” This law proclaims the general identity of political “Kraft” and aesthetically pleasing “Zier” as well as the unity of bodily and spiritual beauty (ll. 389—90), all legitimized by the symbol of Christian religion, the “Kreuz,” which ‘nature’ inscribed into the lower-ranked plants. As much as the famous Swiss scientist and poet may have been directly inspired by the beautiful landscape and cultural traditions of his homeland, his “Alpen” are certainly not a work of poetic realism because their ‘ideal’ order has been imposed onto nature by a preconceived political and theological ideology rather than having emerged from the study of nature. In the words of Lessing’s concluding judg- Out of Ruin: Goethe’s Poetic Realism as a Method of Constructive Inquiry 323 ment of this poetic example: “Ich höre in jedem Worte den arbeitenden Dichter, aber das Ding selbst bin ich weit entfernet zu sehen” (126). In contrast, the following lines selected from Goethe’s poem “Die Metamorphose der Pflanzen” showcase a far more dynamic and also egalitarian model of nature� The focus of these lines is on an action, the plant’s sequential metamorphosis, so that Lessing could have quoted them - had they existed yet - as a positive example for his semiotic poetics: Gleich darauf ein folgender Trieb, sich erhebend, erneuet Knoten auf Knoten getürmt, immer das erste Gebild, Zwar nicht immer das gleiche, denn mannigfaltig erzeugt sich Ausgebildet, du siehsts, immer das folgende Blatt, Ausgedehnter, gekerbter, getrennter in Spitzen und Teile Die verwachsen vorher ruhten im untern Organ. Und so erreicht es zuerst die höchst bestimmte Vollendung, Die bei manchem Geschlecht dich zum Erstaunen bewegt. Viel gerippt und gezackt, auf mastig strotzender Fläche Scheinet die Fülle des Triebs frei und unendlich zu sein. Doch hier hält die Natur, mit mächtigen Händen, die Bildung An, und lenket sie sanft in das Vollkommnere hin. […] Und ein Wundergebild zieht den Betrachtenden an� Rings im Kreise stellet sich nun, gezählet und ohne Zahl, das kleinere Blatt neben dem ähnlichen hin. Um die Achse bildet sich so der bergende Kelch aus, Der zur höchsten Gestalt farbige Kronen entläßt. Also prangt die Natur in hoher, voller Erscheinung Und sie zeiget, gerecht, Glieder an Glieder gestuft, Immer erstaunst du aufs neue sobald sich am Stengel die Blume, Über dem schlanken Gerüst wechselnder Blätter bewegt. (FA 1: 639—41; ll. 23—34, 40—48) The differences between both poems are particularly striking due to their similarity of topic. But in contrast to the “Alps,” this excerpt from the “Metamorphosis” offers a fast-paced narration of continuous change, driven by an innate drive of the primordial organ, the leaf� Temporal adverbs and verbs of action organize and dynamize the entire narration, while descriptive elements remain subordinate to the generative and transformative process and consequently appear in adverbial rather than adjectival positions� The process is further driven by an alternation between expansion (the growth of the plant’s stem, ll. 23—32) and contraction (the formation of blossoms, including a piston and stamens, 324 Christian P� Weber ll. 33—48), which is further reflected in the poem’s basic, yet variably applied beat of the dactylic meter (a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed ones) and the elegiac distich’s oscillation between hexameter and pentameter. The poem’s flexible form thus accords with the main principles of Goethe’s theory of nature, polarity and intensification (see Tantillo 12—103). Janina Wellmann even argues that the hexameters recite the orthodox Linnéan botanical terms, whereas the pentameters operate as Goethe’s counterpunch by instilling messages and terms that conform with his teaching of metamorphosis (164—68). The mature stage of the plant’s development concludes by a shift from the mode of observation to more detailed description and thereby a halting of the progressive narration to ensure a momentary reflection: “Viel gerippt und gezackt, auf mastig strotzender Fläche / Scheinet die Fülle des Triebs frei und unendlich zu sein” (ll. 31—32). The description in the hexameter is, however, not entirely objective but subjective and metaphorical when it evokes the image of sailing on the sea (“gerippt,” “gezackt,” “mastig”) in combination with the earlier line “Knoten auf Knoten getürmt” (l. 24). The judgment articulated in the pentameter “frei und unendlich,” consists, then, not of ideas imposed onto the object like in Haller’s “Alpen” but, instead, ideas generated by the close observation of the object and, further, by inferring a limit of observation for the generative drive that echoes Kant’s aesthetic category of the sublime. Similarly, the surprising appearance of the word “gerecht” (l. 46) - which functions as an intertextual marker, almost a relic of Haller’s imposed “gerechteste[s] Gesetz” that is juxtaposed with the intrinsic lawfulness of the “Metamorphose” - articulates a judgment motivated by the plant’s regular growth, “Glieder an Glieder gestuft.” 16 These poetic liberties take nothing away from the poem’s realism; to the contrary, by marking the points of transition from objective observation to subjective, imaginatively inflected description and aesthetic reflection, they display the operational method and reveal the epistemology of poetic realism� Returning to the fundamental scientific problem addressed at the beginning, namely the impossibility to observe or record the driving force of life itself, this example makes evident that the scientist must resort to poetic means and a method of poetic realism that oscillates between observation with “Augen des Leibes” and imagination with “Augen des Geistes.” On this basis and again with support of the elegy, we may now also address, as far as possible, the second problem and mystery: how force turns into form (or ‘dead’ matter into living, eventually even artistically gifted organisms). We find a correlation between force and form already in the first stage of the imaginary plant’s genesis that the lyric speaker per forms for his beloved: “Einfach schlief in dem Samen die Kraft, ein beginnendes Vorbild” (l. 15). One should understand this apposition literally: the seed contains a forceful beginning because it strives towards the Out of Ruin: Goethe’s Poetic Realism as a Method of Constructive Inquiry 325 archetypal “pre-image” or form it is programmed to fulfill. Force and form are inseparably tied together in the seed: the form motivates and preconditions the force as an ideal for the specific metamorphosis of ‘the plant’ the seed aspires to become, while force is also a precondition of form because any temporal schema implies change that requires energy� Under this consideration, Goethe’s plant operates in agreement with the theory of preformation, only with the important distinction that this pre-form is, indeed, an “image” without materiality; therefore, the seed does not contain the plant itself that simply unfolds like a genie from a bottle. Only with life support of sunlight, soil, and moisture does the seed sprout “die Gestalt der ersten Erscheinung” (l. 21). In this regard, Goethe belongs to Wolff’s epigenesis camp, only that Wolff would have been unwilling to accept the existence of anything invisible to the human eye� The microscopic vision of the materialist cannot confirm the existence of a preconceived spiritual “image” that becomes ‘visible’ only to the “Geistes-Augen” (mind’s eyes) of the poetic realist. According to Goethe, such materialist (self-)limitation hinders the scientist not least to see the bigger picture of an “Analogie der Form” between plants, animals, and humans (FA 24: 432—33; see also Tantillo 76—78). At the next stage of the poetic plant’s metamorphosis, a “consecutive drive” regenerates and raises “immer das erste Gebild” (ll. 23—24). The German word “Gebild” (structure, shape) still retains the idea of “Bild” (image), yet it is already more than that. It now has gained material reality, and the drive has developed a structure that is, if we follow Goethe’s precise language, in agreement with its ideal “Vorbild” (model image). Just when the growth of the plant appears to be - for an (imaginary) onlooker, that is, and not for the drive itself - “free and indefinite,” “nature” intervenes in this process of “Bildung” (l. 33) “with mighty hands” so that the drive withdraws into itself to create the “Wundergebild” (l. 40) of a blossoming flower so attractive to the onlooker. Having thus reached its “höchst bestimmte Vollendung” (l. 29), nature “prangt” (shines forth resplendently) in “hoher voller Erscheinung” (l. 45). It deserves notice how intricately Goethe interconnects - here and throughout the poem - the lexemes of “Gestalt” (shape, figure), “Schein” (shine/ illusion) as in “Er schein ung” (appearance), “Bild” (image) and “Gebild” (structure), accompanied also by “Stimme” (voice) as in “be stimm t” (ll. 29, 52, 70). No less notable is the use of metaphorical language (“mit mächtigen Händen,” at the next stage “die göttliche Hand”) to characterize the actions of the most abstract agent simply called “Natur.” As the best solution to express the unknown and unspeakable, the lyrical speaker quite ‘naturally’ resorts to poetic language and, as this speaker addresses the delicate issue of procreational organs, to mythology. “Hymen” is called upon to execute a symbolic wedding within the plant’s innermost circle and to conceal the act of sexual reproduction with a 326 Christian P� Weber mist of sweet fragrances: “Und hier schließet die Natur den Ring der ewigen Kräfte, / Doch ein neuer sogleich fasset den vorigen an; / Daß die Kette sich fort durch alle Zeiten verlänge, / Und das Ganze belebt so wie das Einzelne sei” (ll. 59—62). These lines conclude the metamorphosis of plants (though not yet the poem) and return to the beginning� This generic, increasingly imaginary sketch of the plant’s metamorphosis becomes a symbol for all other plants (ll. 65—66) and eventually for nature altogether (ll. 67—70). It represents the quintessence of the lyrical speaker’s accumulated higher experience of his plant studies and the reconstruction effort that was motivated by his beloved’s initial confusion (ll. 1—4). Literally inseminating the beloved with this dynamic and versatile schema, the poetically represented schema of the plants’ metamorphosis becomes an intellectual, even spiritual “Vorbild” (cf. l. 15) for the cycle of procreation in nature generally and in the protagonists’ relationship more specifically (ll. 71—80): “Dies ist die höhere Natur, die Realität, in der sich das Erkennen selbst aus der Subjektivität des Erlebens […] in die Objektivität des Lebens umsetzt” (Breidbach, Metamorphosenlehre 189)� In its entirety, Goethe’s elegy exemplifies the sophistication of understanding the method of poetic realism can reach and the brilliant (poetic) phenomena it can produce� As an ideal monument of the possibility and productivity of this realistic method of understanding, the “Metamorphosis” testifies also to the fact that Weimar classicism is not just idealistic but built on a firm foundation of realism, as the next section will confirm regarding another of Goethe’s obsessions: ancient statues� “Ideal Reality”: Goethe’s Reconstruction of Antiquity What is called Weimar classicism, the friendly cooperation between Goethe and Schiller from 1794 until the latter’s death in 1805, emerged not by coincidence - if we follow Goethe’s account of what he labeled in hindsight a “Glückliches Ereignis” - from a dispute about whether the metamorphosis of plants embodies an idea (as per Schiller) or experienced reality (as per Goethe). Prior to this event, both men considered each other antagonists� Schiller attempted to reconcile his own sentimental ‘idealism’ with what he perceived as Goethe’s naive ‘realism’ in his essay Über naive und sentimentalische Dichtung , but he failed to synthesize both positions. Similarly, in “Glückliches Ereignis” Goethe stressed the “ungeheure Kluft” between the polar modes of thinking of his “hartnäckiger Realismus” and the idealism of his “educated Kantian” friend (FA 24: 436—37). Both notions, he admits, remained irreconcilable. Yet Goethe and Schiller were still able to cooperate, as they proved during their very productive partnership, and they prevented one another, as Zumbusch pointed out, from falling into Out of Ruin: Goethe’s Poetic Realism as a Method of Constructive Inquiry 327 extremes: “Der Idealist (Schiller) will den Realisten (Goethe) davor bewahren, in den Grenzen der Natur steckenzubleiben: umgekehrt kann der Idealist vom Realisten den ‘nüchternen Beobachtungsgeist’ und die ‘resignierte Unterwerfung unter die Notwendigkeit’ lernen” (158). For as long as their “Bund” lasted, the two quarreled with each other in the “possibly irreconcilable competition between subject and object,” but they did so to their mutual benefit and to that of many others (FA 24: 437). Goethe’s characterization of both positions deserves closer attention for a more nuanced understanding of the conflict between realism and idealism and what these terms signify. At the beginning of “Glückliches Ereignis,” Goethe marks the point of his and Schiller’s divergence before they collaborated� Apparently, they were separated by two different modes of perception and intuition rather than by different modes of reflection. In short, both had different ideas about what reality means: “Anstatt sie [die Natur] selbständig, lebendig vom Tiefsten bis zum Höchsten gesetzlich hervorbringend zu betrachten, nahm er [Schiller] sie von der Seite einiger empirischen menschlichen Natürlichkeiten” (FA 24: 435—36). The first half of this statement is a precise characterization of Goethe’s own realism. With terms like “selbständig,” “höchste,” and “gesetzlich,” he locates the ideal within nature, whereby he attributes to his realism an idealism that he denies Schiller’s conception, whose sporadic empiricism detects only incoherent “ Natürlichkeiten ” instead of comprehending the whole of Natur � Goethe thereby presents himself not just as a realist, but as the only true idealist, whereas he depicts Schiller as a dilettante realist and therefore also as a naive, pointless idealist at best� By deconstructing Schiller’s early idealism, Goethe demonstrates that idealism must be based on realism and that any idealism is, indeed, always an ideal realism. In his “Winckelmann” essay from 1805 which appeared in the month of Schiller’s death, Goethe coined the term “ideal reality” (“ideale Wirklichkeit”) for ancient statues as “the highest works of art” (see FA 19: 184; quoted in context below). A glimpse at Schiller’s poem “Das Ideal und das Leben” in the version of 1804 (Schiller 152; the poem was first published under the title “Das Reich der Schatten” in 1795) reveals how greatly his anti-real idealism differs from Goethe’s ideal poetic realism: Whereas the Olympian gods reside in “[e]wigklare” and “spiegelreine” spheres (l. 1), the mortal humans must live on earth in the state of a precarious limbo “zwischen Sinnenglück und Seelenfrieden” (l. 7). Unlike the genius of the Goethean wanderer, who continues to create (“weben”) glowingly over the ruins of his prior creation, the youth of Schiller’s gods blossoms like “Rosen […] / [w]andellos im ewigen Ruin” (l. 5—6). The divine “ Gestalt ” (l. 26) that “wandelt oben in des Lichtes Fluren” (l. 25) is for the gods alone and remains out of reach for the humans who are dragged down by 328 Christian P� Weber their heavy “Körper[n]” (l. 20), unless they follow Schiller’s appeal to free their spirit from their anxious, miserable physical existence� Goethe would never have given in to this kind of escapist fantasy. To the contrary, for him the human body is the non plus ultra of natural forms: “das letzte Produkt der sich immer steigernden Natur, ist der schöne Mensch” (FA 19: 183). For Goethe, art’s most sacred task is not to ignore or undo the flaws associated with the human body but to preserve it at the peak of its fleeting beauty. The beauty of the human figure (“menschliche Gestalt”) is the natural foundation upon which the human spirit must build to reach its highest possible state of existence in an “ideal reality”: Ist es [das höchste Kunstwerk] einmal hervorgebracht, steht es in seiner idealen Wirklichkeit vor der Welt, so bringt es eine dauernde Wirkung, es bringt die höchste hervor: denn indem es aus den gesamten Kräften sich geistig entwickelt, so nimmt es alles herrliche, verehrungs- und liebenswürdige in sich auf und erhebt, indem es die menschliche Gestalt beseelt, den Menschen über sich selbst, schließt seinen Lebens- und Tatenkreis ab und vergöttert ihn für die Gegenwart, in der das Vergangene und Künftige begriffen ist. (184; my emphasis) Granted, this characterization sounds at first much like Schiller’s version of classicist Weimar idealism. “Wirklichkeit” refers here not to the life-world, but to the manifestation of an alternative “ideal reality” that the artwork brings forth as its effect. This reality effect appears “ before the world ,” not in the world � Nonetheless, it also represents the quintessence of “all forces” from this world , which the work of the artist transcends, “indem er sich mit allen Vollkommenheiten und Tugenden durchdringt, Wahl, Ordnung, Harmonie und Bedeutung aufruft, und sich endlich bis zur Produktion des Kunstwerkes erhebt” (184). In the statue, human body and intellect are fused into one hyperreal appearance of humanity’s possibilities in this world, which makes the statue another prime creation of poetic realism� In his essay on Winckelmann and already in the introductory essay for his art journal Propyläen (1798), Goethe insists on the rootedness of his idealistic conception of art in the experience of the real� This reality is not limited to the body’s surface but comprises also - countering the second Mosaic commandment - the body’s subcutaneous organs that the artist (and art historian) must study and internalize: Die menschliche Gestalt kann nicht bloß durch das Beschauen der Oberfläche begriffen werden, man muß ihr Inneres entblößen, ihre Teile sondern, die Verbindungen derselben bemerken, die Verschiedenheiten kennen, sich von Wirkung und Gegenwirkung unterrichten, das Verborgne, Ruhende, das Fundament der Erscheinung sich Out of Ruin: Goethe’s Poetic Realism as a Method of Constructive Inquiry 329 einprägen, wenn man dasjenige wirklich schauen und nachahmen will, was sich, als ein schönes ungetrenntes Ganze, in lebendigen Wellen, vor unseren Augen bewegt. […] Was man weiß, sieht man erst! (FA 18: 462—63; emphasis added) Classical aesthetics combined, as Helmut J. Schneider pointed out, beauty with life; accordingly, the ideal artwork had to be grounded in the laws of nature - only under this condition could it manifest itself as living beauty (Schneider 240). Such a great work of art affects the onlooker with its genuineness and uniqueness while it simultaneously embodies and symbolically refers to a greater whole, an entirely different world beyond its physical presence. In short, the ideal-real beauty of the statue has the power to transport and transform. Nothing exemplifies this effect better than the following attempt by Winckelmann to capture the intrinsic spirit of the famous Apollon of Belvedere: Ich vergesse alles andere über dem Anblicke dieses Wunderwerks der Kunst, und ich nehme selbst einen erhabenen Stand an, um mit Würdigkeit anzuschauen. Mit Verehrung scheint sich meine Brust zu erweitern und zu erheben […], und ich fühle mich weggerückt nach Delos und in die lycischen Haine […]: denn mein Bild scheint Leben und Bewegung zu bekommen, wie des Pygmalions Schönheit. (qtd. in Schneider 246) In the final sentence, it remains inconclusive whether the “image” (“mein Bild”) refers to the artwork or to the onlooker’s image of it. According to our definition, the oscillating state of Winckelmann’s vision between object and subject characterizes this description as a work of poetic realism. 17 Winckelmann can be considered a forerunner of poetic realism also in terms of another dimension of reality. In Goethe’s judgment, Winckelmann’s greatness rested not least on his capability to transform the dire circumstances of his personal reality by experiencing the ancient artworks’ brimming with ideal reality. According to Goethe’s account, he was one of the “vorzügliche[n] Geister” who had “die Eigenheit, eine Art von Scheu vor dem wirklichen Leben zu empfinden, und in sich selbst zurückzuziehen, in sich selbst eine eigene Welt zu erschaffen” (FA 19: 177). The ancient artworks corresponded to Winckelmann’s innermost being and transported him to an alternative reality attuned with his own ideals. Yet, he engaged with them in a realistic, scientific manner (as described above): “Wir finden bei Winckelmann das unnachlassende Streben nach Ästimation und Konsideration; aber er wünscht sie durch etwas Reelles zu erlangen. Durchaus dringt er auf das Reale der Gegenstände, der Mittel und der Behandlung; daher hat er eine so große Feindschaft gegen den französischen Schein” (208). The objects Winckelmann chose to focus on, the great artworks of Greek antiquity, reveal something essentially real in that they are all - for Goethe as 330 Christian P� Weber much as for Winckelmann - manifestations of a culture driven by a cult of the real, that is, they themselves are products of poetic realism: Nach einerlei Weise lebte der Dichter in seiner Einbildungskraft, der Geschichtsschreiber in der politischen, der Forscher in der natürlichen Welt. Alle hielten sich am Nächsten, Wahren, Wirklichen fest, und selbst ihre Phantasiegebilde haben Mark und Knochen. Der Mensch und das Menschliche wurden am wertesten geachtet, und alle seine innern, seine äußern Verhältnisse zur Welt mit so großem Sinne dargestellt als angeschaut. Noch fand sich das Gefühl, die Betrachtung nicht zerstückelt, noch war jene kaum heilbare Trennung in der gesunden Menschenkraft nicht vorgegangen. (180) Both Winckelmann and Goethe aspire to an ideal humanism grounded in the real experience of and interactions with the life-forms closest to them: the omnipresent nature and a culture shared with their compatriots. Winckelmann becomes for Goethe a model for the eighteenth-century experience firstly because he was sensitive enough to realize the deep rift between his present existence in the stratified society of a provincial German town with what he reimagined to be the reality of ancient Greek communities. Secondly, Winckelmann is exemplary because he imagined escaping and actually did escape the misery of his age and home country by becoming the custodian of the Vatican collections, by surrounding himself with remnants of an (imagined) ideal, yet once real beauty, and by reconstructing from the fragments of ancient traditions the essential realism of a past Greek culture that he promotes as an ideal(ized) model for the reformation of contemporary society� Yet, when Goethe composed his eulogy at the beginning of the nineteenth century, Winckelmann’s legacy was already threatened. Quite literally, his body of work, the Vatican collection of ancient artworks that he curated in Rome, had been mutilated by looting Napoleonic troops� In the aftermath of the French Revolution, the great number of decapitations, displacements, and dispossessions brought Winckelmann’s dream to an abrupt end. Goethe aims to counter this trend: “Man hat vielleicht jetzo mehr Ursache als jemals, Italien als einen großen Kunstkörper zu betrachten, wie er vor kurzem noch bestand” (FA 18: 475). To substitute for the destruction and dismemberment of the real “Kunstkörper,” Goethe pleads in almost real-political fashion for the construction of an “ideal” one (“idealen Kunstkörper”). By this he means a national museum which would provide the closest substitute for the now obsolete experience of encountering artworks in their initial cultural environment. 18 No matter whether natural phenomena or artworks, their experience must always start with the observation of the physical object ideally located in its original context (471). Out of Ruin: Goethe’s Poetic Realism as a Method of Constructive Inquiry 331 For Goethe, as for Winckelmann and their mutual idea of the ancient Greeks, knowledge grows gradually from the intuition of the real thing to the realization of its typical characteristics and intrinsic lawfulness. Goethe articulated this progressive process of cognition in the essay “Einfache Nachahmung, Manier und Stil” for the arts, in “Die Metamorphose der Pflanzen” for nature, and in a short text that lists the graduation from the empirical via the scientific to the pure phenomenon for scientific inquiry. Crucial for Goethe’s phenomenological epistemology is that the original experience is never suspended by any ‘higher’ form of abstract cognition or representation but sublated ( aufgehoben ) in it in a Hegelian sense� Moreover, the various stages of the formative cognitive process should not be considered as separate but transitory moments within a greater dynamic� This dynamic can be reversed through a hermeneutic process. Like the “transcendental leaf ” can be deduced through scientific inquiry as the generative principle and organ that has actualized itself in a myriad of vegetal appearances, so can the original spiritual blueprint of an artwork be recovered even from its most mutilated state of appearance when the realist method of inquiry and knowledge is applied: “Die Restauration von den ursprünglichen Teilen, die Kopie von dem Original zu unterscheiden, in dem kleinsten Fragment noch die zerstörte Herrlichkeit des Ganzen zu schauen, wird der Genuß des vollendeten Kenners” (471). Goethe recommends his poetic principle of ideal realism as a natural antidote against the general destruction, cultural dispersion, and cognitive distraction of his age: “denn wie die gesunde Faser dem Übel widerstrebt, und bei jedem kranken Anfall sich eilig wieder herstellt; so vermag auch der jenen eigene gesunde Sinn sich gegen innern und äußern Unfall geschwind und leicht wieder herzustellen” (FA 19: 180). The ancient ruins’ call for their restauration does not just concern them as objects but also us as human subjects� Their tradition from past cultures is a gift for present and future ones because - as works of poetic realism - they allow glimpses of a cultural greatness that may be an eternal measure and model for any generation. Ancient ruins thus offer humanity a playground to test and develop their skills through close observation and imaginative, yet (self-)controlled interpretations. But they can only do so because they have been disintegrated by time and nature� In its destructiveness, nature is thus productive not just to procreate its organic life-forms but indirectly also to regenerate human culture� The ruins of antiquity stimulate the imagination to restore the original image of what was once whole, and this cure of poetic realism to their ailment can potentially also cure the ailments of cultural division and destruction of present times. At least this was Goethe’s hope. 332 Christian P� Weber The Moving Human Body as the Mediating Agent of Poetic Realism Now that we have characterized the two processual strains of poetic realism, let us return in closing to the introductory question about the relationship between nature and art: What connects the two processes and motivates the entire cycle that poetic realism performs? In the poem “Der Wandrer”, we already identified two linking factors in the preliminary characterization of poetic realism: First, the drives of self-preservation and procreation have generated artistic measures of protective care that all living organisms share and that link them in a chain of being. Second, exceptional works of art, like the ancient statues or Goethe’s “Metamorphose der Pflanzen,” have been created in accordance with nature’s generative principles and eternal laws. In addition, we may now add as a third factor the mediating and supervising agency of the human body, more precisely the physically moving body set in motion by an imaginatively curious and intellectually agile mind� As we have seen, from Goethe’s humanistic viewpoint the human organism appears as nature’s crowning and, though only fleetingly, most beautiful achievement; its integral system of neuro-sensory organs makes it the most precise apparatus to measure all other living beings and things within the sphere of our existence. Nonetheless, humanity cannot rest in itself: “indem der Mensch auf den Gipfel der Natur gestellt ist, so sieht er sich wieder als eine ganze Natur an, die in sich abermals einen Gipfel hervorzubringen hat” (FA 19: 183—84). The ancient Greeks summoned all their imaginative powers and intellectual faculties to recreate an idealized version of themselves in the image of human bodies at the height of their natural beauty� In their statues, this aspiration has resulted in lasting monuments. However, in perfect condition the well-rounded shapes of these statues appear lifeless and dead to an onlooker. It is rather in their (naturally) deteriorated state, in which they have been passed on to later generations, that they trigger a poetic effect in the attentive beholder. Only animated by the (re)productive imagination do these ideal forms become alive and real (again). Goethe’s credo as articulated in the poem “Die Metamorphose der Pflanzen” applies here as well: “Bildsam ändre der Mensch selbst die bestimmte Gestalt! ” (l. 70). The moved imagination and the moving body - with the senses, especially the eyes, operating as a set of mediating organs - are our portals to the world. Nothing embodies this better than the figure of the wanderer in Goethe’s poetry - a figure that occurs and recurs not only in the thus-titled early poem, but also in his later works, for example the Wilhelm Meister novels and Faust � Goethe was called “the wanderer” when he roamed the hills around Darmstadt and Wetzlar (which allegedly inspired “Der Wandrer,” “Wandrers Sturmlied,” and Out of Ruin: Goethe’s Poetic Realism as a Method of Constructive Inquiry 333 Werther ) alone in his early years; he also called himself a “wanderer” during his formative journey to Italy. The life of the tireless, always attentively observing and imaginatively reflecting Goethe therefore presents a fitting epitome of his method of poetic realism� Notes 1 I add here the original passage: “Die zweite Gunst der von oben wirkenden Wesen ist das Erlebte, das Gewahrwerden, das Eingreifen der lebendig-beweglichen Monas in die Umgebungen der Außenwelt, wodurch sie sich erst selbst als innerlich Grenzenloses, als äußerlich Begrenztes gewahr wird” (FA 24: 531). 2 “Es gibt eine zarte Empirie, die sich mit dem Gegenstand innigst identisch macht, und dadurch zur eigentlichen Theorie wird. Diese Steigerung des geistigen Vermögens aber gehört einer hochgebildeten Zeit an” (FA 13: 167). 3 Goethe applies the concept of “gegeständliches Denken” further to his production of poetry under the heading “gegenständliche Dichtung.” Again, it is the content of a motif, legend, or a tale from primordial times that marks the origin of a long-term reflection process and undergoes many internal transformations before it appears in a more refined “purer form” as a literary work (FA 24: 596). As remarkable as this statement’s content is the fact that Goethe forms here an analogy between his thinking and his poetic production. Deductive thinking turns for Goethe automatically into poetic activity, whereas poetic activity is characterized as a rethinking and reshaping of previous events and the thoughts associated with their transmission. 4 “Diese hohen Kunstwerke sind zugleich als die höchsten Naturwerke von Menschen nach wahren und natürlichen Gesetzen hervorgebracht worden. Alles Willkürliche, Eingebildete fällt zusammen, da ist die Notwendigkeit, da ist Gott” ( Zweiter Römischer Aufenthalt , September 6, 1787; FA 15/ 1: 424). 5 Even the classical Goethe admits that only a very few ancient artworks of the highest category are in agreement with the morphological laws of nature� 6 Wilhelm von Humboldt noticed this very clearly as a “special quality” of Goethe’s cognition: “Ich habe […] zu zeigen gesucht, daß Ihre Beschäftigungen mit den Naturwissenschaften eins sind mit Ihrem Dichtergenie, und daß beide aus dem Tiefsten Ihres Wesens, aus ihrer Art, die Dinge anzusehen und sich einen Begriff von ihrer Gestaltung zu machen, herstammen” (Letter to Goethe from Sept 4, 1830; in Goethes Briefe 551); Humboldt refers here to his review of Goethe’s Zweiten Römischen Aufenthalt � 334 Christian P� Weber 7 Breidbach emphatically emphasized this point in his study on Goethes Metamorphosenlehre (esp. 36—40). About the relationship between knowledge and poetry at the example of “Die Metamorphose der Pflanzen,” see also Stiening� 8 The active participation of the object(s) in the reconstruction process is crucial, as Goethe emphasizes in the opening lines of the Römischen Elegien : “Saget Steine mir an, o! sprecht, ihr hohen Paläste. / Straßen redet ein Wort! ” (FA 1: 393). The stones, palaces, and streets of Rome must contribute more than the inspiration of the traditionally evoked muses; their voices shall literally resound in Goethe’s Elegies ! Hence, “poetic realism” also means a poesy of real objects� Alternative attempts to label Goethe’s epistemology, such as “speculative empiricism” as suggested by Stiening (209—13), fall short in capturing this aspect. 9 I quote this passage here in its larger context because of its relevance for distinguishing Goethe’s “poetic realism” from the “ideal realism” of the early Romantics but also for highlighting their interdependence: “Der Idealismus in jeder Form muß auf eine oder andre Art aus sich herausgehn, um in sich zurückkehren zu können und zu bleiben, was er ist. Deswegen muß und wird sich aus seinem Schoß ein neuer, ebenso grenzenloser Realismus erheben. […] Auch ich trage schon lange das Ideal eines solchen Realismus in mir, und wenn es bisher nicht zur Mitteilung gekommen ist, so war es nur, weil ich das Organ dazu noch suche. Doch weiß ich, daß ichs nur in der Poesie finden kann, denn in Gestalt der Philosophie oder gar eines Systems wird der Realismus nie wieder auftreten können” (Schlegel 303). Whereas Goethe’s poetic realism is grounded in the intuition of specific objects and thereby produces a variety of ideal poetic “organs” that via analogy may lead to “gleicher Ansicht der Dinge” (as articulated in the final distich of “Die Metamorphose der Pflanzen”), Schlegel conceives of “das Organ” in the singular as the (social and ideological) realization of Idealism’s potential through the poetic establishment of a “neue Mythologie.” For a more detailed and incisive analysis of the Romantics’ (including Goethe’s) “organology,” see Weatherby. 10 In the essay “Bedenken und Erfinden” within the Hefte zur Morphologie (FA 24: 449—50), Goethe solves the epistemological dilemma of reconciling the simultaneity of the idea in understanding with the successively processing experience of sense perceptions by citing an old song - a slightly modified version of Mephisto’s lines 1922—27 from Faust - in which the weaving metaphor is applied to the productivity of nature� For more references to weaving in Goethe’s works, see the commentary in FA 24: 1075. Out of Ruin: Goethe’s Poetic Realism as a Method of Constructive Inquiry 335 11 Cf� the opening lines of the Römische Elegien, where the genius of the wanderer engages with the objects in a communication that is not (yet) reciprocated: “Saget Steine mir an, o! sprecht, ihr hohen Paläste. / Straßen redet ein Wort! Genius, regst du dich nicht? / Ja es ist alles beseelt in deinen heiligen Mauern / Ewige Roma, nur mir schweiget alles noch so still” (FA 1: 393). 12 Humboldt’s review deserves special mention in our context because it is the first and still valid attempt to describe Goethe’s method of poetic realism (although he is not using this term, of course). 13 A nuanced discussion of alternative realism theories around 1800 exceeds the scope of this contribution, but I will at least contrast the real ideality of Goethe’s elegy “Die Metamorphose der Pflanzen” to the realistic idealism of Albrecht von Haller’s popular didactic poem “Die Alpen” later. 14 On the poem’s versatility of meaning in diverse contexts, see Peters, Muenzer, and also Weber 2014� 15 Recent publications have also highlighted the pictorial innovations of visual representations and their relationship to textual representations� See fundamentally Breidbach 2005 and specifically for Goethe’s scientific writings Breidbach 2006, Bies (122—226), and Geulen. 16 Later editions of the poem replaced the word “gerecht” with “gereiht.” Perhaps the first version was just an error of the typesetter which has been later corrected� 17 This state could be regarded an inversion of Goethe’s Palermo experience, in which the atmosphere of the botanical garden transported him into the fictional world of the Odyssey � 18 Schiller responded very differently in both content and tone to the looting of ancient treasures by the French and English� See his nationalistic poems “Die Antiken zu Paris,” “Die deutsche Muse,” and “Dem Erbprinzen von Weimar” (Schiller 200—02) as well as Gerhard Kaiser’s juxtaposition of Schiller’s and Goethe’s reception of ancient statues (“Idee oder Körper”; 147—62)� Works Cited Bies, Michael� Im Grunde ein Bild. 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Wellmann, Janina� Die Form des Werdens. Eine Kulturgeschichte der Embryologie, 1760 - 1830. Göttingen: Wallstein, 2010� Zumbusch, Cornelia� Die Immunität der Klassik. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 2014. The Reality of Battle: Realism in the Context of Goethe’s War Experience 337 The Reality of Battle: Realism in the Context of Goethe’s War Experience Christine Lehleiter University of Toronto Abstract: This article examines Goethe’s accounting of his war experience in Campagne in Frankreich and Belagerung von Mainz in order to gain a better understanding of his conceptualization of realism� Scholars such as Gisela Horn have noted that the texts under discussion limit sentimental-subjective moments in favor of a report of the external world. The reference to Goethe’s realistic turn in this context evokes the idea that the very occurrence of a world which we can perceive with our senses guarantees an unmediated access to its reality. However, as Thomas P. Saine and Elizabeth Krimmer have already observed, if there is any impression of immediacy in the war texts, it is a carefully crafted aesthetic construct. In this article, I argue that it is precisely the possibility of the access to reality and the possibility of its adequate representation that Goethe questions in his war reporting. Confronted with an unprecedented brutality of battle, made possible by new artillery power, Goethe’s account is deeply indebted to the iconography of battle depictions and highly aware of the mediatisation of war. The reference to this iconography and mediatisation proves that Goethe’s war texts are indeed an unsentimental and highly aestheticized, but also an ethically engaged and eventually even emotionally charged comment on the war. Keywords: Goethe, coalition wars, realism, media and war, iconography of war, delightful terror, landscape painting, psychology of aesthetics, memory and mind In secondary literature, it has often been claimed that - when writing about his war experience in the Campagne in Frankreich and Belagerung von Mainz - Goethe was less interested in providing a war report, but rather in delivering his autobiography. If Goethe’s war reporting received attention, it was 338 Christine Lehleiter observed that the text distances itself from any discussion of emotions or sentimental attachments. Referencing Goethe’s own statements about this time and its conceptual significance for his work, critics have highlighted the author’s turn to a new “realism” (cf. Müller 907). Gisela Horn remarks “[a]n Stelle der empfindsam-subjektiven Form des Denkens und Gestaltens tritt ein ‘strenger Realismus’” (239). This realism is understood as an unsentimental “Bindung an die äußere Welt” (239). Drawing on nineteenth-century epistemology (cf. Daston and Galison), such claims evoke the idea that the very occurrence of an “external world,” which we can perceive with our senses, guarantees an unmediated access to its reality. However, critics have also observed that the text, despite its turn to the external world, is shaped by a high level of aesthetization (cf. Krimmer, Saine, and also Horn). Elisabeth Krimmer notes “[a]lthough Campagne creates an impression of immediacy, it is the product of intensive study and careful aesthetic design” (“Portrait of War” 50). So much so that Goethe’s account of the war was often “condemned for its failure to represent war truthfully” and that “numerous critics have blamed Goethe for his failure to convey a realistic image of the horrors of 1792” (“Portrait of War” 46, 50). Realism and its relationship to subjectivity and truth have long been at the centre of the discussion on Goethe’s war reporting within the broader context of a project aptly titled Dichtung und Wahrheit � In this article, I argue that it is precisely the possibility of the access to reality and the possibility of its adequate representation that Goethe questions in his war reporting. In the Campagne , he notes about the battle at Valmy: “nun begann die Kanonade von der man viel erzählt, deren augenblickliche Gewaltsamkeit jedoch man nicht beschreiben, nicht einmal in der Einbildungskraft zurückrufen kann” (FA 16: 431). Confronted with an unprecedented brutality of war, made possible by new artillery power, 1 Goethe attests the inability to depict and relate the event mimetically� Even more, Goethe observes that imagination completely fails to recall the event’s immediate (“augenblickliche”) violence. My aim here is to demonstrate that Goethe’s war reporting in light of this crisis of representation is deeply indebted to the iconography of battle depictions, and that the reference to this iconography proves that Goethe’s war texts are indeed an unsentimental and highly aestheticized but also an ethically engaged and eventually even emotionally charged comment on the war. Goethe’s realism is indeed devoted to what we can perceive with the senses but he also makes clear that both the perception of this sensual information and its representation is shaped in significant ways by aesthetic traditions, which Goethe employs in his search for an adequate linguistic and visual language for the war and in order to explore whether there is a place outside mediation. Only against the backdrop of the iconographic The Reality of Battle: Realism in the Context of Goethe’s War Experience 339 tradition is it possible for us to understand the reality of war that Goethe mediates to us� Goethe’s texts on the wars of 1792/ 93 are characterized by a deep familiarity with the iconography of war representation, its political exploitation, and its aesthetic ramifications. One of the places where this becomes most obvious is an explicit reference to the work of Adam van der Meulen, the painter of battle scenes at the court of Louis XIV and an important contributor to the king’s media wars propagating his absolutist power. For the days of mid-September 1792 - only a few days after the horrific massacres in Paris which had followed the manifest of the duke of Braunschweig - Goethe remembers his encounter with the duke and the royal entourage. He remarks about the scene: Diese Reitermassen machten zu der angenehmen Landschaft eine reiche Staffage, man hätte einen van der Meulen gewünscht um solchen Zug zu verewigen; alles war heiter, munter, voller Zuversicht und heldenhaft. Einige Dörfer brannten zwar vor uns auf, allein der Rauch tut in einem Kriegsbilde auch nicht übel. Man hatte, so hieß es, aus den Häusern auf den Vortrab geschossen und dieser, nach Kriegsrecht, sogleich die Selbstrache geübt. Es ward getadelt, war aber nicht zu ändern. (FA 16: 423) By referencing van der Meulen, the narrator suggests that a painting could have captured the scene better than the textual representation allows. The reference to the image relates to a philosophical tradition - uniting thinkers across wide historical time spans such as Leonardo da Vinci and Ernst Gombrich and photographic practices in war reporting from WWI to today - which considers the text-image relationship and generally attributes greater naturalness and veracity to visual representation when compared to the word (cf. Mitchell 79—94). In her seminal essay on war representation Regarding the Pain of Others (2003), Susan Sontag has questioned this conceptualization by highlighting the image’s instant recall effect which provides little space for understanding that - this is Sontag’s hope and conviction - only narrative can provide. Indeed, Goethe carefully considers the interplay of text and image and their role in relating the war experience. The narrator’s textual comment on the van der Meulen-like scene carefully undermines the hope of authenticity and immediacy� The battle scene is presented in a decidedly painterly fashion. The term “Staffage” connects directly to vocabulary used in the description of landscape painting, where it refers to human or animal figures which have a decorative purpose and do not represent the centre of the action. By using the term staffage, Goethe does not only deindividualize the warriors, but he also reduces the masses of horsemen to their aesthetic function within a particular genre tradition. The narrator refers explicitly to an aesthetic mode of perception and implicitly to the epistemolog- 340 Christine Lehleiter ical question of how, or whether, an access to reality outside mediation is possible. In a hyperbole of ekphratic writing, the narrator does not provide a textual description of an image but reality itself turns into an image which then finds its description in the text� The image does not merely capture the moment, instead, reality is here perceived as an image. The narrator makes a conscious reference to his inability to see the scene outside visual traditions and the reference to van der Meulen situates the description within the iconography of battle depictions. A characteristic of Goethe’s engagement with modes of representation in his war reporting is his repeated play in juxtaposing visual and narrative elements. In this particular instance, the visual heroism of the scene, which asks for identification with the conqueror, is undermined by the narrator’s distancing and ironic comment� The narrative comment is characterized by a tendency to depersonify. Repeatedly, the narrator relies on the neutral “man” to describe the subject position and turns to the passive (“es ward getadelt”) or formulations of disambiguation (“so hieß es”) in order to excuse himself from engaged involvement. Even where the status of the direct eyewitness is referenced, it is dissolved in an ambiguous first-person plural (“brannten zwar vor uns auf ”). 2 Goethe’s comment describes the lighthearted heroism of the scene, but also points to the discrepancy between the experience of the conquering party and the one who is conquered. He underlines this discrepancy by pointing to the difference between the great visual effect which the observer experiences and the bitter reality that the smoke represents for the victims of war. 3 When he narrates the story of which the smoke is a visual trace, Goethe does not only refer to an aesthetic tradition of battle depictions, but he inscribes himself into a media history which allows the description of pain but not its (visual) depiction. Such media distinction had been theorized already by Lessing’s Laokoon (1766), and it would shape war reporting well into the nineteenth century. While written war reports told about death and mutilation, the image preserved for the most part a sanitized version of the event which only the war photography of the twentieth century would leave behind (Becker 73). 4 The question of whether aesthetic pleasure is possible, or ethically admissible, in light of human suffering had occupied significant parts of mid eighteenth-century discussions on aesthetics� 5 The discussion around such pleasure was not new: eighteenth-century sources returned again and again to Lucretius’ account of a shipwreck that onlookers view with delight from a safe distance (cf. Zelle 39—40). It gained new urgency within the context of an aesthetics that was no longer bound to mimesis and a canon of rules and instead asked for the viewer’s, or reader’s, affective response. In the German context, decisive theoretical clarifications were provided by Mendelssohn’s concept of mixed feelings, which he developed in correspondence with Lessing and Nicolai, and The Reality of Battle: Realism in the Context of Goethe’s War Experience 341 the conceptualization’s ultimately subjective turn received important impulses from Edmund Burke’s A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of Sublime and Beautiful (1757). By the time Goethe joined his duke on the campaign in France and even more so by the time Goethe published his account of the war, aesthetic debates had been concluded in favor of an aesthetic justification of “delightful terror” (cf. Zelle XXIV), but the underlying questions still formed the backdrop of Goethe’s considerations at the intersection of aesthetics, psychology, and ethics� In the Rhapsodie, oder Zusätze zu den Briefen über die Empfindungen (1761), Mendelssohn had come to the conclusion that pleasure when seeing horrific events, or their representation, is possible (and ethically permissible), if the represented event lays in the past and the observers have neither caused the event nor have they the ability to change it. Mendelssohn writes: Wir mißbilligen das geschehene Böse, wir wünschen, daß es nicht geschehen sei, oder daß es in unserer Macht stünde, es wieder gut zu machen. Ist aber das Übel einmal geschehen, ist es ohne unser Verschulden geschehen, und ohne daß wir es verhindern können; so hat die Vorstellung davon vielmehr einen starken Reiz für uns, und wir sehnen uns dieselbe zu erlangen. (Mendelssohn 142) In Mendelssohn’s assessment here, aesthetic and ethical demands are not at odds when the event is so distanced that we cannot interact with it any longer. As a consequence, we can experience its representation (“Vorstellung”) as pleasurable. (Whether this representation exists only in the mind or takes the form of art is of minor significance for Mendelssohn’s assessment of its aesthetic effectiveness and ethical permissibility). In Mendelssohn’s conceptualization of aesthetic pleasure in light of suffering, we can discern the wish to hold on to the unity of the good and beautiful, or of moral and aesthetic categories� 6 By introducing what one could call a temporal “filter” between event and the experience of pleasure, Mendelssohn can account for pleasure even in light of gruesome scenes� To illustrate his claims, he refers explicitly to battle scenes: Nach dem Blutbade bei *** eilten alle unsere Bürger auf das mit Leichen besäete Schlachtfeld. Der Weise selbst, der mit Vergnügen durch seinen Tod dieses Übel verhindert haben würde, watete, nach geschehener Tat, durch Menschenblut, und empfand ein schauervolles Ergötzen bei Betrachtung dieser schrecklichen Stätte. (Mendelssohn 143) Mendelssohn performs an interesting move: from the observation that pleasurable experience occurs, he tries to explain why it is morally permissible. He needs to make this move because his approach is based on the premise that the 342 Christine Lehleiter experience of pleasure coincides with an experience of greater perfection of the human nature� Instead of raising doubts about humanity’s moral integrity (cf. Zelle 352—353), or, instead of separating the good and beautiful conceptually, Mendelssohn limits here the human’s moral responsibility to his ability to interact with the event under discussion. For him, the imagination or representation of the event has no implications which are morally, or psychologically, problematic� 7 Experiences of war and destruction are an important part of Mendelssohn’s considerations. Of interest in this context is the vocabulary with which Mendelssohn describes the pleasure experienced by the sage who wades through the carnage after the battle. By using the formulation “schauervolles Ergötzen,” Mendelssohn evokes vocabulary that would come to its climax only some decades later in gothic aesthetics (Walpole’s genre-defining novel The Castle of Otranto was published three years after the first edition of Rhapsodie )� Hence, Mendelssohn refers to an aesthetics and a genre that was characterized by its production of pleasure by means of titillating the imagination and appealing to the fantasy of the reader in narrating events and appearances which cannot be explained with reference to natural phenomena (cf. Wilpert 819). One could say that it is a genre which lives from the narration of phenomena which in day-today life cannot be experienced with the senses and at the same time aims to have significant impact on sensual, and more broadly corporeal, reactions (sweating, trembling, palpitation of the heart). Such flights of fantasy ultimately did not only lead to an aesthetics which allows for the pleasure in light of a horrible past event, but eventually developed - certainly far from what Mendelssohn had intended - into a genre which could, as Gero von Wilpert observes, indulge in cruelties, violence, and perversity (see for example the Satanism in Byron, Shelly, and Keats, and similar approaches in German literature in works by E.T.A. Hoffmann and Kleist; cf. Wilpert 809). 8 In Regarding the Pain of Others , Sontag has thought extensively about war reporting and the question of whether our observation of suffering is morally justifiable. If Mendelssohn allows for spectatorship vis-à-vis pain under the condition that the spectator can neither change the situation nor help the victim, Sontag similarly makes the permissibility of viewing a function of our leverage to intervene. However, Sontag articulates a stronger rejection of looking at the pain of others, something which she considers dangerously voyeuristic. Speaking of the destructed faces of WWI soldiers, she notes: “Perhaps the only people with the right to look at images of suffering of this extreme order are those who could do something to alleviate it […] or those who could learn from it. The rest of us are voyeurs, whether or not we mean to be” (51). Where intervention is not possible, so Sontag says, compassion vanishes too (100). In a statement that The Reality of Battle: Realism in the Context of Goethe’s War Experience 343 sounds as if it were directed explicitly against the increasing independence of aesthetics which crystallizes in the course of the eighteenth century, Sontag concludes: “[I]t is not necessarily better to be moved. Sentimentality, notoriously, is entirely compatible with a taste for brutality and worse” (129—30). In pointing out this aesthetic trajectory, the aim here is not to judge or condemn an aesthetics that focuses on affective response and self-affirmation in the cognition process. Rather, the intention is to delineate why it might have become difficult to hold on to the notion of a unity of good and beautiful in this context, or, differently put, why Goethe could not embrace it against the backdrop of his war experience. While Goethe references Mendelssohn’s conceptual approach by explicitly mentioning the observer’s temporal distance to the battle and his inability to change the course of events (“war aber nicht zu ändern”), his report remains decidedly distanced, and even where it acknowledges aesthetic pleasure, it is ironically disrupted by means of the litotes (“in einem Kriegsbilde auch nicht übel”). It is tempting to read such distancing as the posture of an egomaniac author who was primarily interested in working out his color theory, or the reactionary move of a royalist sympathiser, but the - at times obsessive - distancing in Goethe’s war report needs also to be read, I want to suggest, as motivated by ethical considerations� 9 While Mendelssohn, when confronted with the catastrophe of the battle, suggests that distance renders the event aesthetically pleasurable and frees it from ethical implications, Goethe comes to the conclusion that temporal and aesthetic distance might not help and even might have the opposite effect, in particular where personal memory is involved. Imagination - as organ of aesthetization - can produce its own ghosts which emerge from the trauma and repeat it in a way that is difficult to ban. Even thirty years after the war experience, Goethe writes in a letter to Carl Friedrich von Reinhard (10 July 1822): Es wird mir manchmal wirklich schwindlich, indem ich das Einzelne jener Tage und Stunden in der Einbildungskraft wieder hervorrief und dabei die Gespenster, die sich dreißig Jahre her dazwischen bewegt, nicht wegbannen konnte; sie liefen ein- und das anderemal wie ein böser Einschlag über jenen garstigen Zettel. (FA 16: 914) Goethe describes here a direct corporeal reaction (“schwindlich”) although, or precisely because, the events happened several decades ago, and they are mediated by means of the imagination� Already in his account of Valmy, Goethe had stated that imagination was unable to recall the violence of the war (see the first passage quoted here). In the letter to Reinhard, it becomes clear that the aesthetic recall does not only fail to represent mimetically but it also develops its own dynamics. The products of this imaginative process are ghosts (“Gespenster”). In contrast to the images which remain concrete even though 344 Christine Lehleiter they represent reality only partially (cf. Weber 102), the ghosts are characterised by their shapeshifting nature� In order to describe the effects of the ghost-like images from the past which haunt the present, Goethe draws on the language of weavers. According to the Deutsches Wörterbuch , “einschlag” means in the technical language of the weavers “der in den aufzug eingeschossene, eingeworfene faden” which is worked into the “zettel,” the basis of the textile (3: 272). There is no doubt, however, that the artillery resonances of the “Einschlag” (projectile impact) was not lost on Goethe� In Goethe’s use of the image, both the textile’s ground and the thread which is woven into it are of bad quality, and they are inseparable so that they only form the textile together. There seems no hope that the war experience can be reported independently from its ghost-like aftereffect or woven into a beautiful textile or text� Goethe expresses explicitly that the ghostly images have a traumatic effect and elicit the wish to ban them (“wegbannen”). 10 A distinction between objective (horror) and subjective (self-affirmation) reaction to the event, which ultimately helped Mendelssohn to legitimize delightful terror, is not an option for Goethe in light of his war experience. 11 Finding a method to ban them seems to offer the only hope to come to terms with the ghosts. But how can they be banned? Goethe sets his hopes on an aesthetics that helps to mediate sensual impressions instead of exciting them, and which draws on a history of mediatisation in order to come to terms with its own moment in time. In his post-revolutionary collection of novellas Unterhaltungen deutscher Ausgewanderten (1795), Goethe had already explored literary avenues which rely on irony and playfulness to ban the horrors of the war (cf. Trunz 614). In the Campagne , aesthetics is for Goethe a banning tool too, but here it remains deeply indebted to the image� While the image cannot tell the entire truth (including violence), it is a medium of realism for two important reasons: a) the image promises to stay close to that which is experienced by the senses by means of verisimilitude, it is concrete, 12 and b) it exposes its partiality and its indebtedness to a tradition of representation, therefore, providing an extra layer of distancing and cultural contextualization against the shock-like “Einschlag” of war and revolution. Goethe’s war experience leads him to the conclusion that the pleasures experienced in viewing the representations of war are ethically not justifiable. They might still be aesthetically effective and legitimate, but their psychological burden is too high and, therefore, need more mediation than the temporal distance. Despite the differences, Goethe continues here a thought for which Mendelssohn already lays the groundwork. In his consideration of pleasure, Mendelssohn does not strictly distinguish between pleasure derived from immediate experience and pleasure derived from mediated experience, as for example The Reality of Battle: Realism in the Context of Goethe’s War Experience 345 in an artwork. Both of them ultimately work in his view via a representation (“Vorstellung”) in the mind (142 and 146). However, he concedes the greater mediating power of art when considering the effect of horrific events on particularly sensitive individuals: Ein andres Mittel die schrecklichsten Begebenheiten zärtlichen Gemütern angenehm zu machen, ist die Nachahmung durch Kunst, auf der Bühne, auf Leinwand, im Marmor, da ein heimliches Bewußtsein, daß wir eine Nachahmung, und keine Wahrheit vor Augen haben, die Stärke der objektiven Abscheu mildert, und das Subjektive der Vorstellung gleichsam hebt. (150) While Mendelssohn’s approach allowed for a flight of imagination in the perceiving subject (and his hesitation originates in the fear that pleasure might be limited in the case of too great horror), Goethe is wary of imagination’s dynamics and its liberation from social contexts and aims to formulate an aesthetics of the war which is indebted to the concrete and the culturally mediated. In the next section, we will turn to Goethe’s use of the mediating power of the image and the iconography to which it is indebted. It is not clear which of van der Meulen’s paintings Goethe had in mind when he wished to see the battle scene painted by the artist, but we can consider here one example which might illustrate what Goethe found attractive in this context. In van der Meulen’s The Crossing of the Rhine on 12 June 1672 , we see a scene from the French-Dutch war (1672-78), namely the crossing of the Rhine in which Louis XIV actually did not participate but which he observed from a distance. 13 We see the agile movement of the cavalry units to which Goethe seems to allude in his comparison and a heroic Louis XIV who is mounted on a white horse which he controls - a sign of his ruling qualities - with great skill. As Thomas Kirchner has pointed out, Louis’ commanding gesture pretends to be necessary for the battle formation, but he actually looks at us, the observers for whom he has mustered the troops� 14 While the king is already in a heightened position, the observers stand on even higher grounds from which they can assess and appreciate the full meaning of the situation and its historic significance. Van der Meulen’s work is part of an expansive media machinery which Louis XIV employed in order to establish and cement his position as heroic leader of the state. Some scenes of van der Meulen were transferred on tapestry and others were reproduced as large-scale paintings in places such as the dining halls for soldiers in the Hôtel des Invalides. However, while the mastery of the depiction of classic battle scenes was considered the climax of artistic achievement (it required mastery of the representation of the human body, its entanglement with other bodies, and knowledge of scene composition), contemporary battle 346 Christine Lehleiter scenes had no place in the art theory of the time (in André Félibien’s comprehensive and influential text from 1667 for example, there was no category in which these scenes would fit). Contemporary battle representations were considered rather within the tradition of materials with documentary quality. Van der Meulen certainly tried to break out of this tradition, but it still shaped his work and the perception of it. In the context of Goethe’s reference to van der Meulen and his war reporting, it is worthwhile to have a look at this aesthetic genealogy and the genealogy of battle scene depictions� In contrast to classic battle scenes which highlight the human body and the achievement of the single warrior, the representation of contemporary battle scenes is shaped by the focus on the topography of the contested, or conquered, territory� We can see an example in the seventeenth-century depiction of the Recapture of Corbie 1636 (unknown artist). 15 Visually, we have a small strip of landscape in the foreground of this picture where we can discern some figures which might be involved in a battle formation. As observers, we look at these figures from a slightly tilted angle from above. Behind the strip of battle landscape, we have an extended topography which we observe from a yet steeper angle and which, therefore, appears as if it were folded up (raised). The image is less a depiction of the battle than a document and proof of the newly gained territory� The basic structure of this kind of battle depiction became so established that, as Kirchner observes, the raised landscape alone with the conquered (or to be conquered) city at the horizon often signalizes already a battle (115). In the seventeenth-century copper engraving Norlinghen by Nicolas Regnesson (after Francois Chauveau) which illustrates Jean Puget de La Serre’s Eloge historique (1647), we barely see any signs of war, just a few halberd-like poles in the foreground, a vast plane, and a city at the horizon, but the contemporary viewer was in the know that this is the scene of a battle. 16 The tradition depicted here becomes important not only because of Goethe’s direct reference to van der Meulen, but also because Goethe inscribes himself into this tradition and implicitly comments on it. We still have a drawing of Verdun by Goethe produced during the Campagne � 17 We see a wide landscape overlooked by a single observer in the foreground. Otherwise, there are no people, everything is calm if not idyllic and the image certainly lends itself to support the claim that Goethe refused to acknowledge the reality of battle and the cruelty of war, focusing instead on the development of the Farbenlehre which seems to be referenced in the rainbow colors of the light which appears from the left� This is precisely the kind of criticism that Alexander Roob formulates when discussing the image in his detailed study of the drawings that Goethe produced The Reality of Battle: Realism in the Context of Goethe’s War Experience 347 in the context of his war reporting ( Auch ich in Verdun 2008)� Roob observes that Goethe’s Verdun image is characterized by a “provozierende Ruhe und Gelassenheit” (1: 6) 18 that betrays a reactionary understanding of social structures� Roob interprets the figure in the picture’s foreground as a soldier but notes the soldier’s calm demeanor which he reads as the expression of aristocratic paternalism: “Die Haltung, die er einnimmt, gibt allerdings beredten Aufschluss über das Selbstverständnis, mit dem die aristokratischen Aggressoren in das sich im Aufruhr befindende Land einfielen. In der Pose des Schäfers bewacht und beschützt er die Stadt” (1: 6). The political stance observed here coincides, according to Roob, with specific stylistic preferences and with new aesthetic directions in Goethe’s oeuvre after the Italienische Reise . While Goethe had initially preferred what Roob calls a “wirklichkeitsnahen Blick auf Alltagssituationen” in the tradition of Dutch late-baroque graphic arts, he now turned, so Roob claims, to a “monumentalisierten Auffassung, die sich an die idealisierenden Landschafsdarstellungen etwa von Poussin und Lorrain anlehnt” (1: 8). Roob concludes that not only the Verdun image but all drawings that Goethe produced during the Campagne in 1792 follow an ideal of the heroic contemplative landscape “cleansed” (“gereinigt”) of all ordinary life (1: 9). Roob’s analysis of Goethe’s war reporting and his drawings is embedded in a broader criticism of Goethe’s position vis-à-vis the French Revolution and his role as an important administrator at the Weimar court� Highlighting Goethe’s hesitation in light of the revolutionary project, Roob argues that Goethe accompanied the war effort not only as artist and cultural ambassador, but as an important political advisor with an avid interest in strategic questions (1: 2—3). Roob even goes so far as to imply - drawing on Ludwig Börne’s assessment - that Goethe was a co-author of the Manifest of the duke of Braunschweig and, therefore, partly to be blamed for the terror in Paris (1: 4). It is probably true that Wolfgang Rothe’s characterization of Goethe as pacifist is misleading (Rothe 1998), but Roob’s insistence on Goethe’s complicity and his assessment that Goethe’s real idols were after all not “Shakespeare oder Klopstock, sondern Eroberungskrieger wie Friedrich de[r] Große[.] und Napoleon I” (1: 3) overlooks not only the irony with which Goethe’s report comments the heroic and imperial gesture displayed in images such as that of van der Meulen, but it also equates the decision not to depict the war’s brutality with a lack of authenticity. Roob juxtaposes Goethe’s distanced account with the war report that Friedrich Christian Laukhard 19 provided in his autobiography published in the years immediately following the failed campaign: 348 Christine Lehleiter Die Härten des Krieges waren ihm [Goethe] dabei immer nur wenige kurzatmige Aufzählungen am Rande wert, die in den meisten Fälle den äußerst lebendigen und anschaulichen Kriegsberichten des pfälzischen Schriftstellers Friedrich Christian Laukhard entnommen sind. Dieser hatte den gleichen Feldzug erlebt, allerdings von unten, aus der Perspektive eines einfachen Soldaten. (Roob 2: 20) 20 Laukhard’s report is praised here for its liveliness and graphicness. The criticism of a lack of authenticity is connected to a criticism of social class and it is not astonishing that Roob lauds Laukhard’s war report for its perspective “from below.” The causal relationship that is established here between class, authenticity, and the crudeness of reality is not new, but the ease with which it remains unquestioned and the way in which it is equated with a political argument is somewhat surprising. At the same time, Roob’s analysis raises important questions: What does authenticity mean in the context of war reporting? What is the kind of work that we expect authenticity in war reporting to do? What are the implications of innovations in war and media technology on war experience and reporting? In Regarding the Pain of Others , Sontag reflects extensively on war reporting and the question of authenticity� Discussing Virginia Woolf ’s Three Guineas (1938) in which Woolf expresses the belief that seeing the horrors of the war can only lead to the wish to end it, Sontag embarks upon a wide-ranging contemplation on the representation of war and suffering, and its ethical implications. Sontag observes the kind of expectations with which media consumers often come to war reports with which they are confronted in the daily news. They want, Sontag says: the weight of witnessing without the taint of artistry, which is equated with insincerity or mere contrivance. Pictures of hellish events seem more authentic when they don’t have the look that comes from being ‘properly’ lighted and composed, because the photographer either is an amateur or - just as serviceable - has adopted one of several familiar anti-art styles. (Sontag 32) Sontag questions both the possibility of an authentic image and the hope that seeing the war’s horrors will make the audience more engaged in the stance against war. Delineating a long history from Plato to Burke and Bataille, she analyzes the feelings (including excitement) which we might experience when looking at the horror, and she observes the lethargy and lack of compassion that originates in our inability to change the situation (Sontag 129). War photographs, Sontag notes, “reiterate. They simplify. They agitate. They create the illusion of consensus” out of a “hypothetical shared experience” which presumably leads to the sentiment that horrors of war are inacceptable and need to be The Reality of Battle: Realism in the Context of Goethe’s War Experience 349 stopped (5). Sontag spends a good part of the essay dismantling this illusion. There is a real danger - she suggests - that all that remains is voyeuristic pleasure. Sontag comes away from these considerations with a deep suspicion visà-vis the image and its instant and haunting recall mechanism (26—27), but she holds out some hope that “[n]arratives can make us understand” (113). Sontag’s meditation on war representation is useful when considering Goethe’s decision against the depiction of the cruelty of war not as a misrepresentation of the war - or merely the expression of a reactionary position - but as an acknowledgment that authenticity is not an option and that displaying cruelty follows a logic of the spectacle bare of any ethical wake-up function. The aim here is not to launch into an apology of Goethe’s position towards the war and its revolutionary cause - there can be little doubt that he had his hesitations and his behind-the-scene activities against popular upheavals back in Weimar are well documented (see Wilson 1999 and 2004) - but I would like to suggest that the focus of the attack on his political position makes it impossible to consider the kind of questions around representation that Goethe contemplates in wake of his war experience. Let us consider the Verdun image once again. While we might regret at first sight the suppression of the actual battle scene, a closer look at the drawing puts the scene firmly in the tradition of battle depictions. We have a small strip of landscape in the foreground which offers us some details, such as the vineyard to the left and possibly a weapon in the hands of the sitting figure. There is no transition between the hill in the foreground and the landscape which extends to the horizon. The horizon is shaped by the city which is supposed to be conquered and its battle readiness is highlighted by its Vauban fortification structures� As in the van der Meulen battle depictions, the observer outside the picture has a slightly elevated position compared to the observer in the picture and is privileged in its ability to assess the situation and, possibly, its historical significance. There is no mimetic representation of battle activity, but in the context of the iconographic tradition, we can see that this is the topography of a battle scene� Considering the image’s focus on topography and the battle’s target in the distanced background, we can read the figure in the foreground as a soldier, but we can also consider the figure as an observer of a war fought with a technology that allows acting from the distance. We can read the figure’s tool as neither gun nor shepherd stick (Roob), but as one of the telescopes which Goethe mentions when reporting on the scene and which brought the distant action, and its cruelty, so close to him� There are indications that the problem of perception that Goethe considers in this context is deeply connected both to war depictions in general and to the new challenges which appear as a result of the fact 350 Christine Lehleiter that the war is fought at great distance and that the observation of the battle and the suffering that it brings is now possible in temporal immediacy despite the geographic distance. Goethe highlights the problem in the way in which he shapes the vast plane that extends between observer and fortification. He artfully extends this vastness by one element which can only be seen in the colored reproduction, namely the fact that the extended landscape is colored in a blue tint� Goethe applies the Verblauungseffekt , which is usually reserved for the horizon, right behind the hilly landscape strip in the foreground� In using the blue color, Goethe puts extra stress on the difference between foreground and landscape which the battle scene tradition demanded, and thereby the distance between the observer and that which is about to be conquered (we will return to the discussion of color and telescope below). In depictions of classical battles, the fight between two warriors is often put front and centre� The victor’s heroism is derived from his corporeal presence and superiority which ultimately determines the outcome of the battle. One reason why such forms of representation were not possible any longer for contemporary battle scenes was technological advancement. Artillery had largely replaced corporeal power and the outcome of the battle was decisively shaped by technological superiority� The distance established by the topographic conquest documentation was also a reflection on a changed war technology. Military successes were increasingly indebted in crucial ways to improvements in artillery. These technological advancements had significant impact on the understanding of heroism and extended the distance between perpetrator and victim. Goethe reflects on these changes. Goethe foils the statement of heroic battle and conquest not only by extending the distance between adversaries but also in his narrative account of the battle of Verdun. He does so by introducing the medium of the “Fernglas” (telescope) into the narrative. If it is difficult to ascertain whether the object next to the observer that appears in the visual representation should indeed be read as a telescope, the narrative mentions the instrument explicitly. The view through the telescope which the narrator provides - employing a kind of teichoscopic report for the viewer of the image - radically undermines both the picture’s idyllic pretense and its allusion to gestures of heroic conquest� Instead, and in parallel to the burning villages described in the van der Meulen reference quoted above, Goethe shifts the focus away from the historic overview to the detail of human beings struggling for their survival� In the entry for 31 August 1792, he notes about the preparations for the bombardment: Mit guten Ferngläsern beschauten wir indessen die Stadt und konnten ganz genau erkennen was auf dem gegen uns gekehrten Wall vorging, mancherlei Volk das The Reality of Battle: Realism in the Context of Goethe’s War Experience 351 sich hin und her bewegte und besonders an einem Fleck sehr tätig zu sein schien. (FA 16: 405) And then, during the bombardment, Goethe notes: Um Mitternacht fing das Bombardement an, sowohl von der Batterie auf unserem rechten Ufer, als von einer andern auf dem linken, welche näher gelegen und mit Brandraketen spielend, die stärkste Wirkung hervorbrachte. Diese geschwänzten Feuermeteore mußte man denn ganz gelassen durch die Luft fahren und bald darauf ein Stadtquartier in Flammen sehen. Unsere Ferngläser, dorthin gerichtet, gestatteten uns auch dieses Unheil im Einzelnen zu betrachten; wir konnten die Menschen erkennen, die sich oben auf den Mauern dem Brande Einhalt zu tun eifrig bemühten, wir konnten die freistehenden, zusammenstürzenden Gesparre bemerken und unterscheiden […]. Ich war in eine Batterie getreten, die eben gewaltsam arbeitete, allein der fürchterlich dröhnende Klang abgefeuerter Haubitzen fiel meinem friedlichen Ohr unerträglich, ich mußte mich bald entfernen. (FA 16: 405) Contrary to the previous scene under the spell of van der Meulen, this one reflects ongoing preparation for bombardment and action. Interestingly, Goethe observes that the greater access to detail (“ganz genau erkennen”) allows for a better assessment of the damage but does not increase a wish or ability to identify (“mußte man denn ganz gelassen durch die Luft fahren […] sehen”); instead, the narrator Goethe eventually turns away. Goethe first averts his sight, but when he cannot isolate himself from the noise of artillery, he leaves the observer position altogether� 21 Much as a modern “Fern-seher” who witnesses an attack on a faraway city, Goethe is in the dilemma of witnessing the war in real time without being able to engage in the action. Narrating the event, he also stages for the reader to be a witness of action in the distance. While Mendelssohn can accept pleasure in light of tragedy because he can theorize our inability to help, Goethe, confronted with a new technology of warfare and the use of a relatively new medium of the telescope, needs to step away. His stepping aside to discuss the theory of color with Duke Reuß, I want to suggest, is not an unwillingness to confront, witness and document the cruelty of war, but an expression of an ethics in light of a new possibility of murderous action at a distance and its real-time witnessing. Such ethics concludes that for those who cannot help or change the course of action, it is unethical to continue to watch and it is impossible to relate the events in mimetic ways. 22 While the telescope brought the distant event closer to the observer Goethe, Goethe’s visual representation of the scene in the Verdun aquarelle enlarges the visual distance to the embattled city by drawing on the Verblauungseffekt � However, there is a way in which Goethe’s use of the color blue also has the 352 Christine Lehleiter potential to bring the event closer� Goethe’s reference to the Farbenlehre in this context provides further clues about the kind of visualization that Goethe might have had in mind when he grappled with the difficulty to represent the violence. In the Materialien zur Geschichte der Farbenlehre , Goethe relates an anecdote which speaks to the Verblauungseffekt in landscape painting: Ich hatte die Ohnmacht des Blauen sehr deutlich empfunden, und seine unmittelbare Verwandtschaft mit dem Schwarzen bemerkt; nun gefiel es mir, zu behaupten: das Blaue sei keine Farbe! und ich freute mich eines allgemeinen Widerspruchs. […] Indessen versäumte ich nicht, die Herrlichkeit der atmosphärischen Farben zu betrachten, wobei sich die entschiedenste Stufenfolge der Luftperspektive, die Bläue der Ferne so wie naher Schatten, auffallend bemerken ließ. (FA 23.1: 972—73) Goethe occupies himself here with the phenomenon of the color blue in comprehensive ways. He considers a number of phenomena which belong to optical categories (such as perspective) and tools and conventions of landscape painting (such as the creation of distance). However, Goethe also makes remarkable comments on the psychological quality of color� In the Farbenlehre , Goethe devotes a comprehensive section to “sinnlich-sittliche Wirkung der Farbe” in which he discusses the effects of colors on the mind (“Gemüt”) (FA 23.1: 247). When Goethe discusses these effects, he concludes “daß die einzelnen Farbeindrücke nicht verwechselt werden können, daß sie spezifisch wirken, und entschieden spezifische Zustände in dem lebendigen Organ hervorbringen müssen. […] Eben auch so indem Gemüt” (FA 23.1: 248). It is important for him to highlight that such color effect on the mind is comparable or parallel to the effect on the organ, the eye, and as such these effects are specific and unexchangeable and even come with necessity (“müssen”). Goethe considers these effects to be of psychological but universal quality so that he can state: “Die Erfahrung lehrt uns, daß die einzelnen Farben besondere Gemütsstimmungen geben” (FA 23.1: 248). By using the color blue so generously in his depiction of Verdun, Goethe not only stresses and enlarges the visual distance between the observer and the observed (the perpetrators and the victims), but he also represents, or rather re-creates, an emotional experience which is very close to his experience as witness. By attributing to the color blue a feeling of swoon and powerlessness, Goethe evokes precisely those feelings which he also names in the already quoted letter to Reinhard thirty years later� In the context of a study of realism in light of war experience, Goethe’s considerations and use of color are of great interest. Throughout his war reporting, Goethe reflects on how the event is represented and how the war experience can be best related. In the reference to van der Meulen, he highlights how both perception and presentation of the event is mediated by an iconographic tradition The Reality of Battle: Realism in the Context of Goethe’s War Experience 353 which helps to grasp what has happened but also uses the narrative to set both observer (of the result of a past violent action) and reader into (ironic) distance to the event. This distance becomes even more important when the narrator has become an eyewitness of people struggling for life. In light of the cruelty of the bombardment, mimetic representation becomes impossible� Goethe’s Verdun picture does not only exclude the violence and turns to the representation of a seemingly peaceful scene, but it frees color from its mimetic function (and its conventional or iconographic use) and draws on its psychological qualities. It is precisely in this moment that color obtains its greatest veracity, or realism� This realism is ultimately no longer based on visual verisimilitude but on a physiological-psychological (yet not subjective) phenomenon which both eyewitness and viewer of the image experience. The point here is not to advocate or reject the effectiveness of this technique but to highlight Goethe’s intensive engagement with the question of how best to relate the battle experience. In his attempts to find an adequate linguistic and visual language, Goethe is highly aware of the constant aesthetization (and of its necessity) and explores, at the same time, possibilities of relating the events in a less mediated way. Goethe is deeply engaged not only in the tradition and iconography of a specific topic but also in the psychology of aesthetics. The question of how aesthetic features relate to states of the mind had been at the centre of eighteenth-century considerations on the sublime and beautiful. For Burke, feelings of terror are intimately connected to the sublime to which he associates the jagged, interrupted line of ruin and destruction (cf. Boulton lvi). Consequently, the sublime has often been considered the fitting registry for the representation of war and its experience and for eliciting particular audience responses. Considering the power of the mortars that were shot at Verdun and the destruction that they caused, it is indeed noteworthy that Goethe makes a conscious effort to stay clear of the sublime (cf. Krimmer, “Portrait of War”). In fact, the particular attention the Verdun drawing pays to the meandering river stresses the importance that Goethe attributes to the plane in the overall conceptualization of the image and its psycho-physiological force. If Burke had connected the sublime to terror, he also had correlated the beautiful with the smooth line creating pleasure and delight in the audience’s mind. Following a similar line of thought, the English painter William Hogarth had stated in his Analysis of Beauty (1753): The eye hath this sort of enjoyment in winding walks, and serpentine rivers, and all sorts of objects, whose forms […] are composed principally of what, I call, the waving and serpentine lines […] and from the pleasure that it gives the mind, intitles it to the name of beautiful. (qtd. in Boulton lxxi) 354 Christine Lehleiter It is this formal language that is referenced in the meandering river in the long stretch between observer and city in Goethe’s Verdun image. 23 Goethe then combines here an experience of distance and swoon with an overall feeling of beauty. Such combination might astonish at first sight, but in his extensive writings on landscape painting, where Goethe had thought about the place of ruins and the remnants of former life in representation, we can find an explanation. In Ruisdael als Dichter (1813), Goethe describes the Dutch painter’s Das Kloster with particular attention to viewer response: Schon steht veraltet eine herrliche Buche da, entblättert, entästet, mit geborstener Rinde. Damit sie uns aber durch ihren herrlich dargestellten Schaft nicht betrübe, sondern erfreue, so sind ihr andere, noch volllebendige Bäume zugesellt, die den kahlen Stamme durch den Reichtum ihrer Äste und Zweige zu Hülfe kommen. (FA 19: 634) Read against the backdrop of Goethe’s considerations of the ruin in landscape painting, the Verdun image speaks of Goethe’s attempt to incorporate the war experience within an ultimately harmonious total which does not ignore the horror but aims to lead the observer into a state that can overcome it� Goethe’s consideration of an ultimately harmonious totality references a debate about theodicy that formed an important backdrop of the discussions on the ethics and aesthetics of delightful terror in eighteenth-century German texts. If in this context we accept Roob’s suggestion to read the observer in the Verdun image as a shepherd, an alternative to Roob’s interpretation of the image as an expression of aristocratic paternalism becomes possible� Before leaving for Rome in 1786, Karl Philipp Moritz had written Fragmente aus dem Tagebuche eines Geistersehers, which were published in 1793 as Die Unschuldswelt � In this text, Moritz argues that an idyllic reality does not provide material for aesthetic production (cf. Zelle 413—15). Moritz does not shy away from expressing this conclusion drastically: Aber freilich, wenn alle Menschen Schafe gehütet hätten, so wären sie zwar an sich wohl glücklich gewesen. Aber […] [w]o hätte dann der Stoff zu einer Iliade , zu einer Aeneide herkommen sollen? Armselige Welt, die dann geblieben wäre, / Ohne Schwert und Helm, / Ohne Schlachten, / Ohne Kriegsrüstung, / Ohne Blutvergießen, / Ohne Trauerspiele, / Ohne Geschütz und Bomben, / Ohne Schanz’ und Bollwerk […] / Wenn Tausende an einem Tage vor dem Schwertstreich fallen, das ist doch etwas Großes. Und das Große wollen wir ja; unsre Seele will ja erweitert sein, unsre Einbildungskraft will viel umspannen. (qtd. in Zelle 415) For Moritz, the horror of reality is aesthetically justified. Goethe references Moritz’s imaginary space between shepherd’s idyll and blood shedding in his account of siege and bombardment of Verdun. In light of the war experience, The Reality of Battle: Realism in the Context of Goethe’s War Experience 355 Goethe opts very consciously against an aesthetic justification of terror and for a register of the beautiful idyll which is referenced in shepherd and meandering river. This is not the paternalistic stance of aristocracy who does not know the sorrows of the people. Instead, it is a conscious decision against an aesthetization of the horrific experience of these people (“Volk”; FA 16: 405), which are acknowledged as humans (“Menschen”; FA 16: 405). In the following section, I will provide one more instance of Goethe’s experiments with the possibilities of representation and realism in the war context. In June 1793, Goethe witnessed another siege and bombardment, namely that of Mainz� In the entry for June 11, Goethe provides a general picture of the troops’ positions and their preparation of the bombardment� He gushes about the landscape, its charm and aesthetics� The description of the preparation of the ground for camp and battle culminates in the declaration of the scene as a smaller version of the most beautiful park of the world. There is little missing to declare the scene a paradise: Das leicht zu behandelnde Erdreich bot sich den Händen geschickter Gärtner dar, welche die gefälligste Parkanlage mit wenig Bemühung bildeten: die abhängige Seite ward geböscht und mit Rasen belegt, Lauben gebaut, auf- und absteigende Kommunikationsgänge gegraben, Flächen planiert, wo das Militär in seiner ganzen Pracht und Zierlichkeit sich zeigen konnte, anstoßende Wäldchen und Büsche mit in den Plan gezogen, so daß man bei der köstlichsten Ansicht nichts mehr wünschen konnte als diese sämtlichen Räume eben so bearbeitet zu sehen, um des herrlichsten Parks von der Welt zu genießen. Unser Krause zeichnete sorgfältig die Aussicht mit allen ihren gegenwärtigen Eigentümlichkeiten. (FA 16: 582) The passage is characterized by formulations of minimization and might seem a hyperbole of trivialization: the soil is easy to work on, the workers are talented gardeners, the camp is a pleasant park, and the military is dainty. Such miniaturization turns what were after all preparations for the heavy bombardment of Mainz into child’s play� The description is accompanied by a reference to an illustration prepared by Georg Melchior Kraus in which Goethe highlights the care to detail and particularities with which Kraus had treated the subject matter (582). Indeed, Kraus’ illustration is characterized by a panoramic view and the quality of a model landscape in which pewter figures seem to be staged to reenact the scene� Kraus, who was the director of the Zeichenschule in Weimar, had studied in Paris and would have been familiar with the French battle scene tradition to which van der Meulen belonged. 24 In fact, his illustration shares important features with this tradition, such as the extended landscape and a horizon 356 Christine Lehleiter apparently marked by the city to be conquered. However, a closer look also reveals important differences. For example, the landscape between foreground and horizon forms a continuum and provides space for a number of local scenes� We see some military to the right in formation and tents which suggest the siege� It also seems that the observers in the foreground do not focus on the city to be conquered but on an unknown sight to the left. They look outside the picture but leave the observers - here again located above them - in the dark about their object of interest and make it difficult for them to assess the situation. Here, the picture’s viewer knows less, or at least something else, than the observers in the picture� The picture tells many little stories but it refuses to offer a grand narrative. It exposes the fragmentized perception of the eye-witness in the picture, while at the same time also refusing any possibility of an allegorical or even historical reading for the viewer outside the picture. Battle scene iconography might be one way to approach Kraus’s landscape but yet another media history opens up if we consider how Kraus likely produced the image. Throughout the war, Kraus travelled with the businessman and artist Charles Gore and was involved in the latter’s work with the camera obscura� Goethe reports of this cooperation in the entry for 15 July 1793: [Gore] zeichnete sehr glücklich in der Camera obscura und hatte, Land und See bereisend, sich auf diese Weise die schönsten Erinnerungen gesammelt. Nun konnte er, in Weimar wohnhaft, angewohnter Beweglichkeit nicht entsagen, blieb immer geneigt kleine Reisen vorzunehmen, wobei ihn denn gewöhnlich Rat Krause zu begleiten pflegte, der mit leichter, glücklicher Fassungsgabe die vorstehenden Landschaften zu Papier brachte, schattierte, färbte, und so arbeiteten beide um die Wette. Die Belagerung von Maynz, als ein seltener wichtiger Fall, wo das Unglück selbst malerisch zu werden versprach, lockte die beiden Freunde gleichfalls nach dem Rhein, wo sie sich keinen Augenblick müßig verhielten. (FA 16: 593) Both Goethe’s description of the landscape at Marienborn and Kraus’s illustration of it are decidedly nonthreatening, emotionally unengaged, and share an attempt to remove the subject from the observer position. Considering Kraus’s work with Gore and considering that the camera obscura was frequently used as a tool in landscape painting, it is likely that the view that we see in Kraus’s illustration of the Belagerung is actually the view of a camera. 25 There is another image of the bombardment by Kraus that likely was produced with help of the camera obscura, namely an image of the ruin of the Liebfrauenkirche in Mainz, which had been destroyed in the bombardment (Roob 2: 12). This “photographic” depiction of the ruin promises to correspond to a realistic and less aestheticized rendering of the war. However, its subject is not only indebted to an iconography of the disrupted and terrifying formal language The Reality of Battle: Realism in the Context of Goethe’s War Experience 357 of the sublime, but its promise of immediacy is also immediately undermined by its indebtedness to another image of a church ruin, Bernardo Bellotto’s depiction of the Dresden Kreuzkirche (1765), an image which depicts the destruction created by Prussian bombardment during the Seven Years War (Roob 2: 13—14). Bellotto, a cousin of Canaletto (Giovanni Antonio Canal), had been trained in Italy and it is likely that he himself worked with the camera obscura which had been introduced already in the seventeenth century as a tool in the production of urban landscape painting. It is not clear whether Goethe knew Bellotto’s rendering of the ruin, but he had seen the destruction of the city himself when he visited in 1768 (cf. Sommerfeldt) and the ruin of the Kreuzkirche stood out in this memory (cf. Roob 2: 15). In Dichtung und Wahrheit , Goethe notes about his Dresden visit: Diese köstlichen, Geist und Sinn zur wahren Kunst vorbereitenden Erfahrungen wurden jedoch durch einen der traurigsten Anblicke unterbrochen und gedämpft, durch den zerstörten und verödeten Zustand so mancher Straße Dresdens, durch die ich meinen Weg nahm. Die Mohrenstraße im Schutt, sowie die Kreuzkirche mit ihrem geborstenen Turm drückten sich mir tief ein und stehen noch wie ein dunkler Fleck in meiner Einbildungskraft. (FA 14: 354) The stay in Dresden became for Goethe an important moment of reflection on how images shape our perception of the world. In his account of the visit in Dichtung und Wahrheit , Goethe reports twice about his tendency and ability to see reality as image. One of the accounts depicts the situation when returning to his accommodation at a cobbler’s house: Als ich bei meinem Schuster wieder eintrat, um das Mittagsmahl zu genießen, trauete ich meinen Augen kaum: denn ich glaubte ein Bild von Ostade vor mir zu sehen, so vollkommen, daß man es nur auf die Galerie hätte hängen dürfen. Stellung der Gegenstände, Licht, Schatten, bräunlicher Teint des Ganzen, magische Haltung, alles, was man in jenen Bildern bewundert, sah ich hier in der Wirklichkeit. Es war das erste Mal, daß ich auf einen so hohen Grad die Gabe gewahr wurde, die ich nachher mit mehrerem Bewußtsein übte, die Natur nämlich mit den Augen dieses oder jenes Künstlers zu sehen, dessen Werken ich soeben eine besondere Aufmerksamkeit gewidmet hatte. (FA 14: 350—51) 26 Against the backdrop of Bellotto’s ruin painting and against the backdrop of Goethe’s experience in Dresden, Kraus’s pictures of the siege and destruction of Mainz are no longer distanced and objective “photographs” of reality. Instead, they are inscribed into an iconographic tradition and saturated with personal memory� Much as its heir, photography, the camera obscura image had promised to be a medium that provides objectivity and an unmediated access to the world. 358 Christine Lehleiter It is with this hope for immediacy that the camera obscura appears in Goethe’s Wahlverwandtschaften where Gore seems to make a cameo as the English Lord who visits the estate of Eduard and Charlotte where he is busy to picture the estate’s landscape (cf. Hörisch 51—55). While in Wahlverwandtschaften the English Lord and his machine hold much promise precisely because neither of them seem to comment, judge or otherwise engage with the protagonists’ emotional confusions and to offer a “technisches Jenseits der Sprache” und “Vorstellungen” (Hörisch 51 and 54), 27 the reference to Kraus’s image has a different effect in Goethe’s war reporting which undermines the image’s promise of immediacy. While Goethe might have hoped that Kraus’s image could help to illustrate his report of the siege in unmediated ways for his readers, the image becomes an occasion to remember Kraus. Its importance lays, I would like to suggest, less in its representative function than its value as a monument to Kraus’s memory. This camera obscura landscape turns for Goethe, much as the images that Gore produces, in one of the “Erinnerungen” of the war. As such, it has for him a much higher emotional charge than it conveys to the reader� While Kraus was familiar with battle scene iconography and the practice of camera obscura landscape painting, he was aesthetically much closer to genre painting. During his time in Paris, he had gotten to know the oeuvre of Jean-Baptiste Greuze - painter of works that are characterized by both their emotional saturation and allegorical depth such as Young girl weeping for the dead bird - and was known in Weimar not only as a teacher of Goethe and many others from the circle but also for his contributions to Bertuch’s Journal der Moden and the Bilderbuch für Kinder . When Goethe writes about Kraus’s depiction of the siege of Mainz thirty years later, Kraus had already died. He had been wounded when French soldiers looted Weimar in 1806 after Napoleon’s victories in Jena and Auerstedt and died only a few weeks later. For Goethe, the picture must have signalized not only a memory of the war but a memory of Kraus and his life and death against the backdrop of the post-revolutionary wars. This landscape does not depict the war in a heroic or even merely historical way, but Goethe’s report maintains a memory of the picture, the moment of its production, and a memory of Kraus. In particular in the context of the sentimentally charged genre paintings for which Kraus was known, the image becomes a site of memory and mourning which remembers the sentimental gesture without having access to it any longer and within a medium whose advent had promised technical precision (cf. Hörisch 51). Indeed, in the following decades the tradition of visual battle depictions would undergo significant changes. While photography slowly took over many of the image’s traditional functions, as the function of documenting and of representation in the name of the state, war painting was freed from its im- The Reality of Battle: Realism in the Context of Goethe’s War Experience 359 mediate relationship to the events on the ground and could become a space of reflection. While it still quoted the features which we have described here - and in some cases brought representative heroism to its climax (as in Anton von Werner’s work) - battle depiction could now be replaced by an evocation of the battle’s memory. In 1817, even before Goethe started to take concrete steps to write down the Campagne experiences, William Turner visited the battlefield of Waterloo. Detailed topographical studies led to a painting, probably finished a year after Goethe’s death, which quotes the French tradition of a wide-open landscape with a marked strip of foreground, but no horses and warriors are to be seen. However, there are traces, as Monika Wagner has demonstrated, that evoke the memory of the battle: there are sheep who follow the soldiers’ trajectory and a skeleton in the foreground reminds of the death that has taken place here. The sky is lit by lightning which illuminates the scene in a ghostly manner and evokes the glare of artillery. In Turner’s Waterloo , the battle is not depicted but references to the battle are abundant. However, attempts to provide audiences at home with the frontline experience of artillery would shape war representation in the nineteenth century and newest developments in media technology were intrinsically linked to this attempt. Goethe’s war report considers the options. In light of the inability to express the experience of the bombardment in words, Goethe sets some hope in one last medium, a “transparent” visual representation. 28 He reports of Gore’s and Kraus’s attempts to capture the artillery power and its effects on Mainz in what Goethe calls “Brandstudien”: Herr Gore und Rat Krause behandelten den Vorfall künstlerisch und machten so viele Brandstudien, daß ihnen später gelang ein durchscheinendes Nachtstück zu verfertigen, welches noch vorhanden ist und, wohl erleuchtet, mehr als irgend eine Wortbeschreibung die Vorstellung einer unselig glühenden Hautpstadt des Vaterlandes zu überliefern im Stande sein möchte. (FA 16: 585—86) Roob connects the interest in the Brandstudien to the genre of depictions of nightly volcano eruptions which were popular in Italy since the sixteenth century (2: 21). In the comment to the Frankfurt Goethe edition, Klaus-Detlef Müller notes that a painting by the Frankfurt artist C.G. Schütz that depicts the nightly bombardment of Mainz on 29 June 1793 is among the Weimar collection, but he regrets that there is no evidence of a painting by Gore and Kraus (FA 16: 996). Both Müller and Roob provide important references to the iconography of nightly fires and volcanic eruptions, but it is misleading to look for a painting by Kraus and Gore. Goethe’s choice of words from “durchscheinenden Nachtstück” (transparent night piece) to the condition of “wohl erleuchtet” (well lit) suggests instead that he was thinking of yet another technical invention in 360 Christine Lehleiter media history, the magic lantern� The magic lantern, built on the same principle as the camera obscura, uses transparent plates and a light source to project an image on a screen� The lantern gained popularity in the eighteenth century throughout Europe and its function was greatly improved by the invention in the 1790s of the Argand lamp which considerably improved light quality (and to which Goethe possibly refers when stressing the importance of a good light source)� 29 Early on images that were chosen for projection with the magic lantern focused on ghostly figures. One early drawing for the machine produced by Christiaan Huygens shows death taking off his head, another by the German polymath Athanasius Kircher depicts a person in purgatory or hellfire. Such images combined entertainment with moral-educational purposes. Magic lantern projections were regularly used in phantasmagoria productions which confronted eager audiences from the late eighteenth century onwards with ghostly experiences, but phantasmagoric shows really took off in the 1790s. They gained particular urgency in post-revolutionary France where their popularity was closely tied to their lifelike impressions. In fact, in Paris “the show [of Etienne Gaspard Robertson] was temporarily halted by the police because it was thought that Robertson could bring Louis XVI back to life” (on the magic lantern see Barber, here 74)� In his war report, Goethe employs a number of media technologies in order to observe and represent the event. From the word and the image to the camera obscura and the magic lantern, the represented event gains greater and greater realism to the perceiving audience. Interestingly though, while the magic lantern brings the viewer closest to “reality,” it also produces the most eerie apparitions of ghosts. Goethe had thought about the relationship between reality, representation, and ghost-like phenomena in one of the maxims, which considers the question of how the human mind relates to reality and whether humans have the capacity to gain insight into it� It is in this epistemological context that he expresses both the conviction that the human being has access to reality and the acknowledgment that mediatisation is necessary in the process of cognition: Der Mensch ist als wirklich in die Mitte einer wirklichen Welt gesetzt und mit solchen Organen begabt, daß er das Wirkliche und nebenbey das Mögliche erkennen und hervorbringen kann. Alle gesunden Menschen haben die Ueberzeugung ihres Daseyns und eines Daseyenden um sie her. Indessen giebt es auch einen hohlen Fleck im Gehirn, d.h. eine Stelle wo sich kein Gegenstand abspiegelt, wie denn auch im Auge selbst ein Fleckchen ist das nicht sieht. Wird der Mensch auf diese Stelle besonders aufmerksam, vertieft er sich darin, so verfällt er in eine Geisteskrankheit, ahnet hier Dinge aus einer andern Welt , die aber eigentlich Undinge sind und weder Gestalt noch The Reality of Battle: Realism in the Context of Goethe’s War Experience 361 Begränzung haben, sondern als leere Nacht-Räumlichkeiten ängstigen und den der sich nicht losreißt mehr als gespensterhaft verfolgen. (FA 13: 363) Reiterating the word segment “wirklich” three times, Goethe affirms both the positive existence of the world and the possibility of its recognition by the human mind. At the same time, Goethe acknowledges the existence of a blind spot where cognition fails. Interestingly, Goethe implicitly formulates here a model of the mind that functions like an optical apparatus. Not only is there a direct reference to the analogous working of the eye, but the mind is understood as relating to the world like a mirror. 30 In this theory of the mind, it is a mediated image which allows humans to recognize the world. Considering Goethe’s insistence on the real in the first sentence quoted here, we would expect that the place where mediatisation ends is the place where we are closest to reality. This might well be, but Goethe makes also clear that this place remains for the most part inaccessible for us. Even more, our occupation with the blind spot can generate ghosts whose haunting presence might drive one into madness. Goethe stresses that the concentration on this spot outside mediation does not bring humans closer to reality but pulls them into an abyss of haunting ghosts� A “healthy” mind, by implication, will acknowledge the blind spot but will focus on the mediation precisely as the method to stay grounded in reality� It is not surprising then that the one time Goethe experiments with staying away from mediatisation in his war report - when he plays with the physio-psychological effect of color - is a moment of swoon. As with the “Gespenster” that Goethe mentions in the letter to Carl Friedrich von Reinhard from July 1822 and the “dunkle Fleck” which the sight of the destructed Kreuzkirche burns into Goethe’s memory, the violence and destruction of the war ultimately remain unmediated spaces in the mind which conjure ghosts that better stay undisturbed. To stick with the possibilities of mediatisation is both an epistemological and psychological necessity in Goethe’s war report. We have used here four battle scene depictions which Goethe references or presents in the context of his war reporting in order to propose an answer to the question of how Goethe relates the reality of war and how his realism might be defined in light of the unprecedented violence that he witnessed. Confronted with a fundamental inability to recall and relate the actual experience - as he admits to his friend von Reinhard - Goethe draws on the aid of visual representations, partial but concrete media which are indebted to reality as verisimilitude. At the same time, the narrator Goethe makes use of the interaction between image and text in order to highlight how the image is indebted to aesthetic traditions which facilitate the mediation of the event but cannot 362 Christine Lehleiter relate the full truth of the experience� In the comment on the van der Meulen image, the heroism of the scene is undermined by Goethe’s ironic remark which stresses the difference between aesthetic and ethical categories and the different experiences of perpetrator and victim. When Goethe is confronted with a close and simultaneous look at the targets and victims of the bombardment in Verdun made possible by the telescope, he distances himself from the event by turning away to converse with Duke Reuß about optical observations which he had made earlier that day� His visual depiction of Verdun highlights this attempt of distancing by means of the Verblauungseffekt . The observations which Goethe discussed with Reuß centered on phenomena of refraction in which colors can become independent of concrete objects and in which the refraction phenomenon depends on the position of the observer. Here, Goethe is interested in what happens between the object and the eye that perceives the object. Goethe takes one more step on the line which we might imagine connecting object, eye, and mind, when he relies on the effect of the color blue. Drawing on the psychological but universal effect of blue, Goethe makes a rare attempt to relate the “Ohnmacht” of the experience independent of mimetic means and conventions. In Kraus’s camera obscura depictions of the siege of Mainz, the image reaches a high level of verisimilitude but is still indebted to an iconographic tradition and its significance ultimately derives not from its subject matter. Instead, it derives from its quality as a souvenir of a situation and a person who was a victim of the Napoleonic Wars and whom Goethe knew personally. Realism here is neither in verisimilitude nor in physiological processes but in the individual connection between experience and mind which it can conjure. As such, the meaning of this latter representation remains to a large extent personal and hermetic to a larger audience� 31 Finally, in our last example, the transparent night piece, the image arguably reaches its highest veracity, surpassing - according to Goethe’s own assessment - any verbal rendering. At the same time, it is inscribed into a media event in which the greatest proximity to life is at the same time a ghostly spectre� Referencing Goethe’s realistic turn , Gisela Horn has stressed that Goethe in his war reporting avoids political statements so that the events can speak for themselves (235). It is certainly true that Goethe withholds political judgment, however, the claim that the events speak for themselves has only limited validity. Instead, Goethe aims to make visible to what extent his war reporting is indebted to iconographic and aesthetic traditions, optical, physiological, and ultimately psychological phenomena. Goethe’s realism is deeply aware of these conditions of seeing and reporting, which he reexamines in light of the unprecedented violence that he has experienced and for which he seeks to find a language. Against the iconography of battle scenes, we realize that much like The Reality of Battle: Realism in the Context of Goethe’s War Experience 363 Louis XIV, who commissioned van der Meulen to document his successes across a number of media, Goethe too tests a number of media in order to relate the event and experience of war. However, while Louis XIV’s propagandistic use of the image relies on an audience who is blind to the machinery of this media war, Goethe juxtaposes image and narration in order to make the toolbox visible and in the hope that his readers can dissect the apparatus to see the many realities of battle� Ultimately, the Campagne and Belagerung attest to the necessity and limitations of media in representing the reality of war. Acknowledgment: I thank the participants of the Realism in the Age of Goethe panel series at the GSA 2019 for engaging discussions� In particular, I would like to thank the organizers and editors Christian P. Weber and Jan Jost- Fritz for their careful reading and excellent comments and suggestions� My research is supported in part by funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council� Notes 1 The brutality of previous wars had been immense and the memory of the Thirty Years War was still very present in the eighteenth century. What was new with the kind of warfare that started in the last third of the eighteenth century was what one could call violence at a distance which came with increased artillery power and allowed the attackers to stay distanced from their victims (cf. Haythornthwaite). Even before Napoleon assumed power French artillery was known for its superiority, which was confirmed at Valmy. It is not surprising that Goethe, speaking of Valmy, focused on the experience of the “Kanonade.” Bodiner and Childs report that “[e]ngagement usually commenced with a mutual cannonade, which might last for several hours, which was intended to dismount and damage the opposing artillery” (44). 2 Horn notes Goethe’s use of “Passiv- und Pluralformen” and reads them as a sign of the submission of the individual to the group and of a focus on the event instead of individual emotions (237). 3 There are other places in the report where Goethe highlights the discrepancy between observer and observed victim. In the context of the bombardment of Mainz, he reports how peasants on Sunday observed the artillery from a relatively safe distance as a kind of entertainment after church. The description of the curious and amused onlookers quotes Lucretius’ depiction of entertained onlookers of a shipwreck, which figured large in eighteenth-century aesthetic discussions (Zelle 39—40). Goethe’s implicit refer- 364 Christine Lehleiter ence illustrates the degree to which the author embeds his report within the aesthetic tradition of delightful terror� 4 Important exceptions are the haunting visual representations of war atrocities during the Thirty Years War, most notably Jacques Callot’s The Miseries and Misfortunes of War (1633) (cf. Sontag 52—53). 5 For a comprehensive discussion of the aesthetics of delightful terror in the German context see Carsten Zelle’s seminal “Angenehmes Grauen”: Literaturhistorische Beiträge zur Ästhetik des Schrecklichen im achtzehnten Jahrhundert (1987), to which the following section is indebted. 6 Zelle argues that the problematization of delightful terror was “der innere Motor” of the process that lead to the differentiation of the spheres of ethics and aesthetics (Zelle XXIII). 7 Mendelssohn’s thinking on delightful terror is complex and develops over the span of a decade� Zelle argues convincingly that Mendelssohn’s latest considerations on the topic in the second version of the Rhapsodie from 1771 arrive at the differentiation of the moral and aesthetic spheres (see Zelle 315—58, in particular 354)� 8 In the context of realism, it is noteworthy that bourgeois realism maintains a productive relationship to the gothic. Texts with realist characteristics such as Fontane’s Effi Briest , Gotthelf ’s Schwarze Spinne , and Storm’s Schimmelreiter all maintain gothic elements which drive important parts of the plot� 9 Krimmer has demonstrated that German representations of the war are deeply entangled with notions of the Sublime ( Representation of War )� In her work on Goethe, she points out that the author is an exception in that he was “radically opposed to the concept of war as a sublime experience” (“Portrait of War” 46). She notes “Goethe may scan the war that was forced on him for its aesthetic possibilities, but he does not court war as a venue that offers privileged access to the sublime” (“Portrait of War” 53). 10 Goethe’s reference to the textile resonates in interesting ways not only with the tapestry cycle Histoire du Roy that Louis XIV had ordered to glorify his power - the question of realism had been at the core of the discussion around its conceptualization (cf. Brassat) -, but also with a text that Friedrich Schlegel had written upon seeing Albrecht Altdorfer’s Alexanderschlacht (1528/ 29) (published in Europa 1804)� Implicitly referencing the aesthetic program of Lessing’s Laokoon (1766), he observes: “Nirgends ist Blut und Ekel oder hin und wieder geworfne Glieder und Verzerrungen; nur im äußersten Vorgrunde, wenn man ihn sehr genau betrachtet, erblickt man unter den Füßen der von beiden Seiten grade auf einander einrennenden Ritterscharen, und den Hufen ihrer Streitrosse, mehrere Reihen von Leichen The Reality of Battle: Realism in the Context of Goethe’s War Experience 365 dicht zusammenliegen, wie in einem Gewebe ; gleichsam der Grundteppich zu dieser Welt von Krieg und Waffen, von glänzendem Eisen und noch hellerem Ruhm und Rittertum” (Schlegel 118—19; emphasis mine). While Goethe bemoans that the ghostly apparitions of the war cannot be banned, Schlegel manages to limit the war’s ugly reality to the fringes while at the same time justifying and elevating it as the necessary foundation on which glory and knighthood can be erected. 11 “Manche Vorstellung kann als Bestimmung der Seele etwas Angenehmes haben, ob sie gleich, als Bild des Gegenstandes von Mißbilligung und Widerwillen begleitet wird. Wir müssen uns also wohl hüten, diese beiden Beziehungen, die objektive und die subjektiv, nicht zu vermengen, oder mit einander zu verwechseln” (Mendelssohn 143). 12 For a concise account of the relationship between image, imagination, and verisimilitude in Goethe’s oeuvre see Weber, in particular 102� 13 Van der Meulen’s The Crossing of the Rhine on 12 June 1672 can be found online at en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/ Adam_Frans_van_der_Meulen#/ media/ File: Adam_Frans_van_der_Meulen_-_The_crossing_of_the_Rhine_on_12_ June_1672.jpg (accessed 22 June 2021). 14 In this section, I follow closely and summarize Thomas Kirchner’s work on battle scene iconography and van der Meulen� 15 The image can be found online at fr.wikipedia.org/ wiki/ Si%C3%A8ge_de_ Corbie#/ media/ Fichier: Reprise_de_Corbie,_14_novembre_1636.jpg (accessed 22 June 2021)� 16 The image can be found online at commons.wikimedia.org/ wiki/ File: Regnesson_nicolas_Norlinghen_bmr_116.jpg (accessed 22 June 2021). 17 The image can be found online at commons.wikimedia.org/ wiki/ File: - Goethe_Festung_Verdun_1792.jpg (accessed 22 June 2021). 18 http: / / www.meltonpriorinstitut.org/ pages/ textarchive.php5? view=text&ID=85&language= Deutsch (accessed 30 June 2021; quoted as Roob I). 19 For a discussion of Goethe and Laukhard see Krimmer’s excellent observations in “Portrait of War” (2008). 20 http: / / www.meltonpriorinstitut.org/ pages/ textarchive.php5? view=text&ID=86&language= Deutsch (accessed 30 June 2021; quoted as Roob II). 21 The noise produced by artillery was considered already in Napoleonic times a tactical asset and served psychological warfare (cf. Haythornthwaite 67). See also the observations in Sontag on the different degrees to which eye and ear allow the observer to distance herself from the event (152). 22 Sontag notes on a similar point: “morally alert photographers and ideologues of photography have become increasingly concerned with the issues 366 Christine Lehleiter of exploitation of sentiment (pity, compassion, indignation) in war photography and of rote ways of provoking feeling” (100). 23 Goethe was familiar with Hogarth’s work and comments explicitly on it in his morphological studies of the ox fossil (1822) (FA 24: 558). 24 For a brief account of Kraus’s biography see Donop. 25 Roob also draws the connection to the camera obscura and provides further historical details on its use in landscape painting (2: 11—12). 26 In the Italienische Reise , Goethe makes similar remarks on the phenomenon in an entry from 8 October 1786� From his observation of a personal ability, he arrives at a more general statement which acknowledges how seeing is shaped by biographical-historical conditions (FA 15.1: 93). 27 Already in the Wahlverwandtschaften , the English Lord figure is not as unproblematic as it might seem, and the neutral quality of the camera obscura image is put into question� The Lord’s comments on traveling and home, and later his companion’s telling of the novella, touch Charlotte and Ottilie - whose precarious situation the visitors don’t know yet - deeply: “Der Lord ahnete nicht, wie tief durch seine Betrachtungen die Freundinnen [Charlotte und Ottilie] getroffen wurden” (FA 8: 468). 28 Haythornwthwaite describes the technology behind such siege bombing: “Mortar-bombs resembled howitzer-shells - iron spheres filled with powder and sealed by tapered wooden fuze […]. The effect of mortar-bombs falling almost vertically from their high trajectory could produce startling results […]. For illumination-flares, ‘light balls’ were used, fired from a cannon and comprising an oral iron framework covered with painted cloth” (87). 29 See also Goethe’s essay “Transparent-Gemälde” from April 1820 (FA 20: 524—28). In the early 1820, Louis Daguerre - who soon would invent photography - was also using translucent canvas to create illusions of reality in his diorama theatres (cf. Gernsheim, in particular 14—47). 30 Already Plato describes the mind as a mirror and Locke, in the Essay Concerning Human Understanding , uses the image of the camera obscura (cf. Abrams 57—69, in particular 57)� 31 Goethe’s very conscious choices in the context of war reporting become particularly clear when we consider Schlegel’s account of Altdorfer’s Alexanderschlacht � Schlegel’s appreciation is characterized by a tendency to elevate the image to the realm of a metagenre that can provide a “Sinnbild” (symbol) of the battle and its historical (and eschatological) significance: “[S]oll ich es eine Landschaft nennen, ein historisches Gemälde oder ein Schlachtstück? Alles das ist nicht recht passend, es ist alles das zusammen und weit mehr; […] Eine Welt ist es in der Tat […] ein eben so deutliches als großes Sinnbild der dargestellten Geschichte” (118—19). For an assess- The Reality of Battle: Realism in the Context of Goethe’s War Experience 367 ment of Schlegel’s description of the Alexanderschlacht in the context of landscape painting see Wood 22—23� Works Cited Abrams, M�H� The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition. 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Zelle, Carsten. “Angenehmes Grauen.” Literaturhistorische Beiträge zur Ästhetik des Schrecklichen im achtzehnten Jahrhundert. Hamburg: Meiner, 1987� Epistemology, Imagination, and History in Romantic Realism 369 Epistemology, Imagination, and History in Romantic Realism Jan Oliver Jost-Fritz East Tennessee State University Abstract: The short, enigmatic aphorism “Keine Poesie, keine Wirklichkeit” (Schleiermacher) best describes the romantic idea of poetic realism. Rather than approaching the problem of realism as a matter of representation of an objectively given world, the Romantics focused on the inextricable link between subject and world that are both in a mutually constitutive relationship� Realism, thus, describes an epistemological perspective in poetry rather than a particular style of mimetic representation. By taking a close look at theoretical writings by Friedrich and August Wilhelm Schlegel as well as Novalis, and poetic texts by Tieck and Arnim, this article explores romantic notions of poetic realism, without pitting the subjectivist tendency of Romanticism against what in the later nineteenth century came to be called ‘Realism.’ I demonstrate that romantic realism is based on a rejection of both the strict distinction between subject and object in German idealism on the one hand, and the teleological aspect in Schiller’s project of aesthetic education on the other� Romanticism insists on the decisive function of imagination for the constitution of reality and simultaneously recognizes the existence of a resistive and irreducible outside world. Thus, romantic realism embraces the ‘characteristic’ as an index of reality’s manifoldness. Keywords: Romanticism, realism, Friedrich Schlegel, August Wilhelm Schlegel, Novalis, Ludwig Tieck, Achim von Arnim ‘Realism’ is not what first comes to mind when reading both romantic literature and aesthetic self-reflections of romantic authors. Achim von Arnim for instance invokes in Die Majorats-Herren a higher form of reality (4: 142), which can only be revealed by transgressing the limits of our everyday world. As he explains in “Dichtung und Geschichte,” reality is accessible only by separating 370 Jan Oliver Jost-Fritz the “Tau des Paradieses” from the deceiving “ausgespritzten Gifte der Schlange” (2: 12). Drawing on mystical and pietist practices of inwardness, Novalis finds the entire universe within the subject (2: 417—18), and - at least at first look - grants in good Platonic tradition the ‘real’ world only the status of a “Schattenwelt” (2: 232). Finally, in the Athenäum Friedrich Schleiermacher posits: “Keine Poesie, keine Wirklichkeit” ( Fragmente 1: 64)� This romantic subjectivism seems to indicate a disinterest in any form of realism - if ‘realism’ is defined as a mode of mimetic representation. As I argue in the following article, however, such a definition is insufficient to capture the particular romantic take on reality and thus the constitution of romantic realism� For the Romantics, realism only made sense, as we will see, as an appropriation of a meaningful reality, a reality that cannot be disclosed by mere sense perception or an act of positing, but a reality that is saturated with cultural and social traditions, norms, values, as well as the subject’s own agency and history. The examples quoted above appeared to indicate a clear deviation from more practical or pragmatic understandings of reality and were certainly one of the reasons for later rejections of Romanticism� Julian Schmidt, for instance, repudiates the romantic concept of poetry at large, claiming that the “Zeitalter [der Romantik] war das der Tendenzen, d. h. zunächst der mangelnden Befriedigung” which resulted merely in a never-ending self-mirroring of poetry, a “phantastischen Hohlspiegel” (“Charaktere” 361—62). Novalis’s declaration that the world needs to be romanticized is indeed an expression based in a perceived deficit, and a ‘higher’ form of reality seems to be the way out of common everyday life that was met with “Ungenügen” (Pikulik), as ever more insufficient for individual aspirations in, and appropriations of, the world. Schmidt, by contrast, decried imagination, irony, and the primacy of poetry - all of which was part of the romantic answer to Enlightenment thinking. For the later critic, these tenets of romantic thought and writing were nothing more than mere self-contained and inconsequential “buchhändlerische Speculation[en]”: “man sagte so ernsthaft als möglich, daß man überall nur spiele und ironisire” (“Charaktere” 358). Yet, taken at face value, the Romantics conceived of poetry not simply as expressions of a playful imagination in order to compensate for a disenchanted normalcy, but rather as a privileged access to reality, one that is inextricably intertwined with the constitution of meaning. Reality is not reality as something simply being given to the senses and thus a mere object of perception� As expression of life itself it is reality for a community of human beings and as such of a distinctly communicative nature. This allows Tieck for instance to claim that all reality is unconsciously underpinned by an “Allegorie” ( Schriften 4: 129), that is, by the fact that both the most ordinary and the most marvelous appearances address some form of human understanding and thus constitute a shared Epistemology, Imagination, and History in Romantic Realism 371 experience� This experience provides evidence and realization of an inherently harmonic reality, as one type of realism has been defined by Hans Blumenberg. 1 Romantic realism, it seems, is best understood if simultaneously the romantic concept of reality is brought into sharp relief� In this article, I propose that romantic realism is a specific disposition towards a world that is no longer experienced in its unity as divine creation, but as both an ever-evolving manifold of indiscernible data and as an accelerating succession of events that do not allow for a simple act of mimetic representation. Instead, romantic realism emphasized the significance of imagination as the faculty to individuate objects and events in the first place, as the faculty that is best suited to make visible the progression of time as the organizing principle� After tracing this notion of realism in Novalis’s and the Schlegels’ conceptual writings, I will demonstrate how the discussion around the categories of the ‘interesting’ and ‘characteristic’ provided the tools to implement this realism in poetic texts and will test the thesis with a brief look at two poems from Ludwig Tieck’s lyric double cycle Reisegedichte eines Kranken and Rückkehr des Genesenden � I argue that in order to satisfy the demand for the ‘characteristic’ romantic writers had to turn to another category - history - to fully embrace this realism of the ‘characteristic.’ I will close with some remarks on the romantic conceptualization of history in writings by Achim von Arnim, particularly in his novella Die Majorats-Herren � Arnim elaborated explicitly (if enigmatically) on the issue of poetry, history, and reality. He conceives of poetry as a mediator between past realities that no longer allow for an “Übersicht eines ganzen Horizonts” and the present reality of a life characterized by experiences and anticipations (2: 13). I do not claim that there is a single notion of reality and realism in romantic thought� What the writers considered here share as their common ground, however, is their belief in a primacy of imagination, and it is this primacy, as I will demonstrate, that is intrinsic to the romantic conceptualization of reality in the first place. This seems to me to be independent from the differentiation between earlier and later stages of Romanticism. Instead, as I will demonstrate, this is a central concern of romantic writing and artistic appropriations of the world. It is because Romanticism favored the imagination as the central faculty with which to access meaningful reality that it would be later (mis-)understood as a merely subjective and irrational movement that eventually ended in the bondage of Catholicism (Schmidt, “Charaktere” 490). Whereas what becomes later known as ‘Realism’ in aesthetics draws heavily on Hegel’s definition of poetic imagination as a synthesis of subjective content and the ontological status of the concrete intuition (Hegel 388), early romantic theory of imagination and reality posited a more dynamic relationship between world and subject and 372 Jan Oliver Jost-Fritz stressed that imagination is a distinctly epistemological faculty: “die re[elle] [Kraft des Menschen] ist d[ie] Fantasie, die schaffende Einbildungskraft, die produktive Anschauung,” as Friedrich Schlegel muses (KFSA 18: 159). Reality is not anything that is simply given to perception or the cause of intuition but rather something that is constituted only through simultaneously activating perception and comprehension, as Schlegel suggests with his emphasis on the notion of divination (155). From a romantic perspective, thus, a clear distinction between world and cognition is a misleading epistemological move, good only for constructing a philosophical system, but not for embracing the fullness and manifoldness of life and the world (12: 361). Early on, Schlegel couches this idea in a rejection of any form of strong distinction between realism and idealism; in the Athenäum , he famously claims that poetry is realized irony ( Fragmente 1: 33)� Schlegel is not alone in this reframing of the ancient philosophical question whether world or I can claim primacy in cognition; along similar lines, Novalis explains: “Aller reeller Streit ist ein Schein - daher die Frage über Idealismus und Realismus so thöricht, so scheinbar, aber eben deswegen so Johannisch [i.e., previsional]” (2: 232). Divination is here the cognitive disposition that reality is meaningful� Schmidt’s polemic was motivated partly by his staunch anti-Catholicism, and partly by the later generation’s perceived need to distinguish themselves from the previous generation� Current research, in any case, seems to stress continuities more than discontinuities between what later literary historiography came to sharply distinguish as Poetic Realism and Romanticism. As Dirk Göttsche and Nicholas Saul point out, the relationship between Romanticism and Realism is characterized by “intertextual references and continuities in genre histories,” and thus share essential features of poetic practice (Göttsche and Saul 11)� Whereas the self-assessment of realist theory departed from Romanticism notably due to the politics of aesthetical distinction between two generations, contemporary criticism of Romanticism lacks a clear framework to make such a claim. According to Göttsche and Saul, it is a “desideratum in scholarship of Romanticism” to establish clear benchmarks to compare the two epochs and their respective styles rather than a deficit in the historiographic definition of Realism (14). The following considerations will not fill this gap in research; however, a focus on epistemology, imagination, and history in romantic theory and poetry will illuminate the nature of Romanticism’s distinctive realism, a step that in future explorations will help in defining clear points of comparison between the two literary epochs. Schleiermacher’s aphorism “Keine Poesie, keine Wirklichkeit” sums up the romantic nexus of poetry and reality, a formulation, however, that requires some Epistemology, Imagination, and History in Romantic Realism 373 explanation despite - or rather because of - its assumed simplicity. Poetry is not a representation of any form of given reality, based in any form of imitative activity. For him there is no reality without poetry in the first place: Keine Poesie, keine Wirklichkeit. So wie es trotz aller Sinne ohne Fantasie keine Außenwelt gibt, so auch mit allem Sinn ohne Gemüt keine Geisterwelt. Wer nur Sinn hat, sieht keinen Menschen, sondern bloß Menschliches: dem Zauberstabe des Gemüts allein tut sich alles auf. Es setzt Menschen und ergreift sie; es schaut an wie das Auge ohne sich seiner mathematischen Operation bewußt zu sein. ( Fragmente 1: 64) Perception provides the subject with a flurry of data that at best solidifies into general concepts (“Menschliches”) but that is not automatically transformed into true cognition. Individuation of general concepts into the concrete (“Mensch”) is only possible through the simultaneous act of poetic imagination; imagination, as Schlegel puts it, is for the soul as necessary as breathing for the body (KFSA 12: 361)� This has crucial consequences for imitation, the critical concept that generally governs the discussion of any reference to extraliterary reality in poetry� For a long time, scholarship has seen a primacy of poiesis over mimesis in romantic poetry (Petersen 232). Nonetheless, for the romantic authors this primacy was not as self-evident as their rhetorical emphasis on the potency of imagination might suggest� August Wilhelm Schlegel points out that imagination of extranatural realities is impossible and that, thus, all imagination is rooted in reality. Compared with the discussion on imitation in the earlier eighteenth century, he shifts the attention from a discussion of the probable and the marvelous. He stresses that poetry’s mimetic efforts need to address the idea rather than the appearance of nature, in order to prevent a mechanical copying: “[D]ie Kunst soll die Natur nachahmen. Das heißt nämlich, sie soll wie die Natur selbständig schaffend, organisirt und organisirend, lebendige Werke bilden” ( Kritische Schriften 2: 322). “Mimesis,” as Mattias Pirholt summarizes, “represents poiesis” in romantic thought (23). That the term “Nachahmung” in romantic writing is not particularly prominent (Petersen 237) does not mean that the concept itself is absent� Mimesis, or the aesthetic problems that arise attendant on this concept, resurface in many disguises in the romantic reflection on the relationship between art and world, as we shall see. Against Kant and Fichte, Friedrich Schlegel insists that cognition is not based in an original act or premise, from which a system can be determined, but that every cognitive act is in itself an act within a larger temporal continuum: “[D]er Kern liegt bei uns in der Mitte ” (KFSA 12: 328). In a move away from the earlier idealist framework, Schlegel takes a distinctively historical turn; the material world and cognitive experience are self-representations of an organic 374 Jan Oliver Jost-Fritz whole, an “interconnectedness that joins all individuals in the infinite chain of being” (Millan 145). For Schlegel, the purpose of philosophy is to disprove the misbelief of the finiteness of things, that he rejects by embracing the “Ansicht der unendlichen Fülle und Mannigfaltigkeit” (KFSA 12: 335). The iteration of the word “Fülle” here reveals a proximity to the realm of aesthetics, where this word served a central function in regulating the process of creative inspiration during the eighteenth century (Niehle 47). In his Ideen , Schlegel uses “Fülle” to directly refute a central tenet of Schiller’s concept of poetry: Das Moralische einer Schrift liegt nicht im Gegenstande, oder im Verhältnis des Redenden zu den Angeredeten, sondern im Geist der Behandlung� Atmet dieser die ganze Fülle der Menschheit, so ist sie moralisch. Ist sie nur das Werk einer abgesonderten Kraft und Kunst, so ist sie es nicht. ( Fragmente 1: 86) The whole fullness of humanity determines the morality of poetry; if poetry becomes detached from the manifold appearances of life, poetry ceases to have a moral purpose� This idea of progressive poetry, as it had been promoted during the Athenäum years, is based in the dialectic of ‘realism’ and ‘idealism’ - the two extreme positions that frame all thinking about poetry. However, the remark that romantic poetry is not yet finished but itself the realization of an infinite becoming does not lend itself to a poetic program of realism. Yet, Schlegel echoes Schleiermacher elsewhere noting that true realism is only possible in poetry (KFSA 2: 265), since only here the workings of imagination become transparent for the subject� More in practical rather than theoretical terms, Ludwig Tieck has something similar in mind when he defines the novella as a “sonderbare Casuistik”: Und wie der Dichter hier das Geheimnisvolle zwar klar, menschlich und göttlich zugleich, aber doch wieder durch ein Geheimnis ausgleichen will: so ist in allen Richtungen des Lebens und Gefühls ein Unauflösbares, dessen sich immer wieder die Dichtkunst, wie sie sich auch in Nachahmung und Darstellung zu ersättigen scheint, bemächtigt, um den todten Buchstaben der gewöhnlichen Wahrheit neu zu beleben und zu erklären. ( Schriften 11: lxxxviii—lxxxix) At first glance, ‘enlivening’ and ‘explaining’ are rather modest purposes for poetic imagination, if compared to the enthusiasm expressed in early romantic thought at large. However, this passage leads to the core of the romantic conceptualization of poetic realism, which is deeply rooted in early romantic thinking. The tension between transparency and opacity of life itself, Tieck continues to explain, is not relieved in sublime enthusiasm as the ancient tragedy aimed for, but in the emotional and stylistic compounding of potentially infinite perspectives on one and the same fact of life. Only a diversity of “Farben und Epistemology, Imagination, and History in Romantic Realism 375 Charaktere läßt die ächte Novelle zu,” as Tieck continues in his poetics of the genre ( Schriften 11: lxxxvii)� Compared to the 1790s - when romantic though had gathered pace - the historical situation in the late 1820s - when this programmatic text had been written - had completely changed. Yet, Tieck’s emphasis on contingencies, the ostensibly significant or insignificant occurrences of events ( Schriften 11: lxxxvii), echoes early romantic thought that proves to be more persistent and relevant in the conceptualization of early nineteenth-century realism than has been generally acknowledged. The point of departure for romantic theories of poetry and imagination was not only the rapid philosophical development in the 1790s, but also Schiller’s subsequent appropriation of these philosophical innovations in poetological theory and practice as well as aesthetics. As Frederik Beiser argued recently, Schiller’s aesthetic theories, too, have a realistic bend� Schiller defined beauty as autonomy in appearance (8: 285). Although beauty is an appearance for or within reason, Schiller claims that beauty must be a quality that is objectively inherent in the thing in question: “Es gibt also eine solche Ansicht der Natur oder der Erscheinungen, wo wir von ihnen nichts weiter als Freiheit verlangen, wo wir bloß darauf sehen, ob sie das, was sie sind, durch sich selbst sind” (288). What Schiller does not claim in this context is the actual existence independently of cognition; “in other words,” as Beiser summarizes, “it does not identify appearance with things-in-themselves.” What allows Schiller to see beauty as an objective property of a thing is that the property must be identifiable in an “intersubjective spatial world” (Beiser, Schiller 71)� In his Matthisson review, a year after the Kallias letter from 1793, Schiller asserts the value of visual evidence in descriptive poetry as a legitimate poetic device� Nevertheless, the idealist frame of Schiller’s realism is obvious� Schiller insists on eliminating all historical contingencies from poetry, since poetry aims at the “allgemeine[.] Naturwahrheit” rather than individual and accidental occurrences. Poetry should present “wahre Natur” since only “in Wegwerfung des Zufälligen und in dem reinen Ausdruck des Notwendigen liegt der große Styl” (8: 1020—21). This last remark is clearly directed against the rustic and folkloric realism of Bürger’s poetry that Schiller devoted his infamous and damning review to three years earlier, and to which the Matthisson review is obviously the positive coda. But on a general level, Schiller unveils in practical terms his own concept of idealized reality that he develops in his larger essays on aesthetics around the same time� In his letters on ästhetische Erziehung , Schiller demands that art shall leave reality behind, “und sich mit anständiger Kühnheit über das Bedürfnis erheben,” whereas realism is being located in art’s purpose of advancing “wahre[.] politische[.] Freyheit” (8: 559). In this trajectory, poetry is not the representation of the individual and thus contingent object or event 376 Jan Oliver Jost-Fritz of empirical nature� Poetry rather captures essence, not appearance� As mentioned above, the romantic idea that art imitates not nature itself but her ‘idea,’ her creative potential, seems to agree with Schiller. Indeed, romantic authors are deeply indebted to Schiller’s theory; below the surface, however, it is obvious that the romantic concept of reality differs from Schiller’s fundamentally. The romantic authors clearly saw that this program offers only a quite limited approach to reality and poetic realism. Novalis, for instance, remarked: “Das Allgemeine kann man nur mit dem Besondern überhaupt ausdrücken und das Besondre überhaupt nur mit dem Einzelnen” (2: 188), thus leaving no doubt that the accidental is intrinsically constitutive of poetry - and not something to be eliminated� Novalis indeed points exactly to what he perceived as the blind spot in Schiller’s idealized nature, the fact that the imagination is activated only through the individual stimulus, not the abstract idea that - eventually - may be contained in the poetic text� For Schiller, the absence of contingencies had a certain necessity, since he conceptualized poetry as an act of freedom that cannot account for resistive phenomena of the empirical world. He takes up Kant’s distinction between reality as modality (in the sense of actuality) and reality as correspondence between perception and cognition and synthesizes both in the “Spieltrieb.” Novalis does not exactly favor empiricism in his fragment, but feels uneasy with eliminating all accidental events, since they are at the center of every perception of the world’s fullness. He maintains that poetry begins with a fact, with a perception of something actual that then sparks a cognitive process; 2 each contingency may become a representation of the whole, every “Willkürliche, Zufällige, Individuelle kann unser Weltorgan werden” (3: 684). Against this backdrop, Tieck’s “Allegorie” becomes more concrete. 3 Novalis went on to posit an inextricable link between world and meaning as the origin of cognition: “Die Welt ist ein Universaltropus des Geistes, ein symbolisches Bild desselben” (2: 600). Novalis’s epistemological monism guarantees a coherence between mind and world that will be constitutive for reality; only against the world as horizon - taken here in a first, not differentiated meaning as reality - the mind is self-transparent� Whether this is being thought of as an act of positing or perception is a secondary question. The arbitrariness of the empirical world as a fact seems to be a sufficient condition for a representation of reality within cognition. Similar to Tieck’s “Unauflösbares,” Novalis’s transparency, the “symbolisches Bild,” intrinsically has an enigmatic spot, a moment that is perceivable only as wonder, not as distinct cognition: Alle unsre Erinnerungen und Begebenheiten reihen sich an eine mystische Einheit, die wir Ich nennen. Indem wir uns in der Welt umsehen, finden wir eine Menge Sen- Epistemology, Imagination, and History in Romantic Realism 377 sationen aller Art wunderbar gewählt, gemischt[,] geordnet und zusammenhängend. Wir fühlen uns wundersam von diesen Phaenomenen angezogen - das Phaenomenon scheint uns einzuziehen - die Welt ist verschwunden - wir sehn nichts, als das Phaenomenon an der Stelle der Welt - und jetzt entsteht der Begriff des emp[irischen] Ich. (3: 431—32) The last clause makes clear that the disappearance of the world is not an endorsement of idealism but rather the precondition for the constitution of realism in the first place; the empirical subject itself is the result of a process of individuation of the particular from the manifold, a process that in turn is rooted in the inaccessible, ‘mystical’ subject. Where Schiller thought of the empirical fact as an impediment to the free activity of imagination that allows only for self-imposed limitations, Novalis by contrast sees no limitation in the contingent fact but describes contingency as a first stimulus in a cognitive process. Without taking into consideration these epistemological underpinnings, any explanation of romantic aesthetics would miss the difference to Schiller’s concept of modern aesthetics, which in many ways was similar. Romantic epistemology no longer allowed for a normative take on accidental events that characterizes Schiller’s primacy of true over historical nature. Neither was it the Romantics’ question whether ‘realism’ is permissible in poetry, since ‘realism’ was conceived of as an intrinsic part of cognition, as the defining moment of the empirical subject� The decisive factor here, however, is that this problem is not solved in romantic thought in the first place. The introduction of reality’s own historicity into the discussion shifts the attention towards a concept that eventually transcends Schiller’s teleological idea of education as a governing framework of poetical and intellectual activity� Friedrich Schlegel, for instance, does not even try to reconcile the tension between the deeply entangled concepts of idealism, realism, truth, and reality� In his Gespräch über Poesie , he denies the possibility of realism in poetry, only to give reality a few lines later a significant reentry. In a passage which he later added to the Werke edition of this text, Schlegel speaks of the interrelation of nature and poetry and points out that representation in poetry is always underpinned by meaning: “Welch’ unermeßlich reiche Natur-Symbolik liegt nicht in jenen Schilderungen und Gleichnissen verhüllt, welche die Dichter aus der sichtbaren Fülle der Natur so wie sie dem sinnlichen Auge erscheint, entlehnen” (KFSA 2: 320). 4 Since poetry is a product of human activity, there is no true mimetic relationship between art and nature, but art is always an act of symbolizing, and thus relies on superimposing nature with meaning. However, only a few pages later, Schlegel refers to the major tendency of German Idealism, the anti-subjectivist “growing realism and naturalism” 378 Jan Oliver Jost-Fritz (Beiser, Idealism 3), by invoking the “Naturbegriff des Realismus” and locates the origin of poetry in the same reality that he initially had dismissed (KFSA 2: 325)� 5 The language with which he explains his take on poetry here is revealing. Poets produce both “Schilderungen” and “Gleichnisse,” descriptive evocations of things, and figurative images that refer to ideas. “Schilderungen” (descriptions) in eighteenth-century usage of the word carries the connotation of pictorial representation, and with this the idea of verisimilitude. 6 He also posits a strong connection between the symbolism in poetic nature and the “sinnlichen Auge,” as if sense perception were able to immediately intuit symbolic meaning. Finally, the verb “entlehnen” which describes the act of poetic creation suggests that the symbolic meaning is connected to an intrinsic quality of objects in nature that can be directly accessed and transferred into poetry. The two concepts, poetry as cognitive activity of symbolizing and poetry as direct access to nature’s meaning by way of sense perception, can hardly be reconciled. On principle, Schlegel denies a synthesis of these opposing positions, pointing towards the fact that for him the truth lies not in a Hegelian sublation but the infinite negotiating dynamic between two opposing forces - the intake of sense data and the symbolizing activity of the human mind, two cognitive activities that are less distinct than a first glance suggests. Both are framed by the concept of progressive poetry and its distinctly modern trajectory� Schlegel’s monistic premise that allows this evolving dynamic is that poetry (as poesy) is already an intrinsic quality of reality, of the infinite becoming that is inherent in both the great works of art and in the allegedly most insignificant appearances in nature (KFSA 2: 285). Significant here is the fact that intrinsic poesy is unconscious of itself. If attended by consciousness too early, any occurrence would lose its quality as “Charakteristische[s], Interessante[s],” as Schlegel demonstrates in his earlier Studium essay (KFSA 1: 241). In this essay he repeatedly operates with these two terms that around the same time emerged as central concepts in Classicist aesthetics (Dönike 18—29). Originally, Schlegel had supported Schiller’s idea of the objectivity of poetry, which is achieved only by stripping reality from all historical contingencies for the sake of symbolizing her truth. In the Studium essay, he still rejected the trajectory of modern poetry, insofar as the focus on the interesting and characteristic lacks any harmonizing force. But with these two terms, he had found that which would become a central idea in the constitution of romantic realism only a few years later. In the earlier essay, however, the characteristic is thought of as a distraction from the essential in a way that the autonomous potential of poetry, for which Schlegel still takes ancient poetry as the model, is not yet realized� The consequential demand for autonomy that Schlegel adapts from both Kant and Schiller, however, is simultaneously Epistemology, Imagination, and History in Romantic Realism 379 contrasted by his insistence on “ästhetische Heteronomie” (KFSA 1: 270). On the other hand, the fact that the forces of life are not harmonized as in ancient poetry is the prerequisite for the emergence of progressive poetry� Thus, although Schlegel only occasionally rather than frequently used the term of the ‘characteristical’ after the Studium essay, the concept resurfaces in a much more positive light as “progressive Universalpoesie” only a few years after the Studium essay. By now, Schlegel embraced the premise of the ‘moderns’ as an essential component of his progressive ideas on poetry ( Fragmente 1: 16)� Whereas ancient poetry still provides the ultimate normative background against which the moderns are being judged, Schlegel historicized the very concept of ancient poetry as a merely “relatives Maximum” (KFSA 1: 634). Accordingly, aesthetic judgement is not based on measuring modern against ancient poetry, but on bringing both together in a critical framework that takes the respective historical situations of each into account and into a dialogue. “Poesie kann nur durch Poesie kritisiert werden,” as he writes in the Lyceums fragments ( Fragmente 1: 20). Yet, even in the Studium essay, Schlegel was careful not to let the genuine value of the moderns go unnoticed. For example, he praises Shakespeare in particular, which suggests that the concept of poetry he laid out in this early essay is not completely divested of reality as a system of reference� Schlegel appreciates the “unerschöpfliche Fülle des Interessanten, […] unnachahmliche Wahrheit des Charakteristischen” (KFSA 1: 249) in Shakespeare’s plays, explicitly using the categories that he had rejected earlier in favor of aesthetic autonomy. By the time then that the romantic movement was in full bloom, Schlegel merged the ‘characteristical’ with his earlier insistence on objectivity in poetry. A little later, in the Athenäum , he simply and apodictically posits: “Shakespeares Universalität ist wie der Mittelpunkt der romantischen Kunst” ( Fragmente 1: 49)� Schlegel emphasizes, however, that this is not merely a continuation of the querelle ; modern poetry doesn’t put the ancients behind itself, but has a distinctive quality only in progressive, infinite becoming ( Jauss 75). Through critique, poetry needs to explore its own potential, rather than assess what it is, as the Lyceum fragment posits; many of the extensive reviews in the Athenäum follow this trajectory. The review of August Lafontaine’s novels that Caroline and August Wilhelm Schlegel present in the journal’s first volume are an example that leads directly to the problem of realism. The reviewers take particular issue with those characteristics of Lafontaine’s prose that they deem to be idealized to a degree that defies all plausibility: “Ein Mahler wirft leicht eine schwebende Stellung hin, aber laßt es jemand versuchen, sie in Wirklichkeit nachzuahmen, so wird er bald das Gleichgewicht verlieren” (“Beyträge zur Kritik” 156). It is significant that the passage goes beyond a mere reflection on what the earlier eighteenth century negotiated as probability, but that this question directly 380 Jan Oliver Jost-Fritz leads into the idea of morality that is the background of Lafontaine’s novels; Lafontaine’s characters, who are too virtuous to be true, undermine the moral purpose of the novels in the first place, and the reader is left with nothing more than the “trockene Moral der Fabel” (159). As Tieck phrases his critique of Lafontaine around the same time, the prolific author of popular novels presents the reader with characters “die gar nichts Charakteristisches haben” (KS 1: 101—02). What appears as a lack of probability is in actuality a lack of vitality of the characters, a claim that shifts the perspective from normative questions to the relationship between intraand extratextual reality. This distinction, in turn, becomes the center of the emergence of literary realism in the nineteenth century on a more general level (Plumpe 256). Lafontaine’s characters remain within a completely intratextual system of reference, a source that cannot provide them with the vitality that Schlegel called for� His characters are made up from patterns and clichés from other texts and not from observation. In Tieck’s words, Lafontaine knows “Natur [nur] aus einigen und nicht den besten Büchern” (KS 1: 102). Whether or not this assessment is entirely true, Tieck as well as August Wilhelm Schlegel see a lack of vitality, which for them equals a lack of realism; this is the core of the critique of their contemporary popular literature� Crucial here is that the Romantics attest this kind of literature not simply a lack of realism in representation, but that this lack causes a failure of popular literature in serving a function in the increasingly autonomous and differentiated system of literature. Thus, romantic realism detaches the discussion from its close association with problems of representation and turns ‘realism’ into a category in both aesthetics of production and reception� Caroline and August Wilhelm Schlegel explicitly maintain that it is not Lafontaine’s subject matters per se that demonstrate the lack of aesthetic value, which again points to the significance of the ‘characteristic’ as an implicit element of real poetry: “Es kann ein Gegenstand der reifsten Poesie seyn, auch eine sehr gewöhnliche Natur in ihrer vollen Wahrheit und Beschränkung darzustellen” (“Beyträge zur Kritik” 164). The insistence on the aesthetic value of the “Beschränkung” seems to point to Schiller who repeatedly speaks of “Einschränkungen” that result not from the idea of the basic concept of human life, but the accidental and concrete exercise of freedom. This creates the “Schauplatz der Wirklichkeit” (FA 8: 619) in the first place, the ‘historical’ nature that must be overcome in poetry. In other words, neither Schiller’s nor Lafontaine’s idealism may be taken as the origin of poetry - at least not of a poetry that meets the challenge of infinite becoming. Yet, despite the indispensability of reality for poetry, romantic realism is not a realism that switches from intraliterary references to reality proper as dominant system of reference� As it is obvious in Schlegel’s theory, both the ‘characteristic’ as an index of reality and poietic Epistemology, Imagination, and History in Romantic Realism 381 faculty of imagination together are preconditions for poetic realism in Romanticism� A paradigmatic shift from intrato extraliterary reference (“Systemreferenz” and “Umweltreferenz,” to use Plumpe’s terms) has been called on to differentiate periods in the periodization within Romanticism itself. Ludwig Tieck’s lyric double cycle Reisegedichte eines Kranken and Rückkehr des Genesenden has been used to demonstrate this turn� Stefan Scherer for instance claims that these poems mark Tieck’s departure from early romantic premises. Dieter Breuer points to the political and historical realities of the early nineteenth century that determine both descriptive elements and figurative speech as well as the textual organization of the cycle. Tieck himself emphasizes that the poems are based on “kleine Begebenheiten,” i.e., characteristic and interesting events that often in themselves don’t appear as being significant at first glance; claims of Tieck’s turn to a more realistic style are certainly not without merit, particularly not from a more historiographic perspective that emphasizes biographical constellations. However, the realism of the cycle is simultaneously deeply rooted in early romantic thought, which cannot be sufficiently explained by the fact that even realist literature must inevitably include intraliterary references in order to be distinguishable from other social systems (Plumpe 256). Rather than understanding the cycle on a general level as a turn towards realism, I see the poems as attempts to salvage tenets of early romantic aesthetics after the break-up of the Jena constellation. This allows, I argue, for a concept of poetic realism that retains the epistemological framework described above in poetic practice and simultaneously to acknowledge the fact that poetry needs what Schiller describes as “Schauplatz der Wirklichkeit.” The poems were written during Tieck’s journey through Italy in 1805 and 1806 and were published in 1823. Most of the poems are written in a free, rhapsodic form and in poetic prose rather than a particularly lyric style� This already indicates a turn towards a very tangible reality when we compare it to Tieck’s earlier poetry, which often is centered around a Stimmung , a mood or atmosphere (Böckmann). The poems describe Tieck’s experiences during his sojourn in Italy; the ‘realism’ of the text, however, would be misunderstood if the poems are taken in the sense of ‘Erlebnisdichtung.’ Like Schlegel’s contrasting of idealism as a subjective and realism as an objective mode of epistemic attitude, Tieck contrasts the personal experiences of a poet in crisis with the more ‘real’ experiences of the northern tourist in Italy� On several occasions, however, Tieck reverts to earlier modes of writing. He again returns to the hallmark of his pre-Italian poetry, namely playing with sounds and rhythms - and it is exactly in these instances when the realism of 382 Jan Oliver Jost-Fritz the cycle is associated with early romantic modes of poetic self-reflection. A striking resonance of this conceptual background can be found in “Koboldchen,” the next to last poem of the cycle� Formally, the poem resembles the majority of the preceding poems; the text is written in irregular lines and strophes that clearly follow the train of thought rather than a formally determined lyric style or genre; its subject matter and tone as well as its rhymed nature, however, seem to return to Tieck’s earlier lyric style: a fleeting, floating agility that not only characterizes the succession of images but also the central subject, a little goblin that could almost be seen as symbolizing Tieck’s early poetry. The folkloristic fairy-tale reality of the goblin, but also the reference to Goethe’s “Gretchen am Spinnrade” - “das Mädchen / Das still dort am Rädchen / […] / Nicht weiß, daß sie schön und gut.” ( Gedichte 7: 260) - effectively embraces the lyrical subject in intrapoetic security. However, a closer look at the goblin reveals that Tieck uses this image for a negotiation of romantic notions of reality and realism� “Koboldchen” addresses the goblin in the second person, immediately raising the question whether the poem takes the reality of the folkloristic creature for granted, or if some figurative meaning is alluded to. Either way the irreal creature ironically represents a particular take on reality, whereas the figurative meaning is correlated with an idealism that seems to deny reality external to the subject. In both cases, though, the relationship between a tactile, cognitive, or emotional reality and poetic language rather than the beginning of a tale is in the limelight of the text� Immer neckend, Scherze weckend, Bald sich zeigend, Bald versteckend Bist du drollig Gleich drauf tollig, Nie ermüdet, Nie befriedet, In Unruh Ruhe suchend, die dir fehlt, Selbst gequält; (258—59) The restless, whimsical “Koboldchen” doesn’t seem to have a corporeal nature, yet his appearance has a strong and immediate effect; the goblin’s teasing challenges the subject’s wit (“Scherze”). Moreover, he has the power to hide and to show itself, and thus operates by its own intrinsic nature which also seems to determine the inability to ever relax, rendering him simultaneously powerful and powerless. In folklore, a ‘Kobold’ is a household spirit that has no permanent physiognomy but that can take on various imaginative appearances. Epistemology, Imagination, and History in Romantic Realism 383 Thus, the spirit may have an appearance that is simultaneously familiar and entirely foreign� The spirit’s nature is neither good nor evil, rather his nature is the infinite, perpetuated transformation that is not bound to any normative framework. Against the backdrop of Tieck’s earlier poem “Sehnen nach Italien,” it is not without irony that the journey which he commenced in a hopeful mood, ends with an address to a disillusioning, northern, Germanic spirit in a historical environment that is characterized by the unravelling of the old political order� The sojourn under the Mediterranean sun and being surrounded by the artefacts of ancient culture did not lead to a renewal, neither spiritual nor physical, as it was the case with Goethe during his Italian journey. It is obvious, thus, that Tieck does not end his Italian double cycle with a reminiscence to a fairytale reality as a culmination of his Italian experience� Early on, the traveler is disillusioned by his experiences as is made clear by the departure from Schiller’s ideas of aesthetic education in the first few poems of the cycle ( Jost-Fritz 170—71). Now, upon return the subject realizes that Schiller’s “Sonne Homers” (“Spaziergang”; FA 1: 42) is indeed not shining for him, but that he, by contrast, not only failed with transferring southern art and inspiration to the North, but that the return means a return into an ever more disruptive history� In the end, it remains ambiguous whether Tieck replaces Schiller’s teleological structure of history with a cyclical structure. However, the “unglückseliges Dunkel” in the very end of the cycle (“Dresden”; Gedichte 7: 262) is not a matter of the continued personal crisis, but the expectation that historical disruption is the nature of history, rather than the development to any certain end� In the end, it is less important that Schiller’s late-Enlightenment optimism is replaced by resignation, but that the awareness of the fact that all poetry is dependent on different - and from generation to generation differing - experiences of the political, cultural, and social dynamic of history� It might be up to poetry to conceive of a meaning in the ever-changing world. Consequently, Tieck’s cycle is not an embrace of representational realism as realism came to be understood in the course of the nineteenth century, but closely follows many of the themes that were addressed in the romantic reflection on the relationship between reality, realism and poetry. In the end, Tieck’s lyrical subject turns to poetry again to find consolation; his choice, however, just adds another layer of ironic commentary to the poem and cycle: He reads Goethe’s “Gretchen am Spinnrade” - not only a reference to a particularly ‘northern’ myth 7 but also a poem marked by a distinctive unrest, text-internally confirming the earlier line “in Unruh Ruhe suchend.” Beginning and end are neither connected through teleological direction, nor does a circle close� Instead, beginning and end are merely contingent points in time, much the same as Schlegel claims that all thought begins in the middle. The ‘realist’ 384 Jan Oliver Jost-Fritz and the ‘romantic’ elements in Tieck’s double cycle are not reconciled into a unified concept of poetic reality; Tieck’s poems closely echo Schlegel’s epistemic realism that he extensively reflects upon particularly in his philosophical lectures between 1800 and 1807. Schlegel’s insistence on the ultimate lack of transparency of Being’s origin is not an endorsement of irrationalism, but the result of the inherent condition of things and their cognition; this idea is echoed in Tieck’s insistence on something “Unauflösbares,” as demonstrated above. In the center of all knowledge is its own opacity - without discrediting the value of this knowledge, as Schlegel emphatically underscores: “Erkennen bezeichnet schon ein bedingtes Wissen. Die Nichterkennbarkeit des Absoluten ist also eine identische Trivialität” (KFSA 18: 512). To take Tieck’s goblin as a metaphor for the Absolute certainly would stretch Tieck’s philosophical earnestness too far. What Schlegel’s Absolute and Tieck’s “Koboldchen” have in common, however, is their simultaneous ideal and real nature, its infinite state of change and transformation. Much the same way, Schlegel redefined Kant’s Thing-in-itself as a dialectic relationship between persistence and “wechselnden Erscheinungen” (KFSA 12: 306). The changing appearance is the result of the cognitive fact that reality never can be entirely fixated, but that it is an ever-evolving manifold (KFSA 12: 110). Tieck applies this epistemological premise to his poetic practice and posits the utter impossibility of a clear and distinct representational relationship between world and poem: So umgetrieben In rastlosem Wildern? Wenn die Modelle Nie bleiben auf selbiger Stelle, Wer kann in Qualen Denn zeichnen und schildern, Mit Farben gar malen ( Gedichte 7: 259) Schlegel conceives of things not as fixed and finite entities; their only persistent quality is that they are “beschränkt und abgesondert,” limited and isolated, from any perceiving subject� Things rather are circumstantial manifestations of something that is determined only by the fact that everything is in a state of continuing transformation� Things become things by spontaneous individuation in concrete environments� Cognition of things, accordingly, is not dependent on the Thing-in-itself as defined above but determined by historical contexts that are themselves accidental in relation to the thing (and the subject), essential for their constitution as objects and for communicating about them� In Tieck’s poem, the appearance does not allow for a depiction in “[s]tillstehenden Epistemology, Imagination, and History in Romantic Realism 385 Bildern,” but it entices to a flurry of cognitive activity of the “Witzfunken,” an activity that is distinctly linguistic: So laß uns denn flattern, Mit Witzfunken knattern, Und plaudern und schnattern, Jetzt wundersam dichtend ( Gedichte 7: 259) Thus, whereas things as such are not accessible to cognition, they are to language and, accordingly, they are a matter of discursive knowledge (KFSA 12: 345). Communication replaces the quest for the ultimate origin of knowledge; and Tieck here demonstrates that the point is not whether the spirit appearance of the goblin is truth or fiction; instead, the point is that it becomes the origin of a communicative event, no matter what character or moral value this event may have: Doch das ist nicht fraglich So interessant unbehaglich, So ernst und so komisch, So kindisch, dämonisch, Einfältig und witzig, So stumpf und so spitzig ( Gedichte 7: 260) It is clear that the appearance prompts the urge to communicate distinct properties; questions about the ‘true’ reality by contrast remain unanswerable (“Unwissend”) because they are not based in distinct knowledge, a clear rejection of both the Idealist attempt to locate the origin of reality in self-consciousness, and of the mentalist theories that fail to take the communicative nature of human beings into account� As Schlegel claimed, romantic anti-foundationalism does not depart analytically from a determined and determining foundation; 8 rather, cognition emerges within the historical succession of things. But what then is romantic realism against the backdrop of this historical turn? The very last poem of the cycle, “Dresden,” indeed shifts the perspective from the “kleine Begebenheiten” that Tieck mentioned as his source of inspiration to the theater of war that Thuringia would become just weeks after he had written this last poem. On the way back to Ziebingen via Dresden, Tieck pays a visit to Goethe in September 1806� The hopeful longing for Italy in the beginning of the cycle was associated with physical illness and mental exhaustion of the biographical subject of the poems, hence the reference to Schiller’s elegy� In the very end of the cycle, the physical and mental well-being - “gesund und kräftig” ( Gedichte 7: 261) - is correlated with a gloomy anticipation of a catastrophe 386 Jan Oliver Jost-Fritz to come that tinges the atmosphere of the visit in Weimar. Tieck is met with kind reception in Goethe’s house and finds an exquisite group of fellow artists and poets, yet the entire account of his visit is dominated by the sight of the Prussian troops, whom Tieck observed already on his way to the city “auf allen Straßen,” and that are now deployed on the Frauenplan (260—61). These troops were devastatingly defeated at Jena and Auerstedt just a few weeks after Tieck left Weimar� Tieck’s double cycle, thus, ends on a resigned note. Nonetheless, the progressive nature of romantic poetry does not allow a mere acceptance of unfolding historical situations but pushes the subject to make conjectures - as Schlegel used the hermeneutical concept of divination - for the future. The current situation leaves the subject with a “unglückselige[s] Dunkel,” but from a biographical perspective, the title of the poem - “Dresden” (the city is otherwise absent from the poem) - hints at a future reality that is at this point certainly not yet realized. In the end, Tieck’s cycle poses the question of romantic realism, but leaves it open for speculation about how the “Koboldchen” on the one hand and history on the other jointly constitute reality� As Schlegel’s emphasis on the historical embeddedness of characteristic perceptions already suggests, history in the sense of progression, and not only the individual event, is a driving force of human experience that mediates between the situatedness and the epistemological foundation of reality. It is noteworthy that this driving force is less oriented towards a certain point in history, despite the frequent use of tropes such as the ‘golden age’ or ‘childhood’ as symbols for an unalienated state of being in romantic writing might suggest. 9 After all, Schlegel posits that cognition begins “in der Mitte,” and the only teleological vantage point is a state of a “höchster Punkt menschlicher Erkenntnis” when “Umfang so wie die Grenzen alles Wissens” will be fully realized ( Gedichte 12: 328). In an age of rapid scientific progression, Schlegel was probably aware that this “höchster Punkt” is itself only temporary and transgressed by the following generation� Hegelian absolutism of a self-conscious and in the end self-transparent process of history seems to be absent� Nonetheless, tropes of an idealist view of reality remain part of romantic writing, even if those do usually not remain uncontradicted� A revealing example for this is Achim von Arnim’s novella Die Majorats-Herren � Shortly before his premature death, the protagonist of this novella, the Majoratsherr, learns about his true identity, and that not he but the beautiful Jewess Esther, with whom he was exchanged as a baby, is the legitimate heir of a stately mansion, the Majoratshaus. He fell in love with Esther, who in the course of the narration is murdered by her neighbor Vasthi, a crime that he decided to reveal� 10 When the Majoratsherr himself dies shortly Epistemology, Imagination, and History in Romantic Realism 387 thereafter, the narrator explains “ erschien überall durch den Bau dieser Welt eine höhere, welche den Sinnen nur in der Phantasie erkenntlich wird, die zwischen beiden Welten als Vermittlerin steht ” ( Werke 4: 142; italics in the original text). However, this preliminary end of the novella is juxtaposed by a grotesquely open series of successive endings, in which first a court lady takes revenge on her husband by allowing countless dogs to sit at the luxurious dinner table, then a revolutionary commander, who restores the old order in the mansion that seems to be the true and quite versatile metaphorical center of the text, and finally by an anti-Semitically painted old woman who buys up the mansion to install an ammoniac plant� Structurally, this series of endings could be extended into our own present time. 11 This points to the tendency of Romantics to distinguish between reality at large, and meaningful reality� Accordingly, Novalis’s operation of romanticizing the world does not result in a reality accessible only to an exclusive group of the initiated, a lingua latina or sacra , but in a “ lingua romana ,” a universal and inclusive language (2: 545). This allusion to the shift from Latin to the vernacular languages during the Reformation is certainly no coincidence; just as the Reformation set out to change the experience of reality, romantic realism attests to the fact that this experience is no longer bound to a unifying principle around 1800, in contrast to the Enlightenment that still trusted to attribute reality to such a principle, be it in the form of Christian Wolff’s ens realissimum (Holz 210) or Fichte’s original conjunction of act and fact� The higher form of reality, addressed in Arnim’s novella, is not the romanticized reality, since, as Novalis claims, romanticization is a “Wechselerhöhung und Erniedrigung,” and simultaneously embraces the mysterious and the “geläufigen Ausdruck” (2: 545). Neither is the higher form of reality a unifying principle. The resigned character of Tieck’s lyric cycle and Arnim’s novella, thus, only seemingly suggest an apotheosis as a precondition to access a ‘true’ reality. What both point to, however, is the fact that reality increasingly evades disclosure; whereas Tieck can witness the deployment of troops and follow the news, he nevertheless feels his own loss of agency. The protagonist in Arnim’s novella stumbles into the historical shift brought forth by the French Revolution and eventually perishes trying to solve a mystery literally next door to his house� In the end, the higher form of reality becomes an immanent force in the world. ‘Higher’ realities seem to have their very function in pointing to a “realen Zusammenwirken mit der übrigen Welt,” rather than being realities with a different ontology, as Arnim writes in his review of Jung-Stilling’s Theorie der Geister-Kunde , one of the sources for the novella ( Werke 6: 543). In this review, he discusses the problem of imagination and truth; spirit appearances, the phenomenon both Jung-Stilling’s book and Arnim’s review focus on, become part 388 Jan Oliver Jost-Fritz of the empirical world (the “übrige Welt”) that to some extent governs both imitative and poietic acts of the poet. As spiritual phenomena, however, they remain inaccessible to direct perception. Arnim is not concerned with imagination as a subjective end in itself but as a function in a differentiated literary system; the purpose of literature for him is to be in a “sichern Verkehr mit der Welt,” as he explains in “Dichtung und Geschichte,” the first preface to his Kronenwächter novel, around the same time ( Werke 2: 17)� Whether ghostly apparitions are real or not is not the question for him, as long as appearances set forth a creative process and a product in this world. A closer look at how Arnim conceptualizes this preconscious realm of imagination reveals that the higher form of reality resembles what Tieck alluded to with the manifold of life’s events (and eventually the “Allegorie”). “Alle Poesie,” Arnim writes in another book review, “ruht auf einer derben, eckigen Realität, und ohne diese menschlichen Züge ist alles Übermenschliche ein Licht ohne Gestalt” ( Werke 6: 271)� The point here is that Arnim does not pit the realism of a “eckige[.] Realität” against an idealist “Übermenschliche[s]”; rather, he reconciles both in a realism that originates in a mimetic act that is then superimposed by imagination� He explains this idea in an earlier letter to Friedrich von Raumer� While visiting the art gallery in Dresden, Arnim immerses himself in Dutch paintings and criticizes the alleged realism of this school: Die niederländische Schule hat die Wahrheit des Ganzen der Wahrheit im Einzelnen gewöhnlich aufgeopfert, wäre alles so […] ich würde nie dabey verweilen, wie ich bey einem Gemälde verweilen, nicht diesen Ausdruck der gewöhnlichsten Natur zu befestigen und gleichsam als Gemälde zu erstarren würde mein Wunsch seyn, wenn mich etwas reitzte so wäre es der Wechsel die Veränderung dieser Scene, wie alles zusammenstimmt darin zu einer gewissen Freude zu einem gewissen Zwecke. (WAA 30: 191) Arnim appreciates the verisimilitude of the Dutch School’s realism, but he misses reality as an open horizon that allows the imagination to situate seemingly closed scenes in a succession of events in time, i�e�, history� The aspiration of pictorial realism and exhaustive representation of all visual perceptions for him leads into a failure to reconcile imitation, imagination, and contingency, the very moment of “Wechsel” that Arnim calls for. As Schlegel claimed, poetry (referring to art in general) can make the real essence of things visible. He is, however, simultaneously aware that mimetic representation fails due to the elusive nature of reality itself. Romantic aesthetics seem not yet to draw the connection between this essence of reality and the symbolic meaning of objects that in turn become representations for the driving forces in the social and historical dynamics in the later decades of the nineteenth century. But as we have seen, romantic aesthetic puts an emphasis on the problem that realism is Epistemology, Imagination, and History in Romantic Realism 389 dependent on imagination, and that imagination is a precondition to perceive reality in the first place. Beyond its progressive trajectory, however, romantic realism remains, at least with one foot, in pre-modern conceptualizations of reality, a fact that is comprehensible only when simultaneously the romantic concept of history is considered. In July 1802, just a few months after he gave up his career as a scientist in favor of becoming a poet, Arnim writes to Louise von Schlitz that eine gewaltige Dichtung durch die ganze Natur weht, bald als Geschichte bald als Naturereigniß hervortrit, die der Dichter nur in einzelnen schwachen Wiederklängen aufzufassen braucht um ins tiefste Gemüth mit unendliger Klarheit zu dringen. (WAA 31: 54) The romantic understanding of history here is modelled after the concept of natura naturans , along the same lines as August Wilhelm Schlegel favored to imitate not the appearance of nature but the productive potency (“das Hervorbringende selbst”; 2: 322). History is in itself a creating reality, a progressive force that becomes graspable only in its ever-changing manifoldness, but that is in itself not yet understood as the result of competing social processes� Romantic history is the recognition of the significance of contingency, as contingency is a precondition for imagination’s open horizon� By way of conclusion, romantic thought emphasizes the function of both imagination and history for accessing reality, and thus romantic conceptions of realism are always epistemological rather than ontological. Arnim puts the contingencies on center stage, in order to realize the moment of change (“Wechsel”). Tieck focuses entirely on the contingencies to point to the fact that reality emerges not only where individuals find a common ground in communication, but also where the individual encounters resistance. His “Koboldchen” in this sense is a symbol for the subject’s loss of agency in a reality that becomes more and more dependent on a dynamic that has its center beyond the individual subject. This points to what Blumenberg explains as “ Realität als das dem Subjekt nicht Gefügige ” (Blumenberg 53; italics in original text); history no longer allows a vantage point to gain a complete view of its own course. The Romantic authors did not look for the absolutism of a self-conscious spirit, as Hegel did, to solve this loss of preconceived comprehension of history. However, they also did not yet focus on the social dynamics as the driving force of history, as the later nineteenth-century Realism did. For the Romantics the actual (and actualized) reality is ultimately a contingent fact; as meaningful reality, however, it is a fact that is simultaneously based in the subject’s own agency and in something to which the subject has no access. Schleiermacher’s aphorism “Keine Poesie, 390 Jan Oliver Jost-Fritz keine Wirklichkeit” has its explanation in the romantic attempt to actualize the contingent reality as meaningful, an attempt that is possible only through imagination� Romantic realism, thus, needs mimetic activity just as much as poietic faculties� Notes 1 In “Wirklichkeitsbegriff und Möglichkeit des Romans,” Blumenberg differentiates four types of realism that he sees not in a strict historical succession of each other; a particular type of realism, however, may come to dominate a particular period in history. Here, Blumenberg defines realism as “Realisierung eines in sich einstimmigen Kontextes,” which was a dominant type of realism of the Age of Enlightenment (Blumenberg 51). 2 Arnim takes this in a literal sense when he advises young poets not to dwell on every “kleine[s] Gefühl[.]” in their poetry, but to look at the “Stadtgeschichten und Zeitungsnachrichten” as the origin for poetry (6: 264). 3 Tieck indeed included this fragment in his 1802 edition of Novalis’s works and was certainly familiar with his deceased friend’s thought. 4 In several instances, Schlegel replaced the word “Mythologie” in the later edition of the text with his concept of “Symbolik” that draws heavily on his reimagining of Friedrich Creuzer’s allegorical interpretation of myth� 5 For “Naturbegriff” in the edition of 1823, Schlegel uses “Mysterien des Realismus” in the Athenäum edition of the Gespräch (KFSA 2: 325). 6 Deutsches Wörterbuch , lemma “Schilderung” (http: / / www.woerterbuchnetz. de/ DWB? lemma=schilderung; accessed 20 May 2020). 7 At this point, Tieck certainly couldn’t know yet Goethe’s attempt to reconcile northern and southern poetry in Faust II� 8 On Romantic anti-foundationalism see Millan 159—74� 9 This is not to deny the significance of such tropes; Novalis, however, does not see these tropes as conceptually descriptive elements in his views on history, but rather as regulative ideas (Mähl 294—95). 10 The complicated backstory of the novella cannot be discussed here in its entirety� Essentially, Esther is the biological daughter of the old Majoratsherr, who gave her to a Jewish merchant and took the illegitimate child of a court lady in her place in order to secure the lineage of inheritance, from which female children are excluded. The young Majoratsherr observes Esther being murdered, jumps over the street into her room, and drinks water to proof the crime. According to a rabbinic myth, the water that is next to a dead body brings death to whomever drinks it, and consequently the Epistemology, Imagination, and History in Romantic Realism 391 Majoratsherr dies, merging the reality of the historic event (the crime) and the reality of the myth into an inseparable unity� 11 The anti-Semitic tendency of the novella cannot be further discussed here; for an analysis of this issue see Garloff (437—44). It is noteworthy that the text certainly reflects a despicable value system that characterized parts of the Prussian society in the early 1800s, a value system that is also reflected in the extensive and partly open anti-Semitic writings of the “Deutsche Tischgesellschaft” (see WAA 11: 263—65 for this context). 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[Schriften] Stifter, Schleiermacher, and the Vision of a Higher Realism 393 Stifter, Schleiermacher, and the Vision of a Higher Realism Daniel DiMassa Worcester Polytechnic Institute Abstract: Scholarship of visual culture has expanded the parameters by which we define literary realism. Using Goethe’s Farbenlehre as a touchstone for realists’ theories of vision, Elisabeth Strowick’s Gespenster des Realismus (2019) shows that the real is anything but synonymous with the prosaic. Realism is preoccupied with uncanny spaces that are generated by the (haunted) eye of the beholder. Just how far do the limits of realist representation stretch: does it accommodate the metaphysical? If so, the bounds we tend to see between it and the literature of the Goethezeit would begin to recede. Taking up the example of Adalbert Stifter, the present paper argues that the poetic program of the Austrian writer’s Bunte Steine (1853) aims at a practice of spiritual vision that emerges out of Romantic theories of God and nature, specifically, those at the heart of Friedrich Schleiermacher’s early theology. The paper rests on two lines of argumentation: (1) it demonstrates that the apparently pious novellas of the Bunte Steine , in particular, Bergkristall and Granit , exercise withering critiques of Christianity. (2) a close reading shows that the positive philosophy we find articulated in the preface to the Bunte Steine overlaps in compelling ways with the doctrine of intuition outlined and developed by Schleiermacher in Über die Religion (1799). The result - a reading that revises our view of Stifter’s natural philosophical commitments - underscores unexpected affinities between Romantic metaphysics and the practices of realist representation� Keywords: realism, Romanticism, vision, Bunte Steine , Adalbert Stifter, Friedrich Schleiermacher 394 Daniel DiMassa Realism, unlike Romanticism, does not prize things for what they could be - nor for what they are � Above all, Realism prizes the observation of things� Does this make it reducible to a school of empiricism? Not always. Scholars have shown that the sight implied by European Realism of the nineteenth century often operates according to more than standard theories of objective vision� Goethe’s Farbenlehre (1810), for example, revised longstanding theories of objective vision by suggesting that the eye plays a decisive role in the construction of reality (Crary). Subsequent theorists of vision, including German Realists, sought accordingly to conceive of the world as perceived by subjective vision. Elisabeth Strowick, reflecting on the Farbenlehre ’s peculiar language of Augengespenster , has recently charted how Goethe’s theory of color contributed to residues of Realism that we have long sensed but rarely articulated. By her reading, the world as construed by German Realists is anything but prosaic. It is an uncanny world where reality is in the haunted eye of the beholder� 1 In the present paper, I bring to light a religious-philosophical dialogue that manifests continuities across Romantic and Realist thought. Like Crary and Strowick, I deem Goethe and his contemporaries to be crucial models for this dialogue; yet it is not their theories of subjective vision that prove influential. On the contrary, it is their investment in concepts of nature, intuition, and objective vision� Concentrating on the Austrian realist, Adalbert Stifter, and his novella cycle, Bunte Steine (1853), I show that Stifter’s program of Realism - to the extent it is identifiable with that cycle - emerges out of a theory of vision whose roots are both Romantic and Goethean. By placing Stifter in dialogue with Friedrich Schleiermacher, we see how the religious and metaphysical preoccupations of the Goethezeit retain central significance well into the middle of the century. In the process, we see Stifter anew. He emerges neither as a pious Catholic (Downing, Swales and Swales), nor as a physico-theologian (Geulen), but as a naturalist and skeptic whose preoccupation with vision aligns him with Goethe, Schleiermacher, and self-identified Spinozists from the turn of the century� Stifter is one of the most famously embattled figures of the German-language canon. His texts, like those of, say, Kleist, defy classification. Realism is probably the most apt taxonomical umbrella under which to place his work, but not without provisos (Begemann and Giuriato 197). However we classify him, he exasperates us for the attention his texts lavish on seemingly trivial objects� A poet of “Käfer und Butterblumen,” as Friedrich Hebbel once wrote, Stifter and his poetics of the small have spawned insults that have won their own fame. Perhaps the primary reason he remains so ambivalent a figure is the apparent Stifter, Schleiermacher, and the Vision of a Higher Realism 395 provincialism of his work. His texts smack of nostalgia, quietism, and a piety that reads as almost dim-witted. Such impressions seem to be confirmed by his paltry support for the revolutionary events of 1848� Thus could Arno Schmidt, with a certain rectitude, describe Der Nachsommer as the “Magna Charta des Eskapismus” (210). There are times when Stifter would seem to justify such judgments, as when Eric Downing writes that his appeal to Christianity in the preface to Bunte Steine is “unavoidable and highly embarrassing” (31). That is to say nothing of the novellas themselves, littered as they are with salt-of-theearth types whose Christian faith appears prettily idealized. And yet the list of Stifter’s admirers complicates such views. Among them, for example, we find the likes of Thomas Mann and Friedrich Nietzsche - not exactly Christian simpletons� Furthermore, recent scholarship complicates the notion of Stifter’s parochial religious sensibility. For while it is true that titles like Adalbert Stifter und das christliche Weltbild (1959) were once standard fare, there have been movements away from such positions. 2 Among the more illuminating statements on Stifter’s religious sensibility is the following excerpt, which I cite despite its length, because it intimates the scope of the problem with relative concision: [Stifter] kennt Religion als Kirche, als Apparat und Institution, die durch ihre Amts- und Würdenträger repräsentiert wird; er kennt kirchlich verfasste, kirchlich organisierte Religiosität und ihre Praktiken, die in den persönlichen Bereich hineinreichen […]; er kennt vergleichsweise freie, subjektive Formen von Religiosität, die aber doch noch an einem personalen Gottesbegriff festhalten; er kennt religiöse und metaphysische Sehnsüchte bzw. Bedürfnisse unbestimmterer Art, Sehnsüchte nach übergreifenden Sinn- und Ordnungserfahrungen, vagere Vorstellungen vom Göttlichen, die mit einem personalen Gottesverständnis dann nur noch wenig zu tun haben; er kennt schließlich eine Lebens-, Welt- und Naturfrömmigkeit, die ohne einen Gottesbegriff i.e.S. auskommen kann und von der aus sich vielleicht sogar eine Nähe zu Arthur Schopenhauer und Ludwig Feuerbach ergeben könnte. (Begemann and Giuriato 279—80) Despite their sheen of naive faith, the novellas of Bunte Steine - which represent the most programmatic of Stifter’s forays into the territory of a Realist poetics - embody the last and most radical of the religious models that Begemann outlines, i�e�, of the Naturfrömmigkeit that borders on that of Schopenhauer and Feuerbach, but on that of Goethe, too� Nowhere is that more true than in Bergkristall , which presents the most saccharine face of piety in the collection. It is the story of two siblings who lose their way in the mountains on a snowy Christmas Eve. On the journey home from their grandparents, a squall forces them off course. They spend the night 396 Daniel DiMassa on the glacial ice of the mountain� In the morning they meet a rescue party, make their way home, and in doing so seal the happiness of their town’s holiday. The tale conjures powerful feelings of Geborgenheit and Gemütlichkeit , but its narration exposes anxieties that go unresolved� Signs of such anxieties surface in eccentricities of the narration, first of which is a prolix introduction that is peculiar for the attention it devotes to the domestic traditions of the Christmas holiday� As Jochen Berendes points out, it amounts to an ethnographic account of an Austrian Christmas for an Austrian readership (195). The excesses of the narration are at their most apparent in the descriptions of the holiday’s lights: the introduction catalogs nearly every source of light� The visit of the Christkindlein is (1) “ein heiteres, glänzendes, feierliches Ding.” On Christmas Eve, when twilight sets in, the faithful (2) light lanterns, “und meistens sehr viele.” The gifts from the Christ child are presented to children (3) “bei dem herrlichen schimmernden Lichterglanze.” The faithful carry (4) lights along dark paths as they hurry to a church that towers over them with its (5) windows illuminated in the darkness. All this effulgence reaches its high point in the final sentence of the introduction: (6) “Weil dieses Fest so lange nachhält, weil sein Abglanz so hoch in das Alter hinauf reicht, so stehen wir so gerne dabei, wenn die Kinder dasselbe begehen und sich darüber freuen” (Stifter 183—85)� The last of these statements is crucial for at least three reasons� The reference to the holiday’s Abglanz marks the culmination of the introduction’s catalog of light; it reflects the centrality to Stifter of perception, in particular of vision; and it betokens the crystalline title of the tale. The experience of the children atop the mountain will show that this characterization of Christmas aims at an epistemological critique of religious faith� We sense already, when the siblings Konrad and Sanna lose their way in a snowstorm, that their faith carries no currency beyond the bounds of their community. The children wend their way through a mountain forest, looking for a familiar signpost - a memorial to a fallen traveler - but cannot find it. Konrad is sure they will, because the black of the post’s iron cross “immer heraus ragen wird” (210). The image is a repetition of the narrator’s description of the children’s village, which is recognizable by the red shingles of the church steeple, which “aus dem Grün vieler Obstbäume hervor ragt, und […] weithin ersichtlich ist” (185). But neither church nor cross is visible in the children’s crisis. The community professes a god who is not to be found. The narrative is keen to reinforce the point, as when the children exert themselves to climb over a wall of ice: “Jenseits wollten sie wieder hinabklettern. Aber es gab kein Jenseits” (220). The lines suggest the absence of a hereafter, even in their visual arrangement: the sentences detached from paragraphs reflect an existence without ground. The experience of desolation reaches its climax when the children set up camp Stifter, Schleiermacher, and the Vision of a Higher Realism 397 in a mountain cave. Snow emits light as if it had absorbed daylight and now reflected it. Stars glimmer. There is even the shimmer of the Northern Lights in the night sky. The dazzling lights of nature stand in contrast to the many lights of the holiday, for as the narrator points out, not a single light from the village reaches the children atop the mountain (224). Together, the disappearance of the memorial post, the church steeple, and the lights of the town signal a gaping absence: of Christ, of the Church, of Christmas� There is an obvious objection: one might contend, as Martin and Erika Swales do, that the stars and the Northern Lights are a confirmation of faith. The lights of Christmas would seem thereby inscribed into the fabric of the universe (Swales and Swales 195—96). It was a star, after all, that led the Magi to Christ. Furthermore, Sanna eventually tells her mother that she witnessed the Christ child in the night sky. Yet there is good reason to resist the Swales’ contention, as does Christian Begemann, who sees in the discrepancy between the narrative and its interpretation by Sanna an obstacle to the assignation of religious significance ( Zeichen 318—19). Begemann’s skepticism gains traction if we align it with the inquiry of Strowick, who argues that we ought to understand Stifter’s engagement with light, color, and perception as an appraisal of Goethean thought (103—04). Consider, on that note, how the emblems of Goethean color theory find themselves transformed in Stifter’s novella. The rainbow on the alpine meadow at the outset of Faust II , a transformation of Goethe’s 1809 painting of the color wheel, emerges as a nocturnal vision in Bergkristall : amidst a night of white, black, and gray, the children witness the dazzling play of color in the sky. The Northern Lights, a reflection of the earth’s gases, appear to the children in the shape of a bow. They are the negative image of the Faustian rainbow. Even the insight inspired by Faust’s vision - “Am farbigen Abglanz haben wir das Leben” (l. 4727) - is repeated in Stifter’s description of the Christmas holiday� It is the Abglanz of the holiday, after all, which persists into maturity. That repetition in Bergkristall is laden with significance. Inasmuch as it signals the mediated character of knowledge, the Faustian rainbow underscores the potential failure of the subject to recognize nature for what it is. Indeed, this is the lesson of Sanna’s misinterpretation. To read the novella as a confirmation of faith is to repeat her mistake. Bergkristall suggests that faith in a personal deity emerges from a (mis)interpretation of vision. 3 It suggests, moreover, that the subjectivity responsible for such misinterpretation is nourished and reinforced by communal life� Consider, as Berendes points out, how the novella’s introduction characterizes the celebration of Christmas as an act of the community’s consensus. Opening with the possessive descriptor, “Unsere Kirche,” the narration continues, “die katholische Kirche begeht den Christtag als den Tag der Geburt des Heilandes,” “die Mitternachtsstunde als die 398 Daniel DiMassa Geburtsstunde des Herrn” (Berendes 195). As Berendes writes, the narration is more concerned with “volkstümliche[r] Praxis” than with the doctrine of the holiday (195). The role of the community in the persistence of religious interpretation is particularly evident, however, once the children have been saved and returned to their village. Repeatedly, the adults of the village invoke God: (1) “Gebenedeit sei Gott” (234) (2) “so gut wir es vermögen, und so gut uns Gott helfe” (234) (3) “so können wir in Gottes Namen aufbrechen” (236) (4) “Gott sei Dank” (237) (5) “danke Gott auf den Knieen” (238) (6) “Ja, danken wir Gott, danken wir Gott” (238) Piling one upon the other, the invocations reflect two other quirks of speech in the novella� First, they recall the catalog of light in the story’s introduction. There is, in fact, a structural parallel between the two fits of pleonasm: each lexical cluster contains roughly six items (depending on how one counts) and together the clusters, appearing before and after the primary events of the narrative, form a bookend to the novella. Second, the villagers’ proliferation of mindless references to God recalls the seventeen times that Sanna, blindly following her brother’s instructions, had replied “Ja, Konrad.” Just as Sanna’s blind faith in her brother was misplaced, so too is the faith of the villagers. Their god, like the holiday lights to which he forms a bookend, was absent on the mountain� 4 That critical portrayal of revealed religion manifests elsewhere in the Bunte Steine in arguably more incisive ways. Granit presents the narrative of Christian salvation history as downright brutal. The novella’s narrator relates the trouble that ensues when, as a child, he allowed a traveling dealer of pitch to smear his feet with oil. After walking into his house and staining the floorboards, his mother exclaims, “Was hat denn dieser heillose eingefleischte Sohn heute für Dinge an sich? ” (26). The use of the adjective eingefleischt rings odd: in what way, after all, can one be an eingefleischter Sohn ? As they do elsewhere, the excesses of Stifter’s narration manifest what is implicit in the text: eingefleischt , literally incarnate , points to the phenomenon of the incarnation � 5 The narrator is a Christ figure who happens also to be heillos , i.e., god-forsaken. The affinity to Christ illuminates the events surrounding the mother’s exclamation� The child’s submission to having his feet oiled reads as a ritual of anointing� The name Christ, after all, is Greek for “the anointed one,” and Christ submitted to the ritual of anointing in Holy Week (Matthew 26). It is in this light that the events that follow are to be interpreted: the mother carries her son to an adjoining room, grasps a bundle of reeds, and beats the child’s feet so violently that pitch spatters her, her son, and the entire room (26—27). The story stages a domestic Stifter, Schleiermacher, and the Vision of a Higher Realism 399 transformation of the events of Holy Week, up to and including the passion of Christ� 6 What kind of god, the tale of the son and his brutal mother asks, allows his son to be so violently mangled? An earlier version of the story, Die Pechbrenner , makes the same case in yet more painful form. There, a boy, Joseph, also suffers torments like those of Christ. During an outbreak of plague, his father sends away a lost, hungry family for fear of infection. Joseph tracks down the family, finds shelter for them, and supplies them secretly with food. Amidst these acts of charity, Joseph’s family contracts the plague and the father discovers his son’s acts of well-intentioned disobedience. He thus brings Joseph to a rock ledge, removes the ladder with which the boy climbed the ledge, and gives him a choice: jump to his death or starve to death� Once the father has abandoned his son, and Joseph realizes it is no mere exercise, he calls for his father - repeatedly - to no avail. These calls echo those of the crucified Christ: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? ” (Matthew 27: 46). The displacement of the paschal mystery to the realm of the domestic aims to focus Christian eyes on the brutal whims of its god. It is in this respect, too, that Stifter emerges as a belated interlocutor of Goethe and his philosophical peers� Although Christian theology of atonement (e.g., Anselm of Canterbury’s Cur deus homo ) had long since developed arguments for the necessity and goodness of Christ’s crucifixion (cf. felix culpa ), enlightened philosophers of the eighteenth century were often scandalized by divine violence and bloodlust in Judeo-Christian scripture� Voltaire, for example, wrote the drama Saul as a criticism of the prominence of sacrificial violence in the Hebrew Bible. Goethe, meanwhile, though so partial to the Hebrew scriptures that he wished to throttle Voltaire for his mockery of them, nevertheless bemoaned the apparent violence of the deity - as a child in response to the earthquake in Lisbon, and as an adult in the “Prometheus” ode. Kleist, too, of course, figured in the same discourse. Das Erdbeben in Chili , for all else that can be said of it, is fundamentally an expression of horror at the linkages of religion and violence - less than a century since Leibniz had published the Théodicée � The treatment of Christianity in Bunte Steine thus turns out to approximate, as Uwe Steiner has suggested, what we find in novellas like Das Erdbeben in Chili and Die Marquise von O (173). 7 This demands that we inquire after just what sort of god it is to whom Stifter appeals in the preface of Bunte Steine. Considered an early manifesto of German Realism, Stifter’s preface is not an obviously theological statement� It is an apologia of his predilection for apparently trivial things� In structuring that apologia Stifter relies on the correlative pair of the individual ( Einzelne ) and the universal ( Allgemeine ) as justification for his judgments� Phenomena he deems small are those that attract attention to 400 Daniel DiMassa themselves and divert attention from the universal; phenomena he deems grand are those that point beyond their individuality to the universe and its laws. Pursuing the conviction that nature’s laws are discoverable through observation of phenomena, Stifter begins to sketch the principles of an epistemology. It is here that the text comes closest to a theology: Weil aber die Wissenschaft nur Körnchen nach Körnchen erringt, nur Beobachtung nach Beobachtung macht, nur aus Einzelnem das Allgemeine zusammen trägt, und weil endlich die Menge der Erscheinungen und das Feld des Gegebenen unendlich groß ist, Gott also die Freude und die Glükseligkeit des Forschens unversieglich gemacht hat, wir auch in unseren Werkstätten immer nur das Einzelne darstellen können, nie das Allgemeine, denn dies wäre die Schöpfung: so ist auch die Geschichte des in der Natur Großen in einer immerwährenden Umwandlung der Ansichten über dieses Große bestanden. Da die Menschen in der Kindheit waren, ihr geistiges Auge von der Wissenschaft noch nicht berührt war, wurden sie von dem Nahestehenden und Auffälligen ergriffen und zu Furcht und Bewunderung hingerissen: aber als ihr Sinn geöffnet wurde, da der Blik sich auf den Zusammenhang zu richten begann, so sanken die einzelnen Erscheinungen immer tiefer, und es erhob sich das Gesez immer höher, die Wunderbarkeiten hörten auf, das Wunder nahm zu. (11—12) The infinity of the universe - provided for by God - ensures that the search for knowledge is an unending quest. God is mentioned, but the role of the Christian deity in this cosmology is far less integral to the argument than the twin claims Stifter makes of physics and epistemology: (a) the universe is infinite and (b) we come to know the universe through a special practice of vision. It is upon these points, after all, and not upon the existence of a deity, that the argument in favor of small things rests� 8 Nevertheless, the preface to Bunte Steine has led frequently to the attribution to Stifter of a lapsed Christian worldview. Erika and Martin Swales, for example, write of Stifter’s indebtedness to Catholic Austria and to Weimar Classicism (especially to Herder) to explain his preoccupation with scientific inquiry, which they deem a philosophical “act of Christian worship” (28). Eva Geulen, referring also to Stifter’s program of inquiry into nature’s laws, writes that the “only concept of nature that could sustain this project is the early Enlightenment notion of physicotheology, the belief in natural history as the ordered unfolding of a meaningful universe” (588). With Darwin’s landmark work of 1859, Geulen sees Stifter’s project on the brink of catastrophe. Eric Downing, meanwhile, surmises that Stifter’s mention of God in the preface is intended to supply a unity to nature that otherwise is not there: God supplies the “guarantee that the pieces and fragments function as pieces and fragments, as signifiers of a common, but empirically absent, reality. […] Realism becomes a matter not of scientifically Stifter, Schleiermacher, and the Vision of a Higher Realism 401 recording what is there but of religiously believing in what is not” (31). With his tales of apparent Christian virtue, and scattered references to God, Stifter opens himself to such interpretations. Yet the tenets of his worldview by no means entail these conclusions, which tend to be constrained by strict conceptions of creed and theism� In his history of the conceptualization of nature, Pierre Hadot provides a fuller view of the tree upon whose branches we might look to find Stifter. Writing about the study of nature as a study of that which loves to hide, Hadot profiles “Promethean” and “Orphic” approaches to uncovering the secrets of nature. Whereas the former uses experimentation to draw out nature’s secrets and leverage them to utilitarian ends, the latter relies on acts of perception to know nature for the joy that is intrinsic to knowledge. Both dispositions are evident from antiquity onward, sometimes even in the work of the same person. Vital steps in the history of Promethean science include ancient practices of magic and the early modern revolution in mechanics� Promethean practices of science have won hegemony in the Western pursuit of knowledge. The Orphic attitude, on the other hand, is evident from Plato’s Timaeus and Seneca’s Stoicism to Henri Bergson and Jacques Monod, among others - including Goethe. It is not tied to a particular creed, but as Hadot explains, its insistence on the progressive accumulation of knowledge grants research the semblance of revelation. It has a proximity to the sacred (171). One influential version of just such an Orphic stance toward nature emerged from the milieu of German Romanticism� Friedrich Schleiermacher, a friend to and collaborator with the Schlegel brothers, had posited a new form of naturalistic religion on the basis of his enthusiastic reception of Spinoza’s monism� Of the many arguments in Über die Religion: Reden an die Gebildeten unter ihren Verächtern (1799), the ones that are crucial for Stifter are those where Schleiermacher defines the nature of religion. He pulls the carpet from under the feet of religion’s despisers: religion is not what they think it is. It is neither a system of metaphysics nor is it a system of morals� Instead, religion is a matter of Anschauung � The concept derives from his reading of Spinoza’s Ethics , where the latter had posited three modes of knowing: discursive reason, the experience of the senses, and scientia intuitiva . The last of these, “intuitive knowledge,” Spinoza describes as the highest form of knowing (78). It bears quasi-religious connotations by granting the best pathway to the greatest virtue - the knowledge of God. Intuitive knowledge affords humankind optimal perfection, which according to Spinoza’s definitions, results in optimal joy (104, 239). He terms this joy the intellectual love of God ( amor dei intellectualis ) and equates it to the state of blessedness ( beatitudo )� According to the most famous atheist of early modern Europe, intuitive knowledge guides one to salvation. Schleiermacher was an 402 Daniel DiMassa eager evangelist, enjoining his readers to venerate Spinoza and proclaiming that “Anschauen des Universums” was the “Angel meiner ganzen Rede” (213). The reinterpretation of religion as intuition depends on Spinoza’s monistic ontology� Proposing the reality of just one material substance, Spinoza had circumvented the Western philosophical preoccupation with dualism(s) - the dualism of God and creation, the dualism of mind and body, the dualism of matter and spirit etc. He proposed that there was one substance that, though it exists in variegated forms, was ultimately undivided. One might call it nature, or one might call it God - deus sive natura . For Schleiermacher, who saw the idea of a personal deity as a form of anthropomorphism (245—46), the important thing was to apprehend the unity of all being. Religion has nothing to do with the mythologies of human fantasy, he wrote, and everything to do with intuitive knowledge of the universe. Schleiermacher explains intuition as a mode of knowledge that proceeds from the individual ( das Einzelne ) to the whole ( das Ganze )� Without the mediation of reason or concepts, intuition recognizes objects as pieces of a whole. Indeed, Schleiermacher defines religion in these very terms: “alles Einzelne als einen Theil des Ganzen, alles Beschränkte als eine Darstellung des Unendlichen hinnehmen, das ist Religion” (214). In Schleiermacher’s attention to the relation of the individual and the whole we begin to witness how he anticipates the poetic project of Stifter. Both men advocate the preservation of the individual for the sake of knowledge of the universal� Stifter holds it necessary to collect and observe fragmentary objects in order to glean insight into the greater laws at work in the whole of nature. Schleiermacher advocates for the preservation of the individual on the basis that the realm for intuition must be protected� To maximize the opportunities for intuitive knowledge, the religious person has the responsibility to guard the individual� But in the search to contemplate the individual, Schleiermacher warns, one should not confuse it with the sublime events of nature that inspire fear and awe. The similarity to Stifter in that admonition becomes all the more compelling in the example of awe-inspiring nature that Schleiermacher cites: Was ist jenes zarte Spiel der Farben, das Euer Auge in allen Erscheinungen des Firmaments ergözt, und einen Blik mit so vielem Wohlgefallen festhält, auf den lieblichsten Produkten der vegetabilischen Natur? Was ist es, nicht in Eurem Auge sondern in und fürs Universum? (224) The citation of colors in the sky is glaring in the light of Bergkristall � What further highlights the potential intertext is the challenge Schleiermacher poses to his readers: to divorce their response to the phenomenon from the import of the phenomenon to the universe� Sanna’s false perception of the Northern Lights - her reinterpretation of them as the Christkind - is a failure to do exactly Stifter, Schleiermacher, and the Vision of a Higher Realism 403 this� Thus it is that Schleiermacher proceeds, in a statement that again anticipates Stifter, to caution against assigning undue weight to the ostensibly great phenomena of nature: “nicht im Donner des Himmels noch in den furchtbaren Wogen des Meeres sollt Ihr das allmächtige Wesen erkennen” (224). Size and quantity are not the stuff of religion. The night sky was no less marvelous for the ancients to behold than it is for the modern viewer who knows the massive dimensions of the planets. Unlike experiences of the sublime, intuition does not depend upon the effects of a natural occurrence on an observer; it consists in the observer’s asking how natural phenomena cohere with the whole of nature. In the case of Stifter and Schleiermacher, an observer’s attunement to the individual phenomena of nature leads to enlightenment. The knowledge most central to this state of enlightenment is the knowledge of the laws of the universe. Stifter’s preface is famously preoccupied with such laws. His apologia amounts to an argument for a practice of spiritual vision that uses “small” things to intuit grand laws. But the same is no less true of the Romantic theologian, who formulates the argument in much the same way: “Was in der That den religiösen Sinn anspricht in der äußeren Welt, das sind nicht ihre Massen sondern ihre Geseze. Erhebt Euch zu dem Blik wie diese alles umfassen […] und dann sagt, ob Ihr nicht anschaut die göttliche Einheit und die ewige Unwandelbarkeit der Welt” (225). More apparently than Stifter’s preface, Schleiermacher’s enjoinder evinces the religious dynamic inherent in what Hadot calls the Orphic approach to nature’s secrets� But the religiosity of Schleiermacher’s position is not to be mistaken for one more take on run-of-the-mill German Protestantism. Indeed, it is barely legible as any form of Abrahamic theism. Enamored with Spinoza, Schleiermacher spurns the notion of a personal god; he rids himself of Christian dualisms; and he argues that knowledge of the laws of the universe disabuses one of the falsity of miracles, leaving one only to wonder at the marvel of the universe’s existence. The latter of these notions again anticipates Stifter, who writes in the preface that as knowledge of the law ( Gesetz ) comes to the fore, “die Wunderbarkeiten” cease and “das Wunder” increases (9). Miraculous events yield to the miracle of nature itself� The more comprehensive our observation of nature, as the development of chemistry suggested to Schleiermacher, the greater is our wonderment at its unitary character. Stifter and Schleiermacher envision that unity as inclusive also of human society. Thus does the relation of the individual and the whole characterize their reckoning with matters of anthropology. Just as Stifter had dismissed the tempests of nature as dull in their egregiousness, he dismisses violent outbursts, acts of vengeance, and similar such expressions as less worthy of representation than the broader and more common forces of human solidarity. When we see the laws of justice and morals at work, overcoming expressions of fitfulness, we 404 Daniel DiMassa feel “menschlich verallgemeinert” (13). Schleiermacher, too, encourages the intuition of universal humanity as an integral step in the intuition of the universe: each human being is “ein notwendiges Ergänzungsstück zur vollkommnen Anschauung der Menschheit” (230). The recognition of the individual’s station in humanity, and of humanity’s finite place in the material universe, he writes, results in “wahre ungekünstelte Demuth” (236). The reference to humility is worth underscoring, for it raises one final parallel of import between the Reden and the Bunte Steine : one of the greatest affective outcomes of knowledge of the universe, in both Stifter and Schleiermacher, is the humility that results from knowing our own smallness in the universe. And yet, in the case of each text, there is a special class of individuals that transcends the ranks of its humble peers. Stifter, who describes himself as little more than a dilettante, regards real poets as “die hohen Priester, […] die Wohltäter des menschlichen Geschlechtes” (9). The notion is virtually synonymous with that of Schleiermacher, who writes of poets, among others, as priests and prophets who help mediate knowledge of the universe� Stifter and Schleiermacher describe their respective aims in modest terms, but in both cases, of course, humility is a posture� Neither man has small ambitions� Stifter aims to do no less than reveal the universe� If there is something good and noble in himself, it will be found in his collection of colorful stones (9). 9 Schleiermacher wishes to unearth a bunten Stein of his own: for far too long, religion has been mired in the muck of morals and metaphysics. “So liegt auch auch der Diamant in einer schlechten Masse gänzlich verschlossen, aber wahrlich nicht um verborgen zu bleiben, sondern um desto sicherer gefunden zu werden” (28). The affinities of Stifter and Schleiermacher we have been tracing merit recapitulation� In an apologia of things despised, each defends the small and particular as a sign of the great and universal - above all as signs of the laws that govern the universe� 10 Their rhetorical strategies overlap in striking ways, with each abjuring in similar terms the grand phenomena of nature� Inasmuch as they interpret particular phenomena as signs to be perceived, they are at pains to teach readers to “see” objects in relation to greater networks of being. It is a “geistiges Auge” of which Stifter writes, exercised in the maneuvers of natural scientific inquiry, that finds its activity elaborated in Schleiermacher’s discussion of the individual. His notion of “Anschauung des Universums” is promoted, after all, by the attunement of vision in the natural sciences to ever smaller phenomena� The microscopic worlds discovered by the chemistry of organic compounds and by the mathematics of the infinitesimal reveal the incomprehensibly vast stretches between nature and her parts, just as had the data points gathered by Stifter’s researcher of electromagnetic fields. For neither writer is the pursuit of Stifter, Schleiermacher, and the Vision of a Higher Realism 405 science an end-in-itself� It is an activity that promotes the preconditions of our highest form of knowledge: the knowledge of the unity of being. Our frequent ascription to Stifter of physico-theology is a form of shorthand that paints him as an epigone (viz. fides quaerens intellectum )� It implies a personal deity whose existence one seeks to confirm in scientific research, as if Stifter were a “Detektiv auf den Spuren Gottes” (Schiffermüller 18). Admittedly, there is some truth to this: Stifter does regard religion and research as intertwined. But there is a difference between research as a confirmation of the premises of faith and research as a definition of the articles of faith. In the Bunte Steine , observation of nature serves the latter, not the former. After all, we might ask: why would Stifter be at pains to seek out the apparently malevolent deity who reigns over the world of Granit and Die Pechbrenner ? Those novellas - like Kleist’s Erdbeben - are better read as critical accounts of Christian theodicy. Arguably, the Bunte Steine posit no personal deity at all ( Bergkristall )� This is not to discount Stifter’s own discussions of a deity so much as it is to underscore a rift between such discussions and the actuality of his narratives. Instead of aligning him with enlightened theism, this reading of the novellas aligns him with the reorganization of knowledge that took place around the development of science in the mid-nineteenth century� At the outset of his Logische Untersuchungen (1840), Adolf Trendelenburg noted that empirical observation of the individual ( das Einzelne ), as opposed to a preoccupation with the whole ( das Ganze ), had enabled the sciences to flourish (1). That flourishing, as Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison have demonstrated, depended on how empirical observation occurred� By the middle of the nineteenth century, the idealizing vision of collectors and taxonomists like Linnaeus was no longer tenable (73). It became imperative for the researcher to erase his subjectivity and allow nature to speak for herself: “Was ist es,” as Schleiermacher asks, “nicht in Eurem Auge sondern in und fürs Universum? ” (224). This mode of science and its procedures of vision - which Daston and Galison call “mechanical objectivity” - are endorsed by Bunte Steine � 11 In the figure of Sanna and in her interpretation of the Northern Lights, Bergkristall illustrates a powerful (negative) example of how subjectivity clouds the act of observation� The girl’s reinterpretation of a natural phenomenon as a divine being is a case in point for the failure to observe the universe as it is. This hardly makes Stifter a writer whose realism depends on religious belief. On the contrary, it points up the affinities he shares with contemporaneous critics of religion like Ludwig Feuerbach, for whom religion represented a hypostasized anthropology� If there is a religious dimension to Stifter’s program of Realism, it is one that militates against the mythologies of religion and opts to venerate nature� 406 Daniel DiMassa That returns us to the philosophical-religious world of Goethe and his contemporaries� If Stifter’s poetics of the small is a rearticulation of Schleiermacher’s theology of the individual, then the Gott to whom Stifter appeals is not the God of a dualist Christian theology� It is the impersonal God of Spinoza’s deus sive natura � It is the natura naturans of Spinoza’s Ethics � Stifter is decidedly not the provincial Christian whose observation of nature validates his faith; nature is his faith. Where Downing thinks the appeal to God in Stifter’s preface supplies the missing unity to an infinite universe, and thus generates a realism that is underpinned by religious faith, I read the reference to God in the preface differently: the deity to whom Stifter refers is the infinite nature of Schleiermacher, 12 whose Spinozism authorizes the choice between deus and natura � Stifter’s Gott is shorthand for a monistic reality� Consider, on that note, what Stifter writes of our endless quest to know nature: its infinity affords us “die Freude und die Glükseligkeit des Forschens” (11; my emphasis). These are the very terms, translated from Latin, that Spinoza uses to describe the affective results of intuitive knowledge - laetitia and beatitudo � Stifter’s program of realism is not a naturalism that is hellbent on finding Heaven. It is a poetics of the material, dynamic universe, aimed at training readers to orient themselves in a unitary reality� The connection of Stifter and Schleiermacher confuses traditional taxonomies. In a phrase that could have defined Stifter’s poetic endeavor, Schleiermacher described his religion as “einen höheren Realismus” (213). It seems clear now, though, that the tenets of Stifter’s religion were rooted in the nature philosophy that had come to vogue in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries� There thus emerges an ironic chiasm between Stifter and the Age of Goethe and his Romantic contemporaries� Whereas the Spinozism of the Schlegel brothers had given way to Catholicism, the Catholicism of Stifter gave way to Spinozism. The chiasm is ironic not just because both parties moved in opposite directions, but because Stifter despised the bluster of the Romantics and the braggadocio of the Schlegel brothers, the title of whose journal ( Athenäum ) suggested it could show readers the holy of holies. As Hadot reminds us, Heraclitus had said that “nature loves to hide”; to an Orphic naturalist like Stifter, the Romantic project must have seemed to gloat in its expositions of nature� His manifesto of realism stakes a different approach, without thereby dispensing with a similar set of metaphysical commitments. We thus witness in Stifter the example of an early German Realist who has gleaned his Spinozism from a Romantic theologian. The metaphysical presuppositions, in other words, are those that were common to Goethe and several of his Romantic peers — Friedrich von Hardenberg, Friedrich Schlegel, Friedrich Schelling, Friedrich Schleiermacher etc. But whereas several of the latter abandoned those positions and turned to Stifter, Schleiermacher, and the Vision of a Higher Realism 407 Roman Catholicism (Novalis and the Schlegels), to a more orthodox Protestantism (Schleiermacher), or to the world of myth (Schelling), Stifter represents a compelling possibility for conceiving of what the philosophical-religious presuppositions of the Goethezeit looked like when they were translated into the world of post-Goethean aesthetics. If the Jena Romantics met a premature end, having developed a flurry of theory and a dearth of poetry, then in an odd twist, Stifter and his texts of ordinary life suggest what they might otherwise have been� Notes 1 Strowick hesitates to see the prevalence of Gespenster as a return to or continuation of the Romantic; she rejects the view that literary realism is necessarily marked by an interest in the supernatural (8). 2 Important sources for this paper include Begemann (“Metaphysik”), Berendes, and Cooper. Each raises the possibility of forms of skepticism in Bergkristall , while insisting upon an ultimate ambiguity. I try to make the case here for a more thoroughly skeptical Stifter. 3 Sanna’s interpretation of events, Cooper believes, remains fundamentally ambiguous, inasmuch as the text provides no comment on it� Situated in a larger conversation on the relation of Dämmerung to Romantic preoccupations with subjectivity, Cooper sees Bergkristall as essentially post-Romantic� My reading argues in the opposite direction on both counts� In the same paper, Cooper links Caspar David Friedrich’s winter landscape paintings with Schleiermacher’s notions of art as religious mediation, but he does not draw lines of affinity between Schleiermacher and Stifter. 4 Ragg-Kirkby reads the repetition of “Ja, Konrad” as a sign that Stifter has represented a sphere “beyond humanity and beyond divinity.” Sanna’s statement is “an act of misplaced faith; her excessive positivity confirms a negative” (74—75). 5 Compare Stifter’s lexicon to Luther’s translation of John 1: 14, “Und das Wort ward Fleisch und wohnte unter uns, und wir sahen seine Herrlichkeit, eine Herrlichkeit als des eingeborenen Sohnes vom Vater, voller Gnade und Wahrheit.” 6 The Bible is invoked, too, when the boy’s grandfather washes his feet (28). Martin and Erika Swales recognize the biblical reference in that case (Swales and Swales 150), but not in the other facets I have highlighted here. 7 Steiner is less inclined to see Stifter and Kleist as analogous than he is to see them at work on the same religious-philosophical line of inquiry. Inasmuch as I read each of them to be aghast at the narrative of Christian salvation 408 Daniel DiMassa history, I depart from Steiner. That does not diminish, however, the interesting linkages he traces between Bergkristall and Kleist’s Erdbeben ; it only changes how we think of Stifter’s estimation of Kleist. 8 As Paul Fleming writes, “the one thing God does here (if he does anything) is make the task of science infinite and, therefore, guarantee that its joy - the joy of discovering the hidden -will be inexhaustible” (146). 9 It seems significant, keeping in mind how Bergkristall centers the Abglanz , that Stifter indicates in the Vorrede that if “das Niedrige und Unedle” is somewhere in his writing, it is bound to shine through (“durchscheinen”) (9). 10 I have been referring to Stifter’s preface as an apologia� It should not escape notice that the first speech in Schleiermacher’s text is entitled, “Apologie.” 11 It should be noted, too, that precisely this mode of objective vision is at the heart of Thomas Gann and Marianne Schuller’s recent volume on Stifter’s poetics of the surface (8—9). 12 “Ihr wißt daß die Gottheit durch ein unabänderliches Gesez sich selbst genöthiget hat, ihr großes Werk bis ins Unendliche hin zu entzweien (191). Works Cited Begemann, Christian� Die Welt der Zeichen. Stifter-Lektüren � Stuttgart: Metzler, 1995� ---. “Metaphysik und Empirie. Konkurrierende Naturkonzepte im Werk Adalbert Stifters.” Wissen in Literatur im 19. Jahrhundert � Ed� Lutz Danneberg, Hartmut Böhme, Jörg Schönert and Friedrich Vollhardt. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2002. 92—126. Begemann, Christian, and Davide Giuriato, eds� Stifter Handbuch. Leben - Werk - Wirkung � Stuttgart: Metzler, 2017� Berendes, Jochen� Ironie - Komik - Skepsis. Studien zum Werk Adalbert Stifters . Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2009� Cooper, Ian. “‘Winterabende’: A Romantic and Post-Romantic Motif in Friedrich, Büchner and Stifter.” Publications of the English Goethe Society 86.1 (2017): 42—54. Crary, Jonathan� Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990� Daston, Lorraine, and Peter Galison� Objectivity . New York: Zone Books, 2007. Downing, Eric. Double Exposures: Repetition and Realism in Nineteenth-Century German Fiction � Palo Alto: Stanford UP, 2000� Ferraris, Maurizio� Introduction to New Realism � Trans� Sarah De Sanctis� London: Bloomsbury, 2015� Fleming, Paul� Exemplarity and Mediocrity: The Art of the Average from Bourgeois Tragedy to Realism � Palo Alto: Stanford UP, 2008� Gann, Thomas, and Marianne Schuller, eds� Fleck, Glanz, Finsternis. Zur Poetik der Oberfläche bei Adalbert Stifter . Paderborn: Wilhelm Fink, 2017. Stifter, Schleiermacher, and the Vision of a Higher Realism 409 Geulen, Eva. “Tales of a Collector.” A New History of German Literature � Ed� David Wellbery� Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2004� 587—92� Goethe, Johann Wolfgang� Faust . Ed. Albrecht Schöne. Berlin: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 2017� Hadot, Pierre� The Veil of Isis: An Essay on the History of the Idea of Nature � Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2008� Meillassoux, Quentin. After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency � London: Bloomsbury, 2008� Ragg-Kirkby, Helena. Adalbert Stifter’s Late Prose: The Mania for Moderation � Rochester: Camden House, 2000� Schiffermüller, Isolde. “‘jenes Ding … das Licht.’ Zum Glanz in der Prosa von Adalbert Stifter.” Fleck, Glanz, Finsternis � Zur Poetik der Oberfläche bei Adalbert Stifter � Ed� Thomas Gann and Marianne Schuller. Paderborn: Wilhelm Fink, 2017. 15—33. Schleiermacher, Friedrich Daniel Ernst� Kritische Gesamtausgabe . Vol. I/ 2: Über die Religion: Reden an die Gebildeten unter ihren Verächtern . Ed. Hans-Joachim Birkner, Gerhard Ebeling, Hermann Fischer, Heinz Kimmerle and Kurt-Victor Selge. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1984� 185—326� Schmidt, Arno� Dya na sore . Frankfurt a. M.: S. Fischer, 1985. Spinoza, Benedict� Ethics . Ed. Matthew J. Kisner. Trans. Michael Silverstone and Matthew J. Kisner. New York: Cambridge UP, 2018. Steiner, Uwe. “Kreuz-Zeichen. Warum Stifters Bergkristall Kleists Das Erdbeben in Chili in eine Ökonomie des Narrativen umschreibt.” Athenäum: Jahrbuch für Romantik 17 (2007): 159—91. Stifter, Adalbert� Werke und Briefe � Historisch-Kritische Gesamtausgabe. Vol. 2/ 2. Ed. Alfred Doppler and Wolfgang Frühwald. Stuttgart/ Berlin/ Cologne/ Mainz: Kohlhammer, 1982� Strowick, Elisabeth. Gespenster des Realismus: Zur literarischen Wahrnehmung von Wirklichkeit . Paderborn: Fink, 2019. Swales, Martin, and Erika Swales. Adalbert Stifter: A Critical Study � Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1984� Trendelenburg, Friedrich Adolf� Logische Untersuchungen � Vol� 1� Berlin: Bethge, 1840� Stifter’s Realism and the Avant-Garde: Affect and Materiality in “Kalkstein” 411 Stifter’s Realism and the Avant-Garde: Affect and Materiality in “Kalkstein” Robert E� Mottram Whitman College Abstract: Putting Adalbert Stifter, the poetic realist author widely known for his “gentle law,” into dialogue with the acutely abstract works of the avant-garde is to encounter elements of his prose that are not based on mimetic principles of representation but are rather performative effects. Stifter’s subsumption of narrative progression to prolonged descriptions of landscapes, atmospheric conditions, and domestic interiors does not simply represent but rather generates the affective dimensions of a textual body. Part of what Fredric Jameson discusses as the emergence of the bourgeois body around 1840, in which affect stands opposite allegorical narrative, Stifter’s idiosyncratic style nevertheless braids affect with meaningful horizons. The imbrication of bodily affectivity and allegorical meaning in Stifter confronts theories of realism predicated on phenomenalist epistemologies, according to which matter can be delimited and described, with a more elusive materiality that turns every attempt to reduce objects to their bare existence into an uncanny reanimation of significance. Accordingly, Stifter’s “Kalkstein” is not limited to exploring the local landscapes of Upper Austria; it also foregrounds the intensities of the body that are as dynamic and hermeneutically uncertain as the most abstract avant-gardist compositions� Keywords: Stifter, realism, avant-garde, affect, materiality, allegory, atmosphere With an eye toward the increasing rationalization of the nineteenth-century novel, Franco Moretti distills one of the central paradoxes of literary realism: “[T]he more radical and clear-sighted its aesthetic achievement - the more unlivable the world it depicts” (89). Attention to detail and descriptive accuracy came at the expense of the larger significance of those details and descriptions. 412 Robert E� Mottram Two of the most recent and significant works on German realism to appear in English straddle the fault line of this paradox. Eric Downing’s The Chain of Things illuminates the Stimmung that, generated by metonymic and anthropomorphic connections between human subjects and physical objects, makes of the world of realism a palpably meaningful, and therefore livable, whole. Erica Weitzman’s At the Limit of the Obscene , on the other hand, attunes itself to the ever-looming fear with which realism could not live: that the “stony face” of reality would actually be reached, that mere matter would escape the meaningful bonds between subject and object “in defiance of all affective mediation” (6). An English critic’s 1848 review of Stifter’s Abdias as “a highly finished doorway leading into vacant space” (Swales and Swales 47), in addition to restating Moretti’s paradox, bears witness to Stifter’s ability to position the embodied reader throughout his literary work. 1 The review does not only bemoan a preponderance of details lacking an overall coherency; it also registers an affective quality: the experience of vacancy� Although Stimmung originally connoted harmony and the sort of meaningful interconnectedness that forms the basis of Downing’s study, post-World War I avant-gardists would find in their rejection of the sensuous order a characteristically apathetic atmosphere (Gumbrecht 10). Continuous with the avant-garde, the programmatic emergence of what Benjamin called “moot space” in Stifter thus escapes the coherency of the realist world as well as adds an affective dimension to the appearance of “matter as mere thereness” that, following Weitzman, literary realism went to great lengths to integrate into a coherent totality (Weitzman 15). 2 If it can indeed be claimed, as did Rosen and Zerner, that nineteenth-century eyes viewed realism as “an avant-garde movement” (179), it is on the strength of its investment in the “disappearance of the subject” - a progressive renunciation of classical rhetoric and allegorical meaning part and parcel of realist ideology: “an acceptance of visual reality, of that which was given immediately to the eye - and a faith that this reality could be transcribed without falsification into art and still speak for itself ” (177). The genealogy of this ocular immediacy reaches at least as far back as Kant, who in the Critique of Judgment predicates the sublime gaze on the absence of teleological and conceptual coordinates� Instead of viewing “the starry heavens” above as a purposeful relationship between suns and worlds “von vernünftigen Wesen bewohnt” and the ocean as the source of vapors “welche die Luft mit Wolken zum Behuf der Länder beschwängern,” one must rather, if the vision is to be sublime, view it “just as one sees it […] like the poets do, as merely what is given to the eye” (“bloß, wie man ihn sieht […] wie die Dichter es tun, nach dem, was der Augenschein zeigt”) (196). Kant invites us to conceive of a gaze shorn of the attunement and metonymic connections that enable meaningful commerce between subjects and objects, but one that is also Stifter’s Realism and the Avant-Garde: Affect and Materiality in “Kalkstein” 413 irreducible to the mere matter that haunts realism from within. Paul de Man, in his difficult reading of this passage, calls it a “material vision” and emphasizes that such “materiality” implies no intervention on the part of consciousness (82); that materiality is, therefore, neither a return to empiricism - to objects in their empirical verifiability - nor is it a sensation, nor even symbolic. It is “the moment when the infinite is frozen into the materiality of stone, when no pathos, anxiety, or sympathy is conceivable; it is, indeed, the moment of a-pathos, or apathy, as the complete loss of the symbolic” (127). Materiality in this sense bears little relation to Eva Geulen’s account of Stifter’s “paradoxical goal”: “to write in such a way as to make stones speak - and to make them speak as if they spoke for themselves” (“Tales of a Collector” 590). Whereas the latter achieves an impersonal quality through the (technological) effacement of discursive technique, the former attempts to isolate the moment prior to the sign’s phenomenalization in the speaking subject, whether that be a stone or anything else. Viewing the sky “bloß, wie man ihn sieht, als ein weites Gewölbe, was alles befasst” or the calm ocean “als einen klaren Wasserspiegel, der bloß vom Himmel begrenzt ist” (Kant 196), is not to compare the sky to a building or the ocean to a mirror. Such materiality is rather the arbitrary demand for language, the imposition of figure, beyond intention, conceptualization, or anthropomorphism. 3 A radical disappearance of the subject rather than the mere effect thereof, materiality theorizes a precarious rejection of the sensuous in its isolation of an undecidable moment always on the way toward language and affective response. 4 Whether or not the “essence of Stifter’s undertaking” is indeed “to embed human experience in the continuity of non-individual processes” (Swales and Swales 45), certain moments in Stifter escape this continuity in favor of what some decades ago J.P. Stern identified as Stifter’s interest in “the bare lineaments of existence” (100). At these moments a will to abstraction manifests itself, one running through the Kantian sublime via Stifter to the high modernists, whose experiments in disembodiment foregrounded the artistic medium� If Stifter’s inclusion in this genealogy appears unlikely, his place in it may most effectively be challenged by his radicalization of it� For Stifter’s achievement is not only to invert the realist ideology that predicates embodiment - the appearance of the phenomenality of the world in representation - on the technological effacement of technique, and to show rather how phenomenal objects, including the body, escape embodiment in representation - and this at precisely those points when every effort is being made to abstract from all other interests save the bare thing. Stifter radicalizes such efforts at disembodiment by bringing to the fore not just the sheer medium - the letter, for instance - but rather a more volatile materiality, a more uncertain affect, which keep Stifter’s spaces from being merely 414 Robert E� Mottram vacant or moot and which confront the phenomenalist ideology of realism with the contingencies of references that threaten it from within. Stifter’s “Kalkstein” - published in 1853 as part of his Bunte Steine - has as its structuring principle the narrative frame, part of a nineteenth-century preoccupation with encasement recognized emphatically by Walter Benjamin: “What didn’t the nineteenth century invent some sort of casing for! Pocket watches, slippers, egg cups, thermometers, playing cards - and, in lieu of cases, there were jackets, carpets, wrappers, and covers” ( The Arcades Project 220—21). “Kalkstein” encases the secret of a country parson’s fine white linens in a threefold system of first-person narratives: the priest recounts his formative years to a land surveyor, whose own report of his encounters with the priest, as well as of the limestone landscape he has been charged with measuring, has been passed on to “a friend” of the frame narrator. In a discussion of Moltke’s Binoculars by the realist painter Adolph Menzel, depicting a pair of binoculars as well as its case in exacting detail and from multiple angles, T.J. Clark asks a propos the nineteenth century’s fascination with cases “whether this was because the object was felt to need protection from the general whirl of exchange, or whether it was thought to be so wonderful in its own right that a separate small world should be provided for it, like a shell or calyx” (2). This could very well describe Stifter’s literary output, whose debt to the insular world of the idyll is commonplace. 5 The framing device of “Kalkstein,” its story received “at second or third hand,” is part and parcel of a narratological strategy, which sought to shelter its contents from the contingencies, the “whirl,” of history like a case protecting an object (Ragg-Kirkby 139). That the framing device of “Kalkstein” contextualizes, in addition to the linens, the safekeeping of three copies of the priest’s final will and testament, each bearing three seals, accords with what Swales and Swales see as a stress point in Stifter’s “idyllic intention.” The “overprotectiveness” - “shell upon shell, wall upon wall, frame upon frame” - tends to mix “the measured and the menacing” rather than to fulfill the idyllic ideal (Swales and Swales 38). Likewise, J.P. Stern likens Stifter’s elaborate descriptions to an “edifice” meant to shelter his characters from calamity and whose “very weight and size” can be felt (Stern 103). In “Kalkstein,” this weighty architectonic also manifests itself in the detailed description of the priest’s ascetic refuge, one that is noteworthy in its stark opposition to the rationale Benjamin provides for the bourgeois subject’s infatuation with cases: namely, to “preserve the imprint of all contact” ( The Arcades Project 20)� In addition to contextualizing Stifter’s realism in terms of various historical forms of affective response, what is ultimately at stake in what follows are the moments that threaten to escape even the imposing edifice of Stifter’s insular world - details that drive the wedge of undecidability be- Stifter’s Realism and the Avant-Garde: Affect and Materiality in “Kalkstein” 415 tween the spheres of allegorical meaning and affective response, and for which the signifier “case” becomes a somewhat unexpected marker. When the priest offers to shelter a land surveyor from a pending storm for the night, the latter cannot help but take note of the oppressively bare walls, the uncoated table surrounded by similarly unfinished chairs, and the lone wooden bench in the entryway on which the elderly man sleeps with a hard leather Bible in the place of a supple pillow. The land surveyor, on the other hand, revels in the several woolen comforters and a fine white sheet provided to him for the night: “Ich […] konnte nicht umhin, die äußerste Feinheit des Linnens des Pfarrers sehr wohlthätig an meinem Körper zu empfinden” (Stifter 83). Some twenty years after the publication of Bunte Steine , Robert Vischer, one theorist of a broader aesthetics of empathy that gained traction throughout the nineteenth century, described as empathic projection “the unconscious need for a surrogate for our body-ego […]. I wrap myself within its [the phenomenon’s] contours as in a garment” (qtd. in Fried 37). Menzel’s drawing, Unmade Bed , finished within ten years of the publication of Bunte Steine , is a remarkable adherent to this aesthetic of embodiment� It portrays the folds, creases, and lush curvatures of sheets, comforters, and pillows on a bed in the absence of the human figure that has shaped it. It is not the body itself that is present in such works, but rather the bodily presence as it is felt in objects “that in one way or another are adjusted to the body or that bear the body’s traces” (Fried 41). If, following Benjamin, “[w] ohnen heißt Spuren hinterlassen” ( Illuminationen 178), then Menzel’s drawing is far from merely a realistic depiction of an unmade bed� It is rather a picture of ordinary life lived palpably� Adolph Menzel, Unmade Bed , Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin (SZ Menzel 319) 416 Robert E� Mottram The preparation of the land surveyor’s bedding in “Kalkstein,” on the other hand, is punctuated in terms so prosaic as to defy life itself: “Als Hülle für meinen Körper legte er mir eine dritte Wolldecke auf das Lager” (Stifter 81). This enigmatic sentence, printed in isolation, separates itself from the aesthetic of empathy in Menzel and Vischer through its evacuation of the spirit that transubstantiates the body qua matter into the embodiment of the “body-ego.” The distinctly reductive “Hülle für meinen Körper,” evoking a “case” ( Hülle ) besides merely a “cover” ( Hülle ) for the material body as opposed to the spiritual self, contrasts with the “dritte Wolldecke,” the extravagance of which is heightened by its numerical specificity. Simultaneously bare and excessive, it departs from the logic of decoding that links the novella’s programmatic preoccupation with secrecy to the detective-like concern with traces in Benjamin. 6 It is a detail of a different order than that of the contents of the priest’s final testament or of the provenance of his fine linens because it neither looks forward nor backward in search of a meaning. Rather, it gestures toward affect, part of what Fredric Jameson has identified as a history of the bourgeois body emerging in the 1840s (42—43). Affect is an aesthetics of the body, to be sure, but one much more broadly conceived than that theorized by Vischer and put into practice by Menzel - one more attuned to Stifter’s penchant for reducing existence to the barest of terms, but also one to which the idiosyncrasies of Stifter’s prose will present particular challenges. In Jameson, the body appears as a figure of reduction. He accounts for nineteenth-century literary realism in terms of a dialectic between the narrative impulse, or récit , and “the body’s present.” Whereas the former anchors the destiny of a character in an irrevocably past event and its negotiation in linear time, the latter - affect - is predicated on the “’reduction to the body’ inasmuch as the body is all that remains in any tendential reduction of experience to the present as such” (28). Opposed to “named emotions,” those feelings and passions that have ossified into nouns (29), affect is made up of the “more global waves of generalized sensations” that “the isolated body begins to know” (28). Strangely isolated from the bedding that gives it comfort, Stifter’s “Hülle für meinen Körper” thematizes the reduction to the body characteristic of affect while keeping the door cracked onto other potentially incommensurable possibilities. For to read “Hülle” as “case,” evoking a coffin and signifying the death in life characteristic of the priest’s asceticism, is to stumble into a realm anathema to affect, namely, allegory. 7 Not everything that deals with bodily affectivity is exemplary of affect in Jameson’s sense. In Balzac, he points out, “everything that looks like a physical sensation - a musty smell, a rancid taste, a greasy fabric - always means something, it is a sign or allegory of the moral or social status of a given character” Stifter’s Realism and the Avant-Garde: Affect and Materiality in “Kalkstein” 417 (33). Affect, on the other hand, “seems to have no context, but to float above experience without causes” (35). Jameson here echoes Flaubert, who in a letter to the poet Louise Colet, written while he was at work on Madame Bovary , predicates beauty on the withdrawal of style from context: What seems beautiful to me, what I would like to do, is a book about nothing, a book without any exterior tie, which would hold together on its own by the inner force of its style, just as the earth stays up without support, a book which would have almost no subject, or at least where the subject would be almost invisible, if that is possible. The most beautiful works are those with the least material; the closer the expression is to the thought, the more the word sticks to it and disappears, the more beautiful it is. (qtd. in Rosen and Zerner 160—61) 8 As Rosen and Zerner specify in their essay, “Realism and the Avant-Garde,” “subject” in this passage is “not the action or the scene represented: it is what the action or scene is about. ‘Subject’ is that which prolongs the thoughts of the spectator beyond the representation: [it is] the narrative significance, the moral, the meaning” (161). The avant-gardist impulse of realism lies rather in its asceticism, in its renunciation of “subject” in the asymptotic progression of aesthetic technique toward an ideal of technological effacement. 9 To invest in the disappearance of the subject in this sense is to further a romantic vein in the realist experiment - namely, the ideal of aesthetic autonomy, according to which every object is worthy of artistic treatment and artworks sustain themselves through their own intrinsic devices (162). It is also to illuminate a paradox of realism, cited by Rosen and Zerner: that “[p]recisely to the extent that the artist wanted to deal with the commonplace, style tended to develop into an all-important value” (160). Stifter is exemplary in this regard. His well-known preface to Bunte Steine is a protracted apology for a studied attenuation to the seemingly insignificant. Described therein is “the gentle law,” virtually Stifter’s synonym, whose most reproduced sentence traces the fault line between affect and subject: “Das Wehen der Luft das Rieseln des Wassers das Wachsen der Getreide” (and so forth) float in the absence of context, causality, or even punctuation. The sentence’s second half: “das prächtig einherziehende Gewitter, den Bliz, welcher Häuser spaltet, den Sturm, der die Brandung treibt” (10) - is an enumeration of causality and narrative: a cause and its effect. Stifter, of course, privileges the former since their patient study illuminates the “much higher laws” of which the latter are mere effects. That is to say, he subjects the would-be subjectless affect to a higher causality� 10 Stifter gives the example of lightning as but one manifestation of the much more imposing magnetic storm that stretches over the entire earth (9). Yet, despite its insistent bifurcation of the initially indeterminate affect (the 418 Robert E� Mottram flowing of air) and the locally causal subject (the lightning that splits houses), the effect of the gentle law is to intensify rather than stabilize its defining opposition. For although Stifter’s preoccupation with the seemingly contentless lends itself to a particularly rich affective potential, his works, read as they are under the sign of a “law” - however gentle it may be - tend to become allegories of the very project that underwrites their distance from the allegorical. As a framing device for Stifter’s frame stories, the gentle law also encases Stifter’s corpus, protecting it from unauthorized “subject.” It is not surprising that a realist text would shelter itself from contingency; that affect must as well is perhaps more so. For meaning can sneak into any case and under any cover - so much so that Jameson’s characterization of affect as a “reduction to the body” is put into question precisely when Stifter’s prose takes the greatest care to restrain itself to the barest terms possible: “Als Hülle für meinen Körper.” The referential status of Stifter’s phrasing is as dense as its wording is basic. Although written from the perspective of the land surveyor, it mimics the asceticism of which the priest is the symbol. Rather than being a mere description of the priest’s austere living quarters - the bare walls, the uncoated table, the wooden bench, and so forth - it is a literalization of the figure of asceticism. Since it does not simply signify asceticism and therefore cannot readily be assimilated to “a sign or allegory of the moral or social status of a given character” ( Jameson 33), it can gesture toward affect. However, since its reductive vocabulary cannot help but signify “coffin” as well as “cover,” for a body as opposed to a self, it threatens to contaminate affect as its potentially aberrant referential force cannot be completely covered over or rendered inanimate. Irreducible to its nudity, uncanny in its reanimation of significance, the phrase specifies affect not merely as a reduction, but rather as a case for the body: a protective shell against the randomness of signification - materiality � Materiality is neither the material of language or the letter, nor the matter of the object in the phenomenalization of the referent; it is rather the irreducible imbrication that entangles the presence of bodies (as well as cases and covers) in unforeseeable layers of meaning� If, following Eva Geulen, such a “still life still alive” - marking the moment when Stifter’s literary world “comes alive in images that were originally literalizations” (“Depicting Description” 274—75) - is part of Stifter’s systematic avoidance of metaphor, his treatment of the passing storm in “Kalkstein” frames an impulse toward indeterminacy with a figure irreducible to the metaphorical. The land surveyor and the ascetic country parson, who has invited him to take shelter for the night, sit at the table in absolute silence - as is the priest’s custom - and await the gathering force and recession of a storm. A textbook example of the gentle law spanning several pages, it also reflects a more general tendency Stifter’s Realism and the Avant-Garde: Affect and Materiality in “Kalkstein” 419 of realist texts: that of, following Franco Moretti, a background “conquering the foreground” (78). 11 The verb “conquer” is apt for a storm that, armed with the power of anthropomorphism, threatens to force its way inside: “Dasselbe schien nicht mehr lange ausbleiben zu wollen. Als der Pfarrer das Licht gebracht hatte, war die wenige Helle, die von draußen noch durch die Fenster herein gekommen war, verschwunden, die Fenster standen wie schwarze Tafeln da, und die völlige Nacht war hereingebrochen” (Stifter 76). The storm’s initial salvo expels all external illumination and isolates the windows in something less than a symbol and something more than their empirical facticity: their materiality� No longer a transparent frame of mimesis, the blackened windows undergo a reduction to their mere being and simultaneously become the proleptic emissaries of the non-mimetic� The windows, talismanic in their austerity, assume the posture that, following Adorno, the “radically darkened art” of the avant-garde will adopt in the face of an overwhelming social totality: that of “standing firm” (Adorno 40). The tradition of linear perspective, announced by Leon Battista Alberti’s definition of the painted image as an “open window” and reproduced in any representation that “denie[s] its own constructedness and present[s] itself as a natural record of the visual world” (Koepnick 8), holds its breath during this passage in Stifter. Its last exhale came in 1915 when Kazimir Malevich exhibited his Black Square , the fulfillment of what Adorno refers to as radical modernity’s “ideal of blackness” (39). Malevich’s Black Square is both more and less than a canvas covered in black paint. As brought to light by x-ray and ultraviolet ray examinations, it was painted over a more complex and colorful composition (Kudriavtseva 54). This reduction, akin to the dynamics of Stifter’s materiality, preserves the sense of the object as both “matter-of-factly material: a thing on the wall” while conveying a sense of “sheer surging, untrammeled possibility” (Schjeldahl 2). The description is that of Peter Schjeldahl, art critic for The New Yorker , who continues by plotting the achievement following a dialectic of subject and affect. Malevich, he contends, “is monumental not for what he put into pictorial space but for what he took out: bodily experience” (2). Truly a subject disappeared, the ascetic Black Square finds its corollary in the austere priest, who sits unaffected - “ruhig und einfach” (Stifter 78) - through a storm whose proportions the land surveyor had rarely seen. With the final strike of thunder it was “als ob er das ganze Haus aus seinen Fugen heben, und niederstürzen wollte“ (78). Yet when the storm finally abates, the priest, monolithic in his immutability, stands and simply utters: “Es ist vorüber.” 12 An early rehearsal of radically darkened art, Caspar David Friedrich’s Mönch am Meer (1810) is the antithesis of “Es ist vorüber.” A lone monk in dark robes stands on a narrow strip of land dwarfed by the clouds of a gathering storm 420 Robert E� Mottram that, looming over an equally narrow strip of sea, fills the vast majority of the oppressively bare canvas� Unprecedented in its emptiness, Mönch am Meer contradicted those conventions of linear and aerial perspective that conveyed an illusion of depth. Absent the diagonal continuity between foreground and background as well as the tapering viscosity of paint that allows the eye to travel unimpeded into the distance, Friedrich’s canvas confronts the viewer with a suffocating flatness (Koerner 142—43). Lacking any of the traditional repoussoirs - trees, columns, or other figures placed along the edges of the canvas that compel the eye into the center - Mönch am Meer presents the viewer with a boundless uniformity, to which many of Stifter’s literary landscapes are attuned (Calhoon 32). The land surveyor, at odds with the immeasurable by profession, remarks the uncultivated and monotonous character of the Steinkar region to which he is commissioned. He finds it to be “eine fürchterliche Gegend,” precisely because of its want of the characteristically sublime features of romantic iconography: “Nicht daß Wildnisse, Schlünde, Abgründe, Felsen und stürzende Wässer dort gewesen wären - das alles zieht mich eigentlich an - sondern es waren nur sehr viele kleine Hügel da, jeder Hügel bestand aus nacktem grauem Kalksteine” (Stifter 67). The intermittent patches of grass and the small river meandering between the gray and yellow of the stones and sand “bildeten die ganze Abwechslung und Erquickung in dieser Gegend” (67). Eva Geulen suggests that Stifter’s uniform landscapes express the “the emotional flatness and two-dimensionality” of characters devoid of “psychological motivations and other interpretive interventions” and that this is a function of the gentle law which, producing “a radical nondifferentiation between human actions and natural development […] demands of humans the behavioral characteristics of stones” (“Tales of a Collector” 589—90). The priest certainly exhibits an austerity commensurate with a landscape bereft of all but the minutest differentiations. Yet, his presence in the Steinkar (or, more particularly, his absence) has just as much to do with the affective dimension of Stifter’s barren landscapes existing alongside the tropological exchange allowing landscapes to take on the features of their inhabitants� Having gotten used to seeing the priest among the stones, the land surveyor, busily trying to make a recently imposed deadline, is struck by his absence: Daß mir bei diesen Arbeiten der Pfarrer in den Hintergrund trat, ist begreiflich. Allein da ich ihn einmal schon längere Zeit nicht im Steinkar sah, wurde ich unruhig. Ich war gewöhnt seine schwarze Gestalt in den Steinen zu sehen, von weitem sichtbar, weil er der einzige dunkle Punkt in der graulich dämmernden oder unter dem Strahle der hinabsinkenden Sonne röthlich beleuchteten Kalkflur war. (96) Stifter’s Realism and the Avant-Garde: Affect and Materiality in “Kalkstein” 421 The description of the priest acutely taking on “the behavioral characteristics of stones” echoes an earlier passage in which the land surveyor sees his “größere schwarze Gestalt” (82) standing waist-deep in the water - the aftermath of the flood after the harrowing storm - helping children avoid the deepest areas on their way to school. His presence not only saves the children from drowning; it saves the beholder from the nondifferentiation of the landscape. And conversely, that the land surveyor becomes anxious ( unruhig ) at the sight of the Steinkar is just as much a function of its boundless uniformity as of a worry about the priest’s health. Usually “von weitem sichtbar,” the priest’s dark figure in the otherwise empty literary topography is implicated in a transformation of the function of staffage in landscape painting. Friedrich’s Mönch am Meer is situated on the far side of a development according to which figures - whether human, animal, or mythological - that once held a privileged position in regard to the meaning of a landscape were subordinated to the landscape itself. Whereas according to the categories of classicist aesthetics the mere presence of a shepherd could determine if the painting was pastoral, Friedrich’s lone monk, like his counterpart in Stifter’s novella, is subject to rather than determinant of the landscape he so precariously inhabits (Koerner 245). Part of the disappearance of the subject that is integral to the realist project, the tendency of staffage to renounce its meaning-giving function is aligned with the more generalized dimension of affect in its opposition to named emotions. To feel anxiety, as does the land surveyor, is to not know what to feel in “eine[r] fürchterlich[en] Gegend” from which meaning has withdrawn. 13 However, if Stifter’s barren literary landscape belongs to a tendency toward abstraction from Friedrich to the high modernism of Rothko or Malevich, they do so only reluctantly. 14 Indeed, the narrative arc of “Kalkstein” is an anodyne to those moments that subject the human to an absolute wholly indifferent to it. “Kalkstein” plots a course from anxiety to significance - from the land surveyor’s ( Landvermesser ) apprehension toward the stony region he is tasked with measuring ( messen ), to the recognition of his presumptuousness ( Vermessenheit ) after being reassigned and called away from what he ultimately understands to be a beautiful and meaningful landscape� It is the paradigmatic narrative arc of Stifter’s project, since to learn to see as meaningful the initially repellent landscape is to see, and be affected by, the gentle law itself. 15 Whereas the priest, the teacher of the gentle law, exemplifies the radical stoicism and absolute subjection to meaning, according to which, following Begemann, any catastrophe is an acceptable if unfortunate moment in a purposeful order, and which imposes a “Standhalten, das mit nichts anderem begründet wird als der Faktizität des Faktischen” (313), the land surveyor is captive to impressions that still have 422 Robert E� Mottram the potential to escape the order of (an imposed) facticity. The gradualness of this lesson, the arc of this paradigm, allows Stifter to infuse the landscape with intermediary states, in which meaning - still uncertain, still a matter of mere Vermessenheit - yields to affect. One such passage, the description of the landscape the morning after the harrowing storm, is particularly rich in its intermingling of allegorical and affective registers: Der unermeßliche Regen der Nacht hatte die Kalksteinhügel glatt gewaschen, und sie standen weiß und glänzend unter dem Blau des Himmels und unter den Strahlen der Sonne da. Wie sie hintereinander zurückwichen, wiesen sie in zarten Abstufungen ihre gebrochenen Glanzfarben in Grau, Gelblich, Rötlich, Rosenfarbig, und dazwischen lagen die länglichen nach rückwärts immer schöneren luftblauen Schatten. (Stifter 85) From whitewashed stones to their varied coloration, to the vanishing point of increasingly beautiful shadows, the landscape intimates the narrative development of “Kalkstein” as it charts its course from apprehension in the face of nondifferentiation to the integration of the landscape in a meaningful totality. Spatial distance promises temporal fulfillment in an allegory of Stifter’s project: “to tell of individuation as an inset story within the massive frame narration of this earth, to imbed human experience in the continuity of non-individuated processes” (Swales and Swales 45). Although affect, following Jameson, stands opposite a narrative or allegorical impulse - one that can easily enlist description as a mere sign of a character’s social status (in Balzac, for example) or, in the present context, of the gentle law - it is also predicated on a certain “continuity of non-individuated processes” and must therefore have recourse to its own “massive frame” - a protective shell against allegorical contamination. Yet Stifter’s texts, in their attenuation to the gradations ( Abstufungen ) that transcend the horizon of the individual, generate affect despite their tendency to become allegories of the gentle law. The “refracted shimmering shades” of the limestone (“ihre gebrochenen Glanzfarben”) blur individual tones into yellow ish , red dish , and ros y -colored impressions in accordance with a chromatic logic in which “an absolute heterogeneity of the elements is translated into some new kind of homogeneity in which a new kind of phenomenological continuum is asserted” ( Jameson 41). In his discussion of chromaticism, Jameson cites Wagner and the Impressionists, who, in the musical and visual sphere respectively, used slippages in tonal and mimetic conventions to register intensities rather than entities� 16 Stifter’s inclusion in their ranks is a factor of the dissonance between the changing intensities of the Steinkar and the continually intimated promise of beauty on the horizon� Indeed, the land surveyor’s chromatic impressions of the “Morgenschauspiel” culminate in relations more consistent with traditional Stifter’s Realism and the Avant-Garde: Affect and Materiality in “Kalkstein” 423 tonality: “Die große Wasserfläche glänzte unter den Strahlen der Sonne, sie machte zu dem Grün der Wiese und dem Grau der Steine den dritten stimmenden und schimmernden Klang, und der Steg stand abenteuerlich wie eine dunkle Linie über dem silbernen Spiegel” (86). A veritable triad ( Dreiklang ) with impressionistic overtones, the shimmering water, meadow, and stones compose a synesthetic harmony that is more coerced than natural� Its beauty is visible “[a]llein, wenn man von dem Schaden absieht, den die Überschwemmung durch Anführung von Sand auf der Wiese verursacht haben mochte” (86). Harmony is a factor of suppression rather than recognition. Overlooking the damage by the storm is coupled with a more subtle suppression of chromatic relations, their nuanced shades now dampened to a monotone gray. Allegorizing the imposition of a purposeful order, Stifter’s musical interlude lays bare the mechanism underwriting the fulfillment of the gentle law: an abstract vision that simply refrains ( absehen ) from seeing outliers� 17 Yet, despite the passage’s allegorical potential (if not intention), it is hard to overlook its investment in affectivity, blending as it does sensory inputs in a glittering and shimmering abstraction� Materiality consists in the flicker between affect and allegory; its critical potential lies in its consistent capacity to show that any “dark line” between allegory and affect is a bridge more “adventurous” than stable. The nuances of Stifter’s protracted descriptions have not kept him from becoming known as “the most boring German-language writer” (Geulen, “Tales of a Collector” 587). Indeed, his prose frequently provokes the tired ire of his readers who, reacting to his suppression of the narrative impulse, complain that nothing happens. However, it is precisely this suppression that animates the nothing that happens into the happening of nothing� 18 Gernot Böhme has theorized as “atmosphere” such a minimal occurrence between the proclivity of things to step outside of their objective confines and the body in its felt presence. 19 Atmosphere is “[k]ein Objekt, kein Subjekt, nichts und doch nicht nichts” (66). The relationship between the “ecstasy of things” - their ability to suffuse a space with a virtual presence - and the body’s “participation” in that “articulated presence” is what is at stake in Stifter’s description of the atmospheric conditions before the onset of the storm: 20 Eines Tages war in den Steinen eine besondere Hize. Die Sonne hatte zwar den ganzen Tag nicht ausgeschienen, aber dennoch hatte sie den matten Schleier, der den ganzen Himmel bedeckte, so weit durchdrungen, daß man ihr blasses Bild immer sehen konnte, daß um alle Gegenstände des Steinlandes ein wesenloses Licht lag, dem kein Schatten beigegeben war, und daß die Blätter der wenigen Gewächse, die zu sehen waren, herabhingen; denn obgleich kaum ein halbes Sonnenlicht durch die 424 Robert E� Mottram Nebelschichte der Kuppel drang, war doch eine Hize, als wären drei Tropensonnen an heiterem Himmel und brennten alle drei nieder. (72—73) Devoid of the chromatic synesthesia perceivable in the wake of the storm, this claustrophobic noontide panic, with its “wesenloses Licht,” aligns itself with Adorno’s remark that “Blaß und fahl ist das Licht über seiner [Stifters] reifen Prosa, als wäre sie allergisch gegen das Glück der Farbe” (346). Adorno is referring to the increasing austerity of Stifter’s works; to the overprotectiveness that through the “Ausschluß des Störenden und Ungebärdigen” transforms a conservative ideological intention to comfort into a more avant-gardist refusal to console (346). Eric Downing has similarly periodized Stifter by setting his mature “project of mastered stability” against the sense of “inevitable temporality and uncontrol” that in the earlier Studien “frustrates the effort after a stable, uniform, equivalent representation” ( Double Exposures 279). The “wesenloses Licht” of the sweltering day, in which not so much as a shadow is allowed to give contour to the stones, is the figure of an equivalent representation that is unruly precisely by dint of its suppression of masterable distinctions and devices of orientation� Although positioned along a narrative trajectory leading from anxiety to significance, it evinces a curious recalcitrance to positionality. Everywhere and nowhere, the light, seemingly “without any exterior tie” - to evoke Flaubert - drapes itself evenly across the stony landscape, thereby neutralizing all differentiating contours as well as obscuring its source. “Kein Objekt, kein Subjekt,” and emphatically “nicht nichts,” the “wesenloses Licht” is that of atmosphere as such: “die leere, charakterlose Hülle seiner Anwesenheit” (Böhme 26). Böhme credits avant-gardists with a decisive gesture toward the understanding of atmosphere. When artists like Marcel Duchamp tried to destroy what Benjamin called the aura of artworks by suspending the difference between art and life, they lent everyday objects the dignity of the aura rather than wrenching art out of its “heiligen Hallen.” What the avant-garde thereby accomplished was to show that the “Mehr” that makes an artwork an artwork is irreducible to its “objectified characteristics” ( gegenständlichen Eigenschaften ) (Böhme 26). The inability to reduce artworks to the sum of their parts is akin to the process of description, which does not try to specify an object - as would a definition - as much as facilitate its “emergence” ( Hervortreten ): “Wenn man sagt die Sonne , dann heißt das soviel wie die Sonne tritt auf, die Sonne ist da” (244). Böhme’s example is both provocative in its recasting of the philosophical symbol for the Idea as well as fortuitous for the Stifter passage in question insomuch as Stifter’s sun cannot help but summon - that is to say, requisition as an allegorical potential - the metaphysical desideratum of a truth waiting to be revealed alongside its affective, atmospheric dimension. That affect (in this case, the “ecstasy” or Stifter’s Realism and the Avant-Garde: Affect and Materiality in “Kalkstein” 425 virtual presence of things) and allegory (the promise that the uninviting ground of the Steinkar will eventually be illumined and transfigured by the gentle law) can coincide is a factor of what Böhme calls, with no small amount of irony, “the ground” of atmosphere: “Die Individualität der so benannten Dinge [things described in their emergence as opposed to defined in their facticity or “Was-Sein”] gründet deshalb auch nicht in der Spezifizität ihres Hervortretens, sondern in der Dunkelheit und Unerschöpflichkeit des Grundes, aus dem sie hervortreten” (245). Having been displaced from the definitional logic that would delimit their facticity, individual objects - now as much so genannt as so benannt - are also untethered from any specificity that a definition would lend to their emergence. What is here troped as “ground” is neither the object nor the body, but rather the “darkness and inexhaustibility” somewhere (or nowhere) between the ecstasy of things and the body in its felt presence. It is a randomness of signification that enables the articulation and disarticulation of things as much as their ecstasy, an inexhaustible but ultimately asemic capacity - “ein wesenloses Licht” - that specifies objects, including the body, as always on the way toward language. It is the strength of Stifter’s realism to sustain such a light and to gather in its illumination - however insubstantial ( wesenlos ) - the mirage of three suns: the body in its felt presence, the allegorical, and the unforeseen significative potential hovering around matter� When cases bear as many traces as they protect against; when the disappearance of the subject is both the condition of affect as well as its vanishing point; when Stifter’s gentle law and other framing devices have the ability to sanction the allegorical as well as to summon the body; when the reduction to bodies - animate and inanimate - is simultaneously an amplification of their significative potential; when reduction itself is therefore uncannily irreducible; when affect, allegory, and the materiality that allows them to intermingle are at hand; then one can be said to approach if not the thing or representation itself then certainly the case - in all its materiality - of the avant-garde in Stifter� Notes 1 Swales and Swales propose this review of Abdias as “the very nerve-centre of Stifter’s work” (47). 2 Geulen quotes Benjamin in her “Tales of a Collector”: “Benjamin describes dialogue in Stifter as ‘ostentatious’ because it is ‘only the exhibition of emotions and thoughts in moot space’” (590). 3 On Kant’s material vision and materiality in de Man, see Wang’s Romantic Sobriety (119—23) and Redfield’s The Politics of Aesthetics (78—79; 104—07). 426 Robert E� Mottram The following quotes are particularly suggestive for my reading of materiality: “Materiality is in fact the very imposition of figure, an action whose radical arbitrariness blunts the realization of figural representation as simple, intentional meaning” (Wang 131); “What is lost is the possibility of establishing an internal necessity for the patterns of relations that allows signs to function as signs” (Redfield 106). Redfield also draws from Judith Butler, who in Gender Trouble describes the contested site of the body in terms of materiality: “We might want to claim that what persists within these contested domains is the ‘materiality’ of the body. But perhaps we will have fulfilled the same function, and opened up some others, if we claim that what persists here is a demand in and for language , a ‘that which’ which prompts, occasions, say, within the domain of science, calls to be explained, described, diagnosed, altered or within the cultural fabric of lived experience, fed exercised, mobilized, put to sleep, a site of enactments and passions of various kinds” (Redfield 79). 4 Downing is very close to such an understanding of materiality when he writes of Stimmung that “key to its preconceptual nature is also the essential impulse to move from the merely sensed to the grasped: there is almost by definition something premonitory about Stimmung , something awaiting expression, understanding, and affective response” ( The Chain of Things 41)� 5 The most prominent voice identifying Stifter, and poetic realism more generally, with the idyll is Erich Auerbach, whose slight view of German-speaking writers in the wake of Goethe is based on the narrowness of their attempts to treat everyday reality seriously: ”Until toward the end of the nineteenth century the most important works which undertook to treat contemporary social subjects seriously at all remained in the genres of semi-fantasy or of idyll or at least in the narrow realm of the local” (452—53). 6 Deleuze and Guattari distinguish the literary form of the novella from the tale as follows: “The novella has a fundamental relationship to secrecy (not with a secret matter or object to be discovered, but with the form of the secret, which remains impenetrable), whereas the tale has a relation to discovery (the form of discovery, independent of what can be discovered)” (193). 7 Benjamin’s notion of allegory involves a similar evacuation of spirit from matter, and his description of allegory as “the armature of modernity” ( The Writer of Modern Life 159) - or “protective shell” in John Lyon’s helpful elucidation (186) - resonates with Stifter’s interest in encasement as well as with his attempt to preserve existence in its barest elements. Allegory in Stifter’s Realism and the Avant-Garde: Affect and Materiality in “Kalkstein” 427 Jameson, on the other hand, refers to the multi-layered contexts embedded in a given text� 8 A similar argument is put forward in Der Nachsommer : “Only literature has almost no tangible material any more; its material is thought in the widest sense of the word; the word is not the material, it is only the bearer of the thought; as for example the air carries the sound to our ears. Literature is therefore the purest and highest of the art forms” (qtd. in Holub 70). 9 That the avant-gardist impulse of realism has little to do with its subject matter is evidenced by the fact that when arch-conservative critics sought to impugn Wagner’s operas, they did so by calling them “Realist” (Rosen and Zerner 179)� 10 Downing’s critical reading of the gentle law unpacks the logic whereby the natural world is made to appear as if subjectless: “The posited natural world seems not so much the noninscription of a subjectivity as the definite inscription of a would-be nonsubjectivity, which is then reflected back, as reality, to deny the nature of the subject from which it nevertheless originates” ( Double Exposures 39)� 11 This turn of phrase can ultimately be traced back to Flaubert, who in a letter to Jules Duplan apropos his novel Sentimental Education writes: “I’m having a lot of trouble linking my characters to the political events of 1848; I’m afraid the background will devour the foreground” (qtd. in Redfield, Phantom Formations 171)� 12 Marianne Schuller hears in the priest’s pronouncement an echo of Jesus on the cross - “Es ist vollendet” - and, based on her reading that storms in Stifter are part of larger ritualistic cycle of cleansing, argues that the priest’s words entail no small amount of blasphemy given that they propose as repetitive what should be closure and ultimate fulfillment (106—08). This reading is suggestive for my contextualization of Stifter in terms of modernism, for which particular artworks, following Adorno, can only aspire to negative fulfillment. 13 Terada insists, following de Man, that feeling be rigorously distinguished from epistemology in a fashion analogous to Jameson’s distinction between affect and named emotions: “If we have emotions because we can’t know what to believe (what texts and people are up to), as de Man suggests, then we have emotions even though we can’t know which emotions we ought to have. If we truly knew which emotions we should have, we would no longer feel like having any. We are in no danger of being emotionless, though […] since this ‘if ’ condition is never fulfilled” (Terada 89). 428 Robert E� Mottram 14 The classic study on Caspar David Friedrich as a precursor to high modernism is Robert Rosenblum’s Modern Painting and the Northern Romantic Tradition: Friedrich to Rothko � 15 “In der fast vollkommenen Bescheidenheit des Priesters lernt dieser Landvermesser die letzten Spuren seiner eigenen Vermessenheit vertilgen; zugleich lernt er, die Geschichte seines Wohltäters zu erzählen. “Kalkstein” ist also nicht nur eine besondere Geschichte in dem Buch Bunte Steine , sondern auch die Geschichte vom Ursprung der Erzählsammlung, die Geschichte vom Unterricht, der lehrt, die Buntheit der Steine in der rechten Weise anzuschauen. Denn durch den hohen Priester lernt der zunächst vermessene Erzähler, in der auf den ersten Blick häßlichen Landschaft das ‘sanfte Gesetz zu erblicken’” (Fenves 100—01). 16 Elisabeth Strowick also understands Stifter’s realism in terms of intensities and gradations. See, for example, this remark on Bergkristall : “Was Stifters Text im Sich-Ausbreiten von Schall und Licht, im Sichtbarwerden der Farbe inszeniert, ist nicht Sichtbares oder Hörbares, sondern ein Sichtbar werden / Hörbar werden : Wahrnehmung als Ereignis/ Werden/ Intensität” (106). 17 And this notwithstanding his ostensible scientific method. In his preface to Bunte Steine , Stifter likens his project to a field researcher whose individual findings are insignificant until matched with those of the larger community of researchers. What for one researcher seems like anomalies in his compass readings reveal themselves to be signs of a larger magnetic storm stretching across the globe (10—11). Downing sees the magnetic storm as the site where Stifter’s distinction between large and small, the distinction on which the whole gentle law is based, begins to break down: “the general, world-maintaining forces turn out to be as violent as the individual ones; it is simply violence on another, more monstrous ( ungeheuer ) scale and on a less visible plane” ( Double Exposures 28)� Fleming also questions the scientific basis of the gentle law and reads it as a proscriptive moral imperative rather than a description of reality: “Ultimately, Stifter wants a metaphysical atemporal law that indeed determines the whole of human action […] but can only advocate for a moral imperative, a ‘moral law’ in the social sphere. That the gentle law is not a description of history but rather a veiled appeal […] is clear when one reads the ensuing declaration that entire nations can and do collapse as a result of a loss of measure - a danger that amounts to a pressing anxiety for Stifter” (153). 18 See Terada’s discussion of apatheia in de Man’s reading of Kant’s material vision: “feeling nothing is feeling nothing, a feeling like any other, not an anesthetic suppression” (86). Stifter’s Realism and the Avant-Garde: Affect and Materiality in “Kalkstein” 429 19 Jana Schuster calls atmosphere “the key to Stifter’s entire oeuvre” (50). Her claim that “[d]ie unstete Lichtregie der Atmosphäre verzeitlicht den Raum des Sehens, hebt die sichtbaren Dinge in den unsteten und ungewissen Modus aufscheinender Phänomene und verunsichert damit auch den Status des beobachtenden Subjekts - Sehen, Erkennen und Wissen treten auseinander” (36) is very much in line with the contingencies of reference vis-à-vis bodily affectivity that I have aimed to illuminate here. Likewise, her reference to “das Lichtmedium der Luft” as “die schiere Materialität des Er-Scheinens” accords with my usage of “materiality” as a referentially, hermeneutically, and phenomenologically uncertain terrain (60). 20 Under the heading “Ekstasen der Natur,” Böhme specifies that “[d]ie ästhetische Beziehung zur Natur besteht darin, sich auf die Physiognomie der Dinge einzulassen, sich von ihr etwas sagen zu lassen. Sinnliche Wahrnehmung heißt, an der artikulierten Präsenz der Dinge zu partizipieren” (257). Works Cited Adorno, Theodor W� Ästhetische Theorie . Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1970. Auerbach, Erich� Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature � Trans� Willard R. Trask. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1953. Benjamin, Walter� The Arcades Project . Trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin. Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 1999. ---� Illuminationen . Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1977. ---� The Writer of Modern Life: Essays on Charles Baudelaire � Ed� Michael W� Jennings� Trans. Howards Eiland, Edmund Jephcott, Rodney Livingstone and Harry Zohn. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2006� Begemann, Christian� Die Welt der Zeichen � Stuttgart: Metzler, 1995� Böhme, Gernot� Atmosphäre: Essays zur neuen Ästhetik . Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 2013� Calhoon, Kenneth S. The Long Century’s Long Shadow: Weimar Cinema and the Romantic Modern � Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2021� Clark, T.J. Farewell to an Idea . New Haven: Yale UP, 1999. Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari� A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia � Trans� Brian Massumi� Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1987� De Man, Paul� Aesthetic Ideology � Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1996� Downing, Eric. The Chain of Things: Divinatory Magic and the Practice of Reading in German Literature and Thought, 1850-1940 � Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2018� ---� Double Exposures. Repetition and Realism in Nineteenth-Century German Fiction � Stanford: Stanford UP, 2000� Fenves, Peter. “Die Scham der Schönheit: Einige Bemerkungen zu Stifter.” “Geteilte Aufmerksamkeit”: Zur Frage des Lesens . Ed. Thomas Schestag. Frankfurt a. M.: Peter Lang, 1997� 91—111� 430 Robert E� Mottram Fleming, Paul� Exemplarity and Mediocrity: The Art of the Average from Bourgeois Tragedy to Realism � Stanford: Stanford UP, 2009� Fried, Michael� Menzel’s Realism: Art and Embodiment in Nineteenth-Century Berlin � New Haven: Yale UP, 2002. Geulen, Eva. “Depicting Description: Lukács and Stifter.” The Germanic Review 73�3 (1998): 267—79. ---. “Tales of a Collector.” A New History of German Literature � Ed� David E� Wellbery, Judith Ryan et al. Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 2004. 587—92. Gumbrecht, Hans Ulrich� Atmosphere, Mood, Stimmung: On a Hidden Potential of Literature . Trans. Erik Butler. Palo Alto: Stanford UP, 2012. Jameson, Fredric� The Antinomies of Realism � London: Verso, 2015� Kant, Immanuel. Kritik der Urteilskraft . Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1974. Koepnick, Lutz. Framing Attention: Windows on Modern German Culture � Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins UP, 2007. Koerner, Joseph Leo. Caspar David Friedrich and the Subject of Landscape � London: Reaktion Books, 2009. Kudriavtseva, Catherine I. “The Making of Kazimir Malevich’s Black Square .” Diss. University of Southern California, 2010� Lyon, John B� Out of Place: German Realism, Displacement and Modernity . New York: Bloomsbury, 2013� Moretti, Franco� The Bourgeois: Between History and Literature � London: Verso, 2014� Ragg-Kirkby, Helena. “‘Eine immerwährende Umwandlung der Ansichten’: Narrators and Their Perspectives in the Works of Adalbert Stifter.” The Modern Language Review 95.1 (2000): 127—43. Redfield, Marc. Phantom Formations: Aesthetic Ideology and the Bildungsroman � Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1996� ---� The Politics of Aesthetics: Nationalism, Gender, Romanticism � Stanford: Stanford UP, 2003� Rosen, Charles, and Henri Zerner. “Realism and the Avant-Garde.” Romanticism and Realism: The Mythology of Nineteenth-Century Art . New York: W.W. Norton, 1984. 131—79� Rosenblum, Robert� Modern Painting and the Northern Romantic Tradition: Friedrich to Rothko . New York: Harper and Row, 1975. Schjeldahl, Peter, “Shapes of Things: After Kazimir Malevich.” newyorker.com. The New Yorker, 6 March 2011. Web. 5 Sept. 2019. Schuller, Marianne. “Vermessen. Stifters Erzählung Kalkstein .” Fleck, Glanz, Finsternis: Zur Poetik der Oberfläche bei Adalbert Stifter � Ed� Thomas Gann and Marianne Schuller. Paderborn: Wilhelm Fink, 2017. 99—119. Schuster, Jana. “‘Lichtschleier.’ Zu Stifters Ästhetik der Atmosphäre.” Fleck, Glanz, Finsternis: Zur Poetik der Oberfläche bei Adalbert Stifter � Ed� Thomas Gann and Marianne Schuller. Paderborn: Wilhelm Fink, 2017. 35—60. Stifter, Adalbert� Werke und Briefe: Historisch-Kritische Gesamtausgabe � Vol� 2�2� Ed� Alfred Doppler and Wolfgang Frühwald. Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1982. Stifter’s Realism and the Avant-Garde: Affect and Materiality in “Kalkstein” 431 Stern, J�P� Idylls and Realities: Studies in Nineteenth-Century German Literature � London: Methuen, 1971� Strowick, Elisabeth. Gespenster des Realismus: Zur literarischen Wahrnehmung von Wirklichkeit . Paderborn: Wilhelm Fink, 2019. Swales, Martin, and Erika Swales. Adalbert Stifter: A Critical Study � Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1984� Terada, Rei� Feeling in Theory: Emotion after the “Death of the Subject.” Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2001� Wang, Orrin N�C� Romantic Sobriety: Sensation, Revolution, Commodification, History � Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins UP, 2011. Weitzman, Erica� At the Limit of the Obscene: German Realism and the Disgrace of Matter . Chicago: Northwestern UP, 2021. Addresses Jan Oliver Jost-Fritz Department of Literature and Language East Tennessee State University Box 70683 Johnson City, TN 37614-1700 jostfritz@etsu�edu Christian P. Weber Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics Florida State University 625 University Way PO Box 3061540 Tallahassee, Florida 32306-1540 cweber@fsu.edu Christine Lehleiter Germanic Languages & Literatures University of Toronto Odette Hall 318 50 St� Joseph Street Toronto, ON M5S 3L5 christine�lehleiter@utoronto�ca Daniel DiMassa Department of Humanities and Arts Worcester Polytechnic Institute Salisbury Laboratories 100 Institute Road Worcester, MA 01609 ddimassa@wpi.edu Robert E. Mottram Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures Whitman College 345 Boyer Ave� Walla Walla, WA 99362 mottramr@whitman.edu BUCHTIPP Almut Hille, Simone Schiedermair Literaturdidaktik Deutsch als Fremd- und Zweitsprache Eine Einführung für Studium und Unterricht 1. Auflage 2021, 342 Seiten €[D] 24,99 ISBN 978-3-8233-8371-0 eISBN 978-3-8233-9371-9 Diese Einführung gibt einen Überblick über die Literaturdidaktik aus der Perspektive des Faches Deutsch als Fremd- und Zweitsprache. Sie kann für die universitäre und außeruniversitäre Aus- und Fortbildung sowie zum Selbststudium verwendet werden. Ziel ist es, unterschiedliche Ansätze für die Arbeit mit literarischen Texten auf den Sprachniveaus A1-C2 vorzustellen. Der theoretische Teil stellt Geschichte, Begriffe und Methoden der Literaturdidaktik systematisch dar und bildet auch die aktuelle fachdidaktische Diskussion ab. Der zweite Teil behandelt die unterschiedlichen Textgattungen und Medien. Dabei werden jeweils deren Besonderheiten und Eignung für den Unterricht besprochen, Hinweise zur Textauswahl gegeben und konkrete Unterrichtsvorschläge und Angaben zu weiterführender Fachliteratur gemacht. Der Band schließt mit einem Kapitel zur Projektarbeiten (z.B. literarische Lesungen, Theaterwerkstatt etc.) und mit einem Serviceteil zu Institutionen, Aus- und Fortbildungen, Zertifikaten, Hilfsmitteln etc. Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH + Co. KG \ Dischingerweg 5 \ 72070 Tübingen \ Germany Tel. +49 (0)7071 97 97 0 \ Fax +49 (0)7071 97 97 11 \ info@narr.de \ www.narr.de ISSN 0010-1338 Themenheft: Literary Realism Reconsidered from an 18 th -Century Perspective Gastherausgeber: Jan Oliver Jost-Fritz und Christian P. Weber Jan Oliver Jost-Fritz und Christian P. Weber: Introduction: Literary Realism Reconsidered from an 18 th -Century Perspective Christian P. Weber: Out of Ruin: Goethe’s Poetic Realism as a Method of Constructive Inquiry Christine Lehleiter: The Reality of Battle: Realism in the Context of Goethe’s War Experience Jan Oliver Jost-Fritz: Epistemology, Imagination, and History in Romantic Realism Daniel DiMassa: Stifter, Schleiermacher, and the Vision of a Higher Realism Robert E. Mottram: Stifter’s Realism and the Avant-Garde: Affect and Materiality in “Kalkstein” narr.digital