Beilage zum Brief: On ‘Epistolarity’ and Materiality in Bettine von Arnim’s “Die Günderode” 287 Beilage zum Brief: On ‘Epistolarity’ and Materiality in Bettine von Arnim’s Die Günderode Lauren Shizuko Stone University of Colorado Boulder Abstract: As a reworking of actual, historical letters, Bettine von Arnim’s epistolary novel, Die Günderode , seems at first to transform the material world of postal correspondence into a novelistic portrayal of Romantic subjectivity. This article, however, will show that in its insistent return to an artifactual form—as the exchange of attachments, drafts, and commentaries— Die Günderode operates according to a particular epistolarity that is marked not only by an aesthetic but also by a philosophical turn to the material� The form and content of the letters themselves rely substantially on representations of materiality, and thereby emphasize nature as the material ground for the production of both knowledge and literature. Arnim’s novel thus proposes a theory of knowledge that is not based solely on interior subjective experience, but rather mobilizes the exchange of material “ Beilagen” as an intersubjective mode of Romantic philosophy. Despite stated opposition to Schelling’s philosophy, Arnim’s novel produces a theory that bears marked analogical affinities to a materialist reading of Schelling’s “Naturphilosophie.” The resulting philosophical emphasis on nature ( natura naturata, natura naturans ) reframes epistolary poetics—in particular, the materiality of writing—as a condition of knowledge. Keywords: Bettine von Arnim, epistolarity, materiality, epistemology, Romanticism, Schelling, Naturphilosophie Written more than three decades after the death of her beloved friend, Karoline von Günderrode (who committed suicide in 1806), 1 Bettine von Arnim’s novel, Die Günderode , presents a fictionalized elaboration of their exchange of letters. Though it makes no mention of Günderrode’s untimely death—a specter which haunts the reader—the novel transforms her permanent absence into a perpetual presence in the physical existence of the book. 2 The letters themselves are 288 Lauren Shizuko Stone presented to the reader as ‘real’ postal packages, frequently included with a draft of a poem or Dramolett , where each attachment is explicitly indicated as a “Beilage zum Brief.” 3 The novel, which consists primarily of the protagonist’s, i.e., Bettine’s 4 letters, is a pastiche of anecdotes, philosophical debate, and Bettine’s own lively and meandering narration of the material act of responding to her intermittent interlocutor, Karoline. As a reworking of historical letters, Die Günderode has been read as transforming the material world of ‘real’ postal correspondence into a narrative of inner experience, reflecting Arnim’s own political and aesthetic emphasis on subjectivity. 5 In other words, one can read her novel as thematizing its own novelistic trajectory by bringing into relief what Lukács calls “the interiority of the subjective [world]” (70). In contrast, this essay will show that in addition to this novel’s insistent return to its own artifactual form—the exchange of drafts and commentaries—it reflects an unconventional philosophical privileging of materiality alongside subjectivity in the discourse that appears in the letters produced by the novel’s two protagonists. There has been a fair amount of debate on the subject of whether Arnim’s so-called Brief-Bücher should be approached as “novels” ( Briefromane ) at all, or whether they should be seen as “epistolary autobiographies.” 6 My reading of Die Günderode takes Arnim’s fictionalizing and aestheticising efforts as more than merely editorial or curatorial. I suggest that it is precisely in the literariness of the text that she is able to convey her relationship between the aesthetic and epistemological. Her explicit opposition to “philosophy” as such, in fact, demands an alternative medium: namely, literary representation. In contrast to an edited, historical correspondence (which essentially consists of individual responses), this novel comes into view through the particular constellation of formal features, such as the “letters” and “attachments” ( Beilagen ), and their reality effects, in concert with the recurrent emphasis on the material encounter mirrored in the content of the letters themselves� And out of this totality of fictionalized and poeticized letters, Arnim’s various philosophical and political projects become visible. 7 In this article I will demonstrate how Arnim’s novel departs from the Romantic epistolary tradition, emphasizing its own written pages over the illusion of conversation 8 and thereby marking the first of several turns to the material. The content of the letters themselves also relies substantially on representations of materiality. As such the aesthetics of the physical letter are repeated in what appears to be the apriority of nature as material ground for the production of both knowledge and literature. Taken all together, Die Günderode proposes a theory of knowledge that, surprisingly, is not based solely on interior subjective experience, but rather mobilizes an intersubjective mode to suggest a unique Romantic philosophical return to materialism. Beilage zum Brief: On ‘Epistolarity’ and Materiality in Bettine von Arnim’s “Die Günderode” 289 My article will unfold in three steps: in part I, I will show that the novel’s particular epistolary technique foregrounds the materiality of the letter over its dialogical and psychological potential; in part II , I will demonstrate that this aesthetic emphasis on the material world mirrors an account put forward in the letters themselves, suggesting that true knowledge must be grounded in nature; and in part III , I will show that, despite (the character) Bettine’s explicit disinterest in Schelling’s philosophy, Arnim’s novel produces a theory that, even for its differences, bears substantial analogical affinities to a materialist reading of Schelling’s “Naturphilosophie.” The resulting philosophical emphasis on nature (as both productive and itself a product) positions her unique epistolary poetics—in particular, the materiality of writing—as a condition of knowledge� I. Epistolarity, Musicality, and Materiality Janet Gurkin Altman, who first formalized the term “epistolarity,” explains that “epistolary mediation” serves “as a connecter between two distant points, as a bridge between sender and receiver” and where either the “distance or the bridge” may be “emphasized” (13). The epistolary novel’s narrative capacity thus presupposes a material world wherein two subjects are physically separated, and it is the letter that connects them. Arnim’s novel thematizes precisely this epistolary gesture in those letters where Karoline provides Realist-like descriptions of the interior location of writing. Her letters depict the details of the room where the two characters had once written and studied together daily—from the disarray of books, to the state of her houseplants and canary, and even down to Bettine’s lone glove found by the maid under her bed (I, 231). With each letter, the distance is both emphasized—Bettine is not there, hence the impetus for her writing—yet through careful description, Karoline attempts to make this physical space and its material contents present for her. The epistolary gesture does not merely connect two distant cities, it also explicitly points to itself as the material “bridge.” As the aesthetic product whose content is often directed toward poetry and philosophy, their intercourse of drafts and commentaries also unites the spaces of writing and of thinking for both women. The narrative focus on the physical production of the letter itself is therefore also the narrative of the origin of discourse. When Bettine writes of the activity of writing, 9 she permanently transforms and intertwines the ephemerality of her aesthetic and quotidian ruminations into material objects: letters. And, like Kleist’s famous epistolary formulation of the dialogic character of thinking, the letter not only mediates the writer’s (and thinker’s) position against her other; it also provokes thought, electrifying it, giving it shape. The letter, like Bettine’s own intellectual 290 Lauren Shizuko Stone movement, is continually returned to in an ironic gesture even as it continues to be conditioned by the material spaces of the page. 10 Indeed, the act of letter writing provides a Romantic oscillation between the material world ( Natur ) and the world of the mind and spirit ( Geist ). Even the thematic connection in Die Günderode between subjectivity and nature appears, as Catherine Grimm has suggested, to position Bettine nearly in agreement with Schelling’s idea of “Wechselwirkung�” 11 This despite the fact that Bettine openly rejects Schelling’s approach (along with Kant and Fichte) on the grounds that “philosophy” as such operates too abstractly (I, 229), that it coldly strays too far from the sensible experience of nature. Indeed, at the close of Bettine’s second letter to Karoline, she tells her that “natürliche Weisheit” must have a melodic quality—that is to say, it must be “begreiflich” and “fühlbar” (I, 229). Bettine’s description of the musicality of Karoline’s letters articulates for her an exemplary form of knowledge, which appears at the intersection of apprehension and tactility. Crucially, it is not only Karoline’s voice that is “melodic,” but so too is her letter. It seems that words on the page offer an immediacy of perception— begreiflich- which she likens to a conversation� This musicality of their correspondence appears first in Bettine’s own letter-writing technique, as she typically moves rhythmically between citations of Karoline’s letter and her own commentary: Dein Brief ist ganz melodisch zu mir, viel mehr wie Dein Gespräch. “Wenn du noch nicht bald wieder zu uns kommst, so schreibe mir wieder, denn ich habe Dich Lieb.” Diese Worte haben einen Melodischen Gang, und dann: “Ich habe die Zeit über recht oft an Dich gedacht, Liebe Bettine! Vor einigen Nächten Träumte mir, Du seiest gestorben, ich weinte sehr darüber und hatte den ganzen Tag einen traurigen Nachklang davon in meiner Seele.” Ich auch, liebstes Günderödchen, würde sehr weinen, wenn ich Dich sollt hier lassen müssen […]. Der musikalische Klang jener Worte äußert sich wie der Pulsschlag Deiner Empfindung, das ist lebendige Liebe, die fühlst Du für mich. (I, 228) In citing Karoline’s affection from her last letter, Bettine both points to the previous material document and then reproduces a portion of it in this one. At first, she seems to be participating in the Romantic tradition of creating the illusion of “natural” conversation: We can see that Bettine responds, as it were, “directly” to Karoline by inserting her own voice in close proximity (e.g., responding “Ich auch […]”), and thereby reimagines the confines of the letter as an intimate space of conversation. 12 Indeed, Arnim appears to create the effect of a dialogue not only through the novel’s epistolary form—that is, the alternating narration by Karoline and Bettine over the course of the novel—but also within the letter itself. Bettine produces a call and response, as it were, through the writerly incorporation of Karoline’s previous letter. Beilage zum Brief: On ‘Epistolarity’ and Materiality in Bettine von Arnim’s “Die Günderode” 291 Paradoxically, however, this citational strategy seems to emphasize the limits of such an interaction as one that can only occur on paper and thereby distinguishes itself from the conversational tradition. Just as Karoline’s detailed depictions of their once shared study seems to provide a bridge that connects the two women while also reinscribing the separation between their two distant spaces, so too is the would-be illusion of spontaneous conversation, in fact, replaced by the manipulability and repeatability of written text. By citing Karoline’s letters, Bettine does not create what Altman calls an “interior debate” where the paraphrased interlocutor approximates or implies dialogue within what remains technically a monologue (138). Using Altman’s example, we might contrast Bettine’s exchange here with that of the monologic ‘responses’ that produce the letters in Goethe’s Werther. Through the practice of citation, Arnim emphasizes that this is indeed not an ephemeral, spoken conversation, but a response to a material text, which the character, Bettine, has in her hand. 13 This positions each epistle’s narrator to be what Altman calls a “reader-decoder” of each other’s letters (138). Bettine transforms the would-be dialogue into a literary object that can be cut up, resectioned, and repeated. In this epistolary exposition, the act of letter reading is thematized as much as letter writing. In Altman’s words, we could then say that this is not conversation, but rather “the emphatic portrayal of the art of close reading, the art of analysis and explication” (92). Arnim’s epistolarity therefore appears as the imbrication of two forms of production: of knowledge through reading and of an aesthetic object through writing. In returning to the above passage, we can see that the form of the letter (Bettine’s use of direct citation rather than paraphrase) corresponds to the letter’s content (a claim to musicality). Here, the doubling of the tangible material space that Karoline’s expression of love occupies, in fact, multiplies its “musicality” as that which rhythmically reverberates, as if through a material body. 14 The repetition of text—i.e., Bettine writing again what Karoline had written—is repeated in the melodic “Nachklang” in both their souls. The sound, Klang , of Karoline’s words (which are themselves already a retelling of another “Nachklang”) recalls that the words on the page have the same powerful effect as the sound waves of her voice. This “melody” is, as Bettine notes, much more like Karoline’s Gespräch - that is to say, its effect is both romantic (as the aesthetic reproduction of natural conversation) and material (as the reproduction of Karoline’s physical proximity). As citation, however, the first epistle’s material now has the capacity to linger—as “Nachklang.” And its reappearance in this letter rhythmically and physically externalizes itself “wie der Pulsschlag Deiner [Karoline’s] Empfindung.” The ideal immediacy of conversation, which Bettine praises, is made real through the writing and citing of the letter, and then is represented as the immediacy of sound. Through the materiality of epistolary 292 Lauren Shizuko Stone citation, the vibrations of the beloved can be registered; in other words, through the repetition of written words on the page, the letter produces the palpability of the pulsing “feeling” of love. In an oft discussed turn of phrase, Bettine repeatedly addresses Karoline as “Widerhall,” 15 telling her, for example: “Du bist der Widerhall nur, durch den mein irdisch Leben den Geist vernimmt, der in mir lebt, sonst hätt ich’s nicht, sonst wüßt ich’s nicht, wenn ich’s vor Dir nicht ausspräch” (I, 299). By imagining Karoline as her echo, Bettine repeats the trope of a material body’s rhythmic response, as sound reflecting off a physical surface that produces reverberations. This repetition of an echo (as well as the reference to the mythical Echo, who can do nothing other than repeat the words of others) plays on both Arnim’s use of historical textual citations to produce this novel and the lines from the fictionalized letters and attachments that Bettine quotes word for word. Indeed, this Briefroman is itself composed of “echoes” as the acoustic is transformed into the material. This passage also emphasises that the immaterial spirit / mind ( Geist ) is only perceptible through an earthly body. Like the pulsating feelings of love that appear in the reciprocity of letters, Karoline’s capacity to echo is what unites Bettine’s bodily life with the life of the mind� For Bettine, the physicality of the expression and perception of love is also an exemplary form of natural wisdom that stands against the abstract approaches of those “ganz unmögliche Kerle,” Schelling, Fichte, and Kant. Indeed, she compares the act of reading any book to the reception of a “Melodie,” asking “ob nicht alles, solang es nicht melodisch ist, wohl auch noch nicht wahr sein mag” (I, 229). As we will see in the next section, the corporeality of perception must be interwoven into the very possibility of knowledge—and this, Bettine suggests, applies to all texts. Accordingly, each individual letter, like the epistolary form of Die Günderode , emphasizes writing as an investment in the material encounter. 16 II. Reception and Production of Nature’s body: Natura Naturata & Natura Naturans At the end of this same letter, Bettine reintroduces materiality as the productive condition of the letter’s very inception. She is prompted to write in response to Karoline’s “Beilage,” citing the short manuscript of a mythological drama, which had been “attached” to her post in the previous epistle. Referring to this additional document, Bettine writes: “Wie ist die Natur so hold und gut, die mich am Busen hält.” - So lautet wie Spott auf einen Philosophen. Du [Karoline] aber bist ein Dichter, und alles, was du sagst, ist die Wahrheit und heilig” (I, 229-30). Through citation, Bettine grounds knowledge not in consciously detached oper- Beilage zum Brief: On ‘Epistolarity’ and Materiality in Bettine von Arnim’s “Die Günderode” 293 ations of thinking (“philosophy”) but rather in nature herself. And here we see that, as in this citation of Karoline’s draft, “nature” is no mere idea, she is not at all abstract: she is a proper subject, one in possession of a sensuous feminine body. Like the poet, Karoline, nature is the site of production, of generation. We see echoes of Schelling’s theoretical recourse to nature as the “unconditioned” ground of thought, as that which, in his Ideen zu einer Philosophie der Natur, not only has the capacity to “express” knowledge, but to impose a fundamental order on knowledge. As Schelling writes: “Denn wir wollen nicht, daß die Natur mit den Gesetzen unsers Geistes zufällig (etwa durch Vermittelung eines Dritten ) zusammentreffe, sondern daß sie selbst notwendig und ursprünglich die Gesetze unsers Geistes nicht nur ausdrücke , sondern selbst realisiere , und daß sie nur insofern Natur sei und Natur heiße, als sie dies tut” ( SW I.2.55). 17 Although Schelling’s philosophical procedure (Gedankenoperation) for arriving at the notion of “nature as subject” in both Ideen zu einer Philosophie der Natur and the Einleitung zu dem Entwurf eines Systems der Naturphilosophie would be anathema to Bettine’s own investment in Empfindung as a direct material encounter, there is clearly a shared Romantic stake in casting nature as an autonomous and productive condition of knowledge. Grimm has suggested that to portray a specifically feminine subjectivity, Arnim’s novel relies heavily on the tropes of nature as subject. Her analysis therefore sets Arnim’s signature use of subjective metaphors of nature in parallel with Schelling’s notion of the identity between nature and mind� 18 I would suggest that this unlikely affinity between Arnim and Schelling has epistemological consequences that also go beyond the metaphorical invocation of the feminine in order to supply an emancipated poetic subject. Through Bettine’s repeated reference to nature as a material body, Arnim is able to put forward the possibility that poiesis issues from a nuanced interaction between the sensing subject and that which is sensible. In Schelling’s System des transzendentalen Idealismus, nature’s apriority is clear: “Etwas, wofür die Bedingungen in der Natur überhaupt nicht gegeben werden können, muß schlechthin unmöglich sein” ( SW I.3.571). Nature, as the necessary ground, supplies the conditions of thought—subjective experience cannot happen beyond or outside of nature’s “given” parameters. In Arnim’s reframing, however, nature (also as the ground) is not merely the source or condition. She appears as not only having a body (against whose bosom one could be held), she is also received by way of the body. Her productive power thus offers more than mere reflection: “Aus dieser Lehre,” Bettine continues, “wird mein künftig Glück erblühn, nicht weil ich’s gelernt hab, aber weil ich’s empfind ” (I, 229-30; emphasis mine). And by citing her correspondent, Bettine aligns Karoline’s poetic power with a material capacity. Karoline’s “Lehre”—in the sense of her written text and the knowledge that she has to impart—is not 294 Lauren Shizuko Stone conceptual, it is not something which can be “studied,” but rather must be taken up by the senses. Like the act of reading, it is only through the passivity of the senses that the body of nature can be received� The closing lines of the letter insist in concrete terms that thinking—like writing—are materially determined. Nature interjects herself into the letter: “Ach, eben ist ein großer Vogel wider mein Fenster geflogen und hat mich so erschreckt, es ist schon nach Mitternacht, gute Nacht. Bettine” (I, 229-30). 19 The letter’s final form, its end, is quite literally determined by the appearance of a bird flying against her window. 20 Where, for Schelling, nature is a limiting countermovement, for Arnim it provides the bounds and finite edges of the letter. 21 For example, when Schelling articulates the role that matter plays for intuition in the Ideen, he notes that the encounter with an object is only perceived as the product of a force ( Kraft ), which appears for us as the feeling of restriction ( Beschränktheit )� 22 Likewise, for Arnim, the activity of the writer vis-à-vis nature is also one of passivity. Consider how her writing stops and starts: nature acts as a counterforce, a delimiting agent that literally interrupts and halts her production of text; nature acts as that which produces text (as she, nature, inspires the self-reflexive content of the letter); nature is also the aesthetic product as Bettine narrates the scene of interruption. With respect to both the thematizing of nature in the letter and nature’s capacity to shape the letter, Schelling’s famous formulation is indeed apt: “Die Natur als bloßes Produkt (natura naturata) nennen wir die Natur als Objekt (auf diese allein geht alle Empirie). Die Natur als Produktivität (natura naturans) nennen wir Natur als Subjekt (auf diese allein geht alle Theorie)” ( SW I.3.284). In near-perfect analogy, nature’s relation to writing appears as the simultaneity of freedom and restriction and as the production of finitude and determination. Here, nature is both the objective content of the letter, and the productive grounds of its writing—the material basis for the letter itself� III. Precipitation, Germination, and the Electrified Mind In her attempts to convince Bettine to continue with her (much-disliked) history lessons, Karoline suggests that not only is history itself a possible source of inspiration, but that history sows the seeds of the present: “Darum schien mir die Geschichte wesentlich, um das träge Pflanzenleben Deiner Gedanken aufzufrischen; in ihr liegt die starke Gewalt aller Bildung - die Vergangenheit treibt vorwärts, alle Keime der Entwicklung in uns sind von ihrer Hand gesäet. Sie ist die eine der beiden Welten der Ewigkeit, die in dem Menschengeist wogt, die andere ist die Zukunft; daher kömmt jede Gedankenwelle, und dorthin eilt sie! ” (I, 295; emphasis mine). In the double-sense of “Geschichte” (as both history Beilage zum Brief: On ‘Epistolarity’ and Materiality in Bettine von Arnim’s “Die Günderode” 295 and narrative), Armin envisions the animating and creative process as comprehensible in its analogy to nature—that like plant life (which spreads its seeds), “Geschichte” is both the productive “Gewalt aller Bildung” and is itself also a product of such a process. 23 Recalling an exemplary moment of Bettine’s “genius,” Karoline shifts from the metaphorical inseminating power of history to a reflection of the physical scattering of material seed as a condition of nature’s fertility� What Karoline imagines also suggests that among the frivolous threads of Bettine’s chatter lays the embryonic seed of her genius: Wär der Gedanke bloß der Moment, in uns geboren? - Dies ist nicht. Dein Genius ist von Ewigkeit zwar, doch schreitet er zu Dir heran durch die Vergangenheit, die eilt in die Zukunft hinüber, sie zu befruchten; das ist Gegenwart, das eigentliche Leben; jeder Moment, der nicht von ihr durchdrungen in die Zukunft hineinwächst, ist verlorene Zeit, von der wir Rechenschaft zu geben haben. Rechenschaft ist nichts anders als Zurückholen des Vergangenen, ein Mittel, das Verlorne wieder einzubringen, denn mit dem Erkennen des Versäumten fällt der Tau auf den vernachlässigten Acker der Vergangenheit und belebt die Keime, noch in die Zukunft zu wachsen. - Hast Du’s nicht selbst letzten Herbst im Stiftsgarten gesagt, wie der Distelbusch an der Treppe, den wir im Frühling so viele Bienen und Hummeln hatten umschwärmen sehen, seine Samenflocken ausstreute: ‘Da führt der Wind der Vergangenheit Samen in die Zukunft.’ Und auf der grünen Burg in der Nacht, wo wir vor dem Sturm nicht schlafen konnten - sagtest Du damals nicht, der Wind komme aus der Ferne, seine Stimme töne herüber aus der Vergangenheit, und sein feines Pfeifen sei der Drang, in die Zukunft hinüberzueilen. - Unter dem vielen, was Du in jener Nacht schwätztest, lachtest, ja freveltest, hab ich dies behalten und kann Dir nun auch zum Dessert mit Deinen eignen großen Rosinen aufwarten, deren Du so weidlich in Deinen musikalischen Abstraktionen umherstreust. (I, 295) In Karoline’s excursus here, the otherwise immaterial processes of time and history 24 are both expressed by nature (as an analogical representation) and are made real in the very activity of nature (as the procession of seasons, the scenes of germination, pollination, etc.). Most importantly, however, the temporality of an ephemeral conversation—Bettine’s seemingly insignificant schwätzen —is materialized, aestheticized, and, in fact, preserved ( behalten ) in Karoline’s letter� The past does indeed become the seeds of its future, as Karoline mobilizes that insignificant moment of some bygone chatter as that which pollinates ( befruchten ) this letter ‘now.’ Furthermore, Karoline’s recognition ( Erkennen ) of that little seed (i.e., Bettine’s moment of genius) that would otherwise be overlooked ( das Versäumte ), becomes the “dew” ( Tau ) which falls, allowing her genius to be able to germinate. This letter is thus also like the dew, it is a process of condensation: 296 Lauren Shizuko Stone the ephemeral moment of Bettine’s genius, a seed of the past, is made material, germinates, and comes to fruition as a new aesthetic object. One of the unexpectedly material topoi that loosely unites the various threads of the novel is Bettine’s playful plan to establish a “Schwebe-Religion”—the material gestures of which I would suggest can also be encapsulated in the dew motif, which repeats throughout the novel. “Der Tau” in its many iterations— Morgentau , Abendtau , früher Tau , kühler Tau , etc.—appear as an essential “Wirken der Natur.” As we have just seen in Arnim’s epistolary aesthetics, these “effects” of nature are material—and should therefore be understood as both product and productivity. Represented as precipitation (from gas to liquid), in these letters nature is the making-material of that which once only appeared as immaterial. And it is in the particular gestures of both “der Tau” and “schweben” that even where the putative concern is a movement from the transcendent or ideal, Arnim continues to insist upon nature as a necessary material ground for her claims. As an example, let us consider Bettine’s response to Karoline’s letter requesting more details of their newly conceived “Schwebe-Religion” as a distraction from her (Karoline’s) upcoming bloodletting (I, 329). Bettine’s response circulates between admonitions of the specious practice of Aderlassen and the material, indeed, the sanguinary structure underpinning the ideals of the “Schwebe-Religion.” It presents anatomy as the specific medium for wisdom and genius. On Bettine’s account, blood qualifies as part of nature and thus directly impacts “den menschlichen Geist.” This materialist (or even realist) approach moves the stakes of the “Schwebe-Religion” well out of the purely spiritual territory and instead takes up a poetics of anatomy, physics, and chemistry as grounds for knowledge� Bettine warns Karoline: Laß nur nicht zur Ader, denn, wie gesagt, es ahnt mir, daß dadurch etwas im Menschen zugrunde gehen könne, vielleicht das echte Heldentum; […]. - Das Aderlaßmännchen ist der Teufel, der hat sich so ganz sachte in den Kalender geschlichen, um die Menschen um das einzige zu betrügen, was ihm Widerstand leisten kann, um den Stahl im Blut, der übergeht in den Geist und den fest macht, daß er tun kann, was er will. Weisheit und Tapferkeit! (I, 331) When the metaphorical value of the material “Stahl” is mapped onto the idea of valor, it appears not as an analogy, but as a prior requirement. The biological impossibility of the claim aside, we can nonetheless see how Arnim uses the aesthetic experience in language to articulate a causal relationship between material nature and the appearance of ideas, such as heroism. Bloodletting thus poses a threat not only to the body itself (“etwas […] [könne] zugrunde gehen”) but it also exposes, as it were, the “real” conditions for certain religious ideals. We can imagine here that, even in her refusal to engage in “philosophy,” that Beilage zum Brief: On ‘Epistolarity’ and Materiality in Bettine von Arnim’s “Die Günderode” 297 if she were asked to answer Schelling’s question: “Was ist nun jenes geheime Band, das unsern Geist mit der Natur verknüpft, oder jenes verborgene Organ, durch welches die Natur zu unserm Geiste oder unser Geist zur Natur spricht? ” ( SW I.2.55), Bettine might answer that the “geheime Band” is writing, and the site where the material and conceptual worlds have their productive dialogue is in the letter� 25 And, as such, the “schweben” of her religion is not only a reference to the way in which Geist and Luft are equated in many passages, but also to the extent that it operates as the delicate tissue which connects the real and the ideal, much like the dew evinces both water and air. 26 At the very opening of this letter, the body appears as the literal and metaphorical “ground” for knowledge in an irreverent anecdote that offers a playful discourse on the nature of blood. Referring to her childhood at the convent, Bettine describes the hideous Aderlassmännchen , who regularly visited to withdraw the nuns’ blood: Eine alte Nonne sagte einmal, man könne in seine Pockengruben, in denen sehr viel erdiger Schmutz war, Kresse säen, so würde er einen grünen Bart bekommen, ich hielt also immer Kresse bereit und paßte auf die Gelegenheit, ihm den Samen einzustreuen, und habe auch einen Augenblick, wo er über dem Warten auf die Nonnen eingeschlafen war, benutzt, und Du magst’s glauben oder nicht, die Kresse hat einen sehr günstigen Boden, sie begann mit Macht emporzuschießen, man brauchte ihn nur mit Essig und Öl einzuseifen, so hatte man den trefflichsten Salat von seinem Bartschabsel. Aber gelt, Du gläubest nicht? - Aber hör, da fällt mir ein, esse doch eine recht tüchtige Schüssel voll Salat, das kühlt das Blut ab; aber wenn Du bei einer Entzündung noch Blut verlierst, so wird natürlich diese verstärkt, denn wenn Du ein Dippen von mit Wasser kochend hast und schütt’st einen Teil davon weg, so kocht’s viel stärker. (I, 330) This anecdote seems to rely on a quasi-empirical approach to nature as the source of knowledge: that which we observe about boiling water allows us to make claims about blood as well� The romantic humor of this scene relies on the paradox of its impossibility (that it is beyond belief) and its coherence to nature. The force of life needs nothing more than fertile ground—or, in this case, dirty pockmarked cheeks—and a moment of contingency (“die Gelegenheit”) in order to yield wisdom, namely the recommendation to eat a cool salad to counter a fever. The possibility for this quasi-medical recommendation hinges upon the figure of the body as “ground” for thought—and, what the seeds (“Kresse”) thus eventually bear is not a salad for the nuns, but rather knowledge and narrative. 27 This absurd anecdote therefore multiplies the valences of the body qua nature: the corporeal subject literally stands in as the subjectum , the substrate (or, as in Ian Hamilton Grant’s reading of Schelling, the hypokeimenon )� 28 298 Lauren Shizuko Stone What is peculiar about the epistle’s interweaving of sanguinary discourses is not so much the quaint folk remedy it offers, but rather that it demonstrates how the process of writing—and digressing—is, like the dew, one of materialization. Arnim envisions this dynamic mechanism, where poetic production (writing) bears a structural affinity to Schelling’s notion of identity: the material world as substrate must correspond to that which is produced by the mind. Shortly before falling asleep mid-sentence, Bettine returns to blood as the material site of bioelectricity. In keeping with her Romantic colleague, she will take recourse to material physics to locate the ideal. 29 Blood, she declares, with its metallic content is conductive like a lightening rod� And it is the underlying and generative structure that permits genius to move from the infinite ideal of God (as wisdom) to the finite body of man: […] so erzeugt auch das Genie, weil es mit Gottes elektrischer Kette verbunden ist, ewig seine Schläge empfängt und wieder einschlägt ins Blut. - Ich bitte Dich, wie willst Du denn die elektrische Kraft erklären, anders, als daß durch Gottes Geist die Natur zuckt und bis ins Blut geht, wo sie im Menschen wieder den Weg in die Begeisterung findet, weil der Geist hat. - Und siehe da! - Die Kraft empfängt den Blitzenstrahl, und so erzeugen Weisheit und Tapferkeit sich ineinander. […] Gott [ist] die große elektrische Kraft […], die durch die Natur fährt und ins Blut des Menschen und von da sich als Genius in den Geist des Menschen hinüber bildet. (I, 332) Where we previously saw the material as the ground or condition for thinking and writing, here the opposite also seems to be the case. On the one hand, the metallic component of the blood (both literally and analogously understood as the rigidity that undergirds and generates courage), “Stahl,” has the ability to conduct electrical power. This, Bettine suggests, is the necessary force underlying “Genius.” That is to say, genius—rendered here as an ‘electrified’ mind (i.e., Begeisterung )—is conditioned by the objective materiality of the thinking subject which appears to her as force ( Kraft ). And with this, the material, blood, the subjectum to use Grant’s terms, reappears as Schellingian restriction ( Beschränktheit ). On the other hand, electricity is very much the “schwebende Figur,” which, like the precipitation of dew ( Tau ), is merely the visible appearance or index of a greater force. Genius is therefore an effect of the infinite and transcendent force of God, as He appears in the finite body of man. Again, we might imagine Arnim to be the unhappy reader of Schelling, who himself arrived at a similar conclusion following his own discussion of electricity and while parsing the relationship between matter and knowledge in the Ideen : “Die Materie,” Schelling writes, “absolut betrachtet, ist also nichts anders als die reale Seite des absoluten Erkennens, und als solche eins mit der ewigen Natur selbst, in welcher der Geist Gottes auf ewige Art die Unendlichkeit in der Endlichkeit wirkt […]” (SW I.2.225). Beilage zum Brief: On ‘Epistolarity’ and Materiality in Bettine von Arnim’s “Die Günderode” 299 Though I have only discussed a handful of letters, they each nonetheless offer exemplary moments in the novel. And in a dialectical and Romantic fashion, we might read the entirety of this novel as the “ground” and each letter as easily overlooked “seeds,” the recognition and reading of which are productive. Collectively the letters illustrate Arnim’s investment in what Schelling called “die reale Seite” of knowledge—that which must be bound absolutely with nature. As such, the material substrate, which the epistolary form provides, allows Arnim the ability to articulate a certain apriority of nature, and to do so by way of materiality itself. Though I have largely argued against the significance of the fact that this novel is based, however loosely, on actual letters, we might now be able to see the relevance of the novel’s entire provenance both as a product of those material documents and as the productivity of literary engagement: Arnim turns the “seeds” of the past (namely her real epistolary chatter) into an aesthetic literary object. Die Günderode ’s unique epistolarity therefore capitalizes on the double character of the subject’s relation to material nature, to what Schelling described as both product ( natura naturata ) and productivity ( natura naturans ). And the significant consequence of Arnim’s epistolary poetics is then that writing itself is revealed to be the mode of knowledge for her own materialist “Naturphilosophie.” Notes 1 The historical Karoline von Günderrode committed suicide in 1806 under somewhat secretive circumstances following an illicit affair with Friedrich Creuzer. Nearly all correspondences between them were destroyed. For a concise overview of Günderrode (her biography and literary work) see Becker-Cantarino 202-25. 2 With reference to Rüdiger Campe’s theory of the Schreibszene, Marianne Schuller has argued that by virtue of Bettine’s act of writing Günderode’s body, the text of the novel becomes an “archive” of death (Schuller 244). I agree with Angela Steidele that this novel ought not be read strictly as an autobiographical “Denkmal,” since it overwhelmingly consists of Bettine’s letters (Steidele, “Frauenliebe” 52). On the whole, the novel devotes relatively little textual space to Karoline’s voice and therefore appears to be invested much more in putting forward Arnim’s own poetic program than memorializing the deceased Karoline von Günderrode. 3 Here we might draw on Janet Gurkin Altman’s comparison between the art of repraesentatio of theatrical or dramatic dialogue and monologue and the epistolary exchange. Where the former relies on the “presence,” the latter on the illusion of presence in the face of absence (Altman 140). The “conver- 300 Lauren Shizuko Stone sation” between Bettine and Karoline, without the conventions associated with letters, could just as well be theatrical dialogue. Thus the introduction of the Beilage is a crucial detail that reaffirms the textuality and materiality of the discourse. As such, I disagree with Carola Hilmes, who emphasizes the orality or vocality of the discourse in this text. 4 When referring to Bettine von Arnim, the author and historical person, I follow the standard convention of using her last name, and when referring to the quasi-autobiographical figure or fictional character, I will use “Bettine�” 5 The centrality of subjectivity and consciousness in Arnim’s novels generally has been widely analyzed. In contrast to Goethes Briefwechsel mit einem Kind, the case of Günderode presents a particular emphasis on feminine subjectivity, constituted as a utopian relation between two “equals,” Karoline and Bettine (Waldstein 55-57). Peggy Nill has argued that the intensity of Bettine’s sense perception appears essentially in service to the subjective representation of desire (Nill 30). Angela Steidele has also argued that the novel presents Bettine’s “Programm der Subjektwerdung” through the discourse of the “Schwebe-Religion”; as a doctrine which emphasizes “ein inneres Heiligtum” to which one is loyal (Steidele, “Frauenliebe” 55). This article does not seek to supplant either of these interpretations, but rather to show that alongside this “Programm” of feminine subjectivity, Arnim also appears to put forward a theory of the role of the material as part of any metaphysical-aesthetic project. 6 Accordingly, my reading here follows in the tradition of using the term “novel” to describe Arnim’s work; this approach was first established by Waldemar Oehlke in 1925 in his philological analysis Die Briefromane Bettina von Arnims. For this reason, most of the secondary criticism that I engage here tends to follow this line of inquiry rather than the relatively ample body of scholarship that treats her epistolary technique as a form of autobiography. For a brief overview of the various positions in the Brentano-von Arnim scholarship on the generic status of her “Briefbücher” as either epistolary novels or autobiographies see French 208-14. 7 There are numerous threads that can be seen in the novel, most of which I will not have the space to discuss here. In an effort to underscore my impression, however, that this text is indeed a novel and not an aggregation of correspondences, it is worth pointing out the various topoi that unite the “letters” produce something that can be interpreted as a whole. These include (but are not at all limited to): loneliness, friendship (female friendship in particular), poetry and authorship, utopia, emancipation and education. For an overview of these themes see Becker-Cantarino 248-58. Beilage zum Brief: On ‘Epistolarity’ and Materiality in Bettine von Arnim’s “Die Günderode” 301 8 To emphasize a view of the letters as retaining the Romantic referent of discourse and speech despite their fictionality and poeticity, French chose the terms “epistolary book” and “letter book” to describe Arnim’s work (French 213). As will be evident in the next section of this article, I think these “letters” in many ways undermine Romantic discursivity as the effect of oral conversation or spontaneous spoken responses. 9 Schuller’s aforementioned reading of Arnim’s thematization of writing, which she explicitly bases on Rüdiger Campe’s classic notion of the Schreibszene , argues that, in the act of writing and in her repeated use of figures such as the Musenanruf, etc., Bettine unites speaking and writing to produce an impure notion of language (which contrast’s Karoline’s Romantic “pure” language) (Schuller 241-42). 10 In this way, my argument here substantially departs from the Kittlerian psychoanalytic treatment on her project of writing as always “into the wind,” as a subjective movement of letters that “weigh nothing.” I will also show that while her “repulsion” philosophy may produce a “physical horror,” as Kittler suggests (40), it is in her manifested writing of this “aversion” that she does indeed produce a feminine philosophy. For an overview of Brentano-von Arnim reception, see Goozé 349-406. 11 Grimm’s treatment of this affinity does not move much beyond noting this general structure of “reciprocity” with respect to the representation of tropes of nature. This article seeks to elaborate more substantively on this point—that is, that Arnim, even as her thought bears resemblance to Schelling’s, seems to carve out her own theory, and more crucially, her own methodology. See Grimm, “Natur” 159-60. 12 Although I don’t have room to discuss it here, there is literary and historical background for reading the space of the letter as an ersatz meeting between lover-beloved. For more on the use of the letter to create a “virtual space of female same-sex desire” in this period see Steidele, “Schreib doch, Geliebte! ” 13 Alternatively, we might consider this portrayal of discursivity to be self-generating as well. As both Emile Benveniste and later Altman point out, there is a reciprocity between a specific I / you for each “new utterance” in order to “maintain the epistolary exchange.” See Altman’s discussion of Benveniste in Epistolarity 117� 14 In this way, music produces more than a mere awareness of the “innermost self ” as Hilmes has suggested. The acoustic tropes, she argues, are ultimately indices for Bettine’s own voice, mirrored in Karoline. 15 For example, Hilmes reads this as, among other things, a conception of the self, which is constituted by collective reciprocity (where the other appears as the “ideal” completion of that self or as the vehicle for her own self-con- 302 Lauren Shizuko Stone sciousness or genius). Alternatively, Edith Waldstein suggests that the trope of “echo” signifies the reciprocity of the correspondences themselves and reflective of their social and intellectual equality (Waldstein 55). And Becker-Cantarino reads this “echo” as a reference to the myth of Echo (as poet and poetry), the “dialogic” nature of language, and also akin to Aristotle’s notion of friendship as the “zweites Ich” (Becker-Cantarino 251). 16 I am interested in showing that while her “repulsion” from “philosophy” may, as Kittler suggests, elicit a response of “physical horror” (Kittler 40), it is, in fact, by virtue of her manifested writing of this “aversion” that she does indeed produce “a feminine philosophy.” As such, this essay offers a counter argument to Kittler’s reading of Günderode as Arnim’s (and Bettine’s) expressions of desire and wish fulfillment for emancipation from the “philosophy” of “great men,” arguing instead that it is an experimental novel that mobilizes its epistolary form and insistent representation of material text to yield a unique and nuanced contribution to Romantic philosophy. 17 See Grimm, “Natur” 162-64. 18 Grimm, “Natur” 162-64. See also Grant’s extensive discussion of Schelling’s attempts to think nature absolutely, i.e., as her own ground, and thus not a mere construction of thought� 19 Compare the preceding passage in the letter: “‘ Man kann Geister nicht durch Beschwörung rufen, aber sie können sich dem Geist offenbaren; das Empfängliche kann sie empfangen, dem innern Sinn können sie erscheinen .’ […] Und aus dieser Lehre wird mein künftig Glück erblühn, nicht weil ich’s gerlernt hab, aber weil ich’s empfind; es ist ein Keim in mir geworden und wurzelt tief, ja, ich muß sagen, es spricht meine Natur aus, oder vielmehr, es ist das heilige Wort ‘Es werde’, was du über mich ausprichst” (I, 229-30). 20 In reference to another instance where Bettine is writing a letter and a sudden physical interruption by nature then appears as part of the letter’s content, Kittler rightly suggests that “the writing machine runs most beautifully when it is disturbed, when falling linden flowers or raindrops intrude […] above all when Bettina can still write but no longer read” (Kittler 36)� 21 As Rüdiger Campe has argued, the relationship between the event of a text’s writing and the written event can be a fraught one (760-62). Insofar as Bettine also writes the time of the letter’s writing, the impossibility of reading the scene of writing as separate from the text itself becomes apparent, and thus doubles its material signification. 22 “Als der erste Versuch, jenes x zu bestimmen, wird sich uns bald der Begriff von Kraft zeigen. Die Objekte selbst können wir nur als Produkte von Kräften betrachten, und damit verschwindet von selbst das Hirngespinst Beilage zum Brief: On ‘Epistolarity’ and Materiality in Bettine von Arnim’s “Die Günderode” 303 von Dingen an sich , die die Ursachen unserer Vorstellung sein sollten. […] Durch jene Einwirkung kann die ursprüngliche Tätigkeit nicht vernichtet , sie kann nur beschränkt , oder wenn man einen zweiten Ausdruck aus der Erfahrungswelt entlehnen will, reflektiert werden� Aber der Geist soll sich als beschränkt fühlen , und dies kann er nicht, ohne daß er fortfahre überhaupt frei zu handeln und auf den Punkt jenes Widerstands zurückzuwirken” (Schelling, SW I.2.219-20). 23 As Monserrat Bascoy Lamelas remarks, in this letter Karoline also appears to hold the early Romantic view of the possibility of a ‘golden age’ in which past, present, and future (as well as cause and effect) are united by way of a kind of prophetic memory (Lamelas 215). While I don’t dispute this reading as relevant for Arnim’s project, I do think that this particular passage also presents a view of history that is formally akin to Schiller’s paradoxical natura naturata / natura naturans, which I am developing here. To this end, I would agree with Lamelas that Arnim’s representation of the capacity of the imagination to unite the infinite and the finite is not far from Novalis’s own conception of Romantic autonomy (Lamelas 154). 24 In her analysis of this and an earlier passage (I, 239), Waldstein characterizes this Romantic view of history as having both a primordial unity and a movement of progression toward transcendence (Waldstein 53). 25 See Campe as well as Schuller. 26 Here again we can see an affinity or analogy to Schelling’s thought—where a priori knowledge (ideas) begins first in the real—if we take him to be participating in a form of realism. For a thorough discussion of Schelling’s conception of the natural body (qua “organ”) as a dialectical movement— and not the material site of interaction—between thinking and perceiving see Weatherby 172-79. 27 This apparent digression about salad and body temperatures is then immediately interrupted by roosters crowing, thus reminding us that this process of thinking is not a disconnected philosophy whose rational methodology is a universal, which is divorced from nature, but rather a product of material space at a particular time. 28 Grant’s reading of Schelling is apropos: “Schelling reexamines the question of ground throughout his corpus, reengineering the concept of he subject from its postto its pre-Kantian acceptation as subjectum , thus aiding our understanding of the ‘nature as subject’ thesis” (Grant 7). He also clarifies that for Schelling materiality is to be understood as the question of substrate rather than simple corporeality. 29 For a thorough discussion of Schelling’s position in the debate around biological “electricity” around 1800 see Weatherby 185-88. 304 Lauren Shizuko Stone Works Cited Altman, Janet Gurkin. Epistolarity: Approaches to Form. Columbus: Ohio State UP , 1982. Becker-Cantarino, Barbara. Schriftstellerinnen der Romantik: Epoche - Werke - Wirkung. Munich: C. H. Beck Verlag, 2000. Benveniste, Emile. Problèmes de linguistique générale. Paris: Gallimard, 1966. Campe, Rüdiger. “/ Die Schreibszene, Schreiben.” Paradoxien, Dissonanzen, Zusammenbrüche: Situationen offener Epistemologie . Ed. Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht and K. Ludwig Pfeiffer. Berlin: Suhrkamp, 1991. 759-72. French, Loreley. German Women as Letter Writers: 1750 - 1850. 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