Reassessing Romantic Reflexivity—The Case of Novalis
1988; Routledge; Volume: 63; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/19306962.1987.11787306
ISSN1930-6962
Autores ResumoClick to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size NotesTo name only the major studies: Walter Benjamin, Der Begriff der Kunstkritik in der deutschen Romantik (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1973). Hans-Joachim Mähl, Die Idee des goldenen Zeitalters im Werk des Novalis (Heidelberg: Winter, 1965). Karl Heinz Volkmann-Schluck, “Novaiis’ magischer Idealismus,” in Die deutsche Romantik, ed. Hans Steffen (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck, 1967, pp. 45–53). Johannes Mahr, Übergang zum Endlichen: Der Weg des Dichters in Novalis’ “Heinrich von Ofterdingen” (Munich: Fink, 1970). Hannelore Link, Abstraktion und Poesie im Werk des Novalis (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1971). The more recent investigations are by critics known for applying French theory to German Romanticism: Manfred Frank, Das Problem ‘Zeit’ in der deutschen Romantik: Zeitbewußtsein und Bewußtsein von Zeitlichkeit in der frühromantischen Philosophie und in Tiecks Dichtung (Munich: Winkler, 1972). Jochen Hörisch, Die fröhliche Wissenschaft der Poesie: Der Universalitätsanspruch von Dichtung in der frühromantischen Poetologie (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1976). Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy, L’absolu littéraire: Théorie de la littérature du romantisme allemand (Paris: Seuil, 1978). Please note that by subsequently citing from these texts, I in no way claim to summarize and then dispense with the sundry positions of these scholars. Instead of approaching the problem of reflexivity from a detailed discussion of their views (except in major cases in the notes), I prefer to give an indication of some difficulties in the secondary material and then to concentrate on presenting Novalis’ views. I apologize if my approach commits any injustice against these complex investigations.Benjamin, p. 27.Benjamin, p. 27; cf. his references to the absolute as “ein Denkendes” and to “Selbsterkenntnis,” pp. 49 and 60.Armand Nivelle, Frühromantische Dichtungstheorie (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1970), p. 30.Hörisch, p. 88.Hörisch, p. 88.Link, p. 176.Lacoue-Labarthe/Nancy, p. 21.Friedrich Schlegel, Kritische Ausgabe, ed. Ernst Behler (Munich/Paderborn/Vienna: Schöningh, 1967), 11, 204, #238. Referred to hereafter as KA with volume, page and fragment number.Lacoue-Labarthe/Nancy elsewhere argue strongly for Romantic equivocality. Contras! this passage with their-to my mind—more appropriate insight into the Romantics’ “propre impuissance à nommer et concevoir ce qu’ils inventent” (p. 11). At one point Benjamin also remarks that the Romantics con fessed the inexorable falling short of their endeavors (p. 47). To a greater extent than such previous forays, this present paper wants to concentrate on how the Romantics systematized insufficiency.Friedrich von Hardenberg, Werke, Tagbücher und Briefe, ed. Hans-Joachim Mähl and Richard Samuel (Munich: Hanser, 1978), 1,384. In order to support a different view of Novalis ’ reflexivity, 1 quote extensively, to the admitted detriment of my English prose.Clemens Brentano, Sämtliche Werke und Briefe (Stuttgart: Kohlham mer, 1978), XVI, 314.In Begriff der Kunstkritik, Benjamin speaks of Romantic messianism (pp. 8 and 86).For more information on the influence of Fichte on Novalis, cf. Benjamin, Volkmann-Schluck, and Frank. Specific studies include: Géza von Molnár, Novalis’ “Fichte Studies”: The Foundations of his Aesthetics (The Hague: Mouton, 1970), Hannelore Link, “Zur Fichte-Rezeption in der Frühromantik,” Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift Sonderband (1978), 355–68, Wolfgang Janke, “Enttönter Gesang-Sprache und Wahrheit in den Fichte-Studien des Novalis,” in Erneuerung der Transzendentalphilosophie im Anschluß an Kant und Fichte, ed. K. Harnmacher and A. Mues (Stuttgart: Fromman-Holzboog, 1979), pp. 168–203, Richard W. Hannah, The Fichtean Dynamic of Novalis’ Poetics (Bern: Lang, 1981), and Friedrich Strack, Im Schatten der Neugier: Christliche Tradition und kritische Philosophie im Werk Friedrichs von Hardenberg (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1982). By and large, these studies deal with how Novalis overcomes Fichtean solipsism by discovering the transpersonal, unifying powers of the imagination—a reading this paper wishes to call into question by citing from Novalis passages to the contrary.Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Sämmtliche Werke (Leibzig: Mayer and Müller, 1834–46), I, 457. Future references as SW in parentheses.The similarity to Jacques Lacan comes immediately to mind. His psychoanalytic practice is the working out of the theory that the subject is constituted in the field of the Other. “[Le sujet] se voit en [l’] a [utre spéculaire], et c’est pour cela qu’il a un moi” (Le Séminaire, [Paris, Seuil, 1978], II, 285).For a thorough explanation of this paradox, cf. Frank’s first section in Das Problem ‘Zeit’ on “Der Zirkel in Fichtes Wissenschaftslehre,” pp. 22–26.Novalis here links reflection to the notion of the “(Spiegel)-bild.” French, of course, has two separate words for reflection-“reflet” and “reflexion.”This, incidentally, is also Fichte’s starting point: “Was das eigentlich geistige im Menschen, das reine Ich,-schlechthin an sich-isolirt-und ausser aller Beziehung auf etwas ausser demselben-seyn würde?—diese Frage ist unbeantwortlich” (Über die Bestimmung des Gelehrten, VI, 294).In his early Fichte fragments, Novalis variously uses dualistic terminology to describe the reflexive and nonreflexive self. For the former he employs “das getheilte, mittelbare, empirische, gedachte,” or “analytische Ich,” “das Subjekt,” or “das Bedingte.” For the latter his terms are “das reine, gefühlte, identische,” or “synthetische Ich,” or “Ich schlechthin.” As in Fichte, “das absolute Ich” subsumes the two categories.Novalis, Schriften, ed. Samuel, Mähl, Schulz (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1960), II, 361, #19; cf. also Werke II, 564 and II, 46, #54: Synthetisches Ich ist ein einfaches relatives Postulat.”Kant observes the subject has the propensity to believe in the unity of itself: “Gleichwohl ist nichts natürlicher und verführerischer, als der Schein, die Einheit in der Synthesis der Gedanken vor eine wahrgenommene Einheit im Subjekte dieser Gedanken zu halten.” Kant, Werke, ed. Wilhelm Weischedel (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1975), II, 397. Kant thus distinguishes between the a priori pure apperception of self-consciousness that accompanies thought and the self as substance (the latter being an illusion of the former).Derrida calls différance “the movement that structures every dissociation.” Speech and Phenomena, and Other Essays on Husserl’s Theory of Signs, trans. David Allison (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973), p. 130. Cf. Schlegel’s fragment with a similar passage from Novalis: “Das Ich glaubt ein fremdes Wesen zu sehn—durch Approximation desselben entsteht ein andres Mittelwesen-das Produkt—was dem Ich zugehört, und was zugl[eich) dem Ich nicht zuzugehören scheint—Die Mittelresultate des Processes sind die Hauptsache—das zufällig gewordene—oder gemachte Ding-ist das Verkehrt Beabsichtigte “(11, 610, #601).Here I part ways with Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy, who, although they mention the “problématique du sujet imprésentable luimême” (p. 43), find in the Romantics the resolution-“la possibilité de l’auto-reconnaissance de l’ldée comme la forme propre du sujet” (p. 47).This is in opposition to Manfred Frank’s reading of Novalis’ concept of the ordo inversus. Following Dieter Henrich, Frank maintains that by default a prereflexive self exists. lt is revealed as primary, originary, and holistic, albeit secondarily by virtue of reflection, with which it is not identical: “Wir müssen also im ersten Ich (der Thesis) bereits ein aller Reflexion zuvorkommendes Selbsthaben postulieren” (p. 141). The problem, however, is that this preexistent unity cannot ever be grasped by reflection and thus in language. lt therefore must remain illusory or transcendent, in the Kantian sense. Novalis does not posit the prereflexive self; he speaks of the regulatory function of postulating it. lndeed Novalis expressly warns against deriving a prereflexive state from reflection: “Täuschung der Einbildungskraft, oder der Reflexion unvermeidlich—in der Darstellung—denn man will Nichtreflexion durch Reflexion darstellen und kommt eben dadurch nie zur Nichtreflexion hin—man beeifert sich zu demonstriren, daß Schwarz Weiß sey” (II, 27, #25). Since nonreflexive being resists representation, it fails to concern Novalis in his later fictional works, whereas, as we shall see, the reflecting, split subject does. The distinction is utterly crucial, because Frank turns his reading of Novalis into a philosophical argument of his own on the problem of self-reflection. In his response to French Poststructuralists, Frank has claimed that they overlook the legacy of Novalis and Schleiermacher, i.e., that prereflexive being (which he equates with subjectivity) still exists: “der Neostrukturalismus scheint die Theorie vom präreflexiven Cogito gar nicht zu kennen, so daß ihm das Phänomen der Subjektivität auf das ganz andere der Selbsterkenntnis zusammenschrumpft.” Was ist Neostrukturalismus? (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1984), p. 257. My contention is that Novalis seems to be much closer to “neostructuralism” than Frank wants to admit. Furthermore, although I do not discuss the issue of subjectivity—the inner experience of self-, I would assume that for Novalis, at least, the notion of the subject as split and mutable would preclude a certain enduring quality associated with subjectivity. See also Frank and Gerhard Kurz, “Ordo inversus: Zu einer Reflexionsfigur bei Novalis, Hölderlin, Kleist und Kafka,” in Geist und Zeichen: Festschrift für Arthur Henkel (Heidelberg: Winter, 1977), pp. 75–97, and Dieter Henrich, Fichtes ursprüngliche Einsicht (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1967).Jean Paul Richter, Werke (Munich: Hanser, 1961), III, 800.Benjamin, p. 35. Similar conclusions, cf. note 14, have been reached by Strack, Hörisch, Link, and Janke.Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Sämtlich e Werke, ed. H. Glockner (Stuttgart: Fromann, 1928), XII, 104.Søren Kierkegaard, The Concept of Irony, trans. Lee Capel (New York: Harper and Row, 1965), pp. 338–39. Cf. also Kierkegaard’s remark: “When irony appears on the scene it brings the way, though not the way whereby one who imagines himself to have a result comes to possess it, but the way whereby the result forsakes him” (p. 340). For “classics” on Romantic irony cf. Ingrid Strohschneider-Kohrs, Die romantische Ironie in Theorie und Gestaltuag (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1960), Peter Szondi, “Friedrich Schlegel und die romantische Ironie,” in Satz und Gegensatz: Sechs Essays (Frankfurt: Insel, 1964), pp. 5–24, Paul de Man, “The Rhetoric of Temporality,” in Interpretation: Theory and Practice, ed. Charles Singleton (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. 1969), pp. 173–209, Ernst Behler, Klassische Ironie, romantische Ironie, tragische Ironie: Zum Ursprung dieser Begriffe (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1972), and Lilian Furst, Fictions of Romantic Irony (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984). My interpretation of “Romantic irony” has affinities with Kierkegaard’s and De Man ‘s (“it relates to its source only in terms of distance and difference and allows for no end, for no totality,” [De Man, p. 203]). whereas it differs from the traditional ones (Strohschneider-Kohrs, Behler, and Szondi). The latter maintain that the self is relativized by its awareness of an ever higher ideal. Each temporal manifestation of irony is progressive and escalating, anticipating its own supersession. lnstead I see the act of reflection in Novalis as always already missing the object of its mark, its reflected self. Irony is not accumulative but divisive.See the section of Frank’s Das Problem ‘Zeit’ on “Der Mensch ohne Charakter” in Tieck, a phrase that comes from one of Friedrich Schlegel’s fragments on William Lovell (Literary Notebooks: 1797–1801, ed. Hans Eichner [Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1957), p. 66, #525). Hegel refers disparagingly to the “Charakterlosigkeit’’ of Romantic protagonists; they are “platte Figuren … gehaltund haltungslos” (Hegel, XII, 104–5).I thus disagree with Jochen Hörisch’s distinction between Novalis on the one hand and Lacan and Deleuze-Quattari on the other: “c’est la volontê de dêlier la subjectivité du poids du ‘Étre-Je’ qui sous-entend les Écrits et L’anti-Oedipe, tandis que Heinrich von Ofterdingen voudrait proteger l’existence de l’autoabolition … (vor der reflexions-logischen Selbstabschaffung bewahren).” From: ” ‘Chacun vit en tous’: Subversion poétique de la subjectivité réflechissante dans Heinrich von Ofterdingen de Novalis,” Le genre! Die Gattung/Genre (University of Strasbourg, 1979), p. 484.O'Brien makes the provocative statement with regard to Novalis: “Language does not represent what is, but it is nevertheless necessary to erect Being and ldentity, which cannot present themselves as such. … Signification thus acts out and determines Being negatively: it ‘indicates’ Being as the obverse of signification.” In: William O'Brien, The Richly Sown Field: Three Essays on Semiology in the Writings of Friedrich von Hardenberg (Novalis), Diss. Johns Hopkins University 1981, p. 70. Indeed language erects being. However, in so doing it shows it to be a fiction. The same problem therefore lodges in O’Brien as in Frank: that the idea of self arises only upon reflection does not mean that the unparcelled self exists ex negativo.Already the early Novalis associated being and language: he recast the Fichtean dichotomy of subject and object in terms of signi fier and signified. Although they are arbitrarily related to one another, says Novalis, “der Bezeichnende”—the interpretant—brings them together. For a more detailed account of the eleventh fragment (11, 13) see Hannah’s book.See the essay by Steven Schaber, “Novalis’ Theory of the Work of Art as Hieroglyph,” Germanic Review 48 (1973): 35–43.Paul Böckmann (“Der Roman der Transzendentalpoesie in der Romantik,” in Geschichte, Deutung, Kritik: Literaturwissenschaftliche Beiträge dargebracht zum 65. Geburtstag Werner Kohlschmidts, ed. Bindschedler and Zinsli [Berne: Francke, 1969), p. 181–82) astutely observes: “Weil der Begriff nicht die Sache selbst ist, sondern nur ein sprachliches Verweisungszeichen, kann der Mensch über ihn tätig frei verfügen und ihm in wechselnden Zusammenhängen einen eigenen Beziehungsreichtum geben.” On the same page, howe· ver, Böckmann also attributes to Novalis quite a different semiotics: the poetic task is to render everyday existence transparent. The former view is more in line with current critical perspectives (see Hannah and O'Brien).Jean Paul, VI, 686. He also remarks in the Vorschule der Ästhetik that the veil or curtain is what the imagination always puts back whenever it is lifted (V, 285).For an excellent reading of the irony in “Hyacinth und Rosenblütchen,” as well as of the impasses in language, see Kenneth S. Calhoon, “Language and Romantic lrony in Novalis’ Die Lehrlinge zu Sais,” Germanic Review 56 (1981): 51–61.Lucien Dällenbach, Le récit spéculaire: Essai sur la mise en abyme (Paris: Seuil, 1977), pp. 91–93. Compared to the scholarship on the fairy tales in Heinrich von Ofterdingen, the cave scene has received scanty attention. Illuminating, however, is the comment by Jean-Pierre Etienne (“Novalis ou le double discours: Heinrich von Ofterdingen,” Romantisme 20 [1978]: 67): “le manuscript qu’Heinrich lit dans la caverne est inacheve, l’élément pleinement significant étant le vide terminal. Le texte tire sa richesse de son envers silencieux, l’absence fonde la validite des signes.”Hannelore Link perceptively comments on the interchange between Heinrich and Klingsohr preceding the latter’s tale: “Heinrich ist … das Instrument zur Darstellung der intendierten Realisierung des Ideals, Klingsohr ist das Vehikel zur Desillusionierung der dadurch betriebenen Suggestion” (Link, Abstraktion, p. 173).Mahr traces in his study “die Entwicklung Heinrichs von Ofterdingen zum Dichter” (p. 264). Cf. also Mähl’s chapter on “Der Weg des Dichters in das Reich der Poesie.”
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