Hermeneutik und Bibelexegese beim jungen Goethe by Thomas Tillmann
2008; Modern Humanities Research Association; Volume: 103; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/mlr.2008.0458
ISSN2222-4319
Autores ResumoMLR, I03.4, 2oo8 I I 5 I Don Alfonso inCosz fan tutte. Other essays are on more general eighteenth-century topics: Richard T. Gray on physiocracy, Thomas P. Saine on Lutheran settlers in America, and Simon Richter with awealth of ideas about Goethe's Faust. A broader concept of 'enlightenment' is shown by Robert C. Holub to change into itsopposite inNietzsche as he moves from biology as a means of enlightened planning to an enthusiasm foreugenics that anticipates Nazi excesses. Frank Trommler maintains that the I960s studentmovement derived an enlightened critical attitude fromBrecht and theFrankfurt School; he does not consider that theauthoritarian New Left, with itsbinary opposition of salvific 'rationality' and irredeemable 'irrationality', likewise illustrates enlightenment's transformation into itsopposite. Two essays stand out. Noting that the Enlightenment failed to end witch trials, Susanne Kord examines the trialand execution ofAnna Goldi atGlarus in I782 and suggests a connection between the 'evil eye' ascribed towitches and the 'science' of physiognomy. This fascinating and deeply researched study almost bursts thebounds of an article, raising questions which one hopes Kord will address in a future book. She occasionally strains the evidence: Anna G6ldi is described as always looking down, which is incompatible with the 'evil eye'. And thehypnotic gaze ofwitches is also a property of theRomantic 'FatalMan', asMario Praz called him (The Romantic Agony, 2nd edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, I970)), fromSchiller's Armenian toduMaurier's Svengali. The most stimulating recent approach to the Enlightenment, taken by Jonathan Israel inRadical Enlightenment (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 200I), finds a response here only inCarl Niekerk's essay, 'Casanova's Radical Enlightenment'. Vi siting the sexually progressive Dutch Republic, Casanova made advances to a young woman identified as Hester Hooft. Examining their encounter, Niekerk reaches the paradoxical but persuasive conclusion thatCasanova's relation to his body was pas sive, in that he yielded helplessly to its desires, whereas Hester, fending him off, actively decided what use tomake of her body. In these essays especially, there is exciting research inprogress which many read erswill want to sample. Unfortunately, careless copy-editing has left many errors of spelling, grammar, expression, and even fact.The 'Albanians' of Cosi brieflybecome Armenians (p. 7I), while Shakespeare's Glendower ismade to say: 'I can call spirits from thevastly deep' (p. i I2). But then, theEnlightenment never did think much of Shakespeare. ST JOHN'SCOLLEGE,OXFORD RITCHIE ROBERTSON Hermeneutik und Bibelexegese beim jungenGoethe. By THOMAS TILLMANN. (Historia Hermeneutica) Berlin: de Gruyter. 2oo6. xii+286 pp. E98. ISBN 978-3-II O I9068-7. Thomas Tillmann' s monograph ispart of a recent recrudescence of interest inGoethe and religion.This well-researched book (thoughwithout an index) belongs ina strand of scholarship thathas concentrated on Goethe's reception of theBible: notably Luz Maria Linder's Goethes Bibelrezeption (Frankfurt a.M.: Peter Lang, I998) and Goethe und die Bibel, ed. by Johannes Anderegg and Edith Anna Kunz (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2005). Interweaving these threads of scholarship, Tillmann builds on thework ofUlf Michael Schneider, Propheten derGoethezeit: Sprache, Literatur undWirkung der In spirierten (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, I995), andMarianne Willems, Das Problem der Individualitdt als Herausforderung an die Semantik imSturm undDrang (Tiibingen: Niemeyer, I995), who connect Goethe's concept ofGenie to eighteenth century German religious discourse and its 'inspired' language. His project is to II52 Reviews ground Goethe's early writings in an understanding of the Bible thatmobilizes a Pietist hermeneutics rooted in a specific exegetical approach, the sensusmysticus. His first move is to classify typesof biblical exegesis thatwere prevalent in theeighteenth century-largely without reference to how Goethe might have been influenced, ex cept in those cases when his careful textual analysis highlights compelling parallels. One subtext of Tillmann's argument is that it is a serious error to underesti mate what are often referred to as Goethe's juvenilia. 'Prolog zu den neuesten Of fenbahrungen Gottes Verteutscht durch Dr. Carl Friedrich Bahrdt' (I 774) is not only an attack on Bahrdt's extreme application ofAufkldrungskritik in his biblical translations, but is also evidence of Goethe's reverence forLuther's Bible. Biblical ambivalence dominates inDasyahrmarktsfest zu Plundersweilen (I 774) where the lan guage ofGenesis, inGoethe's hands, ismutable even as rationalist and pietistic views of theBible are excoriated...
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