From the Past to the Future

Transcription

1 Britische und Irische Studien zur deutschen Sprache und Literatur 48 From the Past to the Future The Role of Mythology from Winckelmann to the Early Schelling Bearbeitet von Daniel Greineder 1. Auflage Taschenbuch. 227 S. Paperback ISBN Format (B x L): 22 x 15 cm Gewicht: 350 g schnell und portofrei erhältlich bei Die Online-Fachbuchhandlung beck-shop.de ist spezialisiert auf Fachbücher, insbesondere Recht, Steuern und Wirtschaft. Im Sortiment finden Sie alle Medien (Bücher, Zeitschriften, CDs, ebooks, etc.) aller Verlage. Ergänzt wird das Programm durch Services wie Neuerscheinungsdienst oder Zusammenstellungen von Büchern zu Sonderpreisen. Der Shop führt mehr als 8 Millionen Produkte.

2 Chapter 1 Introduction This study traces the changing conceptions of mythology in German intellectual history of the latter half of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In doing so it seeks to explain the eighteenthcentury origins of the new mythology called for by F. W. J. Schelling, Friedrich Schlegel and the author or authors of the Älteste Systemprogramm des deutschen Idealismus. The call for a new mythology remains one of the most bizarre demands of any literary theorist or philosopher of the period. The continued artistic uses of mythology in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries suggest that ancient mythology was still a vital tool at the disposal of modern artists and was seemingly therefore not in need of renewal. At the same time, the ancient cults and practices surrounding mythology had long been abandoned and were not worthy of resurrection. In one respect mythology is a superseded feature of an ancient culture and in another a living cultural presence. Neither suggests a need to invent a new mythology. For a new mythology to be possible the old mythology would have to be recognized as obsolete in spite of its contemporary cultural uses and simultaneously be thought worthy of reinvention. The complexity of the new mythologies is compounded by the fact that they lack features of established mythologies. There is an absence of references to an established iconography and to the antiquity or cultural transmission of myths. Still, the forceful demands for one show that mythology was seen to be capable of remedying at least one deficiency of the modern world. To explain the eighteenth-century background to the new mythology I consider texts which grapple with the nature and application of mythology in the modern world. My argument does not therefore concentrate on the use of specific motifs or characters but on the more abstract question of the role of mythology in the modern age. Some of the writers I consider talk expressly about mythology, others make reference to the established canons of Greek, Roman and, occasionally, Germanic myths. This flexible basis for my argument is necessary as the 9

3 terms Mythologie or mythisch were not used with any great conceptual rigidity at the time and reference to mythology prior to the new mythology is almost always linked with references to the canonical myths. Indeed, while the Romantics do not consider the canonical content of the new mythology in any detail, they show little sense of myth as something totally separable from the systematic framework of mythology. The writers I consider share a realization that the status of ancient mythology in the modern world is problematic which leads them to explore its relevance to the modern age. During the period its role was defined in differing ways and conceptions of mythology changed substantially. The new mythology poses a formidable challenge to critics. Given the widely differing definitions of mythology employed by critics, it is not surprising that their evaluations of the new mythology have varied, too. Their conclusions depend on the perceived relationship between mythology and myth. Neither term is susceptible to precise definition. The former depends on an established canon with recognizable characters, while the latter is a looser term which reflects the varied political, social and poetic functions attributed to myth. 1 Where the emphasis is on myth rather than its canonical framework, the new mythology will fare badly. Where the emphasis is on the transmission of myths, the new mythology will by virtue of its implicit iconoclasm again fare badly. Where, however, mythology is taken to be the vehicle for transmitting myth, which has numerous cultural functions, the new mythology may appear as a vehicle for reviving myth in modernity. To Kurt Hübner, who sees myth as a category of human experience distinct from that of the scientific observer, mythical experience becomes a constant of human existence. 2 He traces it from the aetiology of Greek myth to Expressionist painting and the music dramas of Richard Wagner. 1 Manfred Frank, Brauchen wir eine Neue Mythologie? in Kaltes Herz, Unendliche Fahrt, Neue Mythologie: Motiv-Untersuchungen zur Pathogenese der Moderne (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1989), pp (p. 95): Jeder weiß, daß der Ausdruck Mythos gerade im Journalismus, aber auch in den Humanwissenschaften sehr diffus verwendet wird und für alles Mögliche herhalten muß. Ich nenne nur: das standardisierte Sozialverhalten, die Ideologien, die kollektiven Symbole, die Weltansichten einer Gruppe oder einer Gesellschaft. 2 Kurt Hübner, Die Wahrheit des Mythos (Munich: Beck, 1985), pp

4 In this context the emphasis is on the experience of the mythical rather than on the canonical status of myths. The Romantic demand for the establishment of a new canon of myths appears misconceived in such a context. Hans Blumenberg sees canonical survival as a necessary attribute of myths. 3 He shifts the focus of late eighteenth-century discussions of the subject away from the early Romantics and to Goethe whose seemingly comfortable deployment of myths usually excludes him from discussions of myth during the period. 4 Critics more sympathetic to the new mythology, such as Heinz Gockel, Manfred Frank and Jochen Fried, have usually explained the origins of the new mythology by arguing that it was necessary to counteract failings in Enlightenment thought. 5 Where the rationality of the eighteenth century proved too analytical, dogmatic or restrictive, mythology provided a liberating alternative form of rationality to supplement or even eclipse that outlook. The reason for this was that myth had been preserved in mythology during an age in which it had otherwise been suppressed and could now be released. A mythical explanation of human existence helped to overcome a sense of existential fear and enabled humans to feel more at home in the world. By that token, accounting for natural phenomena, such as thunder, in terms of the acts of the gods helped to overcome the mysteries of an uncomprehended world. These functions are then to be applied to the early 1800s by the authors of the new mythology. Mythos would supplement logos as Romanticism would the Enlightenment. The appeal of this standard argument is that it allows for the integration of a theme in Romantic literary theory into wider theories of myth in Western thought. Its weakness is that it takes for granted that mythology was capable of 3 Hans Blumenberg, Arbeit am Mythos, special edition (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1996), p. 40: Mythen sind Geschichten von hochgradiger Beständigkeit ihres narrativen Kerns und ebenso ausgeprägter marginaler Veriationsfähigkeit. 4 Blumenberg, pp Manfred Frank, Der kommende Gott: Vorlesungen über die Neue Mythologie; I. Teil (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1982), Jochen Fried, Die Symbolik des Realen: über alte und neue Mythologie in der Frühromantik (Munich: Fink, 1985), Heinz Gockel, Mythos und Poesie: zum Mythosbegriff in Aufklärung und Frühromantik (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1981). 11

5 renewal and reinvention and that this was apparent to the writers of the late eighteenth century. It is as if a concept of mythology had lain dormant in Western thought until the turn of the nineteenth century. While both Gockel and Frank acknowledge the neglect of mythology during the mid-eighteenth century, when it was widely looked upon as a convenient array of images from a pagan culture, neither explains adequately how writers came to extrapolate the special qualities of myth from mythology. Frank s appeal to a lack of legitimacy of the modern state and Gockel s to a revival of poetic consciousness around 1800 does not provide a sufficient account of how the special features of myth became apparent to early Romantic writers. Frank s and Gockel s emphasis on factors external to mythology, which may have triggered its revival, has resulted in the neglect of the conceptual evolution of mythology during the period. That process brought about its assimilation to eighteenth-century literary theory and amounted not so much to a re-evaluation of the significance of mythology as to its reformulation. I argue that the Romantic demand for a new mythology was facilitated by a development of a new conception of mythology during the eighteenth century which defined mythology through its cultural functions and uses rather than its antiquity or social and religious institutions. The novelty of the new mythology lies thus in both the demand for a modern mythology and the underlying conception of mythology itself. The mythology of the Romantics, I contend, will give expression to an infinite and fragmented universe in a post-kantian age. By aligning the new mythology with a broadly Enlightenment view that art represents an objective mind-independent world my account is distinct from those of Heinz Gockel and Manfred Frank, who see the new mythology as a new departure from Enlightenment poetics and rationality. I not only reappraise an important feature of Romantic thought but also show the emergence of a new, dehistoricized view of mythology from a mid-eighteenth-century conception of mythology as a collection of beautiful images and allegories which can be widely used in art. Winckelmann s position stands at the opposite end of this study from the new mythologies of Friedrich Schlegel and Schelling. It marks the end of a tradition of allegorical interpretation of mythology and the beginning of a period of discussion of the respective value of ancient and modern culture in Germany. That debate about the ancient and modern 12

6 conditions acted as the catalyst for a reappraisal of mythology. Winckelmann accounts for mythology in a way whose end he has instigated. For that reason, he serves here as the terminus a quo for this study. Conceptions of modern German literature were not defined only in relation to the ancient world, but the paradigmatic status of the ancient world informs the writings of the authors discussed here to a greater or lesser extent. Friedrich Schlegel and Schiller define their conceptions of the modern against the background of the ancient model, as Hans Robert Jauss argues. 6 The question of the relevance of the ancient world to modern Germany is an important starting point for the engagement with ancient themes and their application to the modern world. Winckelmann s vision of ancient harmony poses a challenge to the theorists of modernity. The transformation of conceptions of mythology was to be one of the major areas of engagement with the ancient world and Winckelmann s theory of mythology with its focus on allegory seemed obsolete. He sees mythology merely as an ancillary device employed in a variety of religious and artistic contexts and irreplaceable in none of them. To explain the subsequent reappraisal of mythology I explore one continuity and two distinct areas of change. The first change concerns the historical status of mythology and the second its application in modernity. They are intended to show the conceptual transformations which are preconditions for a new mythology. The different debates are linked by a common view of mythology as a vehicle for articulating ideas and this view remains constant throughout the period. That claim is best expressed in general terms since the communicative functions of mythology are conceived of in such widely differing ways. Expressed in basic terms, the eighteenth century thinks that mythology can tell us something about the world. For example, Winckelmann saw mythology as a way of conveying ideas visually, Herder considered it a form of early poetry and Schelling saw it as a revelation of the absolute within his idealist philosophy. The enduring interest in the subject depended on the demonstration that the substance of mythology was in some sense 6 Hans Robert Jauss, Schlegels und Schillers Replik auf die Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes in Literaturgeschichte als Provokation, 2nd edn (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1970), pp (p. 72). 13

7 relevant and true. The communicative function of mythology had the important consequence that the eighteenth century could never formulate a category of mythical experience because mythology served only as a way of articulating experience which could be formulated in nonmythical terms. Myth was not a feature of experience but a tool used to express it. The changing perceptions of the role of mythology in the present are illustrated by those texts which discuss it against the background of a perceived rift between the ancient and modern world. This context challenges writers to identify aspects of mythology which transcend historical boundaries and are of value to the present. Once the historical remoteness of mythology is recognized and overcome, any subsequent use, which is not merely nostalgic, requires its conscious reinvention for modernity. Many eighteenth-century thinkers attributed qualities to ancient art which they considered to transcend historical boundaries. Given such admiration for ancient art and literature, it would be difficult for them to dismiss mythology, which is a prominent theme. Herder, Winckelmann, Moritz and Schiller see the value of mythology in its ability to articulate ideas. During the period the workings of mythology were often described with the metaphor of Einkleidung of ideas. The notion of mythology dressing up the truth shows that it gives ideas a new form, while still conveying them with greater immediacy than allegory which depends on the additional step of converting an image into an idea. This is a practical poetic function which is not dependent on a specific historical environment. Once mythology is recast as a poetic tool, it can be adapted to modern needs. The second half of this study considers the demand for a new mythology which is formulated expressly in the Älteste Systemprogramm des deutschen Idealismus, Friedrich Schlegel s Gespräch über die Poesie and some of Schelling s writings of around In the tradition of the writers of the mid- and late eighteenth century, these authors all see mythology as a vehicle for expressing ideas in concrete form. According to Schlegel and Schelling, mythology will form the content of modern poetry which strives to describe an infinite universe whose structures transcend the understanding of the individual. Schlegel draws on the wide range of religious, poetic and heuristic functions attributed to mythology by eighteenth-century thinkers. The overall effect is a view of mythology based on its functions as a way of 14

8 making sense of the world rather than on an iconography or on the shared values of a culture. Everything that serves the ends of mythology may by this token be construed as mythological. This theoretical reappraisal of mythology may form a more substantial legacy than the idea of a new mythology itself. 15