Antike und Abendland. Beiträge zum Verständnis der Griechen und Römer und ihres Nachlebens. Jahrbuch 2000 - Band 46

213 Pages·2000·27.57 MB·German

by  Wolfgang Harms

“AuA54” — 2008/11/3 — 14:34 — page i — #1
AntikeundAbendland
“AuA54” — 2008/11/3 — 14:34 — page ii — #2
Antike
und
Beiträge zum Verständnis der Griechen und Römer
und ihres Nachlebens
herausgegeben von
Wolfgang Harms · Werner von Koppenfels
Helmut Krasser · Christoph Riedweg · Ernst A. Schmidt
Wolfgang Schuller · Rainer Stillers
Band XLVI
2000
Walter de Gruyter · Berlin · New York
Inhaltsverzeichnis
Redaktionelle Hinweise IV
Verzeichnis der Mitarbeiter des Bandes VI
Simon Goldhill,
Whose Antiquity? Whose Modernity? The «Rainbow bridges» of exile l
Hubert Benz,
Parmenides im Denken Martin Heideggers: Ein Fall von Seinsvergessenheit 21
Dr. Christina Schefer,
«Nur für Eingeweihte». Herakiit und die Mysterien 46
Bernd Manuwald,
Zur Dialektik von «alt» und «neu» in der griechischen Tragödie 76
Sang-In Lee,
Platons Anamnesis in den frühen und mittleren Dialogen.
Zur Metapher des «vorgeburtlichen Lernens oder Erkennens» 93
Hermann Rohdich,
Liebe, Gesellschaft, Dichtung. Catull c. 6 116
Christine Walde,
Literatur als Experiment? Zur Erzähltechnik in Ovids Heroides 124
Claudia Schindler,
Fachwissenschaft und Lehrdichtung in den Gleichnissen Lucans 139
Gottfried Mader,
Quis queat digne eloqui? Speech, Gesture and the Grammar of the mundus
inversus in Seneca's Thyestes 153
Meinolf Vielberg,
Tacitus als Psychologe 173
Werner Eck,
Die Täuschung der Öffentlichkeit - oder: Die «Unparteilichkeit»
des Historikers Tacitus 190
Manuskripteinsendungen werden an die ifölgeiid^h Herausgebe;: eYjbcfcn:.fVo.f,:t>
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Mitarbeiter des Bandes
Prof. Dr. Simon Goldhill, King's College Cambridge CB 2 ISi; Groß Britannien
PD Dr. Hubert Benz, Auf der Unter 17a, 55263 Wackernhäm
Dr. ChristinaSchefer, Langwiesenstr. 4$CH-9535 Wileri b. Wü
Prof. Dn Bernd iNlarjiuwald,, Insticut.'für Altertumskunde der Universität zu iiöln,
Albertus-Magnüs-Platz, 50923 Köln
Dn Sang-In Lee, I -1483, Bükäheon - 3-Dpng, Geodlaemun - Gu, Seoul, Süd Korea
Hermann RohdSch, Konrad-Adenauer-Ring 74, 69214 JEppellieirh
PD Dr. Christine Walde, Seminar für Klass. Philologie^ Universität Basel, iP^adelberg 6,
CH-4051 Basel · . ' ' \ :
;
Dr. Claudia Schindler, Philologisches Seminar, Universität Tübingen, Wilhelrnstraße 36,
72074 Tübingen ^
Prof. Dr. Gottfried Mader, Department öfClassics, Pakulteit- Lettere en Wysbegeerte,,
University of South Afriea, P.O. Box 392, 0003 Pretoria
Prof. Dr. Meiiiolf Vielberg, Friedrich-Schy.ler-Uriiversiität, Inst;|tüt für Altertums^
Wissenschaft, Kahlaische Str. l, 07745 Jena : .
Prof. Dr. Werner Eck, Universität tu. Kölh^ Msititut für Altertumskuride, Albertus-
Ma^nius-Platz, 50923 Köln
SIMON GOLDHILL
Whose Antiquity? Whose Modernity?
The <Rainbow Bridges> of Exile1
In 1885, Nietzsche wrote in what would become The Will to Power that <German philoso-
phy äs a whole ... is the most fundamental form of Romanticism and Homesickness that
there has ever been>, <Die deutsche Philosophie als Ganzes ... ist die gründlichste Art
Romantik und Heimweh>.? He explains:
Man ist nirgends mehr heimisch, man verlangt zuletzt nach dem zurück, wo man irgend-
wie heimisch sein kann, weil man dort allein heimisch sein möchte: und das ist die griechi-
sche Welt! Aber gerade dorthin sind alle Brücken abgebrochen, - atisgenommen die
Regenbogen der Begriffe! Und sie führen überall hin, in alle Heimaten und «Vaterländer»,
die es für Griechen-Seelen gegeben hat! Freilich man muß sehr fein sein, sehr leicht, sehr
dünn, um diese Brücken zu schreiten!
One is no longer at home anywhere; at last one longs for that only place in which one can
be at home, because it is the only place one would want to be at home: the Greek world.
But it is in precisely that direction that all bridges are broken - save the rainbow bridges
of concepts! And these lead everywhere, into all the homes and «fatherlands» that existed
for Greek souls. To be sure, one must be very subtle, very light, very thin, to Step across
these bridges!
Nietzsche wants to go back - <Man will zurück. He goes on to construct his own journey
back through the Renaissance through Christianity to the Pre-Socratics - from North to
South, äs he puts it. He offers a very selective history of philosophy äs a return journey
towards the earliest Greek philosophers. He concludes:
Vielleicht, daß man einige Jahrhunderte später urtheilen wird, daß alles deutsche Phi-
losophiren darin seine eigentliche Würde habe, ein schrittweises Widergewinnen des
antiken Bodens zu sein, und daß jeder Anspruch auf «Originalität» kleinlich und
lächerlich klinge im Verhältnisse zu jenem höheren Ansprüche der Deutschen, das
Band, das zerrissen schien, neu gebunden zu haben, das Band mit den Griechen, dem
bisher höchst gearteten Typus «Mensch». Wir nähern uns heute allen jenen grundsätz-
lichen Formen der Weltauslegung wieder, welche der griechische Geist, in Anaximan-
der, Heraklit, Parmenides, Empedokles, Demokrit und Anaxagoras, erfunden hat, -
wir werden von Tag zu Tag griechischer, zuerst, wie billig, in Begriffen und Werth-
1 A version of this paper was delivered in Zürich at the seminar of C. Riedweg and E. Bronfen, <Exil in der
Literatur: Zwischen Antike und Moderno. Thanks are due for the invitation, the hospitality, and the dis-
cussion; thanks too for discussion in Cambridge to John Henderson, Tim Whitmarsh and Jas Eisner. In a
subject äs broad äs this, it is possible to offer either a massive bibliographicai background or a minimalist
one. I have chosen the latter route.
2 E Nietzsche Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe edd. G. Colli and M. Montinari vol. VII 3 Nachgelassene
Fragmente Herbst J884 bis Herbst J88S, 412-3 [August-September 1885 fr 41 [4]].
2 Simon Goldhill :
Schätzungen, gleichsam als gräcisireride Gespenster: aber dereinst, hoffentlich auch
mit unserem Leibe} Hierin liegt (und lag von jeher) meine Hoffnung für das deutsche
Wesen!
.A fevv cexituries hence, perhaps, one will jüdge that all Germän philosophy derives its.
real dignity from being a gradual reclamation of the soil of antiquity, and that all
claims to «originality» must sound petty and liidicrpus in reladon tp tjiat higher claim
of the Germans to have joined anew the bond.witH the Greeks, the hithertp highest
type of man. Today we are again getting close to all thöse fundamental forms of world
Interpretation devised by the Greek spirit through Anaximander, Herjaclitus, Par^
menides, Empedocles, Democritus and Anaxagoras - we are growing more Greek by
the day; at first, äs is pnly fair, in concepts and evalüations, äs Hellenizing ghosts, äs
it werej but one day, let us hope, in our bodies too! Herein lies (and has always lain)
rhy hope for the Germän character!
Nietzsche's paragraph, from which I häve offered these twö lerigthy quotations, sums up
almost every gesture of contemporary writirig about exile - which all too rarely marks its
own genesis äs clearly äs Nietzsche döes in Romariticisin .arid Homesickriess, even when
Nietzsche is taken äs a father figure. To begin my discussion, I want to Ipok atfive pf these
gestures or strategies. . . .
iFirst of all, nostalgia ^ Heimweh - is here part of the human cpnditionJ Althoügh the
grandeür and dighity of Germän philosophy is what is explicitly at stake, the move towards :
the general state of man is clear enough. <One — Man - is no loiiger at home>j <the only place
One can be at home>, <let us hope>. The object here is <the highest type of rnan> which <we>
?
- and this is mor.e than tlie roll-call pf philospphers - are hoping tp jpin. Indeed, Nietzsche's
final sermonizing; hope is not merely that 'we should grow more Greek-daily in our coneepts
and evalüations, but also and more weirdly, <m our bodies too> - äs if studyirig the Pre-
socratics will give us all great muscle definition and iliac crests. For Nietzsche, along with
Sartre arid other lurninaries of 20th Century exile writirig, k is the general condition of
alienation, loss of home, which defines man's lot äs exilic. As Adorno puts jt, <it is part pf
mprality not tp be at hpme iri one's home>.ä Or äs Steiner sums up the literature of the cen^
tury: <poets unhoused and Wanderers across language. Eccetitnc, aloof, nostalgic, delibera-
tely üntimely>.4 We are all meant to share existentiäl exile äs a condition of being. Äs we will
see, this view of man's immanent state of exile is itself developed out pf pölemicai lines of
ancient thought. " ..
t
The second crucial element pf iSiietzsche's argumeiit which has spawned ä long tradition
is that exile is not a physical condition, or at least not merely one, despite his Suggestion that
bodily reincarhation äs Qreek is the telos of the process of becoming which his philosophy
inaugurates. The rainbow bridges lead into all the homes and <«fätherlands>>> that existed for
the Greek souL The inverted cprhmas äround «<fatherlands^» mark, I täkeit, the metaphori-
cal or metaphysical extension of the concept of faiherland. Itis at one level a:cultural iden-
tity that Nietzsche wishes to found or find, or what cpuld be calkd;at a less syrnpathetic
leve^ a fantasy. Seein g exile ä.s Separation fr oni rnpre th.an a pUce, btit rather äs the loss of a '
3 T. Adorno Minima Moralia: Reflexionen aus dem beschädigten Leben (Berlinj 1951), quoted and, translated
by E. Said 5The Mind of Winter: reflections ori a life in exilc>, Htrper's Magazine (Sepc. 1984) 54.
4 G, Steiner Extras-territorial: Papeirs on Literature and the Languages Revolution (N0w York, 1971) 11. His
main example here is Nabokov. .:
Whose Antiquity? Whose Modernity? 3
topography, a cultural locatedness, a moral or spiritual placement, is integral to the power
and attractiveness of exile äs a concept for contemporary writers, äs it grounds the sense of
dislocatedness explored by other writers of exile. It is this that leads Kristeva to praise the
pleasurable idealisms of exile, and Homi Bhabha somewhat more caustically to recall for her
the pressing materialities of political disenfranchisement5. So, Gombrowicz can turn exile
away from geography towards an existential Statement: <Has man ever lived anywhere eise
other than in himself? You are at home even if you were to find yourself in Argentina or
Canada, because a homeland is not a blot on a map, but the living essence of man>.6 Similar-
ly, Mircea Eliade - typically for him - can thus see exile äs a form of spiritual initiation: <Our
exile from the homeland is a long and difficult initiatory order, designed to purify and trans-
form us. The distant, inaccessible country will be like a paradise to which we return spiritu-
ally, that is, in spirit, in secret.>7 Indeed the politics of desire integral to exile are articulated
and contested most strikingly precisely in this slide between exile äs a socio-political exclu-
sion and exile äs a longing for a lost and idealised intellectual topography. The slide in the
politics of desire is tellingly expressed by Nietzsche when he writes that the only place one
can be at home is the place <in which one woulä want to be at home> (my emphasis). The
search for home cannot function without such a politics of desire and the dodginess such
longing instantiates. Was will der Verbannte? How complicit with such desires must one be?
The best contemporary writing on exile is much concerned with exploring this aspect of
exile's discourse. As we will see, such an exploration is central to classical texts too, and we
will return to the issue of the exile's desire.
Although Nietzsche has a strong generalizing urge, äs I have just argued, it is not by chance
that he offers a roll-call of German philosophers - which I have omitted in my citation of
the first sentence of the paragraph: Leibnitz, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer - and that he moves
back via the name of Luther and the titles of major philosophical movements through the
Church Fathers to a final roll-call of Anaximander, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Empedocles,
Democritus and Anaxagoras, in the ciosing lines of the paragraph. For although alienation
may be a shared human condition, there is no doubt that the great individual - the philoso-
pher — has a special relationship to this alienation (äs Nietzsche discusses elsewhere at length).
He can rise above the common - äs Kristeva writes in the same vein: <How can we avoid
sinking into the mire of commonsense if not by becoming a stranger to one's own country,
language, sex and identity?>8 So, it can be said that <Intellectualism in the twentieth Century
is a form of exile>.9 Philosophy in the TragicAge ofthe Greeks spells out the importance of
these great and remarkable figures for Nietzsche, and establishes their privileged Status in his
thought (which makes it hard to read his paragraph with any thorough-going irony), and the
general case of the individual is also discussed at length in The Will to Power. In each of the
5 See J. Kristeva £trangers a nous-memes (Paris, 1988); <A New Type of Intellectual: the Dissidem>, in T. Moi
ed. The Kristeva Reader (Oxford, 1988); H. Bhabha Nation and Narration (London and New York, 1990).
6 W. Gombrowicz Diary vol 1., cd J. Kott; trans. L. Vallee (Evanston, 1988) 59.
7 M. Eliade Journal. Vol l J94}-J9H, trans. M. Linscott Ricketts (Chicago, 1990) 145.
* J. Kristeva «A New Type of Intelleciual: the Dissident, in T. Moi ed. The Kristeva Reader (Oxford, 1988)
298; for Kristeva, however, it is <woman> who is the exile par excellence (296): <A woman is trapped within
the frontiers of her body and even of her species, and consequently always feeled exiled both by the general
diches that make up a common consensus and by the very power of generalization intrinsic to language.>
* R. Exner, *Exul Poeta: theme and variations>, Books Abroad 50.2 (1976) 292. See also T. Eagleton Exile and
Etnigres (London, J970).