Secret Germany: Myth in Twentieth-Century German Culture

337 Pages·2019·29.457 MB·English

by  Furio Jesi

SERIES EDITOR
Alberto Toscano
Seagull Books, 2021
Originally published as Furio Jesi, Germania segreta by Silva
Editore in 1967; republished in February 1995 by Giangiacomo
Feltrinelli Editore, Milan, Italy
© Giangiacomo Feltrinelli Editore, 1995
Introduction and appendices© Nottetempo srl, 2018
First published in English by Seagull Books, 2021
English translation© Richard Braude, 2021
ISBN 978 0 8574 2 481 5
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library
Typeset by Seagull Books, Calcutta, India
Printed and bound by Hyam Enterprises, Calcutta, India
-
CONTENTS
vii
INTRODUCTION
MYTHOLOGY AND JUSTICE
Andrea Cavalletti
SECRET GERMANY
265
APPENDIX
302
BIBLIOGRAPHY
-
TRANSLATOR'S NOTE
This volum'e has been prepared for a•reader with an inter
est in German literature but with no particular knowl
edge of the Italian language. Nevertheless, I note here that
two central terms-'guilt' and 'darkness'-ptovide signifi
cant problems of translation due to the triangulation
betwee~ Italian, German and English. The English noun
'guilt' correspqnds easily enough to the German Schuld;
the Italian term colpa, however, has a much broader
meaning, encompassing 'blame: 'fault' and,'error: often
with an implicit religiosity. The English adjective 'guilty'
is, however, in turn broader than the Italian colpevole, the
English c0ntaining a sense of shame not included in the
Italian, which instead equates to the 'guilty' of a juridical
trial. Sometime,s the solution has beerrto use 'guilt-ridden'
when the sense is merely adjectival, i.e. somehow 'per
taining to' guilt. 1:his is significant as Jesi's discussion of
Heidegger or Wagner being 'guilty' does not necessarily
imply a discussion of shame or self-consciousness.
A second central and problematic term is the Italian
adjective oscura, .J.rhich , comprises' 'shadowy', 'dark',
'obscure' and 'hidden.,J he ?IDbiguity is important for Jesi's
exploration of myth, death and the 'dark God'; it also
implies a relation to the 'secrecy' of the 'secret Germany'
of the title. The title itself is a translation of an enigmatic
phrase, geheimes Deutschland, used by the circle of writers
around Stefan George who, in Adorno's judgement,
I I I
viii FURIO JES!
'spoke from the soul of the quantitatively significant
groups of the pre-Hitlerian reactionary German bour
geoisie'.1
References and citations in the original work have
been completed where Jesi often left them enigmatic; they
have also been updated, and references to available
English translations have been provided for the most
part. Where Jesi's translations (or those he drew upon)
from German to Italian have departed from the original
text significantly, this has been noted. German fictional
prose has often been translated anew to maintain the
salience to Jesi's argument rather than rely on other trans
lators' alternative priorities. All translations are my orig
inal, unless otherwise stated. Notes using asterisks are
original to the translation. My thanks to Alfonso Geraci,
Judith Jochum and Giorgia Listi for suggestions and
advice.
Richard Braude
1 Theodor W. Adorno, 'George ( 1967)' in Not en zur Literatur, Vol
IV (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1974), p. 49. [English translation: Notes
to Literature, VOL 2 (Shierry Weber Nicholsen trans.) (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1991) , p. 181, modified.]
INTRODUCTION
MYTHOLOGY AND JUSTICE
AN R A CAVALLETTI
1. At th b ginning of May 1965, Karoly Kerenyi added
a uniqu dedication to his latest article, 'Nietzsche
zwi ch n Literatur-und Religionsgeschichte' (Nietzsche
b tween Literary and Religious History): 'To Furio Jesi,
in order to distract him from an unrealizable Cyclopean
project with justice [Gerechtigkeit].'1
The young scholar from Turin had been corres
ponding with Kerenyi for a year by this point but consid
ered him to have been his mentor 'since adolescence'.2
Accompanied by a brief letter, Jesi had just sent him the
first paragraph of a book he wanted 'to call Secret
Germany' and which was 'going to focus on the survival
of mythic images in nineteenth- and twentieth-century
German culture? The four typewritten pages made up a
'kind of initial programmatic declaration, one that was
l Cf. Karoly Kert~nyi and Furio Jesi, Demone e mito. Carteggio
(1964-1968) (Andrea Cavallettl and Monika Kerenyi eds, with an
essay by Andrea Cavalletti) (Macerata: Quodlibet, 1999), pp. 52-
3nl. Kerenyi's article had appeared in Neue Ziircher Zeitung, 2 May
1965, p. 4 onwards, under the title 'Der Sprung: Nietzsche zwischen
seinem Roman und selnem Evangelium'. It was republished in
Karol Kerenyi, Wege und Wegenossen 2, Wekausgabe 2 (Monika
Kerenyi ed.) (Munich: Langen-MillJer, 1988), pp. 133-58.
2
Furio Jesi to Karoly Kerenyi, 16 May 1968, in Demone e mito,
P-117.
3
Jesi to Kerenyi, 2 May 1965, In Demone e mlto, p. 44.
x ANDREA CAVALLETTI
then removed from the final draft but which nevertheless
contains concepts that would reappear in the (much
altered) work, either rethought or completely revised. As
Jesi wrote:
Developments over the last fifty years have made
the n ed to take very a precise position with
regards to that which is defined as Germanism
dramatically clear. This choice, which must now
b posed to all men of conscience, is above all a
moral choice [ .. . ].Yet the Secdhd World War,
in all the excess of its horrors [ ... j, taught us so
painfully to be all the more cautious. When the
errors can be so' serious and' the world s·o fully
and fundamentally overturned,,it becomes diffi
cult to apply moral criteria with any strictness.4
Jesi continued, 'recalling that 'on'.e of Stefan George's
last great lyric poems is called ,Geheimes Deutschland,
"Secret Germany"' ano that the same phrase 'can be
found in Norbert von l'Iellih$~ath's essay on "Holderlin
and the Germans"' in order to' express 'that distorted,
concealed German soul,whkh ~~rderliri,intended to task
with reinvigorating the greatness of classical civilization'
and indeed, finally, that the last words of Claus von
Stauffenberg, the man who made,an attempt on Hitler's
life, were 'secret Germany lives' (Es lebe das geheime
Deustchland). Jesi then claimed that ~f these recurrences
I I I I
were to construct
'
the conclusion aqd not the begioning of our dis-
cussion we might be accused of sympathizing
with- or at least being fooled by- a Germanic
substrate that can be all too easily confused with
the Gerqianism of Hitler's own di~dples. For t1,s,
'
4 Jesi to K.e;renyi, 2 ~ay 1965, in Demohe e rt-ilto, p. 45.
MYTHOLOGY AND JUSTICE xi
however, Secret Germany is a symbol of that
which remains human in Faust even after his
pact with Mephistopheles. It is a symbol of those
abysses of the human psyche in which the god
of love and the demon of evil are simply names
without Il}eaning, no more than empty, arbitrary
terms within an inappropriate language.
,The mystery of our 'model' of the human
psych~ lies outside. of symbolic consciousness,
an eternal reservoir of realities and images that
, can o~erwb.elm humankind. This overwhelming
r. }s rjot ;S~sceptible to the limitations of consci9us
will.and th~s finds itself beyond the morality of
, .. r,esp~nsi9ility. The only real responsibility is that
rwhich falls iUpon the beh~viour of whoever
' 'stanqs witness to the unfolding of such images
., of;th,e unc9~scious ,and tre11ts them lightly-Le.
witn~mt suffering and un~ertainty-and' as
d~t!!rpi,inant~ ofh,is or her activity or even as an
· object for devotion'.· ,, .,,
1
1 ,J '/ , ,1 '' f: I .i1
, , ' ' · Brit re's,po~sibility is not the only conceiv-
:a ble\fas,is' for ~ morality,
' ' ' ';~f that, 'wlfich emerges fr~m consciousness
1 and' its do~ination leads to the i<lolatry of death,
ld
' ,1, t--Iw ,ou be1cI9 rrect for a hµman community to
,, ,,.·conde,mn' tl;iose' who unwillingly submit them-
; selves to its possession. Whoever does so com
mits ~YU? t;1ot <} metaphysical evil but damage to
thpse similar t~ 'themselves, an attempt on their
very 'surviv;at
,
Once moraljty is red,uced as suc):i. to a prac
t\cal morality, what reaction can one have in
'r~lation to· those who Wt:lcome such images of
1 !iea\h within themselves witho\lt, n,evertheless,
t ·I It
xii ANDREA CAVALLETTI
eeking death? So long as their activities do not
become murderous, do they remain morally
innocent?5
At the time, Kerenyi could only respond by sending
his article, along with the 'perhaps Oracular dedication:
But he wrote again, on 17 May, to explain his own reser
vations better:
First of all, I wanted to call attention to some
unsolved psychological problems, the solution to
which would be necessary in order to reach an
objective judgement of German influence on the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Nietzsche
was one the most influential Germans in intel
lectual history. Yet he was also, at the end of an
epoch, the most influential and undisciplined
figure, a madman-and where madness begins,
there the quality of'the German' regresses to that
of 'sickness'. Hitler himself belongs to the first
order of those completely distorted through
mental alienation. That said, one cannot put him
together with Nietzsche at the same time- or
perhaps one can, if we were to think in terms of
pathology?6
Kerenyi referenced various figures mentioned by Jesi
as well as Thomas Mann's position, who he problemati
cally defined as 'a complete devotee to the images of death
that emerged fascinatingly from his psyche, while at the
same time-aware of the dangers that lay within them
forthrightly opposed those who wanted to derive rules of
behaviour from those images: He continued:
5 Jesi to Ke re'n yi.·, 2 M ay 1965, in Demone e mito, pp. 47-8.
6 Kerenv, i· to Je si·, 17 M ay 1965, in in Demone e mito, p. 54.
MYTHOLOGY AND JUSTICE xiii
The problems presented by these comparisons
and juxtapositions are enormous. Lukacs-who
represented Thomas Mann as a communist
Jesuit through Naphta [in The Magic Mountain];
as a character in a novel, Mann attributes him
with greater dignity than that which he is due-
ls not German. Gottfried Benn is not so far from
Goebbels as Frobenius is from Rosenberg. There
is some injustice [ Ungerechtigkeit] done to the
great ethnologist in mentioning the two of them
in one breath [ ... ] . Thomas Mann as 'a complete
devotee to the images of death'? This was the crit
icism made of him for the most part by nation-
alist critics on the publication of The Magic
Mountain, and one need only note that every
thing is treated with irony in the book, including
death, something that garnered the resentment
of many. One has to read both volumes of his let-
ters (all that has been published of his daily
correspondence) to be reminded of the miscon
ceptions that have been built up around him.
And what of Rilke and his own relation with
death? I do not think I really have to remind you
of this!7 ,
2. On 18 February of the same year, Jesi had put together
an outline of Secret Germany: Myths in Twentieth-Century
German Culture for the publishing house Silva, a plan for
a book of 'around 200 pages' to be completed within 'one
year of work' and subdivided into three sections-or, one
7
Dernone e rnito, pp. 54 onwards. Kerenyi had recently read and
greatly appreciated Jesi's essay 'Rilke e l'Eggito: Aegyptus 44(1-2)
(January-June 1964), later published in Furio Jesi, Letteratura e
rnito (Turin: Einaudi, 1968), pp. 85-94. See Demone e mito, P· 41.
>
xiv ANDREA CAVALLETTI
might say, the whole conceptual development articulated
in three moments. The first ( one which recalls the title
closely, combining studies not only by Kerenyi but also
Frobenius, Propp and Warburg) was to be dedicated to a
Morphology of the survival of three fundamental mythic
motifs: 'woman', 'city' and 'shadow'. This dealt above all
with examining the afterlife (that is, the reverberations
and distortions) of the ancient image of kore; the adoles
cent female divinity, the mythic virgin reborn in German
literature and figurative arts as a hybrid creature, human
and animal or plant, ambiguously infernal ( as with Frank
Wedekind's Lulq) or 'monstrously deformed'., The 'motif'
of the,city, on the other hand, was understood-mytho
logicaUy ,speaking_:_as ·the 'resolution of collective and
social problems: the Expressionist city, the dark bour
geois met~opolis tq which the veterans o,f the First World
War return. Th~s is a space experienced as isolation from
the gen'uineness of myth or (and·for Jesi the'two experi
ences c9incide) as,th~ impossibility of an authentic col
lective life. It is, therefore, the location of a closed and
'
autonomous coinmurtity, organized according to individ-
ual interests, the 1efence of which'.__as Jesi, observes, in
terms that could not seem m~re contemporary-leads to
'the desperation of closing oneself within a' surrounding
wall, confronted by the threatening advance of those
forces that had 'always been' excluded from the "serene"
microcosm, in correspondence with an intrinsic weak
eni11:g o,f that microcosm's internal defences'.8 The section
deals with the heavenly and infernal city and its meta
morphoses, corresponding ('in ~evolutions ~nd particu
larly in the Spartacist revolution') to changes in the
relation to myth: the city changes from being 'the
entrenched site of the b9urgeoisie . . . to the site of the
8 See below, p. 120.
I