Tragedy and the tragic in German literature, art, and thought

382 Pages·2014·19.47 MB·English

by  Dowden, Stephen D., Quinn, Thomas P

he many catastrophes of German history have often been T
described as tragic. Consequently, German literature, music, r
philosophy, painting, and even architecture are rich in tragic Tragedy and The Tragic
a
connotations. Yet exactly what “tragedy” and “the tragic” may
mean requires clarification. The poet creates a certain artful shape and g in GErman LitEraturE, art, and thouGht
trajectory for raw experience by “putting it into words”; but does putting e
such experience into words (or paintings or music or any other form)
d
betray suffering by turning it into mere art? Or is it art that first turns mere
y
suffering into tragic experience by revealing and clarifying its deepest
dimension? What are we talking about, exactly, when we talk about
a
tragic experience and tragic art, especially in an age in which, according
to Hannah Arendt, evil has become banal? Does banality muffle or n
even annul the tragic? Does tragedy take suffering and transform it into
d
beauty, as Schiller thought? Is it in the interest of truth for suffering to

be “beautiful”? Is it possible that poetry, music, and art are important T
because they in fact create the meaning of suffering? Or is suffering h
only suffering and not accessible to meaning, tragic or otherwise? This
e
book comprises essays that seek to clarify the meaning of tragedy and

the tragic in its many German contexts, art forms, and disciplines, from
T
literature and philosophy to music, painting, and history.
r
a
conTribuTors: Jeffrey A. Bernstein, Stephen D. Dowden,
g
Wolfram Ette, Jennifer Anna Gosetti-Ferencei, Barbara Hahn,
i
Karsten Harries, Felicitas Hoppe, Joseph P. Lawrence, James McFarland,
c
Karen Painter, Bruno Pieger, Robert Pirro, Thomas P. Quinn, Mark W. Roche,

Helmut Walser Smith.
sTephen d. dowden is Professor of German Language and d
o
Literature at Brandeis University.
w
d
Thomas p. Quinn is an independent scholar. eE
nd
it
a Ed
n

Cover image: Anselm Kiefer, Nigredo, 1984 (oil, acrylic, emulsion, shellac, and straw on photograph d b
y
and woodcut, mounted on canvas; 10 feet 10 inches x 18 feet 2 ½ inches, Philadelphia Museum Q

of Art) © Anselm Kiefer, used by courtesy of Gagosian Gallery on behalf of Anselm Kiefer. u
i
Cover design: Frank Gutbrod n
n
Stephen d. dowden thomas P. Quinn
EditEd by and
Tragedy and the Tragic in
German Literature, Art, and Thought
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Studies in German Literature, Linguistics, and Culture
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Tragedy and the Tragic
in German Literature,
Art, and Thought
Edited by
Stephen D. Dowden
and
Thomas P. Quinn
Rochester, New York
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Copyright © 2014 by the Editors and Contributors
All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation,
no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system,
published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted,
recorded, or reproduced in any form or by any means,
without the prior permission of the copyright owner.
First published 2014
by Camden House
Camden House is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Inc.
668 Mt. Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620, USA
www.camden-house.com
and of Boydell & Brewer Limited
PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK
www.boydellandbrewer.com
ISBN-13: 978-1-57113-585-8
ISBN-10: 1-57113-585-5
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Tragedy and the tragic in German literature, art, and thought / edited by Stephen
D. Dowden and Thomas P. Quinn.
pages cm.—(Studies in German literature, linguistics, and culture)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-1-57113-585-8 (hardcover : acid-free paper)—
ISBN-10: 1-57113-585-5 (hardcover : a cid-free paper)
1. German literature—History and criticism. 2. Tragic, The, in literature.
3. Art, German—Themes, motives. 4. Tragic, The, in art. 5. Tragedy—
Philosophy. I. Dowden, Stephen D., editor. II. Quinn, Thomas P., 1949– editor.
PT148.T69 T73 2014
2014037877
A catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
This publication is printed on acid-free paper.
Printed in the United States of America.
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In Memoriam
Jane V. Curran
1953–2011
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Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction: The Pursuit of Unhappiness 1
Stephen D. Dowden
1: The Confinement of Tragedy: Between Urfaust and Woyzeck 21
Helmut Walser Smith
2: Goethe’s Faust as the Tragedy of Modernity 40
Joseph P. Lawrence
3: Before or Beyond the Pleasure Principle: Goethe’s
Wahlverwandtschaften and the Tragedy of Entsagung 65
Thomas P. Quinn
4: Hölderlin und das Tragische 93
Bruno Pieger
5: Nietzsche, Büchner, and the Blues 124
Stephen D. Dowden
6: Freud und die Tragödie 148
Wolfram Ette
7: The Death of Tragedy: Walter Benjamin’s Interruption of
Nietzsche’s Theory of Tragedy 171
James McFarland
8: Rosenzweig’s Tragedy and the Spectacles of Strauss:
The Question of German-Jewish History 195
Jeffrey A. Bernstein
9: Requiem for the Reich: Tragic Programming after the
Fall of Stalingrad 216
Karen Painter
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viii  CONTENTS
10: The Strange Absence of Tragedy in Heidegger’s Thought 229
Karsten Harries
11: The Tragic Dimension in Postwar German Painting 255
Jennifer Anna Gosetti-Ferencei
12: Vestiges of the Tragic 287
Mark W. Roche
13: Atrocity and Agency: W. G. Sebald’s Traumatic Memory in
the Light of Hannah Arendt’s Politics of Tragedy 296
Robert Pirro
14: “Stark and Sometimes Sublime”: Hannah Arendt’s
Reflections on Tragedy 311
Barbara Hahn
15: The German Tragic: Pied Pipers, Heroes, and Saints 325
Felicitas Hoppe
Afterword: Searching for a Standpoint of Redemption 337
Thomas P. Quinn
Notes on the Contributors 357
Index 361
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Acknowledgments
AFTER THE ESSAYS IN THIS BOOK were composed and assembled in
near-final form, we invited a select group to read the manuscript
and come to Boston to join the writers in discussion. This event, open
to the public, unfolded as a three-day symposium—properly speaking,
it was a conversazione—on tragedy and the tragic in German literature,
culture, and thought. There were no academic presentations, only open
discussion of the ideas in the book. Our conversation took place at the
Goethe-Institut-Boston on March 13–15, 2014, and was staged collab-
oratively by the Center for German and European Studies at Brandeis
University together with the Goethe Institut. Sabine von Mering, direc-
tor of the Brandeis Center, and Detlef Gericke-Schönhagen, director of
the Goethe-Institut-Boston—together with their staffs—managed the
event beautifully. Thanks for the symposium are due especially to our
main funders: the German American Exchange Commission and the Max
Kade Foundation.
Our multidisciplinary interlocutors in Boston included Isabel Ballan,
Joshua Billings, John Burt, Anke Finger, Gesa Frömming, Abigail
Gillman, Jessica Gokhberg, Eugene Goodheart, Lauren Hobler, Vanessa
Lubiner, Charles Maier, Tara Metal, Klaus Mladek, Martin Moraw, Evan
Parks, Laura Quinney, Sylvia Schmitz-Burgard, Kathrin Seidl, Howard
Senzel, Gregor Thuswaldner, Pu Wang, Alex Weick, and Meike Werner.
We are grateful to them for their thought, time, and many insights.
Special thanks go to Felicitas Hoppe who, after reading the manuscript,
graciously agreed to join the event as its keynote (and only) speaker.
Not originally part of the manuscript, her contribution to this book is
an English translation of the address she gave on March 13, 2014. A
grant from the Theodore and Jane Norman Fund at Brandeis University
enabled the book’s indexing, and we are grateful to the Office of the
Dean of Arts and Sciences for this support. We owe a special debt of grati-
tude to Anselm Kiefer, who has graciously allowed us to use his painting
“Nigredo” (1984) on the book’s cover.
Finally, this book is dedicated to the memory of Professor Jane V.
Curran of Dalhousie University. She was to be both an editor and contribu-
tor to the volume with an essay on Schiller. Her presence is sorely missed.
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