Goethe and Kleist
David Pan
Humanities Core Course
Winter 2013
century reactions condemned Goethe’s
Faust for its anti-Christian tendencies.
th
19
from Joseph von Eichendorff’s History of
German Literature (1857)
„...Goethe summed up the idea of humanity, not
just as the cultivation of a sense of beauty
through art, but the harmonious development of
all human powers and capacities through life
itself. He does not at all want to „follow an ideal“
but to allow his feelings to develop into
capacities through struggle and play. [...]
Clearly such an absolute focus on natural
development makes all positive religion
impossible, or at the very least superfluous
(1052-53).
Eichendorff sees Goethe’s Faust as
central to the development of an
individualist, humanist ethic.
But this new ethic undermines
religion.
Eichendorff, Joseph von. Werke in sechs Bänden. Ed. Wolfgang Frühwald, Brigitte Schillbach and Hartwig Schultz. Frankfurt am
Main: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1985-1993.
The Holy
Roman
Empire in
1789
consisted
of
hundreds
of small
kingdoms
Unified
Germany from
1871-1918
Beginning with German unification in 1871, critics
began to see Faust as a model for German
identity.
Gustav von Loeper (1871)
„Faust‘s true guilt and at the same time his true greatness
lies in the struggle against the limits of human nature“
(XIV).
Kuno Fischer (1878)
„Faust‘s pleasure lies in the fruit of his labor, the view
upon the great and blessed sphere of influence that he
has created and upon the land that he has wrung from the
elements, settled, and transformed into a human world
and into an arena for striving generations after his own
image“ (3:55-56, emphasis in original).
Loeper describes Faust’s guilt
as part of his “greatness.”
Fischer sees Faust’s ideal of
striving as the basis of
activity for future
generations.
Loeper, Gustav. Goethes Sämtliche Werke. Vol. 13. Ed. Gustav von Loeper. Berlin: Hempel, 1871. Fischer, Kuno. Goethe’s Faust.
Ueber die Entstehung und Composition des Gedichts. Stuttgart: Cotta, 1878. Cited in Karl Robert Mandelkow, Goethe im Urteil seiner
Kritiker : Dokumente zur Wirkungsgeschichte Goethes in Deutschland. 4 vols. Munich: Beck, 1989.
Nazi
Occupation
of Europe,
1941-42
The individualist ethic of Goethe’s Faust reaches the peak of
its influence in the Nazi period.
Hermann August Korff
Professor, University of Leipzig (1925-1954) Visiting Professor, Harvard University (1934), Columbia University (1938)
“The contrast between good and evil is not thereby dissolved. Faust feels deeply
what in an elementary sense is good and what is evil. But though he always
participates in the two as he participates in the play of pleasure and pain,
elementary morality does not have final power over him. It becomes a preserved
moment within a more total ideal that has a hyper-moral character because
morality is only one value next to other values and is no longer the highest
value.”
“For that which is placed above morality is the personality, whose fulfillment is
the true goal of such a life.”
Morality is subordinated to the
personality of the individual.
“Great personalities consume the smaller ones. That is the law of nature.
And their unethical behavior only consists in the way in which they must
obey their natural law without allowing themselves to be hindered by their
still existing moral affects.” (161-63)
What seems unethical is
actually the individual’s
adherence to a natural law
without allowing moral
feelings to get in the way.
Korff, Hermann August. Faustischer Glaube: Versuch über das Problem humaner Lebenshaltung. Leipzig: J. J. Weber, 1938. My
Nazi Goethe critics praise Faust.
“Faust is the ingenious man who cannot be content
with having and possessing either material or
spiritual possessions. In this man there lives a drive
to become a genius of the world and of the deed.
The paltry contentment and the merely pleasurable
that are the essence of the philistine are foreign to
him, at least to the truly Faustian man (12).
Yet, we must express this more clearly and more
powerfully: here in the Faustian man there lives a
passionate will that surges from the primal depths
and does not shy away from any means of fulfilling
the numerous tasks with which life confronts him –
even to the point of allying himself with the devil!”
(12).
Schott promotes a focus on
the world and deed.
Schott refers to the Faustian
man as someone who should
not shy away from devilish
means for fulfilling his goals.
Schott, Georg. Goethes Faust in heutiger Schau. Stuttgart: Tazzelwurm Verlag, 1940. My translation.
W. E. B. Du Bois, “Of Our Spiritual
Strivings” in The Souls of Black Folk
In those sombre forests of his striving his own soul rose before
him, and he saw himself,--darkly as through a veil; and yet he
saw in himself some faint revelation of his power, of his mission.
He began to have a dim feeling that, to attain his place in the
world, he must be himself, and not another.
Two Souls
GOETHE
FAUST.
Two souls, alas, dwell in my breast,
Each seeks to rule without the other.
The one with robust love’s desires
Clings to the world with all its might,
The other fiercely rises from the dust
To reach sublime ancestral regions.
(Faust I, p. 87, ll. 1111-17)
DU BOIS
By the poverty and ignorance of his people, the
Negro minister or doctor was tempted toward
quackery and demagogy; and by the criticism of the
other world, toward ideals that made him ashamed
of his lowly tasks.
It is a peculiar sensation, this doubleconsciousness, this sense of always looking at
one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring
one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in
amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his
twoness,--an American, a Negro; two souls, two
thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring
ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength
alone keeps it from being torn asunder.
(The Souls of Black Folk)
The main conflict in “The Betrothal
in San Domingo” sets:
A. An individual against the community.
B. One community against another community.
Role of narrator
On Monsieur Guillaume de
Villeneuve’s plantation at Port-auPrince in the French sector of the
island of Santo Domingo there lived
at the beginning of this century,
at the time when the blacks were
murdering the whites, a terrible old
negro called Congo Hoango (205).
Objective reporting
Biased perspective
Haitian Revolution
•
•
By 1789, San Domingo accounts for 11 million
pounds of France’s total export trade of 17
million pounds. (Total British colonial trade
was 5 million pounds.) 500,000 black slaves
and 30,000 whites.
1789 French Revolution
Source: C.L.R. James, The Black Jacobins (1938; New York: Vintage, 1963).
Declaration of the Rights of Man - 1789
Approved by the National Assembly of
France, August 26, 1789
The representatives of the French people, organized as a National Assembly,
believing that the ignorance, neglect, or contempt of the rights of man are the sole
cause of public calamities and of the corruption of governments, have determined to
set forth in a solemn declaration the natural, unalienable, and sacred rights of man,
in order that this declaration, being constantly before all the members of the Social
body, shall remind them continually of their rights and duties; in order that the acts
of the legislative power, as well as those of the executive power, may be compared
at any moment with the objects and purposes of all political institutions and may
thus be more respected, and, lastly, in order that the grievances of the citizens,
based hereafter upon simple and incontestable principles, shall tend to the
maintenance of the constitution and redound to the happiness of all. Therefore the
National Assembly recognizes and proclaims, in the presence and under the
auspices of the Supreme Being, the following rights of man and of the citizen:
Articles:
1. Men are born and remain free and equal
in rights. Social distinctions may be founded
only upon the general good.
2. The aim of all political association is the
preservation of the natural and
imprescriptible rights of man. These rights
are liberty, property, security, and resistance
to oppression.
Haitian Revolution
•
•
•
By 1789, San Domingo accounts for 11 million
pounds of France’s total export trade of 17
million pounds. (Total British colonial trade
was 5 million pounds.) 500,000 black slaves
and 30,000 whites.
1789 French Revolution
1791 Slave Revolt begins in St. Domingue
•
1794 French abolish slavery in colonies
Source: C.L.R. James, The Black Jacobins (1938; New York: Vintage, 1963).
Decree
of the
National Convention
of the 16th of Pluvidor, Year 2 of the French
Republic, one and indivisible,
Which abolishes Negro slavery in
the colonies
The National Convention declares that Negro
slavery in all of the colonies is abolished; it
further decrees that all men, regardless of color,
who live in the colonies are French citizens and
enjoy all rights guaranteed by the constitution.
It delegates to the Committee of Public Health
the task of reporting on the measures to be
taken to assure the execution of this decree.
February 4, 1794
Haitian Revolution
•
•
•
By 1789, San Domingo accounts for 11 million
pounds of France’s total export trade of 17
million pounds. (Total British colonial trade
was 5 million pounds.) 500,000 black slaves
and 30,000 whites.
1789 French Revolution
1791 Slave Revolt begins in St. Domingue
•
•
1794 French abolish slavery in colonies
1798 Toussaint L’Ouverture defeats British
•
1802 French land troops in St. Domingue and
L’Ouuverture imprisoned in Fort-de-Joux and
dies in 1803.
1803 Dessalines defeats French troops near
Cap Francais.
1804 Dessalines declares independence of
Haiti.
•
•
Heinrich von Kleist
French in Germany
•
1777 Heinrich von Kleist born
•
1789 French Revolution
•
1789 French Revolution
•
•
1792 Kleist joins Prussian army
1793 Participates in siege of Mainz
•
•
1792 French occupy Mainz
1793 Prussian troops retake Mainz.
•
•
1799 Leaves army to go to university
1800 Leaves university. Engaged to
Wilhelmine von Zenge.
1802 Begins first literary works
•
1806 Napoleon defeats the Prussians
at Jena. Begin of French occupation
of Germany.
•
1809 Napoleon defeats the Austrians
at Wagram.
•
•
1813 Napoleon defeated at Leipzig
1815 Napoleon defeated at Waterloo.
•
•
•
•
•
Source: C.L.R. James, The Black Jacobins (1938; New York: Vintage, 1963).
1807 Arrested by the French as a spy
and imprisoned briefly in the Fort-deJoux.
1808 Writes plays and pamphlet texts
against the French occupation. Goethe
performs Kleist’s “Broken Jug”
1811 Writes “The Betrothal in St.
Domingo”
1811 Commits suicide in Berlin.
White planters
Mulatto planters
Wealth
Small whites
Black slaves
Social Status
“do you mean to say
that you yourself, who
as the whole cast of
your features shows
are a mulatto and
therefore of African
origin, that both you
and this charming
mestiza who opened
the door of the house
to me, are
condemned to the
same fate as us
Europeans?” (236-37)
What is more important for judging
the characters as heroes or villains?
A. Individual traits
B. Political loyalties
Description of Guillaume de Villeneuve’s kindnesses
This man, who came originally form the Gold Coast of Africa,
had seemed in his youth to be of a loyal and honest
disposition, and having once saved his master’s life when
they were sailing across to Cuba, he had been rewarded by
the latter with innumerable favours and kindnesses. Not only
did Monsieur de Villeneuve at once grant him his freedom,
and on returning to Santo Domingo make him the gift of a
house and home; a few years later, although this was
contrary to local custom, he even appointed him as manager
of his considerable estate, and since he did not want to remarry provided him, in lieu of a wife, with an old mulatto
woman called Babekan, who lived on the plantation and to
whom through his first wife Congo Hoango was distantly
related. Moreover, when the negro had reached the age of
sixty he retired him on handsome pay and as a crowning act
of generosity even made him a legatee under his will; (205)
Description of Congo Hoango’s cruelty
and yet all these proofs of gratitude failed to protect Monsieur de Villeneuve from the fury of this
ferocious man. In the general frenzy of vindictive rage that flared up in all those plantations as a
result of the reckless actions of the National Convention, Congo Hoango had been one of the
first to seize his gun and, remembering only the tyranny that had snatched him from his native
land, blew his master’s brains out. He set fire to the house in which Madame de Villeneuve had
taken refuge with her three children and all the other white people in the settlement, laid waste
the whole plantation to which the heirs, who lived in Port-au-Prince, could have made claim,
and when every single building on the estate had been razed to the ground he assembled an
armed band of negroes and began scouring the whole neighborhood, to help his bloodbrothers
in their struggle against the whites. Sometimes he would ambush travellers who were making
their way in armed groups across country; sometimes he would attack in broad daylight the
settlements in which the planters had barricaded themselves, and would put every human being
he found inside to the sword. Such indeed was his inhuman thirst for revenge that he even
insisted on the elderly Babekan and her young daughter, a fifteen-year-old mestiza called Toni,
taking part in this ferocious war by which he himself was feeling altogether rejuvenated:
(205)
The Narrator’s final words
There Herr Stroemli settled, using the
rest of his small fortune to buy a
house near the Rigi; and in the year
1807, among the bushes of his
garden, one could still see the
monument he had erected to the
memory of his cousin Gustav, and to
the faithful Toni, Gustav’s bride. (225)