Goethe and Kleist

David Pan

Humanities Core Course

Winter 2013

19th century reactions condemned Goethe’s Faust for its anti-Christian tendencies.

Eichendorff, Joseph von. Werke in sechs Bänden. Ed. Wolfgang Frühwald, Brigitte Schillbach and Hartwig Schultz. Frankfurt am Main: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1985-1993.

But this new ethic undermines religion.

„...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. [...]

from Joseph von Eichendorff’s History of German Literature (1857)

Eichendorff sees Goethe’s Faust as central to the development of an individualist, humanist ethic.

Clearly such an absolute focus on natural development makes all positive religion impossible, or at the very least superfluous (1052-53).

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.

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.

„Faust‘s true guilt and at the same time his true greatness lies in the struggle against the limits of human nature“ (XIV).

„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).

Gustav von Loeper (1871)

Kuno Fischer (1878)

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.

Nazi Occupation of Europe, 1941-42

The individualist ethic of Goethe’s Faust reaches the peak of its influence in the Nazi period.

Korff, Hermann August. Faustischer Glaube: Versuch über das Problem humaner Lebenshaltung. Leipzig: J. J. Weber, 1938. My translation.

Hermann August KorffProfessor, 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.”

What seems unethical is actually the individual’s adherence to a natural law without allowing moral feelings to get in the way.

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)

Nazi Goethe critics praise Faust.

Schott, Georg. Goethes Faust in heutiger Schau. Stuttgart: Tazzelwurm Verlag, 1940. My translation.

“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).

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.

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).

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

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.

FAUST.Two souls, alas, dwell in my breast,Each seeks to rule without the other.The one with robust love’s desiresClings to the world with all its might,The other fiercely rises from the dustTo reach sublime ancestral regions.(Faust I, p. 87, ll. 1111-17)

It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, 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)

GOETHE DU BOIS

The main conflict in “The Betrothal in San Domingo” sets:

A. An individual against the community.

B. One community against another community.

On Monsieur Guillaume de Villeneuve’s plantation at Port-au-Prince in the French sector of the island of Santo Domingo there lived at the beginning of this century,

Role of narrator

Objective reporting

Biased perspectiveat the time when the blacks were murdering the whites, a terrible old negro called Congo Hoango (205).

• 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

Haitian Revolution

Source: C.L.R. James, The Black Jacobins (1938; New York: Vintage, 1963).

Declaration of the Rights of Man - 1789Approved by the National Assembly of France, August 26, 1789The 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.

• 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

Haitian Revolution

Source: C.L.R. James, The Black Jacobins (1938; New York: Vintage, 1963).

Decreeof the

National Conventionof the 16th of Pluvidor, Year 2 of the French

Republic, one and indivisible,

Which abolishes Negro slavery inthe 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

• 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.

• 1777 Heinrich von Kleist born

• 1789 French Revolution

• 1792 Kleist joins Prussian army• 1793 Participates in siege of Mainz

• 1799 Leaves army to go to university• 1800 Leaves university. Engaged to

Wilhelmine von Zenge.• 1802 Begins first literary works

• 1807 Arrested by the French as a spy and imprisoned briefly in the Fort-de-Joux.

• 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.

• 1789 French Revolution

• 1792 French occupy Mainz• 1793 Prussian troops retake Mainz.

• 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.

Haitian Revolution Heinrich von Kleist French in Germany

Source: C.L.R. James, The Black Jacobins (1938; New York: Vintage, 1963).

Black slaves

White planters

Small whites

Mulatto planters

Wealth

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

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 re-marry 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 Guillaume de Villeneuve’s kindnesses

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)

Description of Congo Hoango’s cruelty

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)

The Narrator’s final words