GERMAN LIFE AND LETTERS最新文献

The article aims to show the central importance of Friedrich Nietzsche to notions of genius in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. On the one hand, it considers the influence of idealised representations of Nietzsche (for example, in Thomas Mann and Gottfried Benn) as a genius marked by loneliness, illness, and finally madness. On the other hand, it seeks to trace the significance of ‘genius’ within Nietzsche's oeuvre. It transpires that genius as a concept is not only instrumental in the ‘self-characterisations’ of Nietzsche's late works, but runs through his entire oeuvre, from early texts written around 1870 to the final period of 1888/9.

The article uses the contrast between Heinrich Heine and Tolstoyʼs descriptions of Napoleon to explore the paradigm shift from artistic to political figures in nineteenth-century models of genius. Departing from a brief sketch of five fundamental elements of eighteenth-century genius aesthetics, it outlines how poetic genius (personified by Goethe) is succeeded by political genius (Napoleon) in Heine's work. Genius as a political category maintains a constitutive underdetermination which accounts for its superlative and enigmatic quality. At the same time, the politicisation of personal genius means that it can be questioned in terms of historical and military achievements. The article demonstrates that this option of critical evaluation, instrumentalised by Heine against Napoleonʼs enemies, is turned against the emperor himself in later nineteenth-century accounts, as a brief reading of War and Peace exemplifies. Both Heine's exuberant and Tolstoy's polemic depiction of Napoleon are centred on the concept of fate. This focus points to rivalry between literature and politics with regard to the possibility of individual self-assertion. Genius becomes a way of describing historical events that allows for individual agency in the face of necessity and chance, war and mobilised masses; it also re-establishes literatureʼs authority to evaluate historical events.

Der Aufsatz zeichnet anhand gegenläufiger Napoleon-Beschreibungen bei Heine und Tolstoj die Ersetzung des Künstlergenies durch den genialen Feldherrn im neunzehnten Jahrhundert nach. Ausgehend von einer kurzen Skizze zu fünf grundlegenden Elementen der Genieästhetik des achtzehnten Jahrhunderts wird zunächst gezeigt, wie in Heines Schriften poetisches Genie (Goethe) durch politisches Genie (Napoleon) abgelöst wird. Der Genie-Begriff behält dabei auch als politische Kategorie eine konstitutive Unterbestimmtheit, die ihn zu einem unhintergehbaren Superlativ macht. Allerdings wird die Zuschreibung von Genie hinterfragbar, mit Blick auf tatsächliche politische (etwa militärische) Erfolge. Die Begründung für die Zuschreibung von Genie über Handlungen, bei Heine zur Glorifizierung Napoleons eingesetzt, wird im späteren neunzehnten Jahrhundert gegen den Kaiser selbst gewendet, wie eine kursorische Lektüre von Krieg und Frieden zeigt. Heines begeistertes Porträt und Tolstojs Karrikatur Napoleons sind jeweils um das Konzept des Schicksals zentriert und verweisen auf eine Konkurrenz zwischen Literatur und Politik mit Blick auf die Möglichkeit individueller Selbstbehauptung. Genie bedeutet eine Möglichkeit, in der Beschreibung historischer Ereignisse individuelle Handlungsmöglichkeiten wieder einzuführen, gegenüber den Zwängen von Schicksal, Zufall, Krieg und mobilisierten Massen. Bei Heine wie Tolstoj wird ein literarischer Deutungsanspruch gegenüber historischen Ereignissen artikuliert.

In his farces, Johann Nepomuk Nestroy seizes on prevailing stereotypes of genius, treating the concept with an irony that contributed to its critical revision in his day. Drawing on the theories of Michail Bachtin, the article examines how genius – as a term and as a series of (con)figurations – features in Nestroy's works, differentiating between its chronotopic, polyphonic and dialogic dramaturgical functions. Within the sociolinguistic groundedness of Nestroy's settings, the tension between words and action, puns and plot, opens up perspectives on the play between various kinds of capital which drove ʻVormärzʼ society.

Die Possen Johann Nepomuk Nestroys lassen sich die zeittypische Konjunktur des Geniewesens nicht entgehen und haben Teil an seiner kritischen Ironisierung. Ausgehend von Konzepten Michail Bachtins unterscheidet und untersucht der Beitrag eine chronotopische, eine polyphone und eine dialogisch-dramaturgische Funktion, die Begriff und Figuration des ʻGeniesʼ bei Nestroy  zukommen. In der Spannung von Wortbedeutung und dramatischem Geschehen öffnet sich in der sprachlich-sozialen Konkretion der Faktur der Stücke ein Blick auf das Spiel der Kapitalien, das die Vormärzgesellschaft umtreibt.

While the German Expressionists announced an end to bourgeois art, hopes of a literary revolution also rose in the labour movement. Since the 1910s, worker poets, such as Gerrit Engelke and Karl Bröger; literary critics, such as Julius Bab; and leading political figures of the Social Democratic Party such as Clara Zetkin, proclaimed a poetical breakthrough of the proletariat that was expected to challenge bourgeois poetry. This article examines the relationship between the literary and political programmes of Expressionism and new concepts of workers’ poetry at the beginning of the twentieth century. Using poetry, literary and cultural criticism, and political speeches, the paper traces how aesthetic and political discourses interacted in order to produce concepts of a collective, class-specific genius.

Während die deutschen Expressionisten ein Ende der bürgerlichen Kunst ausriefen, wurden auch in der Arbeiterbewegung Hoffnungen auf eine literarische Revolution laut. Seit den 1910er Jahren verkündeten dichtende Arbeiter wie Gerrit Engelke und Karl Bröger, Literaturkritiker wie Julius Bab und politische Leitfiguren der Sozialdemokratie wie Clara Zetkin einen poetischen Durchbruch des Proletariats, der die bürgerliche Dichtung unter Druck setzen werde. Dieser Beitrag nimmt die Wechselbeziehung zwischen Programmen des Expressionismus und Entwürfen einer Poetik der Arbeiterdichtung zu Beginn des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts in den Blick. Auf der Grundlage von Dichtung, Literatur- und Kulturkritik und politischen Vorträgen wird nachgezeichnet, wie ästhetische und politische Diskurse interagierten, um Konzepte eines kollektiven, klassenspezifischen Genies hervorzubringen.

In her essay ‘Der Mensch als Weib’ (1899) Lou Andreas-Salomé compares women to trees: both produce their ‘fruit’ unintentionally. This comparison seems to allow very little scope for active female creativity, let alone ingenuity. Closer inspection, however, reveals a more differentiated view of questions of gender and creativity. By bringing biology together with psychology and outlining the differences between male and female desire, Salomé establishes the feminine as an entity in its own right. Although she denies the existence of female genius, women and geniuses suspiciously seem to have a lot in common in her writing: both embody a heightened self-sufficiency through their very essence. Characters who illustrate the complex relations between self-fulfilment, desire and creativity can be found throughout Salomé’s literary work; I take as my example here the early ‘Novellencyclus’ Menschenkinder (1899). Hans Holtema (‘Mädchenreigen’), Hildegard (‘Das Paradies’) and Irene von Geyern (‘Zurück ans All’) possess skills that can best be described as ingenium, an innate gift, which is often seen as a challenge by their (male) surroundings. Rather than offering dogmatic answers, Salomé’s novellas as well as her theoretical work around 1900 emphasise the richness of debates about gender and genius.

‘Genius’ is an eye-catching, resonant expression to include in any title, be it of a book, film or exhibition, whether factual or fiction, popular or scholarly. Its fascination persists in academia despite repeated announcements of its demise as a term in serious critical debate. Generations of influential thinkers have sought to discredit and deconstruct it, presenting it as an ahistorical means of obscuring the workings of culture or else as a reactionary fetish that lends itself all too readily to political appropriation.1 Nevertheless, it survives effortlessly, due in large part to its versatility or rather de facto opacity; genius defies definition, while maintaining a wide spectrum of highly evocative associations. Although it fell out of general use or else was considered unviable in aesthetics and literary criticism post-1945, it periodically returns as a term of justification and approbation, if not of analysis or explanation;2 in other disciplines, most notably psychology, it is currently thriving (again).3 There has also been a recent resurgence of interest in its history as a discursive phenomenon, interest which, understandably, has tended to examine its emergence as a modern concept in the eighteenth century, or else its refinement and universalisation during Romanticism.4 This special number focuses instead on the period which gave genius a bad name with critical theorists in the first place: the nineteenth century.5 We begin at the point most studies see its discursive power waning, around 1830,6 and carry our investigation through to the early twentieth century. And while acknowledging that intense international dialogue and exchange played a vital role in the crystallisation of genius as a modern concept, we also seek to implement the insight of Joyce E. Chaplin and Darrin M. McMahon who note that ‘genius has performed specific cultural work within each of the societies in which it has had a historical presence’.7 The appeal and survival of genius may be due to its seemingly universal applicability, potentially in all spheres of activity, transcending cultural boundaries.8 As literary and cultural historians, however, it is incumbent on us to relativise its fascination; our special number is therefore made up of localised studies, considering theories, uses and ‘manifestations’ of genius within their particular discursive contexts.9

The German term ‘Genie’ has a very particular history within the general history of genius. Over the course of the 1700s, genius – ‘génie’, ‘genio’, ‘Genie’ – was established throughout Europe, primarily as a designation for exceptional creative power, but increasingly also for individuals considered to possess such power. Stemming from the Latin genius and ingenium, the term itself was not, of course, new: its extraordinary proliferation and evolution during the classicist eighteenth century were due in no small part to this distinguished ancestry.10 Originally denoting