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“Hamiltonian-Hendelian” Mimoplastics and Tableau of the Underworld: The Visual Aesthetics of Goethe's 1815 Proserpina Production
- from Special Section on Visual Culture in the Goethezeit
- Edited by Adrian Daub, Elisabeth Krimmer
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- Book:
- Goethe Yearbook 23
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 25 February 2017
- Print publication:
- 15 June 2016, pp 171-194
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Summary
Proserpina Redux: From Sentimental Interlude to Pan-Aesthetic Tragedy
PROSERPINA, GOETHE's SOLILOQUY dramatizing the plight of Jupiter and Ceres's daughter after her violent abduction to Pluto's Underworld, first appeared as an insert into the satire Triumph der Empfindsamkeit (Triumph of Sentimentality), which premiered in the Weimar Courtly Amateur Theater on January 30, 1778. Soon after, the monologue was published and then, on June 10, 1779, performed as a separate melodrama over a musical score by Sigmund von Seckendorff, with soloist-actress Corona Schröter in the title role. With its single female protagonist, its passionate display of intense suffering, and its rhetorically charged declamation, the theatrical-musical hybrid was a typical representative of the age of sentimentalism, along with Rousseau's Pygmalion, Christian Brandes's Ariadne, and Friedrich Wilhelm Gotter's Medea. The dual use of the interlude as satire and tragedy reflected the mixed reception of the Rape of Proserpina myth in Western art, music, and literature and the function of the Triumph burlesque as an antidote to the emotional intensity of the monologue, which Nicholas Boyle has rightfully recognized to be the most starkly tragic of Goethe's dramatic works. Later on, in his Tag- und Jahreshefte (Annals), the author expressed regret at his insertion of his tragedy into a farcical context, calling it a “criminal” act that robbed it of its dramatic effect by making it the target of a satire of sentimentality (Goethe, Tag- und Jahreshefte bis 1780, FA 1.17:13).
Such self-criticism channeled the purpose of his newer Proserpina adaptation, almost forty years after its original composition, which was realized in close collaboration with the musician Carl Eberwein, student of Carl Friedrich Zelter and director of Goethe's “house choir,” who also produced numerous other musical settings for Goethe's poems. In full recognition of the role of music in capturing and maintaining the affectivity of lyrical poetry, both artists cooperated to produce a score that would enhance the emotional power of the monodrama. Conceived and executed by its director as an enticing multimedia experience, the new production was also the result of a long and intense working partnership with the gifted Weimar actress Anna Amalia Wolff.
Michael Mandelartz, Goethe, Kleist: Literatur, Politik und Wissenschaft um 1800. Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 2011. 465 pp.
- Edited by Adrian Daub, Elisabeth Krimmer
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- Book:
- Goethe Yearbook 22
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 27 May 2021
- Print publication:
- 01 July 2015, pp 286-287
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Summary
Whoever comes across a Goethe-Kleist juxtaposition in a book title might expect to find a sequel to the biographical conflicts and intertextual relations disentangled by Helmut Sembdner or Katharina Mommsen a few decades ago. Instead, the volume published by the Meiji University Germanist Michael Mandelartz places the two authors on a hermeneutic stage with the aim of pointing to the “conceptual unity of their work” and contrasting their respective concepts of subjectivity. Goethe's “Auffassung des Subjekts als Produkt der Natur und der historischen Entwicklung,” seen as a continuation of Enlightenment philosophy, is posited against Kleist's “extreme Theorie des Subjekts,” placed in the context of Kant's and Fichte's transcendental philosophy of the subject (9–11).
Mandelartz illustrates his thesis with a collection of articles and book chapters that, with the exception of the Michael Kohlhaas and Penthesilea essays, have been previously published as stand-alone essays. His volume is organized in three sections, each devoted to one author, and each chapter is focused on a single work: Novalis's Klingsohrs Märchen; Kleist's Über das Marionettentheater, Der zerbrochne Krug, Michael Kohlhaas, Penthesilea, and Der Findling; and Goethe's Dichtung und Wahrheit, Zur Farbenlehre, Harzreise im Winter, Iphigenie auf Tauris, Die Wahlverwandtschaften, Pandora, and Novelle. Despite the high scholarly quality of many of the individual essays, the heterogeneous origin of the parts results in a lack of conceptual coherence of the whole.
Framed as a response to postmodern subject theory, the author intends to show a conceptual unity between Goethe's literary and scientific production. Such a unity is most clearly demonstrated in the author's juxtaposition of Goethe's geological fragments Granit I/II and his interpretation of Harzreise im Winter, Pandora, and Novelle, where, in contrast to Kant's theory of the sublime as a strengthening of the self, mountaintop experiences lead to either the dissolution, the symbolic surrender, or the Steigerung of the self into nature. While only marginally related to the central thesis of the volume, Mandelartz's chapter on the scientific methodology of Goethe's color theory and his essay on architecture as art in Die Wahlverwandtschaften stand out as original additions to the voluminous scholarship on these works.
The Kleist essays trace how the reception of his works was influenced by Fichte's transcendental and moral philosophy as laid out in his Wissenschaftslehre, Grundlage des Naturrechts, Bestimmung des Menschen, and Grundzüge des gegenwärtigen Zeitalters.