Original genius
The original genius was a model and paradigm of the creative human being for the representatives of the literary movement of the Sturm und Drang .
The term first appeared as a designation for Homer in Robert Wood's "Essay on the Original Genius of Homer" (1769), the German title of which was "Attempt on the Original Genius". Therefore, the author of the German translation from 1773 (presumably Christian Friedrich Michaelis ) can be regarded as the one who coined this term of the epoch, since the “Sturm und Drang” was also referred to as the “time of genius”.
Wood referred in his presentation to Edward Young's Conjectures on Original Composition , which took the view that there are two forms of imitation in artistic creation, namely imitation of nature on the one hand and imitation of other artists on the other: “We call the former original. “That means that the artist is considered an“ original genius ”, who, outside and independent of cultural tradition, directly imitates the essence of nature. In Lavater , genius, understood in this way, is described in hymnal form:
- Whoever notices, perceives, looks, feels, thinks, speaks, acts, educates, writes, sings, creates, compares, separates, unites, deduces, punishes, gives, takes - as if it were dictated and given to a genius, a being of a higher kind he has genius; as if he himself were a being of a higher kind - is genius. [...] The character of genius and all works and effects of genius - in my opinion - is apparition ... How angelic apparition does not come, but stands there; does not go away, but is gone; as the angelic appearance hits the innermost marrow - works immortally in the immortal part of humanity - and disappears, and continues to work after disappearance - and leaves behind sweet shivers and tears of horror and pallor, so the work and effect of genius. [...]
- Or call it, describe it as you want! Call it fertility of the spirit! Inexhaustibility! Source spirit! Call it power without its equal - primal power, powerful love; Elasticity of the soul [...] Call it central spirit, central fire which nothing can resist. [...] Call it and describe it as you want and can: the unlearned, the unlearned, the unlearnable, the irrefutable, the inimitable, the divine - is genius - the inspirational is genius.
In this sense, alongside Homer, William Shakespeare in particular was a prototype of the original genius for the poets of Sturm und Drang . In addition, the chants of Ossian , supposedly works of early Irish times, actually written by James Macpherson , and the poems of the Scottish Robert Burns were regarded as prime examples of original creation.
Opponents of the direction also used the term power genius , for example referring to Herder by Johann Friedrich Bahrdt in his “Church and Heretic Manach for the Year 1781” or the satire “Das Kraftgenie” by Gotthold Friedrich Stäudlin, which refers to Friedrich Schiller .
In a poem with the relevant title "The Original Genius", Karl Kraus put it in nasty form that creation outside of cultural tradition and ties is of course ultimately not possible :
- He never took anything second hand
- and just stuck to the originals
- and where he only found something good,
- there he always stole it for the first time.
- As a boy, they say, he was forgotten about the world
- he likes to sink into the forest weaving.
- He often sat at the source
- and never stated it.
swell
- Robert Wood: Attempt on the original genius. Andräische Buchhandlung, Frankfurt a. M. 1771 digitized
Individual evidence
- ↑ So with Ferdinand Josef Schneider : The German poetry of the genius time 1750-1800. Metzler, Stuttgart 1952
- ↑ Robert Wood's attempt on Homer's original genius. From the English . Andreean Buchhandlung, Frankfurt am Mayn 1773 (digitized version) Additions and changes ... 1778 (digitized version)
- ↑ "The first we call originals." Quoted in: Religion in the past and present . 3rd edition, Vol. 6, pp. 440f
- ↑ Johann Caspar Lavater: Physiognomic Fragments. Leipzig and Winterthur 1778. Vol. 4, p. 80 digitized
- ^ Words in verse III. In: Karl Kraus: writings. Edited by Christian Wagenknecht. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1989. Vol. 9, p. 145