Titanism

Titanism is a term used in literary and intellectual history that describes the defiant resistance of the individual to an insurmountable power. The term is derived from the titans , the primeval gods of Greek mythology .

In particular, the term is used to denote the attitude and expressions of some representatives of the Sturm und Drang , and especially for the young Goethe . The best-known of the relevant works by Goethe is the poem Prometheus , in which the rebellious Titan Prometheus addresses the world-ruling Zeus in a challenging speech :

Cover your sky, Zeus,

With cloud haze

And practice like a boy

Who decapitates thistles,

At Eichen you and Bergeshöhn ...

A similar attitude is expressed in the two equally well-known poems An Schwager Kronos and Wandrer's Sturmlied .

But the main field of Titanism in Sturm und Drang was drama . In the first place works like Goethe's Faust :

Where do I catch you, infinite nature?

You breasts where? You sources of all life,

On which heaven and earth hang

Thither the withered breast presses -

You swell, you water, and do I languish in vain?

The dramas by Friedrich Maximilian Klinger (the author of the epoch eponymous drama Sturm und Drang ), Johann Anton Leisewitz and Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz also practice emulating Goethe 's Shakespeare . Goethe writes about Shakespeare: “He competed with Prometheus, copied his people, move before move, only in colossal size ; it is therein that we misunderstand our brothers; and then he enlivened them all with the breath of his spirit, he speaks from everyone, and one recognizes their kinship. "

The philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer wrote :

The titanism of the young Goethe, the conquest of which in the eyes of his defenders and admirers is the great moral achievement of his life, still seems to be his last word. For titanism is man's defiant insistence on himself vis-à-vis the divine, as found revolutionary expression in Goethe's predilection for the figure of Prometheus in his youth. Titanism, however, seems no less the poetic self-help that Goethe trusts himself constantly and to the end.

It seems questionable whether philosophical attitudes of later times, in particular Nietzsche's design of the superman, can be linked with the term “Titanism”.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Goethe Berlin edition, vol. 1, p. 327f
2. ↑ Faust. The first part of the tragedy. In: Hamburg edition. Vol. 3, p. 23
3. ^ Religion in the past and present . 3rd ed., Tübingen 1956-1965, vol. 6, p. 442
4. ↑ Goethe: On Schäkespears Day. In: Berliner Ausgabe, vol. 17, p. 288
5. ^ Gadamer: Collected works. Vol. 9, Tübingen 1993, ISBN 3-16-146065-0 , p. 78