Universal poetry
Universal poetry is a literary theoretical term from early romanticism that arose from the transfer of philosophical thoughts to the handling of literature. At the end of the 18th century it was mainly influenced by Friedrich Schlegel , who developed the theory of progressive universal poetry together with Novalis .
description
The progressive universal poetry describes a specific, romantic-called type of literature which not only all literary genres - that all forms of poetry , drama , and not least prose - brings together, but also the literature with philosophy , criticism and rhetoric , art with science connect to . The aim is to synaesthetically address all the senses. She tries to correlate dream and reality , poetry and real social life . It is progressive because it is forever in the making. Accordingly, the unfinished piece of literature, the fragment , plays a major role. Schlegel did not present
his theory of universal poetry in a coherent doctrine, but in various essays, letters - a public genre in Romanticism -, a novel and fragments, primarily in the magazine Athenaeum, which he and his brother August Wilhelm founded in Jena in 1798 .
Important basic texts
Several texts published in the journal Athenaeum are famous and fundamental . First and foremost, along with other Lyceums and Athenaeum fragments, is the Athenaeum fragment No. 116. Friedrich Schlegel's Wilhelm Meister criticism is also important, as is his novel Lucinde .
The Athenaeum fragment no.116
Romantic poetry is a progressive universal poetry. Its purpose is not merely to reunite all the separate genres of poetry and to bring poetry into contact with philosophy and rhetoric. It wants and should also mix poetry and prose, genius and criticism, art poetry and natural poetry, sometimes merging, making poetry lively and sociable and making life and society poetic, poeticizing wit and filling the forms of art with solid educational material of all kinds and sate and animate with the vibrations of humor. It encompasses everything that is purely poetic, from the greatest systems of art that contain several systems to the sigh, the kiss that the poet breathes out in artless song. [...]
This little text lives from the paradoxes which, even if they seem to be mutually exclusive, should be thought together. In addition to the hubris of merging genres and sciences, as described above, progressive universal poetry wants to mix them up, sometimes merge them , i.e. H. The approach should also be different in the type of mixture. Art reflection stands next to art itself: Romantic universal poetry should be both. At the time of Immanuel Kant's critique of the power of judgment , one has to imagine the greatest [...] system of art to be equivalent to the babbling of an infant. We find a sigh of sadness as an expression of the child, the expression of love in the kiss, which is also communication at the same time. In addition, it is poetic in its unconscious way, because - as one learns shortly afterwards - this poetry, although it is song, is nonetheless artless . When progressive universal poetry so different forms of intent play a role in its execution.
The development of the theory: "About Goethe's Master"
When the Schlegel brothers founded the Athenaeum in Jena, Friedrich had just two years of productive symphilosophy - as he called it - with the (religious) philosopher Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher in Berlin. The two friends lived in a small apartment, read Fichte's science theory together , translated Plato and had a heated discussion. Schlegel now tried to transfer his philosophical considerations into aesthetic areas. The most important novel on which he based his new possibility of writing novels in the romantic sense was Goethe's Wilhelm Meister . His essay On Goethe's Masters , described by Schleiermacher as an over-master , formed the beginning, the germ of progressive universal poetry . Schlegel recognized in Goethe's Bildungsroman tendencies towards a new romantic novel. At the same time he established a theory of romance with his criticism, actually a review . An over- master now means that the author Friedrich Schlegel has taken up exactly what, in his opinion, made Goethe's novel what it was, and brought this into a new form that could stand for itself as an independent text. This new text, however, was a typical Schlegel text. The author of the new work should become visible.
Implementation of the theory
Many authors have worked on this theory. As a first attempt, Schlegel's own novel should certainly be mentioned: Lucinde . Others are: In the early days Heinrich von Ofterdingen von Novalis - praised by Schlegel himself as the most successful implementation of the theory -, Godwi by Clemens Brentano - hated by Schlegel, but praised by literary studies as the most successful implementation of the theory - the reading dramas by Ludwig Tieck and Der Puss in Boots or The Wrong World . In the late Romantic then the Parcival by Friedrich de la Motte Fouque or Joseph von Eichendorff The life of a ne'er-do .
A parody of the theory
In his novel Die Nachtwachen des Bonaventura from 1804, Ernst August Friedrich Klingemann parodied Friedrich Schlegel's fragment of the Athenaeum 116. Klingemann, who had heard the lectures by Fichte and August Wilhelm Schlegel in Jena, was friends with Clemens Brentano, whose novel Godwi as an exemplary implementation of the theory of Universal poetry applies. It can be assumed that she was therefore well known to him when he went to work on the night watch . Apart from the fact that the entire novel can be read as an exemplary implementation of the concept, in the eighth chapter - the "Eighth Night Watch" - several elements that belong to the concept of universal poetry are combined into a grotesque parody. In addition to the philosophical question of ideality and reality of the subject, we find a game with the portrayal of life in poetry and poetry in life, as well as the term that is important for Schlegel: 'floating':
First, in this chapter the narrator introduces a writer. We find in him a torn person who tries to lead a life for art, but suffers from the fact that he cannot earn a living with art. Absolutely impoverished, he cannot make up his mind to take up a 'profane' profession. This city poet lives through the inner conflict of a typically romantic fictional character:
The city poet in his little attic was also one of the idealists who had been converted to realists by force through hunger, believers, courtesans, etc. [...].
With precisely this problem of having to choose between idealism and realism, Goethe's Wilhelm Meister - whom Schlegel read 'romantic' (see above) - and Novalis' Heinrich von Ofterdingen - had the most successful version authorized by Schlegel himself of universal poetry - having to grapple.
The first-person narrator in the cloister finds the poet hanged in his attic. Klingemann describes this in a way that assumes that the author can be confused with his work. Schlegel had called for this to be an important characteristic of progressive universal poetry:
It [romantic poetry] can so lose itself in what is represented that one would like to believe that characterizing poetic individuals of every kind is one and everything to it; and yet there is still no form which is made to fully express the spirit of the author: so that some artists who only wanted to write a novel have portrayed themselves by accident.
The piece written by the city poet is entitled "The Man". In his description of the scene, Klingemann explicitly refers to the fact that the young man, who, since he has no name - is only "a person" himself - becomes the protagonist of his own play:
Panting, I climbed into the high Olympus and opened the entrance; but instead of a tragedy, which I had not expected, I found two of them, the one coming back from the publisher, and the tragedian himself who had composed the second off the cuff and performed it as the protagonist. Since he lacked the tragic dagger, in a hurry, which can easily be overlooked in an improvised drama, he had chosen the cord that served as a travel belt for the manuscripts on the return journey, and hovered on it as a saint traveling to heaven , quite light and with discarded earth ballast over his work.
The desperate poet has resolved the conflict in a macabre way. As a rule, the solution for a romantic poet is to float , which means that he should make both possible, namely to live in the real world as in the world of poetry, in which he performs a constant interplay between the two:
And yet it too [romantic poetry] can float most of all between what is portrayed and what is performing, free of all real and ideal interest on the wings of poetic reflection in the middle [...] poetry lively and sociable, and that Making life and society poetic
His life becomes the object of poetry, but poetry should also have a formative effect on life. The characters in other romantic novels only succeed to a limited extent. Wilhelm Meister z. B. returns to down-to-earth life; he decides against the 'floating' itself and in favor of reality. Heinrich von Ofterdingen postponed the problem: the novel remained a fragment . The "floating" of Klingemann's poets looks different. He did not surrender to the required interplay, but withdrew completely from reality through his suicide . He is free from all real and ideal interest in that he has thrown off the earth ballast . The fact that in the end the other possibility is taken up again, that is, poetry is given its justification in life again, shows that Klingemann wanted to implement the concept of universal poetry here . The author gives his poet the opportunity to completely lose himself in the work of art, even to become a work of art himself, by letting his narrator describe his death as a work of art of a romantic kind. The survivors reported the readers of the work of art, "Man" that the suicide previously streaked has - as it says in his "letter of refusal":
Man is no good, that's why I cross him out. My person has not found a publisher, neither as persona vera nor ficta, no bookseller wants to shoot the printing costs for the last one (my tragedy), and the devil does not care about the first (myself), and they let me starve [. ..].
Remarks
- ^ Friedrich Schlegel: Critical Edition , edited by Ernst Behler (among others). Paderborn (among others). 1967. Vol. 2, pp. 182f.
- ↑ Cf. Nicola Kaminski: Cloisters. Novel experiments of romance.
- ↑ Klingemann: The night watch of Bonaventura
- ^ Friedrich Schlegel: Athenaeum fragment 116
- ↑ Klingemann: The night watch of Bonaventura
- ^ Friedrich Schlegel: Athenaeum fragment 116
- ↑ Klingemann: The night watch of Bonaventura
swell
- Gero von Wilpert : Subject dictionary of literature (= Kröner's pocket edition . Volume 231). 8th, improved and enlarged edition. Kröner, Stuttgart 2001, ISBN 3-520-23108-5 (EA 1955).
- Friedrich Schlegel: Critical writings , ed. v. Wolfdietrich Rasch, 2nd edition, Munich 1964.
- Critical Friedrich Schlegel edition. KA II, pp. 126–146 [About Goethe's Master].
- Nicola Kaminski: Cross-aisles. Novel experiments of German romanticism . Berlin, New York 2001.