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1
Lecture 7 Classicist German Literature -
Aesthetic Theory

• Classicism in European contexts
• German Classicism as a culmination of tendencies
  since 1750
• Schillers analytical terminology
• Classicist Weimar
• Schillers Classicist dramas (a brief comparison
  with the drama of the Enlightenment and of the
  Storm and Stress)

2
Classicism in European Contexts German
Classicism as a late development

• Classicist Art
• period of exemplary nature - setting a norm
• revival of ancient classicist arts and
  philosophy (reception)
• Weimar Classicism from Goethes journey to
  Italy (1786) towards Schillers death (1805)
• Germanys answer to the French Revolution

3
German Classicism as a culmination of the
tendencies since 1750

• Main Topics - as an alternative to the French
  Revolution
• individual education ? development of the
  personality
• humanitarianism
• striving for harmony
• cosmopolitanism

4

• Terror, Uproar, Violence
• violent clashes within the streets of Paris
• Christian Churches abolished, their property
  withdrawn
• in war with feudal Europe
• burning and tearing down of the Bastille and the
  palaces
• famine and mass rallies of the poor

• Reason, Order, Dictatorship
• proclamation of a democratic constitution
• Reason as new religion Kult des Höchsten Wesens
• building the peoples army
• a radically modern architec-ture ideal of the
  straight line
• power sharing institutions run by the bourgeois
  classes

Schillers analytical terminology
sensuous drive / Stofftrieb
form drive / Formtrieb
The contradictions of the French Revolution are
to be taken as the signature of modernity where
Stofftrieb and Formtrieb clash, people need to
develop as a third evolutionary means the
Spieltrieb to recreate the unity of both on a
higher level of culture
5
Schillers analytical terminology (as a result
of his Kant-studies)
sensuous drive / Stofftrieb physical existence
form drive / Formtrieb rational existence
play drive / Spieltrieb

• people need to develop the Spieltrieb to recreate
  the unity of sensuous and form drive on a higher
  level of culture
• against the partial truth of actuality the
  overriding truth of art has to be established
• the aesthetic experience amounts to the
  resolution (by the reader, theatre-goer) of the
  tension between the sensual and the moral nature
  of man
• Ich hoffe, Sie zu überzeugen, ... daß man, um
  jenes Prob-lemi.e. the problem of power versus
  reason in der Erfahrung zu lösen, durch das
  ästhetische den Weg nehmen muß, weil es die
  Schönheit ist, durch welche man zur Freiheit
  wandert. It is only through Beauty that man
  makes his way to Freedom. (Ueber die Ästhetische
  Erziehung des Menschen, 2. Brief, NA 20, p. 312)

6
Why Education to Freedom through Experiencing
Beauty?

• Beauty is that mode in which the mind has so
  thoroughly transformed matter that material
  reality has lost its accidental character and has
  become the vehicle of an intellectual or
  spiritual intention. In this state of beauty,
  the sensual is not so much destroyed, as rather
  completely unfolded, its structure is revealed,
  its range explored. This exercise of freedom,
  the functioning of the mind within a high moral
  purpose towards a total absorption of matter,
  permits Schiller to say that beauty is the
  achievement of freedom, or freedom in
  appearance (Freiheit in der Erscheinung).
• (Victor Lange, The Classical Age of German
  Literature. 1740-1815, p. 124.)
• Schiller in Ueber die Ästhetische Erziehung des
  Menschen,18. Brief
• Durch die Schönheit wird der sinnliche Mensch
  zur Form und zum Denken geleitet durch die
  Schönheit wird der geistige Mensch zur Materie
  zurückgeführt, und der Sinnenwelt wiedergegeben.
  Aus diesem scheint zu folgen, daß es zwischen
  Materie und Form, zwischen Leiden und Thätigkeit
  einen mittleren Zustand geben müsse, und daß uns
  die Schönheit in diesen mittleren Zustand
  versetze. (NA 20, p. 365-6.)

7
Why Experiencing Beauty through Playing?

• Schiller in Ueber die Ästhetische Erziehung des
  Menschen, 15. Brief
• Man wird niemals irren, wenn man das
  Schönheitsideal eines Menschen auf dem nehmlichen
  Wege sucht, auf dem er seinen Spieltrieb
  befriedigt. ... Nun spricht aber die Vernunft
  das Schöne soll nicht bloßes Leben life und
  nicht bloße Gestalt form, sondern lebende
  Gestalt living form, das ist, Schönheit seyn
  indem sie beauty ja dem Menschen das doppelte
  Gesetz der absoluten Formalität und der absoluten
  Realität diktiert. ... Denn, um es endlich auf
  einmal herauszusagen, der Mensch spielt nur, wo
  er in voller Bedeutung des Worts Mensch ist, und
  er ist nur da ganz Mensch, wo er spielt.
  (NA
  20, p. 358-9.)
• Play is regarded as the aethetic state of
  mind in which man can experience his highest
  capacity, his wholeness in contemplating living
  form, which is beauty, man recognizes his
  humanity.
• Who has the power to create in play a virtual
  universe, a world of semblance (Schein)
  experiences freedom and is through this
  education able to bring harmony into society.

8

• Drama of the Enlightenment and Storm and Stress
• avoiding the Haupt- und Staatsakionen, dealing
  more with the private realms
• avoiding the alexandrine verses, prose drama
  established (Lessings Nathan, der Weise, as an
  exception in blank verse the ideal of
  communication)
• plot based on talk (Lessing) and action (Storm
  and Stress)

• Tragedy of the Classic Period
• going back to historical sujets, dealing again
  with politics however, what looks similar, is
  different
• going back to verse-drama this time the blank
  verse as an aesthetic ideal (to some extent how
  it can be dealt with in terms of interference,
  threat)
• plot so much more based on reflection and
  thinking
• analytical qualities stressed (the play only
  unrolls what already is set before, does so in a
  tragic analysis)