An Allegory of 'Bildung'. Friedrich Schlegel's Interpretation of Goethe's "Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre"

An Allegory of Bildung

Friedrich Schlegel’s Interpretation of Goethe’sWilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre

Sofie Kluge, University of Copenhagen

This article proposes an interpretation of Friedrich Schlegel’scritical essay ‘Uber Goethes Meister’ (1798). Conspicuouslysubjecting Goethe’s classical Bildungsroman to what we may terma ‘deconstructive’ reading ante terminem, Schlegel’s famous reviewmay be interpreted as an underplayed Romantic refutation ofGoethe’s Classicist aesthetics. Advancing a daring allegoricalinterpretation of the novel’s central concept of Bildung – not justreferring to ‘formation’ in the delimited social and educationalsense, but also to ‘formation’ as the infinite principle of aestheticcreation, the inexhaustible source of art – Schlegel claims theliterary text’s deviation from the author’s official aestheticprogramme, the organic aesthetics of the symbol, and provocat-ively inserts it into a transcendental allegorical aesthetics. Hethereby ultimately turns Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, the emblemof the secular bourgeois novel, into a paradigm of the Romanticwork of art as progressive Universalpoesie.

Keywords: allegory vs. symbol, Classicism vs. Romanticism, Bildung, reading andinterpretation, poetic criticism, metaphysical aesthetics.

I. Introduction

Ever since the Romantic period, the Athenaum group’s controversial views

on literature and art have been the object of more or less intentional

misinterpretations.1 Considering the hermetic quality of the Romantic

corpus, it is perhaps not so surprising that the Romantics – Friedrich

Schlegel in particular – have been subject to such interpretive activity,

although we may wonder at the not unusual, but quite improper

foundation of many such interpretations on a general displeasure with

Schlegel’s so-called laxity of morals.2 Leaving the curious discussion of

Schlegel’s moral stature apart, I shall attempt a consideration of his work,

which despite its notorious difficulty has had an undeniable influence on a

great deal of secular modern aesthetics (fragmentation, contingency,

Orbis Litterarum 62:3 177–209, 2007Printed in Singapore. All rights reserved

irony), but certainly also points backwards to the metaphysical aesthetics

of the Middle Ages, the Christian Renaissance and the Baroque. These two

tendencies meet in what I shall subsequently term Schlegel’s ‘allegorical’

aesthetics, which basically sees the literary text as a complex aesthetic

structure consisting of several levels, only one of which – the level of

aesthetic content – is immediately accessible. This view of the literary text

as an allegory (from the Greek: ‘saying something more’) logically implies

the need for an allegorical interpretation, seeking to unveil the esoteric

message hidden beneath the beautiful surface.

Considering, moreover, the fact that Schlegel was first and foremost a

critic and a reader (not many think of his Lucinde as great literature or

acknowledge his philosophical achievement), I think that an appropriate

place to begin our study of his aesthetics is with the notion of

interpretation as creative Darstellung which permeates a good deal of his

critical writings.3 Perhaps the theory of the necessary interdependence of

poetic and critical Darstellung as two related interpretive practices

represents Schlegel’s most important contribution to the field of literary

studies. Claiming a necessary interdependence of aesthetic and critical

Darstellung is not a mere redundant affirmation of the necessary relation

between reading and text; as we shall see, Schlegel radicalized this relation

and made it the basis of his allegorical aesthetics, as a necessary

consequence of the structural complexity of the text ever focused on the

problem of interpretation.

Certain methodological problems need to be addressed before embark-

ing on our analytical journey. Interpretations of Schlegel’s œuvre tend to

develop into a disoriented hunt for the scattered elements of an aesthetic

theory that is nowhere clearly defined, producing enigmatic concepts from

the confused clutter of apparently self-contradictory and unspecific

formulations. They become, in other words, a paradoxical attempt to

discover a system in something conscientiously designed to be unsystem-

atic. As if the heterogeneity of the single works were not enough, the

heterogeneity of the œuvre in its totality further raises the question of

Schlegel’s intellectual development: who is the authentic Schlegel – the

young, the younger, or the older? The burning Classicist, the ironic

Romantic rebel, or the devout Catholic? Again, the interpreter lacks a

systematic frame or background on which to consider this enigmatic

œuvre. Where are we to begin, then?

178 Sofie Kluge

Taking the famous review ‘Uber Goethes Meister’ (1798) as my point of

departure, I shall subsequently focus on the interdependence of aesthetic

and critical Darstellung in Schlegel’s allegorical aesthetics. This carefully

constructed piece of literary criticism may be seen as a kind of

performative theory of Darstellung, a manifesto proclaiming the necessary

interdependence of critical interpretation and literary text, and not the

least as a highly polemical contribution to the aesthetic debate in Germany

around 1800. Thus, I shall assume that Schlegel’s Meister essay is

simultaneously a vindication of his own allegorical aesthetics and a

provocative refutation of Goethe’s theory of the aesthetic symbol.

II. Negative figures of reading in the ‘Ubermeister’

Schlegel’s review of Goethe’s Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre overflows with

reflections on the nature of interpretation. Mostly, these reflections

appear as critical comments on contemporary views of this essential

critical problem, which are introduced only to be subsequently rejected

as obsolete and useless. Through the enumeration of these views

Schlegel’s own concept of interpretation is indirectly suggested in its

fundamental opposition to contemporary literary criticism and theory.

In this context we shall first have a brief look at the different

critical ‘schools’ rejected by Schlegel, subsequently turning to his own

proposition.

By opposing objectivistic, ‘empiristic’ criticism on the one hand, and

subjectivistic, ‘impressionist’ criticism on the other hand, Schlegel indi-

rectly gives the outlines of a concept of criticism that is neither objective in

the positivistic understanding of this word, nor subjective in the negative

sense as ‘anti-objective’. As we shall see, Schlegel’s notion of critical

objectivity is closely related to the concept of Darstellung and hence to the

creative activity of the poet himself. However, before presenting his own

vision of criticism as a ‘Darstellung des Dargestellten’, Schlegel criticizes

the different contemporary ‘schools’ of criticism for their lack of

methodological foundation. He begins with the kind of criticism that

believes itself to be objective:

Ebensosehr regt sich das Gefuhl gegen eine schulgerechte Kunstbeurteilung desGottlichen Gewachses. Wer mochte ein Gastmahl des feinsten und ausgesuchte-sten Witzes mit allen Formlichkeiten und in aller ublichen Umstandlichkeit

179An Allegory of Bildung

rezensieren? Eine sogenannte Rezension des MEISTER wurde uns immererscheinen wie der junge Mann, der mit dem Buche unter dem Arm in den Waldspazieren kommt, und den Philine mit dem Kuckuck vertreibt. (Schlegel 1990a,151)

The quoted passage suggests an incompatibility between the organicity of

the aesthetic object (‘das Gottliche Gewachs’) and a learned, but

instrumental criticism (‘die schulgerechte Kunstbeurteilung’), which meta-

phorically speaking dissects the text or puts it under a microscope. Despite

its objective criteria and erudition such interpretation lacks the sense of the

vivacious quality of its object, a critique that Schlegel further illustrates

through the passage’s final image of the young man walking into a wood

(organic object) with a book (erudition) under his arm.4

Schlegel now turns his stern eye toward the ‘sensibility’ of subjectivistic

criticism, presented as a mere negative variant of scientific objectivism:

Vielleicht soll man es [das Buch] also zugleich beurteilen und nicht beurteilen;welches keine leichte Aufgabe zu sein scheint. Glucklicherweise ist es eben einsvon den Buchern, welche sich selbst beurteilen, und den Kunstrichter sonachaller Muhe uberheben. Ja es beurteilt sich nicht nur selbst, es stellt sich auchselbst dar. Eine bloße Darstellung des Eindrucks wurde daher, wenn sie auchkeins der schlechtesten Gedichte von der beschreibenden Gattung sein sollte,außer dem, daß sie uberflussig sein wurde, sehr den kurzern ziehen mussen;nicht bloß gegen den Dichter, sondern sogar gegen den Gedanken des Lesersder Sinn fur das Hochste hat, der anbeten kann, und ohne Kunst undWissenschaft gleich weiß was er anbeten soll, den das Rechte trifft wie einBlitz. (Schlegel 1990a, 151)

Schlegel here confronts the kind of criticism that – faced with the

impossibility of an objective valuation and the shortcomings of empiristic

objectivism – has degenerated into a mere impressionist description of the

moods and feelings evoked in the reading subject by the aesthetic object.5

Schlegel’s motive for rejecting this kind of criticism is its dilettantism: it is,

at its best, ‘keins der schlechtesten Gedichte von der beschreibenden

Gattung’. The ‘bloße Darstellung des Eindrucks’ is thus inferior – to the

aesthetic Darstellung of the poet as well as to the interpretation of the

sagacious reader who grasps ‘das Rechte’ without recurring to the whole

sphere of sensibility and subjective impressions which blocks the objective

understanding of the aesthetic message, and even possibly blurs it with its

gibberish. As a ‘bloße Darstellung des Eindrucks’, impressionist criticism

remains within the boundaries of subjective description, and ultimately

180 Sofie Kluge

reveals itself as nothing but a mere negative, unambitious version of naıve

empiristic objectivism. These objections form part of a superordinate

methodological discussion (from which we gather, that the ideal proposed

is a criticism which is necessarily subjective, but simultaneously truly

objective), but Schlegel also addresses more specific problems relating to

the interpretation of literary texts. Armed with Goethe’s novel he rejects

the relevance of the reading which automatically and without much

argument identifies a given book with a specific literary genre, thus

projecting more or less arbitrary and prefabricated frames of reference

onto the aesthetic work:

Man lasse sich also dadurch, daß der Dichter selbst die Personen und dieBegebenheiten so leicht und so launig zu nehmen, den Helden fast nie ohneIronie zu erwahnen, und auf sein Meisterwerk selbst von der Hohe seines Geistesherabzulacheln scheint, nicht tauschen, als sei es ihm nicht der heiligste Ernst.Man darf es also nur auf die hochsten Begriffe beziehen und es nicht bloß sonehmen, wie es gewohnlich auf dem Standpunkt des gesellschaftlichen Lebensgenommen wird: als einen Roman, wo Personen und Begebenheiten der letzteEndzweck sind. Denn dieses schlechthin neue und einzige Buch, welches mannur aus sich selbst verstehen lernen kann, nach einem aus Gewohnheit undGlaube, aus zufalligen Erfahrungen und willkurlichen Forderungen zusam-mengesetzten und entstandenen Gattungsbegriff beurteilen; das ist, als wenn einKind Mond und Gestirne mit der Hand greifen und in sein Schachtelchenpacken will. (pp. 150–151)

Schlegel here criticizes the concept of genre, pointing to its four-fold

arbitrary basis in ‘Gewohnheit’, ‘Glaube’, ‘zufallige Erfahrungen’, and

‘willkurliche Forderungen’, and emphasizes that it is a misunderstanding to

readWilhelmMeisters Lehrjahre on the basis of the traditional notion of the

novel genre.6 Such a notion emphasizes the novel as a wholly secular-

immanent genre occupied exclusively with ‘die Personen und die Be-

gebenheiten’, i.e. with the action of the humanworld.However, according to

Schlegel, Goethe’s novel must, on the contrary, be referred to as ‘die

hochstenBegriffe’, andWilhelmMeister thus serves as the point of departure

for a general rejection of generic interpretations (i.e. interpretations led by

preconceived concepts of genres).What exactly Schlegel understands by ‘die

hochsten Begriffe’ as the true frame of reference for Goethe’s novel remains

unsaid in this context; the answer must be found in Schlegel’s superordinate

interpretation of the Meister as an allegory containing a hidden philosoph-

ical truth. We shall subsequently return to this point.


Finally, Schlegel rejects the moral interpretation of the fictive characters,

which judges these as if they were portraits of real, existing persons.7

Again, the lack of objectivity of the interpretive procedure appears as the

motive of its rejection, but the passage also demonstrates an interesting

awareness of the fundamental and necessary distinction between literary

characters and real persons:

Uberhaupt gleichen die Charaktere in diesem Roman zwar durch die Art derDarstellung dem Portrat, ihrem Wesen nach aber sind sie mehr oder minderallgemein und allegorisch. Eben daher sind sie ein unerschopflicher Stoff und dievortrefflichste Beispielsammlung fur sittliche und gesellschaftliche Untersuchun-gen. Fur diesen Zweck mußten Gesprache uber die Charaktere im Meister sehrinteressant sein konnen, obgleich sie zum Verstandnis des Werks nur etwaepisodisch mitwirken konnten: aber Gesprache mußten es sein, um schon durchdie Form alle Einseitigkeit zu verbannen. Denn wenn ein einzelner nur aus demStandpunkte seiner Eigentumligkeit uber jede dieser Personen rasonnierte undein moralisches Gutachten fallte, das ware wohl die unfruchtbarste unter allenmoglichen Arten, den Wilhelm Meister anzusehen; und man wurde am Endenicht mehr daraus lernen, als daß der Redner uber diese Gegenstande so, wie esnun lautete, gesinnt sei. (Schlegel 1990a, 160)

Passing a moral judgement on the characters of a literary text as if these

were portraits of real persons may inspire ethical or sociological

discussions in the salons, but it has nothing to do with literary criticism.

The serious critic must reject it because of its lack of objectivity: in the last

analysis, the moral judgement of this or that fictive character says less

about the text than about the individual critic and his historical and

cultural determination. According to Schlegel, the characters in Meister –

and the novel in its totality – must much rather be considered allegories

(referred to as ‘die hochsten Begriffe’), and he consequently only deals with

the characters of the text as figures or variations on a common theme

forming parts of a structural game. We shall subsequently return to this

remarkable view of Goethe’s characters.

Concluding this analysis of the negative projections of interpretations in

the ‘Ubermeister’, we may say that Schlegel seems to have set himself the

heroic task of eliminating once and for all unreflexive habitual thinking

and common misunderstandings of contemporary literary criticism,

proving its lack of theoretical foundation. This endeavour simultaneously

draws an indirect sketch of his own intention to establish the guidelines of

a truly objective criticism, neither identifiable with the schulgerechte

182 Sofie Kluge

empiristic criticism, nor with the attempt on behalf of impressionistic

criticism to reinstate a less ambitious version of the Cartesian subject

(a kind of sensuous phenomenological subject).8 As has already been

pondered, and as we shall subsequently see, truly objective criticism is

much rather fundamentally akin to the creative act of the poet, i.e. a

necessarily subjective, yet still objective – artistic – Darstellung.

More specifically, the re-evaluation of the novel genre – a common

denominator of Schlegel’s early aesthetics9 – is also already present in the

critique of generic and moral criticism. In both cases, Schlegel sketches the

outlines of an allegorical interpretation, which doesn’t remain at the level

of content or the thematic realm, but interprets the elements of this realm

as allegorical signs of something higher, philosophical ‘ideas’ or universal

concepts;10 he hereby opposes the common view of the novel as a secular-

immanent genre occupied with ‘die Personen und die Begebenheiten’.

Schlegel’s diatribe against the novel in the Meister review is only

paradoxical, if we overlook the execration of an exclusively negative

concept of the novel, carried out in order to redefine the genre. The

anecdotal stories of persons and their actions pertinent to the popular

novel has very little (if anything) in common with Schlegel’s central notion

of the Roman as an at once philosophical and artistic genre that Goethe’s

Meister, among other works, first helped him define.

III. An alternative strategy of reading

However, Schlegel also gives more directly constructive hints of his own

concept of a truly objective literary criticism. He primarily ponders the

necessity of a double reading, which both embraces the text’s seductive

surface (with its ‘Personen und […] Begebenheiten’) and enquires into the

hidden design behind this surface:

Es ist schon und notwendig, sich dem Eindruck eines Gedichtes ganzhinzugeben, den Kunstler mit uns machen zu lassen, was er will, und etwa nurim einzelnen das Gefuhl durch Reflexion zu bestatigen und zum Gedanken zuerheben, und wo es noch zweifeln oder streiten durfte, zu entscheiden und zuerganzen. Dies ist das Erste und das Notwendigste. Aber nicht mindernotwendig ist es, von allem Einzelnen abstrahieren zu konnen, das Allgemeineschwebend zu fassen, eine Masse zu uberschauen, und das Ganze festzuhalten,selbst dem Verborgensten nachzuforschen und das Entlegenste zu verbinden.[…] Warum sollte man nicht den Duft einer Blume einatmen, und dann doch das


unendliche Geader eines einzelnen Blatts betrachten und sich ganz in dieseBetrachtung verlieren konnen? Nicht bloß die glanzende außre Hulle, das bunteKleid der schonen Erde, ist dem Menschen, der ganze Mensch ist, und so fuhltund denkt, interessant: er mag auch gern untersuchen, wie die Schichten imInnern aufeinander liegen, und aus welchen Erdarten sie zusammengesetzt sind;er mochte immer tiefer dringen, bis in den Mittelpunkt wo moglich, und mochtewissen wie das Ganze konstruiert ist. So mogen wir uns gern dem Zauber desDichters entreißen, nachdem wir uns gutwillig haben von ihm fesseln lassen,mogen am liebsten dem nachspahn, was er unserm Blick entziehen oder dochnicht zuerst zeigen wollte, und was ihn doch am meisten zum Kunstler macht:die geheimen Ansichten, die er im stillen verfolgt. (Schlegel 1990a, 148)

Although Schlegel here to a certain extent employs an empiricist rhetoric,

this doesn’t mean that he advocates the return of empiristic criticism with

its naıve objectivism. Neither should the semantic group of words referring

to sensuous rapture be mistaken for a concession to the subjectivism of

impressionist criticism. What Schlegel means to indicate by his intertwin-

ing of metaphors relating to sensibility and science is much rather the

combination of thought and feeling: a doubleness which corresponds with

his allegorical view of Goethe’s text. The methodological combination of

thought and feeling must be seen against the background of his allegorical

aesthetics, emphasizing the double nature of the text and the correspond-

ing necessity of a double interpretive perspective – not as vindication of the

critical paradigms of empiricism and impressionism rejected earlier in the

review.

The double outlook of the ideal literary critic is very well exemplified by

Schlegel’s own practice in the Meister review, as already announced in the

opening lines, generally treating Goethe’s novel as a Bildungsroman on

two levels: it is the story of Wilhelm’s education (Bildung), but also the

meta-aesthetic story of the text’s own formation or genesis (Bildung):

‘Ohne Anmaßung und ohne Gerausch, wie die Bildung eines strebenden

Geistes sich still entfaltet, und wie die werdende Welt aus seinem Innern

leise emporsteigt, beginnt die klare Geschichte’ (Schlegel 1990a, 143). The

grammatical subject of the main clause is obviously the text itself (‘die

klare Geschichte’), whereas Wilhelm’s Bildung is merely one of several

analogies (‘wie die Bildung eines strebenden Geistes’, ‘wie die werdende

Welt’). The grammatical structure of the opening lines clearly mirrors

Schlegel’s view of the novel’s thematic level (Wilhelm’s story) as an

allegory of ‘die hochsten Begriffe’. These elevated concepts are the treasure

184 Sofie Kluge

hidden by the poet beneath the surface of appearances, i.e. ‘die geheimen

Ansichten, die er im stillen verfolgt’.11 Before turning to a closer

consideration of the problems relating to the excavation of this hidden

treasure, we shall briefly observe what Schlegel esteems these secret

intentions of the poet to be:

Wenn wir auf die Lieblingsgegenstande aller Gesprache und aller gelegentlichenEntwicklungen, und auf die Lieblingsbeziehungen aller Begebenheiten, derMenschen und ihrer Umgebung sehen: so fallt in die Augen, daß sich alles umSchauspiel, Darstellung, Kunst und Poesie drehe. Es war so sehr die Absicht desDichters, eine nicht unvollstandige Kunstlehre aufzustellen. (p. 149)

In writing the story of Wilhelm Meister’s social and sentimental education,

Goethe’s secret intention was thus, according to Schlegel, to establish ‘eine

nicht unvollstandige Kunstlehre’. As readers we may allow ourselves to be

seduced by the ‘Personen und […] Begebenheiten’ on the beautiful surface

of the text, but we should always be aware that these are essentially

allegories, and as such must be referred to a deeper level of meaning: the

hidden philosophy of art, which focuses on the idea of art as Bildung, i.e.

on Bildung as an aesthetic or ‘poetological’ phenomenon (genesis,

formation, creation), just like the thematic level focuses on the idea of

Bildung as a social phenomenon. Bildung – the essential theme of Wilhelm

Meisters Lehrjahre – thus needs to be subjected to the double perspective

of an allegorical interpretation: the allegorical figures of the thematic level

are not only variations on social and sentimental Bildung, but also

poetological figures alluding to different concepts of art.12 Although

Schlegel’s interpretation of the novel’s characters is surely interesting, I

shall confine myself to referring to his view of Wilhelm, the novel’s central

allegory of Bildung (in both senses). Schlegel focuses on Wilhelm’s built-in

infinity, however simultaneously noting the negation of this same infinity

also inherent in his character:

Auch gewinnt er [Wilhelm] schon jetzt das ganze Wohlwollen des Lesers, dem er,wie sich selbst, wo er geht und steht, in einer Fulle von prachtigen Worten dieerhabensten Gesinnungen vorsagt. Sein ganzes Tun und Wesen besteht fast inStreben, Wollen und Empfinden, und obgleich wir voraussehen daß er erst spatoder nie als Mann handeln wird, so verspricht doch seine grenzenloseBildsamkeit, daß Manner und Frauen sich seine Erziehung zum Geschaft undVergnugen machen und dadurch, vielleicht ohne es zu wollen oder zu wissen, dieleise und vielseitige Empfanglichkeit, welche seinem Geiste einen so hohenZauber gibt, vielfach anregen und die Vorempfindungen der ganzen Welt in ihm


zu einem schonen Bilde entfalten werden. Lernen muß er uberall konnen, undauch an prufenden Versuchungen wird es ihm nie fehlen. Wenn ihm nun dasgunstige Schicksal oder ein erfahrner Freund von großen Uberblick gunstigbeisteht und ihn durch Warnungen und Verheißungen nach dem Ziele lenkt, somussen seine Lehrjahre glucklich endigen. (p. 146)

The protagonist may be characterized by eternal aspiration (‘sein ganzes

Tun und Wesen besteht fast in Streben’), but despite his ‘grenzenlose

Bildsamkeit’ the reader somehow feels certain that he will never complete

the process of Bildung on his own (‘wir voraussehen daß er erst spat oder

nie als Mann handeln wird’). The passage thus ends by pondering

Wilhelm’s dependence on external factors (‘das gunstige Schicksal oder ein

erfahrner Freund’), which further the completion of this process, pointing

to the contradiction between the infinity inherent in the process of Bildung

as described by Goethe, and its dependence on external factors for its

completion. This interpretation of the novel’s central character is first of all

seminal for understanding the Kunstlehre allegedly hidden beneath the

surface of Goethe’s text: this philosophy of art is essentially about an

endless becoming or generation (the idea of art as an endlessly prolific and

abundant source of aesthetic creation, or ‘grenzenlose Bildsamkeit’), just

as Wilhelm’s whole life and person is characterized by an endless

becoming, a ‘grenzenlose Bildsamkeit’. Second, it is important for

understanding the mutual dependence of the text’s two levels, the level

of aesthetic content and plot (‘die Personen und die Begebenheiten’) and

the deeper philosophical level beneath this surface. Finally, it is

indispensable for understanding Schlegel’s seminal critique of the novel’s

ending; the fact that Wilhelm – the novel’s central figure of Bildung – is

characterized by eternal aspiration indicates that the hidden philosophy of

art on the deeper level of the text is also essentially an endless and

interminable process, a reflection on or circumscription of the idea of art as

eternal Bildung. Like Wilhelm’s character, the text’s meta-aesthetic

circumscription of art’s idea remains an infinite aspiration or approxima-

tion, which is transported or translated into allegorical figures at the level

of content only with some difficulty: how is one to represent an endless

becoming or an infinite quest in a finite form? In fact, Schlegel has already

accounted for this problem through his allegorical interpretation of the

text’s characters and events as variations on the theme of Bildung in its

different significations. The novel’s essentially infinite reflection on art’s

186 Sofie Kluge

idea thus has adequate expression in the numerous circumscriptions

and variations at the level of content (the characters as allegories of

different concepts of art, Wilhelm’s character as a ‘grenzenlose

Bildsamkeit’, etc.).

In order to adequately understand these points, we need to enquire a bit

more into Schlegel’s view of the relation between the two levels of

Goethe’s novel, i.e. the aesthetic expression at the level of content and the

art-philosophical meditation on art’s idea (Kunstlehre) hidden beneath the

surface. In several places, Schlegel emphasizes that the allegorical

interpretation of the text’s ‘Personen und […] Begebenheiten’ mustn’t

be mistaken for a sheer negligence of the particular aesthetic quality of

this poetic material. He does so in order to distinguish his own notion of

allegory from the common view of allegory as a dry conceptual art form,

designed to be mechanically decoded according to a preconceived

dogmatic codex. By Schlegel’s time, a negative notion of allegory as an

unartistic art form disrespectful to the intrinsic value of the aesthetic

image, which served only to decode a conceptual, often dogmatic,

message and could subsequently be disposed of, had gained acceptance.13

We have already seen how Schlegel emphasized the necessity of a double

interpretive perspective on the literary text, the sensibility to its beautiful

surface (‘den Duft einer Blume’) on the one hand, and the conceptual

understanding of its underlying structure (‘das unendliche Geader eines

einzelnen Blatts’) on the other hand. In the following passage we observe

how this doubleness of the critical perspective is intertwined with the

text’s own allegorical nature – its duality of poetry and philosophical

reflection:

Wie die Grundfaden dieses Styls im ganzen aus der gebildeten Sprache desgesellschaftlichen Lebens genommen sind, so gefallt er sich auch in seltsamenGleichnissen, welche eine eigentumliche Merkwurdigkeit aus diesem oder jenemokonomischen Gewerbe, und was sonst von den offentlichen Gemeinplatzen derPoesie am Entlegensten scheint, dem Hochsten und Zartesten ahnlich zu bildenstreben. Obgleich es also den Anschein haben mochte, als sei das Ganze ebensosehr eine historische Philosophie der Kunst, als ein Kunstwerk oder Gedicht,und als sei alles, was der Dichter mit solcher Liebe ausfuhrt, als ware es seinletzter Zweck, am Ende doch nur ein Mittel: so ist doch auch alles Poesie, reine,hohe Poesie. Alles ist so gedacht und so gesagt, wie von einem der zugleich eingottlicher Dichter und ein vollendeter Kunstler ware; und selbst der feinste Zugder Nebenausbildung scheint fur sich zu existieren und sich eines eignenselbststandigen Daseins zu erfreuen. (Schlegel 1990a, 150)


‘Uberall werden uns goldne Fruchte in silbernen Schalen gereicht’ (p. 150).

The relation between the two levels of the text is thus one of relative

equality and mutual dependence, because the poetic material is the conditio

sine qua non of the hidden philosophy of art, which cannot be expressed

except through the aesthetic configurations at the level of content. The

persons and events, however, simultaneously acquire their raison d’etre

and depth through their function as allegorical signs pointing beyond

themselves toward the inexpressible idea of art as the transcendent telos of

the hidden Kunstlehre. Goethe’s novel seems to be the happy result of the

coincidence of a divine poet (‘ein gottlicher Dichter’) and a perfect artist

(‘ein vollendeter Kunstler’), the one creating convincing characters and

events, the other reflecting on the idea of art. We may ask if an unartistic

poetry or an unaesthetic art is at all conceivable, and the answer is clearly

no. In the first case, the text would remain a superficial story about

‘Personen und […] Begebenheiten’, in the second case it wouldn’t even

exist as a literary text. However, the mutual interdependence of aesthetic

expression and art-philosophical content does create a certain problem for

the allegorical representation at the level of content of an art-philosophical

reflection in turn conceived of as an allegorical circumscription of the idea

of art as an endless process of formation. On the one hand this

representation is effectuated through the text’s numerous variations on

the theme of Bildung,14 but on the other hand this circumscriptive

variation structure collides with the generic convention that the novel

demonstrate a certain progression and that the events culminate in a

definitive ending (cf. the conventional continuum-discontinuum-con-

tinuum structure of the Bildungsroman):

Die gewohnlichen Erwartungen von Einheit und Zusammenhang tauscht dieserRoman ebenso oft als er sie erfullt. Wer aber echten systematischen Instinkt,Sinn fur das Universum, jene Vorempfindung der ganzen Welt hat, dieWilhelmen so interessant macht, fuhlt gleichsam uberall die Personlichkeitund lebendige Individualitat des Werks, und je tiefer er forscht, je mehr innereBeziehungen und Verwandtschaften, je mehr geistigen Zusammenhang entdeckter in demselben. Hat irgendein Buch einen Genius, so ist es dieses. Hatte sichdieser auch im ganzen wie im einzelnen selbst charakterisieren konnen, so durfteniemand weiter sagen, was eigentlich daran sei, und wie man es neben solle. Hierbleibt noch eine kleine Erganzung moglich, und einige Erklarung kann nichtunnutzig oder uberflussig scheinen, da trotz jenes Gefuhl der Anfang und derSchluß des Werkes fast allgemein seltsam und unbefriedigend, und ein und dasandre in der Mitte uberflussig und unzusammenhangend gefunden wird, und da

188 Sofie Kluge

selbst der, welcher das Gottliche der gebildeten Willkur zu unterscheiden und zuehren weiß, beim ersten und beim letzten Lesen etwas Isoliertes fuhlt, als ob beider schonsten und innigsten Ubereinstimmung und Einheit nur eben die letzteVerknupfung der Gedanken und der Gefuhle fehlte. (pp. 151–152)

The question is how any text would be able to represent an eternal

becoming or progression (a ‘grenzenlose Bildsamkeit’) in ‘der schonsten

und innigsten Ubereinstimmung und Einheit’. Since every text is neces-

sarily characterized by conclusiveness and finality – it has to end –

literature seems to be a vain business. Schlegel now ponders that the

ending of Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre appears enforced and implausible,

because Wilhelm – by then a lazy bourgeois deprived of all determination

and engagement15 – against all odds suddenly appears as a mature,

gebildeter man in due accordance with the generic conventions of the

Bildungsroman. That the guarantee of this incredible development should

be the esoteric ‘Turmgesellschaft’ (the external factor or deus ex machina,

that Schlegel earlier promised would ensure the completion of Wilhelm’s

Bildung) only adds to the impression of enforcement and arbitrariness:

‘Der eigentliche Mittelpunkt dieser Willkurlichkeit ist die geheime

Gesellschaft des reinen Verstandes, die Wilhelmen und sich selbst zum

besten hat, und zuletzt noch rechtlich und nutzlich und okonomisch wird’

(p. 163). Schlegel’s expectation that the novel’s level of content should

faithfully mirror the text’s esoteric level has been badly disappointed, since

the finality of the plot seems to contradict the necessary infinity of the

deeper art-philosophical reflection: the transcendent idea of art – the

‘grenzenlose Bildsamkeit’ – cannot of course be enclosed in the finite form

of a text. However, what Goethe does is what could be expected: he

finishes his novel and postulates the happy termination of Wilhelm’s

Bildung. Schlegel’s critique of the novel’s ending is a highly principled

pondering of the fundamental arbitrariness of any ending, essentially an

artificial closure of the endless art-philosophical reflection on art’s idea,

that goes on at a deeper level of any truly good, reflective literary text.

Thus conceived of, Schlegel’s critique of the ending of Wilhelm Meisters

Lehrjahre appears less paradoxical and contradictory to his general

exaltation of the novel in the review: Goethe does what he must do;

Schlegel merely wants to emphasize his own point that every truly good

literary text on a certain level aims at a representation of the transcendent

idea of art, and is hence principally interminable.16 He thus again opposes


his own concept of the novel as transcendental form to the traditional

concept of it as a wholly immanent-secular genre, exclusively occupied

with ‘Personen und […] Begebenheiten’.

However, what Schlegel also wishes to emphasize in the quoted passage

is the necessary interdependence of the fundamentally imperfect literary

text and the perfecting intervention of the critical interpretation (‘hier

bleibt noch eine kleine Erganzung moglich, und einige Erklarung kann

nicht unnutzig oder uberflussig scheinen’). It seems to be a fundamental

premise of literature, that the text cannot complete itself and therefore

needs the ‘Erganzung’ and ‘Erklarung’ of the interpreter. This premise is a

direct consequence of those problems that arose from the mutual

interdependence of the two textual levels: the necessary inadequacy of

the aesthetic figurations of the transcendent idea of art at the level of

content and plot. According to Schlegel’s interpretation of Goethe’s novel,

the text’s dependence on its critic is a necessary premise and a consequence

of its essential orientation toward the transcendent and fundamentally

irrepresentable idea of art: essentially an interminable quest or an infinite

process of circumscriptions and variations on the idea of a ‘grenzenlose

Bildsamkeit’, it depends on external factors for its completion, just as

Wilhelm’s Bildung did. At the level of content as well as the deeper art-

philosophical level the text remains an allegory, which requires interpre-

tation and cannot be immediately understood.

This explains why Schlegel’s review overflows with reflections on

interpretation: if the text’s ultimate telos is to present a ‘grenzenlose

Bildsamkeit’, and if this infinite formability exists only in the different

allegorical variations and circumscriptions on the surface, some funda-

mental guidelines to its interpretation indeed seem necessary. The

importance of interpretation must necessarily be seen as a consequence

of Schlegel’s allegorical aesthetics: the complementarity and mutual

interdependence of text and interpretation occupies a central place in this

aesthetic, basically because the text is said to be a complex aesthetic

structure which ultimately aims at the representation of the transcendent,

irrepresentable idea of art. However, as the text is only able to point to this

idea in the encrypted form of an allegorical imagery, it needs the

Erganzung of the critical interpretation. The German term Erganzung

indicates both completion and supplementation, both closure and infinite

addition. In order to esteem the exact function of literary criticism we

190 Sofie Kluge

obviously need to consider which (if either in particular) of these two

meanings is the more appropriate: is the critical interpretation yet another

circumscription of the idea of art, supplementing the text’s own circum-

scriptiveDarstellung, or is it a completing activity on a different level – or is

it both? This question seems to be a seminal point of disagreement in the

scholarship on the subject, that we shall subsequently consider.

IV. Poetic criticism

So far, we have focused on the necessary doubleness inherent in Schlegel’s

concept of interpretation, the sensuous vision of the work’s poetic qualities

and the conceptual or scientific knowledge of its underlying structure, the

doubleness of feeling and thought. Although this doubleness does perhaps

separate Schlegel’s concept of criticism from this and that contemporary

critical ‘school’ or tendency, the seminal point of difference to these is more

likely the reflective and even aesthetic qualities of Schlegel’s own text. As

we have seen, Schlegel was clearly aware of the problem pertaining to the

textual figuration of the transcendent idea of art as the ultimate telos of

every literary text. This awareness became manifest, for example, in his

view of the novel’s characters and events as allegorical circumscriptions,

figurations, or variations on the novel’s central theme of Bildung, but it

also influences – as we shall see – his own interpretive practice and

determines the form of his own critical text.

Goethe’s text ‘translates’ the hidden Kunstlehre into ‘Personen und […]

Begebenheiten’, i.e. into the aesthetic material of the poetic Darstellung.

His philosophy of art is thus encrypted into an allegorical imagery, which

constitutes its only mode of existence. This view of aesthetic representation

as circumscription subsequently takes hold of the critical interpretation,

which, following the example of its object, becomes a ‘Darstellung des

Dargestellten’, which redoes the novel’s own Darstellung. This has nothing

to do with the ‘bloße Darstellung des Eindrucks’ of impressionist criticism,

which remained merely descriptive and inextricably tied to the historically

determined subjectivity of the interpreter, giving up any connection to an

extra-subjective object. On the contrary, Schlegel’s concept of criticism as a

‘Darstellung des Dargestellten’ may be subjective or tied to interpretation,

but it is still said to achieve a certain kind of objectivity through

its mimicry of the literary text, from Aristotle onwards said to be


characterized by ‘poetic universality’. The paradigm of this ‘poetic

criticism’ is Goethe’s interpretation of Hamlet in Wilhelm Meister:

Die in diesem und dem ersten Buche des nachsten Bandes zerstreute Ansicht desHamlet ist nicht sowohl Kritik als hohe Poesie. Und was kann wohl andersentstehen als ein Gedicht, wenn ein Dichter als solcher ein Werk der Dichtkunstanschaut und darstellt? Dies liegt nicht darin, daß sie uber die Grenzen dessichtbaren Werkes mit Vermutungen und Behauptungen ausgeht. Das muß alleKritik, weil jedes vortreffliche Werk, von welcher Art es auch sei, mehr weiß alses sagt, und mehr will als es weiß. Es liegt in der ganzlichen Verschiedenheit desZweckes und des Verfahrens. Jene poetische Kritik will gar nicht wie eine bloßeInschrift nur sagen, was die Sache sei, wo sie in der Welt stehe und stehen solle:dazu bedarf es nur eines vollstandigen ungeteilten Menschen, der das Werk solange als notig ist, zum Mittelpunkt seiner Tatigkeit mache; wenn ein solchermundliche oder schriftliche Mitteilung liebt, kann es ihm Vergnugen gewahren,eine Wahrnehmung, die im Grunde nur eine und unteilbar ist, weitlaufig zuentwickeln, und so entsteht eine eigentliche Charakteristik. Der Dichter undKunstler hingegen wird die Darstellung von neuem darstellen, das schonGebildete noch einmal bilden wollen; er wird das Werk erganzen, verjungern,neu gestalten. Er wird das Ganze nur in Glieder und Massen und Stucke teilen,nie in seine ursprunglichen Bestandteile zerlegen, die in Beziehung auf das Werktot sind, weil sie nicht mehr Einheiten derselben Art wie das Ganze enthalten, inBeziehung auf das Weltall aber allerdings lebendig und Glieder oder Massendesselben sein konnten. Auf solche bezieht der gewohnliche Kritiker denGegenstand seiner Kunst, und muß daher seine lebendige Einheit unvermeidlichzerstoren, ihn bald in seine Elemente zersetzen, bald selbst nur als ein Atomeiner großeren Masse betrachten. (Schlegel 1990a, 157–158)

Schlegel here establishes a concept of ‘die gewohnliche Kritik’ as a negative

background on which to present his own vision of ‘poetic criticism’.

Interestingly, he reassumes his earlier critique of traditional allegory,

distinguishing between poetic criticism and the so-called ‘Charakteristik’,

which ‘wie eine bloße Inschrift nur sagen, was die Sache sei, wo sie in der

Welt stehe und stehen solle’. This description obviously refers to the

mechanical deciphering of traditional allegory, which consists of an image

(pictura) and a short text (subscriptio), decoding the meaning of the image

according to a preconceived and often dogmatic codex. As earlier

observed, Schlegel distinguished between his own allegorical aesthetics

and the negligence of the poetic material pertinent to this hyper-intellectual

and moralizing tradition; similarly, at this point he distances himself from

the mechanical interpretation of the aesthetic image characteristic of this

tradition, which either dissolves the image in atomistic elements (the lion

on the left signifies Christ, the dog below signifies Melancholy, etc.), or else

192 Sofie Kluge

inserts the atomistic image in a greater dogmatic structure (Christian

morality). In both cases, the interpretation neglects the image as image,

neglects its intrinsic aesthetic value. This is exactly the problem with the

literary ‘Charakteristik’. Just as the interpretation of the image effectuated

in the emblems’ subscriptiones was felt by late eighteenth-century artists

and theorists to destroy the integrity of this image, ‘die gewohnliche Kritik’

destroys the ‘lebendige Einheit’ of the literary text, either dissolving it into

atomistic elements (see, for example, the critique of the ‘moral’ interpreta-

tion of the fictive characters) or neglecting its particularity by referring it

to a greater structure (see, for example, the critique of the generic

interpretation referring the singular work to a preconceived notion of the

novel genre). These critical methods tend to exhaust the aesthetic image

rather than respect its integrity.

In contradistinction to this irreverent procedure, ideal ‘poetic’ criticism

makes broad cuts in the aesthetic material (‘er [der Dichter und Kunstler]

wird das Ganze nur in Glieder und Massen und Stucke teilen’), isolating

significant elements from the totality only to subsequently relate them to

the universe (‘das Weltall’), reviving them and placing them in new

semantic configurations. What are we to understand by this? A little

earlier, Schlegel wrote: ‘Wir mussen uns uber unsre eigne Liebe erheben,

und was wir anbeten, in Gedanken vernichten konnen: sonst fehlt uns, was

wir auch fur andre Fahigkeiten haben, der Sinn fur das Weltall’ (Schlegel

1990a, 148). This passage obviously describes ‘der Sinn fur das Weltall’ as

an ironic attitude; but in establishing a relation between irony and the

universe, Schlegel importantly renounces the negative concept of irony

often associated with his name: the nineteenth-century polemics surround-

ing Schlegel’s concept of irony focused on its ‘bad infinity’, i.e. its allegedly

empty concept of infinity.17 However, both quoted passages present the

universe as the replete telos of ideal criticism, which in an ironic gesture

breaks up the beautiful totality of the literary text only to integrate the

resulting fragments in a new totality. In the passage on poetic criticism the

sense of the universe is thus no longer just cognitive, but also creative – an

activity that revives the text by inserting it into a new semantic

configuration. This new figuration of the aesthetic material by the poet-

artist is an ironic gesture in this last, positive sense (‘der Dichter und

Kunstler hingegen wird die Darstellung von neuem darstellen, das schon

Gebildete noch einmal bilden wollen; er wird das Werk erganzen,


verjungern, neu gestalten’), which may well destroy the beautiful totality of

that which he adores, but does so only to revive or revitalize it (‘wir mussen

[…] was wir anbeten, in Gedanken vernichten konnen’). In order to

understand Schlegel’s notion of the ‘Darstellung des Dargestellten’

performed by poetic criticism as a positive ironic gesture and relation of

the disjecta membra of the text to the endlessly rich universe of meaning,

we need to take a brief look at Goethe’s interpretation of Hamlet, which

Schlegel makes the paradigm of poetic criticism:

Gerade diese Seite des Shakespeare [die Unendlichkeit] wird von Wilhelmenzuerst aufgefaßt, und daß es in dieser Kunstlehre weniger auf seine große Naturals auf seine tiefe Kunstlichkeit und Absichtlichkeit ankam, so mußte die Wahlden Hamlet treffen, da wohl kein Stuck zu so vielfachem und interessantenStreit, was die verborgne Absicht des Kunstlers oder was zufalliger Mangel desWerks sein mochte, Veranlassung geben kann, als eben dieses, welches auch indie theatralische Verwicklung und Umgebung des Romans am schonsteneingreift, und unter andern die Frage von der Moglichkeit, ein vollendetesMeisterwerk zu verandern oder unverandert auf der Buhne zu geben, gleichsamvon selbst aufwirft. (p. 157)

In his treatment of Hamlet in Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, Goethe focuses

on the problem of interpretation. Hamlet is certainly a play that explores

the ambiguity of interpretation. But Schlegel also ponders the play’s

formal ambiguity (it is uncertain whether the ambiguity of the text is ‘die

verborgne Absicht des Kunstlers oder was zufalliger Mangel des Werks’),

perhaps referring to its missing or at least ambiguous denouement. Hamlet

thus appears as an allegory of interpretation, which ‘infects’ its own

interpretation with ambiguity: the play explores the absence of absolute

Truth and the pertaining ambiguity of interpretation as a basic premise of

human understanding. By the very act of interpreting and through the

creation of a new circumscriptive figuration of this theme, Goethe turns his

own text into an Erganzung of the central theme of Shakespeare’s play.

Schlegel thus sees Goethe’s interpretation of Hamlet as an ideal interpre-

tation, which supplements the play’s central theme in a further exploration

of its semantic potential. This ‘Darstellung des Dargestellten’ of poetic

criticism is exactly a revival of the semantic potential of the text through its

relation to the infinite universe of meaning – and, in Schlegel’s own words,

an exploration of the fact, that ‘jedes vortreffliche Werk, […], mehr weiß

als es sagt, und mehr will als es weiß’.18

194 Sofie Kluge

But there is more to say about the creative side to poetic criticism. The

literary text is fundamentally a historically determined ‘selection’ of the

infinite semantic possibilities of the universe, a certain demarcation or

delineation of a perspective, which poetic criticism breaks up only to begin

a reworking of the text’s semantic potential beyond the historical form

(e.g. Hamlet) in which it was originally encrypted. From this reworking,

interpretive work of the poet-critic surges a new historical form (e.g. the

Meister-novel), which is simultaneously a circumscription and a (tempor-

ary) completion of the original text. This new form is subsequently

subjected to a similar critical practice, from which surges yet another new,

historical form (e.g. Schlegel’s ‘Ubermeister’ with its elaboration of the

theme of ‘interpretation’), and so on. Behind the demand that poetic

criticism effectuate an ironic destruction of the text’s beautiful totality, the

partition into ‘Glieder und Massen und Stucke’, we thus find a historico-

philosophical notion of the endless perfectibility of the text, developing

over the centuries by the work of ever new poetic interpreters; taking on

ever new forms, which temporarily perfect its semantic potential in new

historical contexts, the text and its numerous Erganzungen explore the

endless semantic possibilities of the universe and strive to represent

the idea of art. Critical interpretation thus has a transcendent telos, but the

attainment of this telos paradoxically entails its immediate relativizing, just

as the critical interpretation itself constituted a certain ironic relativizing of

the text’s own configuration of truth. Emblematically expressing this

insight, Schlegel’s review originally ended with the words ‘to be contin-

ued’19 – an invitation to posterior critics to take up the lead, not an

indication that Schlegel would subsequently write an ‘Uber Goethes

Meister II’.

However, a fundamental ambiguity remains: the ‘Darstellung des

Dargestellten’ of poetic criticism, its interrelation of the literary text and

the infinite semantic possibilities of the universe, seems to be simulta-

neously a supplementation and a completion of the literary text.

Interpretation thus entails the same ambiguity as the text itself, whose

figuration of the hidden art-philosophical reflection was likewise both

supplementary and completive. The notion of ‘Darstellung des Darge-

stellten’ with its mimicry of the text acutely expresses Schlegel’s acknow-

ledgement of this problem, and raises the question of the hierarchic

relationship between the critical interpretation and the literary text: is the


critical Erganzung of the necessarily incomplete text a completion or just a

supplementation of the text’s own Darstellung?

V. Critical Erganzung: completion or supplementation?

As we have seen, Schlegel’s view of interpretation as necessarily double had

to do with his view of the literary text as an allegory, consisting of a

directly accessible level of content and a deeper level of art-philosophical

reflection; the interpretation thus had to consider the aesthetic material

(‘Personen und […] Begebenheiten’) as allegorical signs, pointing beyond

themselves to something else. In order to understand Schlegel’s notion of

literary criticism as allegorical interpretation we need to take a closer look

at the substantive Erganzung and the verb erganzen, appearing in two

central passages (Schlegel 1990a, 151 and 158) dealing with the relation

between the critical interpretation and the literary text: will the chain of

interpretations ever end, finally transforming the allegorical object into a

perfect eternal symbol, i.e. an image that needs no interpretation but

simply lets the transcendent idea shine through the aesthetic material? Or

will it forever remain a circumscription or figuration of the idea of art,

subject to interpretation, akin to the text’s own Darstellung and one of a

principally infinite number of interpretations?

Although most scholars today tend to reject Walter Benjamin’s study of

the German Fruhromantik, Der Begriff der Kunstkritik in der deutschen

Romantik (1920) remains a seminal contribution to the field of Romantic

studies.20 The problem of contemporary scholars with this work is first of

all Benjamin’s view of Schlegel as a systematic and idealistic thinker,

whose concept of criticism is said to be completive and almost

apotheosizing to the extent that it succeeds in excavating the very idea

of art from the text’s figurative, circumscriptive Darstellung. This view is

obviously irreconcilable with the poststructuralist and deconstructivist

tendency of recent Romantic scholarship, notoriously appalled by

idealism and metaphysics.21 Decisively influencing the modern view of

allegory as an arbitrary form, Benjamin’s central point, that the

arbitrariness of allegory doesn’t exclude its referential function as a sign

pointing toward transcendence, has disappeared somewhere along the

way.22 Benjamin’s theory of allegory doesn’t stop by recognizing the

fundamental arbitrariness of signification (although it dwells on it with

196 Sofie Kluge

considerable insistence), but on the contrary acquires its originality

precisely from the recognition that even the most arbitrary linguistic or

aesthetic sign may refer to a transcendent, metaphysical truth. This view,

as well as the vindication of allegory, must be referred to Benjamin’s

omnipresent critique of mythical thought and aesthetics, not least his

recurring polemics against the false prosperity of naıve symbolism and the

aesthetics of the symbol.23 The latter is obviously relevant to Benjamin’s

confrontation of Romanticism (Friedrich Schlegel) and Goethe in the

important closing chapter of his study of Romanticism, which opposes

the Romantic theory of criticism to what we may term Goethe’s ‘theory of

the aesthetic material’.24 Behind this opposition we intuit the opposition

of allegory and symbol:

Die Kunsttheorie der Fruhromantiker und die Goethes sind in den Prinzipieneinander entgegengesetzt […] Die ganze kunstphilosophische Arbeit der Fruh-romantiker kann also dahin zusammengefaßt werden, daß sie die Kritisierbar-keit des Kunstwerks prinzipiell nachzuweisen gesucht haben. Die ganzeKunsttheorie Goethes steht hinter seiner Anschauung von der Unkritisierbarkeitder Werke. (Benjamin 1991, 110)

As previously noted, it was precisely the notion of the literary text as

incomplete and dependent upon interpretation that qualified Schlegel’s

aesthetics as allegorical, so when Benjamin generally emphasizes the role of

criticism as seminal to Romantic aesthetics, we may infer that he means to

indicate its allegorical nature. Whereas the first part of Benjamin’s study is

concerned with an extrapolation of the concept of absolute reflection, the

second part centres on the concept of criticism; whereas the first part

argues that Romanticism introduced the phenomenon of the polysemous

literary text, opening up an endless process of textual semiosis (see, for

example, the open form of the fragment, susceptible to an infinite number

of interpretations), the second part claims the subsequent closure of this

process through criticism as a completive or exhaustive interpretation of

the text. The Romantic concept of criticism is thus presented as a more or

less systematic quest to confine the semiotic infinity opened up by absolute

reflection in the literary work, endlessly reflecting on the transcendent idea

of art. Considering Goethe’s importance as a representative of the

aesthetic symbol, Benjamin’s final chapter appears as an intent to

enlighten the Romantics’ allegorical aesthetics through its opposition to

the Goethean aesthetics of the symbol.


Benjamin thus basically presents the Romantic concept of interpretation

(criticism) as an answer to the aesthetics expressed in Goethe’s notion of

the literary text as a torso, forever separated from the ‘Urbild’ (the idea)

and at the most able to assume the status of a ‘Vorbild’ by forming

historical constellations with other texts (the paradigm of such constella-

tions is Classical art, where a group of texts taken together approach, but

do not reach, the prototype):

Wohl haben die einzelnen Werke an den Urbildern Anteil, aber einen Ubergangaus ihrem Reich zu den Werken gibt es nicht, wie ein solcher im Medium derKunst, von der absoluten Form zu den einzelnen, wohl besteht. Im Verhaltniszum Ideal bleibt das einzelne Werk gleichsam Torso. Es ist eine vereinzelteBemuhung, das Urbild darzustellen, und nur als Vorbild kann es mit anderenseinesgleichen dauern, nie aber vermogen sie zur Einheit des Ideals selbstlebendig zusammenzuwachsen. Uber das Verhaltnis der Werke zum Unbeding-ten und damit zu einander hat Goethe entsagend gedacht. Im romantischenDenken aber rebellierte alles gegen diese Losung. Die Kunst war dasjenigeGebiet, in welchem die Romantik die unmittelbare Versohnung des Bedingtenmit dem Unbedingten am reinsten durchzufuhren strebte. […] Aber was Schlegeldiese Losung, je mehr er zu sich selbst kam, verbot, war daß sie zu einer hochstbedingten Einschatzung des einzelnen Werkes fuhrt. […] Die Aufhebung derZufalligkeit, des Torsohaften der Werke ist die Intention in dem FormbegriffFriedrich Schlegels. […] Das Kunstwerk darf nicht Torso, es muß bewegtesvergangliches Moment in der lebendigen transzendentalen Form sein. Indem essich in seiner Form beschrankt, macht es sich in zufalliger Gestalt verganglich, invergehender Gestalt aber ewig durch Kritik. (Benjamin 1991, 114–115)

According to Benjamin’s rather tendentious interpretation of Goethe’s

aesthetic theory, the radical dissociation of the ‘Urbild’ results in a

negligence of the historical specificity of both the single text and the

constellations of texts (‘Vorbilder’). On the contrary, the Romantic

exaltation of transcendental form (the ‘grenzenlose Bildsamkeit’) appears

as a utopian telos, compared to which the historical texts appear as

arbitrary and transient, but also dynamic figurations, eternalized by the

critical interpretation of them as allegories of the idea of art. Schlegel’s

notion of the complementarity of interpretation and text is thus mirrored

in its own contradiction, Goethe’s notion of the self-contained text, which

neither can nor attempts to reach the unreachable ideal:

Kritik am Kunstwerk ist in der Tat nach Goethes letzter Intention wedermoglich noch notwendig. Notig mag allenfalls ein Hinweis auf das Gute,Warnung vor dem Schlechten sein, und moglich ist das apodiktische Urteil uberWerke dem Kunstler, der eine Anschauung vom Urbild hat. Aber die

198 Sofie Kluge

Kritisierbarkeit als ein wesentliches Moment am Kunstwerk anzuerkennen,verweigert Goethe. Methodische, d.h. sachlich notwendige, Kritik ist vonseinem Standpunkt aus unmoglich. In der romantischen Kunst aber istKritik nicht allein moglich und notwendig, sondern unausweislich liegt in ihrerTheorie die Paradoxie einer hoheren Einschatzung der Kritik als des Werkes.(p. 119)

According to Benjamin, Goethe’s aesthetic theory doesn’t need any specific

notion of critical interpretation. This is a direct result of Goethe’s view of

the literary text as self-contained, endlessly removed from the truth and

prudently rejecting the possibility of absolute representation. The only

function of criticism is to identify the good and bad work (to the benefit of

the book consumer?), and the only form of ‘criticism’ admitted by Goethe

is the artistic consciousness of the abyss separating the historical texts from

the transcendent ideal. On the contrary, Romantic aesthetics is an

aesthetics of interpretation, which paradoxically ranks criticism above

literature, precisely because the completive function of criticism perfections

the fragmentary text in a way that it cannot do itself, and hence

approximates it to the transcendent idea of art:

Die Absolutierung des geschaffenen Werkes, das kritische Verfahren, war ihmdas Hochste. Es laßt sich in einem Bilde versinnlichen als die Erzeugung derBlendung im Werk. Diese Blendung – das nuchterne Licht – macht die Vielheitder Werke verloschen. Es ist die Idee. (p. 119)

The Romantic aesthetics of interpretation thus focuses on the final

excavation of the truth performed by criticism as a completive act, which

not only closes the infinite semiosis opened up by the literary text in its

attempt to represent the transcendent idea of art, but also redeems the

historical constellations of texts. Contrasting the Romantics’ allegorical

aesthetics and its complementarity of interpretation and text with Goethe’s

aesthetics of the symbol, Benjamin thus emphasizes that through the

Romantic concept of criticism, both ‘Werk’ and ‘Vorbild’ ultimately join

the ‘Urbild’. Romanticism becomes an expression of transcendental

idealism. This final outcome of Benjamin’s study of Romanticism has

subsequently been refuted by more than one of Benjamin’s own disciples.

Among these is Winfried Menninghaus, who largely focuses on

Benjamin’s prolongation and interpretation of Romantic aesthetics and

philosophy. Whereas the early Walter Benjamins Theorie der Sprachmagie

(1980) demonstrates the roots of Benjamin’s theory of language in


Hamann, Herder and Humboldt, the Unendliche Verdopplung. Die

fruhromantische Grundlegung der Kunsttheorie im Begriff absoluter Selbst-

reflection (1987) presents an interpretation of German Fruhromantik based

on Benjamin’s study of Romanticism, but also in significant ways deviates

from it. Menninghaus, for example, begins his study by correcting

Benjamin’s focus on the concept of criticism, which he considers

subordinate to the concept of reflection (along with other central

Romantic concepts such as form, work, irony, transcendental poetry and

the novel):

Der Begriff der Kunstkritik in der deutschen Romantik – so lautet der Titel vonWalter Benjamins Dissertation. Richtiger, angemessener ware ein andere Titel:Die Theorie poetischer Reflexion in der deutschen Romantik. Denn der Kern, derBrennpunkt der ganzen Arbeit ist der romantische Reflexionsbegriff, und derBegriff der Kritik figuriert nur als eine der systematischen Konsequenzen diesesReflexionsbegriffs. (Menninghaus 1987, 30)

This shift of focus from criticism to reflection has considerable conse-

quences for Menninghaus’s understanding of both Benjamin and Roman-

ticism, the essence of the latter being presented as an anticipation of

Ferdinand de Saussure’s concept of difference and its development in

poststructuralist thinking, or simply as a Semontologie (the knowledge of

the being of signs as opposed to ontology, the knowledge of the being of

Being). Menninghaus now relates the resulting notion of semiosis as an

endless play of signs to the concept of absolute self-reflection, the

originator of these signs as well as of a non-representational system of

signification. This procedure obviously amounts to a liberation of

Romanticism from its historical relation to transcendental idealism, and

Menninghaus thus characteristically sees the discovery of this endless

‘semontological’ potential in the Romantic concept of reflection as

Benjamin’s real achievement:

Die grundlegenden Tropen der romantischen Semontologie – wie Nach-traglichkeit des Ersten, Vorgangigkeit und Konstitutivitat des Zweiten(ursprungliche Reflexion, schaffende Darstellung) – sind in ihrer Paradoxienicht sowohl wider- als gegensinnig. Denn sie unternehmen es, die ,,Meta-physik der Prasenz‘‘ in deren eigener Sprache zu dementieren. Mit derCharakterisierung der Reflexion als eines ,,logisch Ersten‘‘ (I, 36) und ,,absolutSchopferischen‘‘ (I, 63) hat Walter Benjamin diese Auseinandersetzung imMedium fruhromantischen Denkens bereits in aller (scheinbaren) Paradoxiemarkiert. (p. 115)

200 Sofie Kluge

With this interpretation of Der Begriff der Kunstkritik in der deutschen

Romantik it is no wonder that Menninghaus is utterly incomprehensible

to Benjamin’s interpretation of the Romantic concept of criticism as a

closure of the endless semiosis of the literary text. Menninghaus’s

subordination of the concept of criticism to the endless semiosis of

absolute reflection, on the contrary, makes the critical interpretation a

supplementation or rewriting of the literary text, which neither can nor

attempts to close the text, but on the contrary exhibits the text’s

semontological play of signs beyond any preoccupation with a transcen-

dental truth or ‘signifie’:

Identitat und ihre hochste Chiffre, das Absolute, werden als gleitender Effekteiner differentiellen Kette sich reflektierender Ahnlichkeiten (Symmetrie, Reim,isotope Reihen) angesehen. Das prasenzmetaphysische Konzept von Identitatwird ersetzt durch ein Spiel der differance zwischen Ahnlichkeiten. Erst beideMomente, operierende differance und Praxis der Ahnlichkeiten, lassen diephilosophische Dignitat der Reflexionsphanomene Duplizitat, Symmetrie, Reimund Reihen verstehen, ihre ganz und gar nicht ,,nur-formale‘‘, sondernontosemiologisch fundierte Dominanz in den literatur-kritischen Analysen derFruhromantiker. (p. 186)

This passage sums up Menninghaus’s critical project, the equation of the

Romantic concept of reflection with Derrida’s concept of ‘differance’,25

both transgressing their origin in metaphysical philosophy (transcendental

idealism), and establishing a non-representational poetics based on

likeness, repetition and symmetry. In fact, Menninghaus even ventures

to present Romanticism as a transgression of Derrida’s thought: in the last

analysis, Romantic semontology is not just a negation of the philosophy of

identity, but a redeeming transformation of it, which rethinks identity as a

play of ‘differences’ and thus establishes the basis for a whole new kind of

‘realism’, which doesn’t rely on any (not even a negative) concept of

original ‘originality’:

Es fallt sogar schwer zu sehen, worin Derrida gegenuber den Fruhromantikernetwas substantiell Neues zu bieten hat; leichter dagegen, worin er hinter ihnenzuruckbleibt. Der umfassendere, facettenreichere Charakter des fruhromanti-schen Denkens bringt es namlich mit sich, daß die kritischen Wendungen gegeneine Metaphysik der selbstprasenten Identitat nicht auf eine Negation vonIdentitatsphilosophie hinauslaufen, sondern sich eher als deren Rettung in einerextremen Anspannung verstehen. Die Figuren der differance supplementieren


nicht nur, sondern sind an sich selbst wiederum eine Fassung von Identitat, furdie Romantiker letztlich die einzig haltbare: Identitat als Effekt des Spiels derDifferenz selbst. (p. 131)

Developing the concept of absolute reflection expounded by Benjamin in

the first part of his study of Romanticism, Menninghaus views the

Fruhromantik as a direct predecessor of the dancing Nietzsche in Derrida’s

La differance. Criticism plays no noteworthy part, since it is only one of

numerous disguises of the absolute, sign-producing reflection, and

important parts of both Schlegel’s and Benjamin’s aesthetic insights are

consequently lost: the central role of criticism – mirroring the necessary

complementarity of text and interpretation central to both their allegorical

aesthetics, focusing on the excavation of the idea of art from the text’s

figurative Darstellung through the critical interpretation as a ‘Darstellung

des Dargestellten’ – has been subordinated to the endless production of

arbitrary signs by absolute reflection. Concluding our brief survey of our

two important critics of Romanticism, we may say that whereas Benjamin

basically saw critical Erganzung of the literary text as a completive act,

Menninghaus sees it as a supplementary, principally endless rewriting of

the text. Their disagreement mirrors the fundamental ambiguity inherent

in Schlegel’s own concept of Erganzung – and in the very term itself.

VI. Allegory and symbol

Describing the ‘Darstellung des Dargestellten’, Schlegel conspicuously

explored this ambiguity, which the preceding analysis of Benjamin’s and

Menninghaus’s interpretations of Romantic aesthetics elucidates: Schlegel

indeed seems to be both an idealist and a ‘semontologist’, simultaneously

seeing critical interpretation as a completion and a rewriting of the text.

Does his concept of criticism ultimately end in sheer paradoxy and

ambiguity, then? The answer to this rhetorical question is obviously no.

Schlegel’s concept of criticism is namely inserted in a philosophy of

history.

We have already observed how the doubleness of Schlegel’s concept of

interpretation was intimately intertwined with the allegorical nature of the

text, essentially a historical form which temporarily ‘houses’ the trans-

cendent idea of art, and for a given historical period expresses this idea

202 Sofie Kluge

wholly and fully. Subsequently, this form is, however, bound to be

subjected to the reworking of poetic criticism, which destroys it or cuts it

up in ‘Glieder und Massen und Stucke’ only to recycle the semiotic

material creating a new temporary completion, which will in turn be

subjected to the same procedure – and so on ad infinitum. The Erganzung

of poetic criticism is thus simultaneously a completion and a supplemen-

tation or rewriting, as the allegorical aesthetics is situated within a larger

historico-philosophical frame.

In order to put Schlegel’s historico-philosophical allegorical aesthetics

into perspective, we may take a brief look at Goethe’s notion of the

symbol, often presented by the great poet in its contradistinction to

allegory:

Die Allegorie verwandelt die Erscheinung in einen Begriff, den Begriff in einBild, doch so daß der Begriff im Bilde immer noch begrenzt und vollstandig zuhalten und zu haben und an demselben auszusprechen sei. Die Symbolikverwandelt die Erscheinung in Idee, die Idee in Bild und so daß die Idee im Bildimmer unendlich wirksam und unerreichbar bleibt, und selbst in allen Sprachenausgesprochen doch unaussprechlich bliebe. (Goethe, Maximen und Reflexionen,quoted in Sørensen 1972, 134)

Goethe’s critique of allegory centres on its conceptual, non-aesthetic

tendency to neglect the intrinsic value of imagery: according to this view,

the aim of allegory is the mere articulation of an abstract concept by means

of an image. This artistic practice creates works whose (conceptual)

content and (aesthetic) expression are sharply distinguished. Such distinc-

tion between content and expression is unartistic to the extent that art is

defined by its self-contained and non-conceptual form, and this definition

is essentially the one voiced in Goethe’s subsequent emphasis on the

unbreakable synthesis of image and idea in the symbolic form, far removed

from the dry and mechanical conceptuality of allegory.

As previously mentioned, Schlegel also rejected traditional allegory and

its negligence of the aesthetic image; however, he gave us no reason to

think badly of conceptuality in the sphere of the arts. On the contrary, he

held that Goethe’s real intention with Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre was the

establishing of ‘eine nicht unvollstandige Kunsttheorie’, so that the story

about Wilhelm had to be referred to as ‘die hochsten Begriffe’, that is to

say, ultimately inserted in a philosophy of history in accordance with the

larger framing of the concept of criticism. Schlegel would, though, never


claim that the idea of art itself was present in the aesthetic figuration: the

art-philosophical reflection on the idea of art was essentially endless,

because this idea – genesis, creation, formation, ‘grenzenlose Bildsamkeit’

– was per se irrepresentable in the finite form of a work of art. If the text

had been able to represent the idea of art, it would have no need of its

allegorical form nor of the allegorical interpretation, and it would then

have been a perfect symbol in the Goethean sense. When Goethe claims

that the idea is present in the symbol, he must therefore be speaking of an

idea that is radically different from the transcendent object of Schlegel’s

allegorical aesthetics. Another of Goethe’s reflections on the difference

between allegory and symbol seems to confirm that this is indeed so:

Es ist ein großer Unterschied, ob der Dichter zum Allgemeinen das Besonderesucht, oder im Besonderen das Allgemeine schaut. Aus jener Art entstehtAllegorie, wo das Besondere nur als Beyspiel, als Exempel des Allgemeinen gilt;die letztere aber ist eigentlich die Natur der Poesie; sie spricht ein Besonderesaus, ohne ans Allgemeine zu denken, oder darauf hinzuweisen. Wer nun diesesBesondere lebendig faßt, erhalt zugleich das Allgemeine mit, ohne es gewahr zuwerden, oder erst spat. (Goethe, Maximen und Reflexionen, quoted in Sørensen1972, 134)

Emphasizing how the symbol departs from particularity (‘das Besondere’),

Goethe here sheds considerable light on the presence of the idea in the

aesthetic symbol: the idea that is present in the symbol is immanent in the

poetic material itself, not a transcendent idea as in Schlegel’s allegorical

aesthetics. Goethe’s theory of the symbol is thus an expression of an

immanent aesthetics, and even if this aesthetics doesn’t, according to

Goethe, exclude a concept of generality (‘wer nun dieses Besondere

lebendig faßt, erhalt zugleich das Allgemeine mit’), it is evidently a

different kind of generality than the absolute transcendent form – the idea

of art – which, according to Schlegel, settles temporarily in the historical

work. Goethe much rather conceives of the general (‘das Allgemeine’) as a

quality inherent in particularity and resuscitated by the poet.

It seems reasonable to conclude that Schlegel’s allegorical aesthetics and

Goethe’s aesthetics of the symbol have widely differing points of departure:

whereas Schlegel refers the literary text to ‘die hochsten Begriffe’, the idea

of art, Goethe sees the phenomena of the physical and historical world as

the origin of poetry; whereas Schlegel seeks to solve the problem relating to

the representation of a transcendent idea through his concepts of the text

204 Sofie Kluge

as an allegorical Darstellung and the critical interpretation as a ‘Darstel-

lung des Dargestellten’, Goethe rejects transcendentalism and finds true

poetic objectivity in immanence. The two perspectives express two eternal

aesthetic viewpoints, the location of the essence of poetry beyond

phenomena and in phenomena themselves, respectively.

Schlegel’s critique of Goethe’s aesthetics of the symbol, as expressed in

his allegorical interpretation of the Meister novel, primarily aims at the

Goethean notion of the literary work as an unbreakable synthesis of image

and idea, a hermetic self-contained object, widely separated from the

Urbild: this aesthetics is principally inseparable from a wholly immanent

aesthetics ‘wo Personen und Begebenheiten der letzte Endzweck sind’.

Against this aesthetics, Schlegel establishes his view of the literary work as

a temporary, historical receptacle which for a certain period of time

contains the idea of art only to be subsequently reworked by poetic

criticism. The question arises whether this historico-philosophical vari-

ation of an allegorical aesthetics in the last analysis escapes the critique –

launched not only by Goethe, but also by Schlegel himself – of traditional

allegory (focusing on its conceptuality and negligence of the aesthetic

image). From Goethe’s point of view, the Romantic rehabilitation of

allegory was basically Promethean: the transcendent idea (the Urbild)

always remains transcendent, and art is neither entitled nor able to reveal

it. It should therefore focus on phenomena, discovering the immanent

generality inherent in these, and respect the intrinsic value of the aesthetic

image instead of relating it to ‘die hochsten Begriffe’ and thereby removing

the focus from the profane beauty inherent in immanence.

Concluding our analysis and this article, we may ponder that Schlegel’s

rehabilitation in the Meister review of an allegorical aesthetics with its

mutual interdependence of text and interpretation considerably elucidates

his œuvre in its totality: the emphasis on the importance of interpretation

as a congenial reworking of the literary text appears as the necessary

background against which to understand Schlegel’s exploration of

fragments. The emphasis on the transcendent, yet temporarily attainable

telos of all poetic and philosophical activity likewise elucidates Schlegel’s

intellectual development: however inconsistent it may appear, it seems to

be a constant quest for the transcendent realm of ideas, which the

successive historical stages represent in a temporary form and which are

(like the poetic Darstellung) always criticizable and subject to a critical


Erganzung. Finally, the ‘Ubermeister’ appears as a subtle reply to Goethe’s

symbolic aesthetics, provocatively based on a kind of deconstructive

reading of the master’s own novel, demonstrating the literary text’s

deviation from the author’s official aesthetic programme as it appeared in

the Maximen und Reflexionen by inserting it into a transcendental

philosophy of history, which Goethe didn’t support. Schlegel’s review

thus ultimately turns Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre into the paradigm of a

transcendental and allegorical – Romantic – work of art. The nickname

‘Ubermeister’, whereby Schlegel usually referred to this text, emblemat-

ically expresses his own confidence in this astonishing critical achievement.

NOTES

1. Karl-Heinz Bohrer gives a good survey of the critical reception of Romanticism inDie Kritik der Romantik (1989).

2. Cf. Andreas Huyssen’s epilogue to his edition of Schlegel’s Kritische und theore-tische Schriften (1990), which reproduces Curtius’s words:‘Erstens wird ihm vorgeworfen, daß er faul war; zweitens war er frech, denn er hatdie Faulheit noch literarisch verteidigt und ein Lob des Mußiggangs geschrieben.Dazu kommt, daß er Schillers Glocke komisch fand und das auch sagte und dru-ckte. Weiter: Friedrich Schlegel war unmoralisch. Die Kombination von Faulheitund Frechheit wurde das ja allein schon zur Genuge beweisen. Nun hat sichderselbe Verfasser aber auch noch erlaubt, einen Roman zu schreiben, der dieFreuden der Liebe feiert. Das haben die Aufsichtsbehorden der deutschen Literatursehr ubel vermerkt. Aber es kommt noch schlimmer. Friedrich Schlegel waruberhaupt ein Genießer. Er aß und trank gerne und brachte es dabei zu einerbehabigen Korpulenz. Auch dieses Faktum wird gegen ihn ausgebeutet. AndereLeute durfen dick werden, ohne daß man sie deswegen noch postum belastigt. […]Daß aber Friedrich Schlegel zur Korperfulle neigte, wird allgemein als ‘‘Verfet-tung’’ bezeichnet, und der ungunstige Beiklang dieses Wortes soll andeuten, daß essich nicht nur um einen korperlichen, sondern auch um einen seelischen Prozeßgehandelt habe.’Rene Wellek’s well-known articles on Romanticism repeat these views (Wellek1949a, b).

3. Besides the review ‘Uber Goethes Meister’, primarily ‘Uber Lessing’, which con-tains the important prologue on the nature of literary criticism.

4. Schlegel may have the great Enlightenment critic J. C. Gottsched in mind. We notea variation ante terminem on the hermeneutic distinction between Erklarung andVerstandnis in the critique of ‘empiristic’ criticism.

5. Schlegel may here be drawing a caricature of G. E. Lessing, the father of a newcritical self-understanding (a free and personal critical style) and an agressiveopposer of the ‘gelehrte Kritik’ of Gottsched and others. Cf. Schlegel’s above-mentioned ‘Uber Lessing’.

206 Sofie Kluge

6. The concept of the novel (der Roman) is of course of utmost importance to Schlegel,the Roman-tic.

7. Cf. also modern equivalent: the psychoanalysis of fictive characters.8. In L’absolu litteraire (1978) Jean-Luc Nancy and Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe present

the literary theory of Athenaum Romanticism as an intent to reconstitute orreintegrate the different aspects of the Cartesian subject, which had disintegratedwith Kant’s two first critiques. Identical to Kant’s own programme in the Kritik derUrteilskraft the Athenaum was thus, according to these French philosophers,an attempt to establish a ‘subject of art’ able to mediate between Vernunft andVerstand, albeit on radically different premises (the premises of art) than thoseproposed by Kant himself.

9. E.g. thematized in Antonio’s speech in the Gesprach uber die Poesie (the ‘Brief uberden Roman’). Cf. also Schlegel’s preoccupation with Cervantes’s Don Quixote, aparadigm (I may add) of his early theory of the novel.

10. In the case of Don Quixote, Schlegel (in accordance with Schelling’s interpretationof the novel in the Philosophie der Kunst) interprets the protagonists Don Quixoteand Sancho as allegories of ‘ideality’ and ‘reality’.

11. In his review of Tieck’s translation of Don Quixote, Schlegel likewise ponderedCervantes’s (and Shakespeare’s) conspicuity: ‘Da man schon anfangt, den Shak-speare [sic] nicht mehr fur einen rasend tollen Sturm- und Drangdichter, sondernfur einen der absichtsvollsten Kunstler zu halten, so ist Hoffnung, daß man sichentschließen werde, auch den großen Cervantes nicht bloß fur einen Spaßmacher zunehmen, da er, was die verborgne Absichtlichkeit betrifft, wohl eben so schlau undarglistig sein mochte, wie jener, der ohne von ihm zu wissen, sein Freund undBruder war. (Schlegel quoted in Minor 1882, 314).

12. See Schlegel 1990a, 156: ‘Beide [i.e. Aurelie and Jarno] sind sich so vollkommenentgegengesetzt wie die tiefe innige Mariane und die leichte allgemeine Philine; undbeide treten gleich diesen starker hervor als notig ware, um die dargestellte Ku-nstlehre mit Beispielen und die Verwicklung des Ganzen zu versorgen. […] Serlo istin gewissem Sinne ein allgemeingultiger Mensch, und selbst seine Jugendgeschichteist wie sie sein kann und sein soll bei entschiedenem Mangel an Sinn fur dasHochste. Darin ist er Jarno’n gleich: beide haben am Ende doch nur das Mecha-nische ihrer Kunst in der Gewalt.’

13. This negative view of allegory found its quintessential expression in Goethe’saesthetics of the symbol, which we shall subsequently return to. However,K. W. F. Solger especially supported Schlegel’s rehabilitation of allegory; see forexample, his words from the lectures on Asthetik: ‘Sie [die Allegorie] kann denwirklichen Gegenstand als bloßen Gedanken auffassen, ohne ihn als Gegenstand zuverlieren. Sie macht, was vor unseren Augen vorgeht, zu einer Erscheinung derIdee, wobei wir gleichwohl die Wirklichkeit als solche vor uns behalten’ (Solger1829, 135).

14. See Schlegel 1990a, 161: ‘Wir sehen auch, daß diese Lehrjahre eher jeden andernzum tuchtigen Kunstler oder zum tuchtigen Mann bilden wollen und bilden kon-nen, als Wilhelmen selbst. Nicht dieser oder jener Mensch sollte erzogen, sonderndie Natur, die Bildung selbst sollte in mannigfachen Beispielen dargestellt, und ineinfache Grundsatze zusammengedrangt werden.’


15. See Schlegel 1990a, 161: ‘Nach einigen leichten Krampfen von Angst, trotz undReue verschwindet seine Selbststandigkeit aus der Gesellschaft der Lebendigen. Erresigniert formlich darauf, einen eignen Willen zu haben.’

16. See also Schlegel’s notions of ‘progessive Universalpoesie’ and ‘Transzendental-poesie’ as expressions of the Romantic desire to ‘re-enchant’ the world by means ofpoetry and art after what was felt to be the ‘disenchantment’ of the Enlightenmentperiod.

17. See Hegel’s critique of Schlegel’s irony in the opening chapter of his Aesthetics andKierkegaard’s critique of aestheticisim in the second part of Enten-eller

18. Schlegel 1990a, 157.19. In accordance with Schlegel’s own correction in the subsequent edition of the

Meister review in the anthology Charakteristiken und Kritiken (1801), the Reclamedition has omitted these highly significant closing words.

20. See, for example, Menninghaus 1987, 230–254, the appendix ‘Zur Vor- undNachgeschichte von Walter Benjamins Romantik-Dissertation. Ein Kapitel Wis-senschaftsgeschichte’.

21. Cf. in particular Paul de Man’s extensive and seminal contribution to Americanscholarship on the period (Rhetoric of Romanticism, 1984).

22. Again, Paul de Man is a seminal point of reference; see, for example, his devel-opment of an allegorical aesthetics in Allegories of Reading (1979), and not the leastin the chapter from Blindness and Insight (1983) entitled ‘The rhetoric of tempo-rality’, which deals with symbol and allegory.

23. See also, however, Benjamin’s notorious mystic vein (his theory of the ‘Namen-sprache’, etc.).

24. See Benjamin 1991, 110–119 (‘Die fruhromantische Kunsttheorie und Goethe’).Entering the explosive field of opposition between Weimar Classicism and Fruh-romantik, Benjamin in this context supports the Romantics, whereas he favours theGoethean perspective in the essay on Goethe’s Wahlverwandtschaften.

25. Menninghaus accordingly claims that ‘die sprachtheoretischen GrundannahmenDerridas konvergieren weithin mit denen der Fruhromantiker’ (Menninghaus 1987,115).

REFERENCES

Benjamin, W. 1991, ‘Der Begriff der Kunstkritik in der deutschen Romantik’ inGesammelte Schrjften, I–1, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main.

Bohrer, K.-H. 1989, Die Kritik der Romantik, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main.Hegel, G. W. F. 1999, Vorlesungen uber Asthetik, I–III, vols 13–15 of Werke,

Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main.Kierkegaard, S. 2004, Enten-eller, vols 2–3 of Samlede vaerker, Gyldendal, Copen-

hagen.Lacoue-Labarthe, P. & Nancy, J.-L. 1978, L’absolu litteraire, Seuil, Paris.Man, P. de. 1979, Allegories of Reading, Yale University Press, New Haven & London.–. 1983, Blindness and Insight, University of Minnesota Press, Minnesota.–. 1984, Rhetoric of Romanticism, Columbia University Press, New York.Menninghaus, W. 1987, Unendliche Verdopplung. Die fruhromantische Grundlegung der

Kunsttheorie im Begriff absoluter Selbstreflexion, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main.

208 Sofie Kluge

Minor, J. (ed.) 1882, F. Schlegels prosaische Jugendschriften 1794–1802, Carl Konegen,Vienna.

Schlegel, F. 1990a, ‘Uber Goethes Meister’ in Kritische und theoretische Schriften,Reclam, Stuttgart.

–. 1990b, Gesprach uber die Poesie in Kritische und theoretische Schriften, Reclam,Stuttgart.

–. 1801, ‘Uber Lessing’ in F. Schlegel & A. W. Schlegel, Charakteristiken und Kritiken,Nicolovius, Konigsberg.

Solger, K. W. F. 1829, Vorlesungen uber Asthetik, Brockhaus, Leipzig.Sørensen, B. A. (ed.) 1972, Symbol und Allegorie, Athenaum, Frankfurt am Main.Wellek, R. 1949a,‘The concept of ‘‘Romanticism’’ in literary history. I. The term

‘‘Romantic’’ and its derivatives’, Comparative Literature, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 1–23.–. 1949b, ‘The concept of ‘‘Romanticism’’ in literary history. II. The unity of European

Romanticism’, Comparative Literature, vol. 1, no. 2, pp. 147–172.

Sofie Kluge. Born 1975. PhD student, Department of Arts and Cultural Studies,University of Copenhagen. Author of Don Quixote og romangenren (2006), ‘The Worldin a Poem. Gongora versus Quevedo in Jorge Luis Borges’ El Aleph’ (2005), and severalarticles on seventeenth-century literature.


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An Allegory of 'Bildung'. Friedrich Schlegel's Interpretation of Goethe's "Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre"