Alan C Leidner

South Atlantic Modern Language Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to South Atlantic Review.

http://www.jstor.org

South Atlantic Modern Language Association

Catharsis and Self-Exoneration in Klinger's "Die Zwillinge" Author(s): Alan C. Leidner Source: South Atlantic Review, Vol. 50, No. 4 (Nov., 1985), pp. 51-63Published by: South Atlantic Modern Language AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3199382Accessed: 07-05-2015 21:04 UTC

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/ info/about/policies/terms.jsp

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

This content downloaded from 132.248.9.8 on Thu, 07 May 2015 21:04:23 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Catharsis and Self-Exoneration in Klinger's Die Zwillinge

ALAN C. LEIDNER

W HEN KURT MAY launched the "therapeutic" approach to F M. Klinger in the 1930s, his point of departure was Klinger's own frequently-voiced need to "pour out" disquieting feelings through the act of writing (Briefbuch 388).' May was fascinated by the unrelenting "will to self-realization" that drove Klinger to purge youthful emotional excesses in the "raging, stomping . . . quivering and roaring" of his dramatic characters (405) and suggested that Klinger's early drama was literary therapy that served to aid his "fight for a new attitude and style of life" (407). Subsequent criticism has been less sensitive to this aspect of Klinger's work. In an essay now part of the Reclam edition of Die Zwillinge (1776; The Twins), Karl S. Guthke notes that this play, in particular, allows Klinger to criticize "a figure [Guelfo, the protagonist] who is similar to himself, and whose repre- sentation makes it easy for him to release his own emotion" (707); he goes on to argue that Guelfo's self-critical fury marks a simultaneous "peak and crisis" of the intense, short-lived Sturm und Drang (703).2 But Guthke does not pursue May's original line of thought, with its promise of identifying the precise role of emotional discharge in Klinger's social development, and maintains, in fact, that Klinger derived no lasting beneficial effect whatsoever from writing the play. His conclusion is that Guelfo, Klinger's literary alter ego, is childish, and that his behavior is "pointless . . . practically absurd, pure discharge" (712). It is a view that reinforces Sturm und Drang's reputa- tion as a tradition whose response to frustration is, as a matter of course, shallow and simplistic.

The therapeutic approach to Die Zwillinge has, however, neglected a curious feature of the play, one at the center of a complex strategy: far from depicting a simple and direct purgation of Guelfo's emotions,


Alan C. Leidner

the text blames his murder of Ferdinando on an external agent- C-rimaldi-who incites Guelfo's passion for revenge. Christoph Hering and Gert Mattenklott have greatly advanced our understand- ing of Grimaldi's role in this drama: Hering has provided a convincing account of his manipulation of Guelfo (65-73), and Mattenklott has revealed Grimaldi as an expression of the author's own "melan- choly" (59-60). I will argue that Grimaldi's peculiar role in Guelfo's demise is part of a sophisticated, if unconscious, scheme to help Klinger overcome a disturbing attraction to the "sublime" grandeur of terror, and that the play's rectification of this problem helped prepare the way for Klinger's entry into the officer corps in 1778. Klinger dealt with his painful ambivalence toward violence and terror not simply by expressing that ambivalence in the hope that it would disappear, but by employing a method similar to that outlined by certain twentieth-century psychologists, according to which purgation can provide the right conditions for a liberating change of perspective. Die Zwillinge by no means rid Klinger of his sensitivity to the emotions that frightened him; rather, its ingenious rite of self- exoneration helped him adopt a more comfortable viewpoint on his feelings.

Friedrich Maximilian Klinger, whose 1777 play Sturm und Drang gave the movement its name, was born on 17 February 1752 in Frankfurt am Main. By the age of twenty-six, when he became a lieutenant in the Austrian army, he had already composed the six dramas that would make him a principal writer of the tradition: Otto (1775), Das leidende Weib (1775), Die Zwillinge (1776), Die neue Arria (1776), Simsone Grisaldo (1777), and Sturm und Drang (1777). His long military career began with his participation in the Bavarian War of Succession (1778-1779) and culminated with his appointment as a lieutenant general in the Russian army in 1811. He died in Dorpat (Tartu), Russia on 25 February 1831. Die Zwillinge was Klinger's personal favorite throughout his life and has, as May points out, often been regarded as supremely typical of Sturm und Drang. The play is sparse on traditional plot development, but rich and suggestive in its depiction of the explosive frustration for which the movement is famous. On the surface, it is a protest against the immutable, maddeningly arbitrary right of the first-born. The action takes place in the castle of Guelfo, a rich Italian nobleman with twin sons: Ferdinando, his favorite, who will inherit the estate as a result of being older by a few minutes; and Guelfo, his namesake and the play's protagonist, who questions his brother's status as the heir. In his frantic search for facts that might prove him the elder, Guelfo learns

52


South Atlantic Review

that his mother and her doctor are, in fact, not perfectly certain whether Ferdinando entered the world first. Grimaldi, Guelfo's companion, urges him on in his desire for power (Grimaldi has his own reason to hate Ferdinando), and with this encouragement, Guelfo becomes the "titanic," individualistic Kraftmensch, presumably ready to re-establish the natural order of things according to which he, the warrior, and not his effeminate brother, should predominate. On the morning of Ferdinando's wedding to Kamilla, whom Guelfo also loves, Guelfo kills his brother. Then, disgusted by his act, and unable to look at his face in the mirror, he pronounces his own death sentence and is, subsequently, killed by his father. Typical of the frustrated protagonist of Sturm und Drang, Guelfo is more than a preromantic rebel facing a repressive society; behind his cruelty and madness is a non-citizen whose ambitions are thwarted because the only society he knows is unwilling to recognize him. In his obsessive search for the facts of his birth, his sickly need for self-assurance, and his horrifying sense of separation from the social group, Guelfo personifies the furious search for national identity pervading late eighteenth-century German life.

Klinger's correspondence leaves no doubt that he used writing as a means to express (and condemn) feelings he found alarming; however, recent literature on catharsis suggests that emotional discharge alone may have little or no curative effect.3 The argument advanced by the most modern school of cathartic therapy can be summed up as follows: exercising unwanted emotional reflexes rids one of those reflexes no more efficiently than intentionally hitting the wrong typewriter keys rids one of errors in typing. According to this view, the ventilation of unwanted feelings is not itself the cure; it merely sets the stage for the cure, which, as Robert R. Holt writes, "has nothing to do with . . . the discharge of energy, or the reduction of drive tension" (9).4 Catharsis, by this way of thinking, depends upon the build-up and subsequent discharge of tension, but has a lasting benefit only if the discharge occurs within the right context; the emotional release provides only the "clearing of the air" that is necessary for a rearrangement of one's perspective. Michael P. Ni- chols and Melvin Zax contend that, even for Aristotle, catharsis "is not simply a passive intellectual exercise. The shock of emotional arousal helps to rearrange perceptions and thus leads to a modification of the audience's self-concept and world view. Aristotle believed that the powerful intellectual and affective experience of having anxiety dissolve in tears fosters personal exploration and development" (2).

53


Alan C. Leidner

The classic statement of this approach to catharsis was made by Percival M. Symonds, who divides the cathartic process into two parts, which he calls "Insight I" and "Insight II." Insight I is the discovery of a situation allowing one to release emotions easily and "make responses that he had not dared to make formerly" (706). This initial emotional release encourages an ever greater freeing of ener- gies, progressively reducing inhibitions and increasing spontaneity. The resulting relaxation of tension clears the way for Insight II, the crucial, second aspect of catharsis, which brings "a critical evaluation of old accepted reasons and explanations," "a change in the perception of the self," and "a change in motives, goals, ideals and standards . .. [and] valuation, particularly self-evaluation" (707-708). Afterwards "there may be greater self-acceptance and a higher belief put on the self" (708). The application of this new model of catharsis to literature is overdue, and Sturm und Drang offers an excellent proving ground; applied to Die Zwillinge, it uncovers an unsuspected psychological strategy--one not simple, but complex; not childish, but, rather, appropriate to the urgencies of an age frustrated by deep social and political discontinuities.

On 30 June 1776, in a letter to Ernst Schleiermacher (1755-1844), Klinger announced: "I'm joining the soldiers" (BriefJuch 393). Schlei- ermacher, to whom Klinger had just sent the newly completed manuscript of Die Zwillinge, was the first of his close friends to learn of his intent (he had not yet informed his family), and although Klinger seems to have decided on a military career while writing Die Zwillinge in May and June of 1776, he maintains in this letter that he had felt for some time that the military was his proper element. He is also eager to see action; although he will accept a position with the Prussian army, his real preference is to serve with the Russians, which would bring more respect, higher pay, and "the greater likelihood of war" (Briefbuch 393).5 Klinger's apparently sudden desire to see battle represents a striking change in attitude. A passage from his correspondence of 1774, frequently cited as evidence of his rather confused mental state prior to the burst of literary activity from 1775 to 1777, indicates that, just two years before, he had felt extremely uncomfortable with his emotional susceptibility to what can perhaps best be described as the sublimity of terror, the aesthetic phenomenon by which violence can, paradoxically, be inspiring. The 1774 passage refers to a disturbing intersection of the "divine" and the "satanic" that he had difficulty dismissing from his mind. "Here again I stand on my hill," he writes to his fellow student Schumann, "throw glances into the wide world and into human hearts and, driven by my spirit, have

54



divine and satanic notions like those of poets, fanatics and fools" (Briefbuch 372). As he continues, he describes his method of dealing with these uncomfortable feelings: "Let it be! I am myself again - I push from my heart anything gloomy I have heard and think only of the lovely, of which there is also no lack in the ocean rushing about my ears. Rush then forth, humanity! Your friend is at peace" (372).6 In February 1775, still struggling with this problem, Klinger shuttles between the alternatives of containing or expressing his ambivalent feelings. "I am in the worst situation possible," he writes to Schu- mann. "I don't want to go into detail, but, rather, just suffer through it as long as my strength holds out. ... I would like to feed to the chaos mankind and everything that lives and crawls, and then jump in myself. But I won't, because I know that this, too, will pass, and then I'll laugh" (Briefbuch 373). The same letter also makes it clear that Klinger considers this alarmingly close association of good and evil a sensibility unique to him. "Passions that are unknown to you," he writes, "are tearing me to pieces" (Briefbuch 373). His inclination to "jump in himself" suggests, however, that he may be close to a solution. This solution is, as I attempt to show, the cathartic autotherapy of Die Zwillinge, which provides its author an indirect experience of his discomforting sensibility within a conceptual frame- work that helps rectify it. One modern theorist of catharsis has, in fact, emphasized the importance of approaching distressful feelings without coming completely under their sway, arguing that catharsis occurs only when one achieves "the simultaneous and equal experience of being both participant and observer"; successful catharsis, maintains T. J. Scheff, requires the proper "aesthetic distance" on one's emotions, midway between the extremes of dispassionate obser- vation and helpless participation (Catharsis 60).7 For Klinger, Die Zwillinge became not simply a forum for the ventilation of feelings with which he was uncomfortable, for pure discharge could, at best, have afforded him only temporary relief. It was necessary that the play appropriately symbolize his dangerous impulses, but at a safe distance, allowing him to work through his feelings within a less threatening context. Only a purgation of emotion staged under the right conditions could promise a lasting change of perspective on his attraction to the "satanic."

Our first clue to the text's corrective strategy is its portrayal of the lure of revenge not as a force within Guelfo, but, rather, as an external influence for which he is not personally responsible. It is Grimaldi who manipulates Guelfo to murder, and he achieves his goal by fostering in Guelfo a taste for the exact sensibility from which

55


Alan C. Leidner

Klinger wants to distance himself: the sublimity of terror. A glance at the aesthetic theories of Edmund Burke helps explain how this phenomenon was conceived in the 1 770s. Burke's A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1755), which was well-known in Germany, set the standard for the pre-Kantian under- standing of the sublime. Like Sturm undDrang, the sublime emerged as a tradition fundamentally at odds with Neoclassicism. Burke con- trasts sublimity with beauty: the beautiful (associated with Neoclassi- cism) unites, civilizes, and teaches social conventions, while the sublime (the revolutionary, new "preromantic" category) isolates, subjugates, and throws us back upon ourselves. Whereas the beautiful is founded on pleasure, the sublime is founded on terror:

Whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain, and danger, that is to say, whatever is in any sort terrible, or is conversant about terrible objects, or operates in a manner analogous to terror, is a source of the sublime; that is, it is productive of the strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling. . . . Indeed terror is in all cases whatsoever, either more openly or latently the ruling prin- ciple of the sublime. ... I know of nothing sublime which is not some modification of power. (39, 58, 64)

Appropriately, Klinger provides Grimaldi with a taste for a poetic tradition deeply imbued with the aesthetic of sublimity: graveyard poetry. "Grimaldi," declares the elder Guelfo, "ist ein diistrer Mensch, der Nachts im Feld lauft, bey Sturm und Wind, und zu den Sternen ruft. Der Kirchhof soll sein liebster Aufenthalt seyn. Ich selbst fand ihn einstens durch die 6de Nacht weinen, dag3 ich erschrack. Das ist Guelfos Gesellschaft" (Grimaldi is a gloomy one who walks about in the country on stormy nights and calls to the stars. The churchyard is supposed to be his favorite place. I myself once came upon him weeping his way through the desolate night. I was terrified. This is the company that Guelfo keeps; 2.2). Despite such observations, Gri- maldi is perceived as little more than a harmless Schwdrmer, and the elder Guelfo even jokes about Grimaldi's influence, warning that his son's companion might "infect" them all (2.3). But Grimaldi's sensibility is the crime of which Klinger wants acquittal: if the dramatist is to be cleared of all wrongdoing for his attraction to the sublime aspect of terror, then Grimaldi's influence must be surreptitious. Grimaldi succeeds, in fact, through clever rhetoric: "Dieser Blick! dieses We- sen! diese sich ausbreitende Menschenbeugende Gluth im schwar-

56



zen, grossen, rollenden Auge! -Guelfo! Du bist ffir ein Konigreich geboren. Eine weissagende Gottheit, mein Genius sagt mirs. Guelfo! Du bist Ferdinandos Bruder nicht" (This glance! This bearing! The expansive, awesome glow in these dark, great, rolling eyes! Guelfo! You were born to be a king! A prophetic divinity, my intuition, tells me so. Guelfo! You are not Ferdinando's brother; 1.2). Grimaldi's function in Die Zwillinge is awkward and unexplainable outside the context of a cathartic interpretation. Posing as Guelfo's friend, Gri- maldi desires revenge on Ferdinando, whom he blames for the death of his beloved Juliette: when forced to marry Ferdinando, Juliette had chosen instead to commit suicide. One would think that Grimaldi would plan to murder Ferdinando himself, but he does not; according to his odd reckoning, he believes that murdering Ferdinando would prevent his reunion with Juliette in heaven, whereas convincing Guelfo to murder Ferdinando would incur no such sin. Thus, in lieu of personal revenge, he undertakes to exact revenge through Guelfo. His plan, with its specious rationale, is an inelegant aspect of the play, but some such improbability is necessary if Guelfo is to be seduced by a figure symbolizing sensibilities that the author both does and does not want to acknowledge. The strange circumstances underlying Grimaldi's insidious role are, quite simply, improbabilities through which Klinger's plot must persevere for the sake of its devious rite of exoneration.

The tactic Grimaldi employs to increase Guelfo's taste for violence - and desire for revenge - is twofold: first, he strives to affect exactly the attitude he does not want Guelfo to adopt (that is, an uninspiring weakness and resignation), while hoping to make such behavior look as unbecoming as possible; second, he lamely disap- proves of Guelfo's increasingly grim countenance and murderous threats-"Du wirst zu ernsthaft" (You are growing too grave; 1.1); "Lieber Guelfo, nicht so!" (Dear Guelfo, not like that!; 1.2)-while pretending to be awe-struck. Grimaldi's calculated "warnings" against violent action leave Guelfo infatuated with his apparent power to elicit respect. They also perform another useful function: by dealing in sublimity's paradoxical conflation of horror and awe, Grimaldi's own pretended horror at Guelfo's threats helps protect him further from the charge of having helped incite them. Guelfo is, of course, marginally aware of Grimaldi's deceit, and his suspicions appropriately reflect Klinger's own ambivalence toward the attractions of terror: "Du machst mich rasend mit Deiner Zweydeutigkeit. . . . Du sagst zu viel und zu wenig" (You're making me furious with your ambiguity. ... You say too much and too little; 1.1). Still, Guelfo is

57


Alan C. Leidner

so infatuated with his apparent ability to inspire amazement in others that he does not pay much attention to his own suspicions, and he quickly comes under the sway of Grimaldi's flattery: "Fieberhafter Grimaldi, Du streichelst die Tropfen von der Stirn, und mift mich mit den Augen--staunst, wunderst Dich, ziehst die Augenbrauen" (Feverish Grimaldi, you stroke the sweat from your forehead and measure me with your eyes--you are astonished, amazed, and raise your brow; 1.2).

In his final delirium, Guelfo jumps headlong into emotions he finds both alluring and frightening: "Ha! verfolgt mich alles? Alle Dimonen und alle Gespenster der Nacht? Mein boser Geist hangt mir auf dem Nacken, er lafit mich nicht, stiert mich aus allen Winckeln an. Bias' zu! Vergift' mir jedes Faserchen meines Herzens! Wiihl' giftig in meinem Blut!" (Ha! Is everything pursuing me? Every demon and ghost of the night? My evil spirit has me by the neck. It refuses to depart and stares at me from every angle. Keep on blowing! Infect every thread of my heart! Rage in my blood like poison!; 3.1). Klinger's fictional alter ego cries for help in overcoming murderous inclinations, but his determination to follow them through becomes as irrevocable as it is unacceptable: "Mord! Mord! und wenn ichs denke, stehn mir die Haare nicht. Grimaldi! rette mich vor meinem Geist! Rette, rette mich!" (Murder! Murder! And when I think of it my hair doesn't stand on end. Grimaldi! Save me from my spirit! Save me, save me!; 3.1). After the fratricide, Guelfo's self-criticism reaches its peak as he shatters a mirror with the words: "Ha! ich kann mich nicht ansehen!" (Ha! I can't look at myself; 4.4). With Guelfo, Klinger created a figure through whom he could express his own ambivalent feelings about the lure of power and terror; with Gri- maldi, he created the possibility of viewing this ambivalence as an exterior phenomenon for which he, the author, could not be held accountable. Die Zwillinge is neither merely a purgation of demonic Schwirmerei, nor merely a methodical externalization of feelings for which Klinger had assumed too much personal responsibility; rather, it is both. The play's depersonalization of an undesired sensibility is as important as its violent release of emotions.

Fundamental to Grimaldi's influence on Guelfo is his use of flattery, a weapon whose seductive power underlines this drama's hidden aims: "Guelfo! ein Mensch mit diesem Sinn, mit dieser Festigkeit, mit dieser niederwerfenden Gewalt--Ich mochte rasend werden!" (Guelfo! A man with this disposition, this stability, this overwhelming power-I could go mad!; 1.2). Grimaldi convinces Guelfo, chiefly through feigned awe, that his difficulties with his

58



father and Ferdinando stem from their inability to grasp his superhu- man qualities: "Ihr stahlt mir alles," cries Guelfo, "und gabt's ihm, weil ihr meinen Geist nicht fassen konntet" (You stole it all from me and gave it to him because you couldn't grasp my spirit; 1.2). Grimaldi barrages Guelfo with adulation: "Dieser Blick is gut, Guelfo! Fahr fort!" (That look is good, Guelfo! Keep it up!). How- ever, he is careful to add: "Bei alledem m6cht' ich Ferdinando kein Haar kriimmen" (Still, I wouldn't want to hurt a hair on Ferdinando's head; 1.2). Flattery, the main ingredient in Grimaldi's manipulation of Guelfo, is a feature central to virtually every theory of the sublime. As an aesthetic of boundaries, sublimity always involves our reaction to limitations. The English "sublime" (Latin: "below the threshold") denotes the field below the limit; the Greek hypsos and German erhaben ("elevated") refer to the inner sensation caused by our presumption to transcend it. For Burke, the limits we meet are concrete situations such as difficulty, obscurity, and privation, while for Kant they are boundaries to our innate ability to comprehend. At its most basic level, Guelfo's situation also involves limitations: he is frustrated in his attempt to prove he is his father's true heir, and he grows obsessed even with such seemingly trivial matters as his fixed salary. He feels he will burst if not allowed to react: "Grimaldi! Grimaldi! Laf mich was thun! Ich will eine Pistole losschiessen - ich mufi so was h6ren! Mein Herz heischts!" (Grimaldi! Grimaldi! Let me do something! I want to fire a pistol--I have to hear something like that! My heart needs it!; 2.1). It is the special power of the sublime, charged with its liberating flattery, to impart the impression that one is capable of exceeding limits that are, nevertheless, impossible to exceed. Accord- ing to Longinus, persuasive writing and speaking demand that the listener be given the impression that he or she is ascending to a "more than human level" (48): "Our soul is naturally uplifted by the truly great; we receive it as a joyous offering; we are filled with delight and pride as if we had ourselves created what we heard" (10). When the eighteenth century turned the invigorating rhetoric of the sublime into an aesthetic category, the Longinian "as if" remained essential. In 1755 Edmund Burke observed: "Now whatever either on good or upon bad grounds tends to raise a man in his own opinion, produces a sort of swelling and triumph that is extremely grateful to the human mind" (50). Kant, in the Kritik der Urteilskraft (1790), would later "justify" sublime flattery by citing the uniquely human capacity for morality. But Klinger, assuming a posture not atypical for Sturm und Drang, treats the sublime as a potentially dangerous phenomenon.

The results Klinger obtained from his literary "cure" would fill any

59


Alan C. Leidner

cathartic therapist with envy. To be sure, composing the play must have afforded Klinger momentary pleasure as he vicariously indulged impulses with which he was ordinarily uncomfortable. But if the play had been restricted to simple purgation, we could not expect a permanent change in his behavior. As it was, 1775 and 1776 saw Klinger progress from an initial awareness of his need to express his deepest fears, through expression of those fears in his correspondence, to effective catharsis in Die Zwillinge. His readiness to enter the violent life of military service signaled the success of his autotherapy: letters to Ernst Schleiermacher during the summer of 1776 reveal that Klinger could now enjoy feeling inspired and invigorated by the thought of violence and aggression without the ambivalence that had plagued him just one year before. In June he looks forward to the day when Schleiermacher can "kiss the fire of war on [his] burning lips" (Briefbuch 394); in August, planning his career, he writes:

I want to take part in the campaign in America as an officer. There will be a call, and I will go with the first recruits. Imagine, what a world-what a great, new world! To stand on American soil with the courage, the insight, the reliability! God help me! Within me shoot up a thousand flames, and I feel I will burn and collapse! Oh, for that day! You see, brother, how splendid it all would be, and the poetry and romance of it, as war is in general- and so distant, where everything is so new, so significant- and I feel I will return. (Briefbuch 398)

These passages, expressing an unabashed acceptance of the mutual interplay of terror and delight, document a remarkable - some might say ominous -change in Klinger. Finally, he is able to embark upon the military career to which, as he would often emphasize, he had always felt drawn (Briefbuch 422, 426). The literary expression of Klinger's uncomfortable attraction to violence (Symonds's "Insight I") cleared the air for a restructuring of attitude ("Insight II") obtained by representing himself under the sway of feelings for which he was not personally responsible. Klinger conquered his fear not simply through indulging in emotions about which he felt ambivalent; it was essential to posit a new, impersonal perspective on them.

The nature of Klinger's transformation is nowhere more evident than in a 1778 letter, again to Ernst Schleiermacher, indicating that he now experienced pleasure, not discomfort, when facing "the thing in people that makes even the devil look like a sheep by comparison":

60



I have survived one campaign now with the greatest pleasure and look forward with delight to the next. . . We always have the pleasure of being the first to encounter the enemy.. . . You can't imagine what this life is like - it is a life in which one has to renounce every pleasure. But that thing in the human being that makes even the devil look like a sheep by comparison is compensation that I still would never exchange for a sultan's harem or my soft bed and sofa. (Briefbuch 422)

Klinger is enjoying the violence of battle; the apparently idiosyncra- tic sensibility from which he had once recoiled is now a universal human phenomenon invigorating to feel and behold. He is, moreover, free of all ambivalence regarding the seductive power of flattery; in a 1779 letter to the composer Philipp Christoph Kayser (1755-1823), he candidly declares his attraction to the invigorating flattery offered him by the military: "All my passionate dreams and plans have scattered like dust--it is peacetime. Fourteen days ago we left the cordon, and the war has been over for six weeks. My first tour of duty is over. Meanwhile, the military remains my destiny! Anyone who has once felt this ambition-flattering slavery [dem Ehrgeitz schmei- chelnde Sclaverey] in all its severity and all its charm has difficulty playing any other role in life" (Briefbuch 422-23).

When we call Die Zwillinge a self-critique of youthful emotionalism, we must recognize the liberating change of perspective it helped Klinger achieve. This drama, considered so typical of Sturm undDrang, deals with excessive emotionalism not by extirpating it in purgative tirades, but by recasting it in a more acceptable form. That a mechanism circumventing Klinger's own subjectivity can flourish beneath Guelfo's impulsiveness undermines Sturm und Drangs reputa- tion for straightforwardness and authenticity. But it also suggests the unsuspected resources of a literary tradition forced to respond to difficult problems with extraordinary solutions.8

University of Louisville

NOTES

'See also Briefbuch 402. The most famous therapeutic interpretation of a work of German literature is that of Goethe, who claimed to have derived a beneficial effect from writing Die Leiden desjungen Werthers (1774). "I felt," Goethe wrote in chapter 13 of Dichtung und Wahrheit in 1813, "as after a general confession, once again happy

61


Alan C. Leidner

and free, and entitled to a new life" (9:588). It is clear, incidentally, from his essay, "Nachlese zu Aristoteles' Poetik" (1827) that Goethe does not equate purgation with Aristotelian katharsis (12:342-45); thus, he does not speak of Werther's effect as "cathartic." See also n. 8. All translations are my own.

2See also Hering 36-40; and Huyssen 192-202. Huyssen criticizes Guthke's interpretation of Die Zwillinge for treating Guelfo's frustration as a psychological issue, but Guthke deserves credit for his insight that the play reflects the simultaneous triumph and crisis of Sturm und Drang itself. Guthke's approach, already dialectical, represents an important step toward Huyssen's sociopolitical interpretation.

"It should be pointed out that the effectiveness of catharsis--however inter- preted-has never been universally agreed on. See Nichols 186-191; and Scheff, Catharsis 20-25.

4Jung, as Symonds points out (704), seems to have been of this opinion as well: "The curative effect does not consist solely in the discharge of affective tension. It depends much more upon the resolution of the dissociation" (Jung 287).

"Fritz Osterwalder's discussion of the role played by the lure of battle in the dissolution of Sturm und Drang is particularly good (41-44). Osterwalder, who deals chiefly with Klinger's political development as reflected in the later work, does not treat Die Zwillinge.

6The verb Klinger uses to express the pushing of gloomy thoughts from his heart is wilzen: "[ich] walz vom Herzen was ich Trubes gehort habe." As Grimm 13:1421 indicates, walzen, like abwdlzen, can be used to denote the shifting of blame onto another.

7See Scheff, "Distancing" 485-87 and Catharsis 59-69, 134-40. Scheff adopts and redefines Bullough's term.

8Not all of Sturm und Drang's cathartic rituals are so personal. A well-known eyewitness account of the premier of Die Rauber (Bulthaupt 348), a play sometimes compared to Die Zwillinge, suggests that Schiller's 1781 drama may have owed its spectacular popularity to the fact that its audience, not merely its author, could enjoy the classic results of catharsis: an invigorating sensation of self-confidence and liberation, and a renewed sense of identity (Nichols 2). These two plays are especially similar in that each invites the spectator who can identify with the protagonist to indulge vicariously in behavior that is felt as both attractive and disturbing, but within a context that will avert blame for such indulgence from himself: in Klinger's personal ritual, blame is laid on Grimaldi's intrigue; in Schiller's communal ritual, it is laid (much more obviously) on Franz's intrigue and, at least temporarily, society itself.

WORKS CITED

Bulthaupt, Heinrich. Dramaturgie des Schauspiels. Oldenburg & Leipzig: Schulz, 1908.

Burke, Edmund. A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. Ed. T.J. Boulton. Notre Dame: U of Notre Dame P, 1968.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. Werke. Ed. Erich Trunz. Hamburger Ausgabe. 14 vols. Hamburg: Wegner, 1948-64.

Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm. Deutsches W'rterbuch. 16 vols. Leipzig: Hirzel, 1854- 1960.

62


South Atlantic Review 63

Guthke, Karl S. "F M. Klingers Zwillinge: Hohepunkt and Krise des Sturm und Drang." German Quarterly 43 (1970): 703-14. Rpt. in Friedrich Maximilian Klinger. Die Zwillinge. Stuttgart: Reclam, 1972. 67-79.

Hering, Christoph. Friedrich Maximilian Klinger. Der Weltmann als Dichter. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1966.

Holt, Robert R. "On the Interpersonal and Intrapersonal Consequences of Ex- pressing or Not Expressing Anger." Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 35.1 (1970): 8-17.

Huyssen, Andreas. Drama des Sturm und Drang. Kommentar zu einer Epoche. Munchen: Winkler, 1980.

Jung, C. G. Contributions to Analytical Psychology. Trans. H. G. and Cary F Baynes. London: K. Paul, 1928.

Klinger, Friedrich Maximilian. Die Zwillinge. Dramatische Jugendwerke. Ed. H. Berendt and K. Wolff. 3 vols. Leipzig: Rowohlt, 1912-13. 1:234-320.

Longinus. On Great Writing (On the Sublime). Trans. G. M. A. Grube. New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1957.

Mattenklott, Gert. Melancholie in der Dramatik des Sturm und Drang. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1968.

May, Kurt. "Fr. Max. Klingers Sturm und Drang." Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift 11 (1933): 398-407.

Nichols, Michael P. and Melvin Zax. Catharsis in Psychotherapy. New York: Gardiner, 1971.

Osterwalder, Fritz. Die Uberwindung des Sturm und Drang im Werk Friedrich Maximilian Klingers. Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 1979.

Rieger, Max, ed. Briefbuch. Vol. 3 of Rieger, Max. Friedrich Maximilian Klinger. Sein Leben und Werke. 3 vols. Darmstadt: Arnold Bergstrasser, 1896.

Scheff, T. J. "The Distancing of Emotion in Ritual." Current Anthropology 18.3 (1977): 483-505.

.Catharsis in Healing, Ritual and Drama. Berkeley: U of California P, 1979. Symonds, Percival M. "A Comprehensive Theory of Psychotherapy." American

Journal of Orthopsychiatry 24 (1954): 697-714.


Article Contentsp. [51]p. 52p. 53p. 54p. 55p. 56p. 57p. 58p. 59p. 60p. 61p. 62p. 63

Issue Table of ContentsSouth Atlantic Review, Vol. 50, No. 4, Nov., 1985Volume Information [pp. 173 - 216]Front Matter [pp. 20 - 218]Editor's Note [pp. 1 - 2]Goethe's Magnetism [pp. 3 - 19]A Tribute to Richard Eberhart [pp. 21 - 33]The Infection and Spread of Evil: Some Major Patterns of Imagery and Language in "Othello" [pp. 35 - 49]Catharsis and Self-Exoneration in Klinger's "Die Zwillinge" [pp. 51 - 63]Yeats and Measurement [pp. 65 - 79]Expanding the Influence: Faulkner and Four Melville Tales [pp. 81 - 92]"The White Peace of the Altar": White Imagery in James Joyce's "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" [pp. 93 - 106]Book Reviewsuntitled [pp. 107 - 109]untitled [pp. 109 - 112]untitled [pp. 113 - 116]untitled [pp. 116 - 120]untitled [pp. 120 - 122]untitled [pp. 122 - 125]untitled [pp. 125 - 127]untitled [pp. 127 - 129]untitled [pp. 130 - 131]untitled [pp. 131 - 133]untitled [pp. 133 - 135]

Theses and Dissertations for 1984 [pp. 137 - 167]ForumBlind Submissions [pp. 169 - 170]New "SAR" Style [pp. 170 - 171]Peter Pineda [p. 172]

Back Matter

Alan C Leidner

Documents

Transcript of Alan C Leidner