Keine Ader Griechisch Blut Im Leibe

7/30/2019 Keine Ader Griechisch Blut Im Leibe

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"Keine Ader griechisch Blut im Leibe":Goethe versus Wieland on Antiquity in 1773JOHN P. HEINS The George Washington University

In the lively late eighteenth-century German discussion of the cultural legacy ofancient Greece, begun (according to most accounts) by the publication ofWinckelmann's Gedancken iiber die Nachahmung der Griechischen Wercke inder M ahlerey undBildhauer-Kunst in 1755 and leading to Goethe and Schiller'sWeimar Classicism of the 1790s, the particular character of that legacy is a con-tentious issue in great part because the character of the participants' historicalmoment, the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, is at stake. Although the term"classicism" in the case of Weimar might be said to be used normatively ratherthan in specific reference to ancient G reece, this study will not enter the termino -logical quagmire marked by the word Klassik, but rather speak of a fairly spe-cific debate about the Greeks in order to illustrate stark differences in historicaland cultural understanding between Wieland and the young Goethe in 1773.These differences, however, mask a commonality in motivation. Ultimately bothwriters' visions ofthe Greeks are driven by modem concerns, Wieland's visionby an interest in Enlightenm ent m oral tenets and in literary methods for affectinga modem audience emotionally and Goethe's vision by an interest in a Sturmund Drang critique of the older generation's "scheele Ideale" (Goethe, Dra-matische Dichtungen 214).

Eighteenth-century arguments about what ancient Greece was clearly re-volve around what modem eighteenth-century Europe is - more specifically,what the Enlightenment is, and what cultural progress entails. This dynamic isclear in the echoes ofthe earlier French quereile des anciens et des mo dernes andthe English "Battle of the Books" detectable in Winckelmann's text, as he ad-dresses the question of how studying the ancients might orient the modems intheir quest to achieve something like ancient greatness in the arts, as the m odem shave surpassed the ancients in the sciences (Pfotenhauer et al. 368-92).Eighteenth-century Europe's cultural self-definition in reference to the ancientsbecomes particularly interesting at those moments when the discussion aboutGreece grows particularly noisy and volatile, since these strong disagreements


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2 JOHN P. HEINSance of its participants but especially because of th e differences exposed, is pro-vided by Goethe's satirical attack on Wieland in 1773, in the form of his playGotter, Helden und Wieland., a response to Wieland 's Singspiel Alceste (based onthe Aicestis of Euripides) and to Wieland's discussion of his own work in thefirst issue of his joumal Der teutsche Merkur in the same year. This con stellationof three texts provides insights into the strong differences between the em ergingSturm und Drang movement and Wieland's more established Enlightenmentview ofthe state of cultural progress in 1773, differences inextricably linked tofundamental issues in the self-understanding of the modem world from theeighteenth century to the present: the precise nature of historical difference andof progress.The Sturm und Drang generation's instinctive antagonism against the "oldman" Wieland, whom they associated with the complacent, formally con-ventional culture of the rococo courts, cannot fully explain the severity ofGoethe's attack on the writer who had introduced him to the world of theancients in his university days. Nor can Goethe's satire be ignored on thegrounds that he originally had no intention of publishing it (Goethe, Drama-tische Dichtungen 535-38). Wieland's self-satisfied praise in the TeutscherMerkur article of what he had accomplished in Alceste impelled Goethe to thissatirical "correction" of W ieland's attitude. But the vehemence of th e correctionsuggests that not jus t one m an's arrogan ce, even the arrogance of an adm iredmodel, nor the hostile energy of youth against the older generation, can explainthe character of the text. Rather, we must assume that there are real differencesof opinion in play. In this short piece, written (according to his Dichtung undWahrheit) on a Sunday aftemoon in the autumn of 1773 over a bottle of Bur-gundy an d published by Le nz in M arch 1774, Go ethe expresses through satiricalmean s a critique of Wieland's play that at certain points suggests a critique ofth eentire age, what one character calls "Euer ganzes aberweises Jahrhundert vonLiteratoren" {Dramatische Dichtungen 207). Euripides' original play tells thestory of Aicestis, who sacrifices herself in order to save her husband Admetus,who has been condem ned to death by the g ods. Aicestis is retume d to life by theintervention o fthe demigod H ercules, a friend ofth e house of Ad metus. Wielandhad been encouraged by his patron, the Duchess Anna Amalia of Weimar, towrite this Singspiel, which, when it was performed at the Weimar court on 29M ay 1773, was apparently the first Singspiel ever staged by a German companywith both a text written by a German (Wieland) in the German language andmusic composed by a German, Anton Schweitzer (Wieland, Werke 808).W ieland's verses, like his poetry in general in this period, were co nsidered a re-


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Goethe versus Wieland 3cizes Wieland for the liberties he has taken with Euripides' work as well as forWieland's personal arrogance exhibited in the Teutscher Merkur piece, a text inwhich Wieland criticizes Euripides and praises his own "improvement" of theplay.

Subsequent critics have often downplayed this short-lived confiict betweenGoethe and Wieland, since Goethe shortly thereafter gladly accepted a call toAnna Amalia's court, where he developed a warm relationship with Wieland.Maria Erxleben, for instance, sees the episode as a minor discord in a forty-year"harm ony" of two different voices, while Friedrich Sengle sees Go ethe's antag-onism as merely the ressentiment of a spirited young man, far from the matureKlassiker he would become, and presents a richness of detail about the twowriters' close relationship. In the event, Wieland himself wrote a gracious andcomplimentary review of Goethe's satire, calling it "ein Meistersttick von Persi-fiage und sophistischem Witze," in response to which the embarrassed Goethe(as reported in a letter from Johanna Fahlmer to Friedrich Jacobi) acknowledgedhimself defeated: "Wieland gewinnt viel bei dem Publico, und ich verliere"(Erxleben 85-86). Apparently sealing the matter, by 1779 Goethe himself waswriting an adaptation of a play by Euripides, his Iphigenie aufTauris, which helater rendered in strict formal verse (1787) in direct consultation with Wieland(Boyle 321-27; Sengle 64-65). Another natural tendency for the present-dayreader would be to take one side or the other in the debate: either Goethe theyoung genius was right that Wieland got Greece all wrong, or history (and theolder Goethe) proved Wieland right, in the sense that Wieland's mastery of formin Alceste overshadows any damage done by his modemization ofthe material,and this kind of formal mastery after all became the hallmark of the greatestworks of Weimar Classicism between 1787 and 1805. Thus, we can explain theconfiict in terms of Goethe's personal growth, as he quickly rejects his Sturmund Drang intemperance and comes to prefer the cool excellence of form to-wards which Wieland was working. Altematively, we can focus on the evolvingpersonal relationship between Goethe and Wieland, perhaps (following Sengle)understanding Wieland as Goethe's "educator," just as Goethe will later "edu-cate" the fiery Schiller (Sengle 71). Rather than pursuing any of these familiarand well-developed lines of reasoning any further, however, this article will ex-plore what is at stake in the confiict itself, that is, what is the real difference be-tween the attitudes towards the ancients expressed in these texts. Pursuing thisline of inquiry might contribute to a better understanding of eighteenth-centuryGermany's confiicted self-understanding at one historical moment, the year1773.


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4 JOHN P. HEINSthize with a distant historical culture. He criticizes Wieland for having "keineAder griechisch Blut im Le ibe" {Dram atische Dichtungen 203 ). For Go ethe, thisinability is demonstrated in Wieland's injection of eighteenth-century moralideals and affective preconceptions into the ancient material and in his corre-sponding narrowm inded adherence to Christian prejudices. The text, as its com-men tators have suggested (Erxleben 81 ; Wolfgang K ayser in Goethe,Dramatische Dichtungen 536-37; Petzoldt 407, 413-14) and as the presentarticle will attempt to demonstrate, fits easily into the pattem of Sturm undDrang protest against a tame, didactic form of sentimentalism, a pattem de-lineated by research on Empfmdsamkeit (Doktor 205-25; Jager 54-56; Sauder154 -69). The critique targets what it sees as a philistine adherence to an abstractconcept of virtue in combination with the mannered tones of the court. In ex-pressing this critique, Go ethe's play both propou nds the irreducible p articularityof ancient Greece that is falsified in Wieland's version and betrays its ownmo dem agenda in mak ing the ancients into Sturm und Drang hero es. W hile noneof the commentators appears to disagree with the point that both Goethe's andWieland's versions of Greeee here are "interested" - that is, motivated by con-temporary con cem s - none pursues the particular nature ofthe confiicting under-standings of modernity's relationship to Greece to a satisfactory conclusion.Thus the present article will try to refocus interest on this question. Wieland'sSingspiel and his explanation of it in the Teutscher M erkur article (the latter atext underexamined in the secondary literature) operate with a different con-ception of the ancient Greeee refiected in Euripides' play than does Goethe.Wieland sees Eu ripides' accomplishment as the creation of a dramatically effect-ive situation that he, Wieland, will simply give a sharper expression for a modemaudience. Thus w hat Goethe w ill see as falsification Wieland will see as neces-sary modification for a modem and more culturally advanced audienee. Thoughthat audience is no longer the "primitive" audience of Euripides' day, the osten-sibly natural responsiveness of the imagined viewer is the target of Wieland'sartistic end eavours. It is precisely the natural hum anity (or divinity) ofth e Greekcharacters, though, that Goethe suggests has been falsified by Wieland's senti-mental. Christianized version of Euripides. This 1773 confrontation ofthe cult-ural progressivist Wieland and the Sturm und Drang-inspired, Herder-informedcultural critic Goethe shows how understandings of the historical present areexpressed in two competing conceptions of ancient Greece.

Goethe's farce takes the form ofa confrontation in the underworld betweenthe shades of the real Aicestis, her husband Admetus, the hero Hercules, andtheir "historian" Euripides on the one hand and Wieland's dream shade and the


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Goethe versus W ieland 5Demokritus, and the tradition ofth e Volkstheater (Petzoldt). W ieland is imaginedas dreaming the scene, and thus his "shade" in this context is understood as hisdream p syche. We see Euripides as well as the real Aicestis and Adm etus in theunderworld responding to the news about Wieland's version of the play withaltemating horror and disbelief. As the discussion develops and the shade ofWieland listens to the critique from the real ancients, he respo nds, "Ihr rede t wieLeute einer andem Welt, eine Sprache, deren Worte ich vemehme, deren Sinnich nicht fasse," to which Admetus replies, "Wir reden griechisch. Ist Euch dasso unbegreifiich?" (209). Goethe's suggestion is that to understand the Greekworld requires a much greater suspension of one's own cultural preconceptionsand a greater sympathy with a historically distant culture than Wieland has ex-hibited; "speaking G reek" exp resses this potential for the cultural und erstandingthat Wieland apparently lacks.

Behind Goethe's fiippant critical claim about Wieland's ostensible foreign-cultural illiteracy (a claim arguably belied by Wieland's life work) lies a dis-tinctly Herderian concept of "sympathizing" with ancient Greece as a necessarystep in the understanding of its character and difference. Taking Herder's Aucheine Philosophie der Geschichte zur Bildung der Menschheit of 1774 as an ex-pression of ideas influencing the Sturm und Drang movement's conception ofcultural and historical difference would corroborate the idea that Goethe's farceentails a larger historical argument about the necessity for each age to suspendits belief system in order to understand a different culture or era. In order tounderstand a culture. Herder writes, one must "sympathize" with its particularcharacter, since each age is unique, "nur sich selbst gleich" (62 9): "Mattes halbesSchattenbild von Worte! [...] man muBte erst der Nation sympathisieren, um eineeinzige ihrer Neigungen und Handlungen, alle zusammen zu fuhlen, Ein Wortfinden, in seiner Fiille sich alles denken - oder man lieset - ein Wort" (612;emphasis in the original). Herder points out specifically that the self-understoodEuropean Enlightenment ofthe eighteenth century is particularly prone to judgedistant nations and eras according to its own ideals, specifically becau se it under-stands its view to be benign : "der allgemeine Philosoph ische, Menschenfi-eund-liche Ton unsres Jahrhunderts" is bound to skew our vision (620). As RobertNorton has made clear. Herder's critique should not be understood as anirrationalist protest against the ideals of the Enlightenment, but as a call forunderstanding historical periods on their own terms rather than always measur-ing them against values posited as ahistorical and absolute. As an E nlightenmentthinker with a strong belief in the cultural progress attained by his civilizationand perhaps with a tendency to make absolute the values of his own culture,Wieland certainly writes in the tone Herder criticizes here, and Goethe's farce


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6 JOHN P. HEINSclaim abou t the ancients that his play m ight imply.

Goethe criticizes Wieland for the weak, civilized emotionality of his char-acters and for their homogeneous nature caused by Wieland's subordinatingthem all to the vague and unrealistic mo ral ideals o fthe Enlightenment. In target-ing both the moral character of Wieland's work and his emphasis on emotionalresponse, Goethe implicitly assigns Wieland's text to the category of the senti-mental, significantly a category targeted in other satirical texts of Goethe'swithin the same year. Pater Brey and Das Jahrmarktsfest zu Plundersweilern(Doktor 244). From the start of Goethe's play, the critique of Wieland's play assentimental comes across. As Aicestis and Admetus in the underworld reporttheir encounter with the playwright's dream versions of themselves, their re-sponses exhibit Goethe's satirical strategy of diminution, a favourite strategy ofsentimentalism's critics. Aicestis sees Wieland's characters as "zwei abge-schmack te, gezierte, hagre, blasse Piippchens, die sich einander Alceste! Adm et!nannten, voreinander sterben wollten, ein Geklingele mit ihren Stimmenmachten als die Vogel und zuletzt mit einem traurigen Gekrachz versehwanden"(204). The satirical diminution in the use ofth e suffix "ch en" is echoed through-out the text, as for instance when Aicestis further com me nts, "Eure Alceste m aggut sein und Eure Weibchen und M annchen amu siert, auch wohl gekitzelt haben,was Ihr Ruhrung nennt" (207). But Aicestis, in a passage ridiculing the music-ality of Wieland's poetry as well as the actual m usic of the piece, reports that shefied these singing characters as she would fiee an untuned zither. The term"Ru hrun g" is a cm cial concept in early Germ an sentimentalism as a designationfor the effeet of a well-made work of sentimental art, precisely the effectWieland was hoping for, in keeping with his sentimental Wirkungsdsthetik (seebelow). By using this term in this satirical way Goethe invokes sentimentalismas the force that is falsifying the ancient Greek material.

In keeping with Sturm und Drang opinion, Goethe casts Wieland as the ex-ponent of a tame, sentimental impulse that is the literary expression of the over-civilized culture ofthe courts, a culture that is not only self-satisfied but further-mo re incapable of understanding the difference of other cultures. As W ieland en-counters the real Aleestis in the underworld, he cannot imagine it is really she:"M it dieser Taille! Verzeiht! Ich weiB nicht, was ich sagen so il" (205 ). Wieland 'samazement stems from the fact that Aicestis is not laced, that is, does not adhereto the norms of eighteenth-century courtly dress (539). The fact that Goethe'sWieland cannot imagine different sartorial norms from those currently in placesuggests not only that he cannot see beyond his cultural prejudices, but also inthis case that he lacks a concept of the natural. Goethe may be obliquely ex-


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Goethe versus W ieland 7many of these generally "bind ing" fashions b egan to fade from the scene as morecomfortable-fitting clothing came into style at the end ofthe century, and by thetime of the "empire" fashion era fiowing, Greek-inspired gowns became com-mon in Germany as well as in other European co untries. In this small way, to beamplified later in the play, Goeth e's text implies that with such falsification ofGreece Wieland's expectations falsify nature itself.

The idea that the ancients are giants rising above the petty, minuscule ac-complishments of the present age is presented plastically in the confrontationthat Goethe stages between Hercules and Wieland. Here, the satirical strategy ofdiminution reaches its high point in a low blow: as Hercules appears and seesWieland, his first words are "Nun, der ist klein genug" (212), wherein Goethedisparages W ieland's actual small stature. Goe the's W ieland later com ments thathe never imagined Hercules to be quite so large, reinforcing the image of hisown smallness. Hercules is clearly a character Wieland w ill be unab le to portray,and, as Goethe's satire mns, Wieland has robbed Hercules of his natural vitalpower and made him a representative of eighteenth-century, virtue in altering themotivation for Hercules' intervention. In Euripides' play, Hercules is moved tointervene on beh alf of Aicestis by his friendship for the ho use of Adm etus a ndmore specifically by his respect for Admetus's hospitality. Even though Aicestishas just died and the house is in mou ming , Adm etus refuses to let on to Herculesthat anything is amiss and insists on hosting him. This act can be eonsidered aviolation of mouming, but it is done to fulfill the sacred duties of hospitality.Euripides' chorus remarks: "The noble strain / comes out, in respect for others"(Euripides 35). When Hercules is told by the servant that the house is in m oum -ing, he is ashamed of the way in which he has immediately begun drinking, andhe resolves to save Aicestis in order to "pay A dmetus all the kindness that I owe .[...] who did not drive me off but took me into his house / and, though hestaggered under the stroke of circumstance, / hid it, for he was noble andrespected m e. / Who in all Thessaly is a tmer friend than this? " (44 -45 ).

Rather than keeping to this very specific ancient sense of Hercules' motiv-ation, Wieland has changed the motivation to respect for Alcestis's virtue,proved precisely in her self-sacrifice. Wieland makes Hercules the champion ofvirtue, as becomes clear from the mom ent he appears and sings a song addressedto virtue, in an act comically out of keeping with at least Goethe's idea of theancient hero: "O du, fur die ich weieher Ruh / Und Am ors stlBem Scherz en tsage,/ Du, deren Nam en ich an me iner Stime trage, / Fur d ie ich alles tu, / Fiir die ichalles wage, / O Tugend!" (Wieland, Werke 89). Fittingly, Hercules encouragesvirtue in others, addressing Adm etus: "Dein Zustand jamm ert m ich, Adm et, / Ichfuhle deinen Schmerz. Doch zur Verzweifiung sinkt / Die Tugend nicht herab!"


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8 JOHN P. HEINSmore culturally specific motivation for Hercules in Euripides' play. The associ-ation of Hercules with virtue is certainly not foreign to antiquity, having beenestablished most markedly in the traditional image of "Hercules am Scheide-wege" choosing between virtue and pleasure, a tradition drawing on Prodikos'slegend (Panofsky). Goethe refers to this tradition disparagingly, as his Hercules(who should know) disavows this apparently inaccurate tradition while criti-cizing W ieland's protagonists more gen erally: "A ber des Prodikus H erkules, dasist dein Man n. Eines Sehulmeisters Herkules. Ein unbartiger Sylvio am Scheide-we g" (214). The comparison of W ieland's Hercules to the sentimental, quixoticDon Sylvio of Wieland's first novel suggests that this image of Hercules, virtu-ous in precisely the most congenial way for Enlightenment morality, violates thecharacter of Euripide s' figure (Heins).

In Goethe's satire, Hercules takes Wieland to task for this violation, object-ing to Wieland's motivation for his character as virtue: "Fiir die Tugend! Washeil3t die Devise? Hast du die Tugend gesehen, Wieland? Ich bin doch auch inder Welt hemntergekommen, und ist mir nichts so begegnet" (212). Goethe'sHercules expresses a kind of empirical corrective to Wieland's wilful, idealisticabstraction. To intensify the sense of his distance from Wieland's ideal of virtue,Hercules goes on to brag of his virility in his description of the true nature ofdemigods and heroes like himself, whom he calls "brave Kerls": "Hatte einerdenn OberfiuC an Saften, machte er den Weibem so viel Kinder, als sie be-gehrten, auch woh l ungebeten. Wie ich denn selbst in einer Nach t funfzig Bubenausgearbeitet habe" (213). The Kraftgenie Hercules objects further to the ab-straction involved in Wieland's labelling this sexual bravado "vice": "Laster, dasist wieder ein sehones Wort. Dadurch wird eben alles so halb bei euch, dafi ihreuch Tugend und Laster als zwei Extrema vorstellt, zwischen denen ihrschwankt. Anstatt euem Mittelzustand als den positiven anzusehen und denbesten wie's eure Bauem and Kneehte und Magde noch tun" (214). HereGo ethe's valorization o fth e legends of Greek antiquity exhibits a typical Sturmund D rang glorification of the comm on peo ple in their natural vitality and theirhealthy morality, as opposed to what Hercules calls Wieland's "scheele Ideale"(214). Ironically, this suggestion of an ideal Mittelzustand is entirely in keepingwith the ideal propounded in Wieland's Musarion of 1768, precisely the text inwhich Goethe had first imagined him self to be encountering the world of G reekantiquity, as he recounts in Dichtung und Wahrheit: "Hier war es, wo ieh dieAntike lebendig und neu wiederzusehen glaubte. Alles was in Wielands Genieplastisch ist, zeigte sich hier aufs vollkommenste" (Goethe, AutobiographischeSchriften 271 ). It is interesting to note here that G oethe 's implicit celebration ofwhat his contemporaries would see as Hercules's moral laxity in sexual matters


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Goethe versus Wieland 9fections and argues that a culture cannot be perfect in more than one way at atime, whereas G oethe appears to question polem ically the application of contem-porary morality to ancient culture at all.If Wieland's text denatures Greek characters, Goethe suggests, it further-more hom ogenizes them in the name of eighteenth-century notions of virtue anddignity superimposed on the ancient material. His Euripides addresses W ieland'sshade: "Eure Leute sind erstlich alle zusammen aus der grofien Familie, der ihrWurde der Menschheit, ein Ding, das Gott weiB woher abstrahiert ist, zum Erbegegeben habt, ihr Diehter auf unsem Trtlmmem! Sie sehn einander ahnlich wiedie Eier, und Ihr habt sie zum unbedeutenden Breie zusam men geruhrt" (208). Incalling the "dignity of humanity" an empty and levelling abstraction, Goethe'ssatirical voice calls into question the universality of the German Enlightenm ent'smoral ideals. W hat is provocative here is not just the charge that Wieland hom o-genizes the literary eharacters (that is, a critique suggesting that Wieland issimply a bad artist), but the further charge that that levelling and dedifier-entiation results from a distinctly modem concept of human dignity. A centralmoral tenet ofth e Enlightenment is blamed for erasing the rich variety of Greeknature ostensibly exhibited in Euripides' original.

For Wieland in 1773, of course, "Wurde der Menschheit" is not an emptyabstraction but a moral ideal rooted in the fundamental, natural humanity of hisaudience and refiected in his characters. In his article in Teutscher Merkur,Wieland spells out an aesthetics of effect or Wirkungsdsthetik that he strives for,founded on a belief in a universal human dignity to which all peoples andcultures, he imagines, would respond equally. In fact, Wieland explains almostall the changes he m akes to Euripides in terms of this Wirkungsdsthetik, first inreference to a set of norms and expectations simply different from those ofEuripedes and, second, in terms of the historical advancement he feels thatmo dem Europe embodies over ancient Greece. W ieland's Wirkungsdsthetik fore-grounds emotional effects on the viewing audience in contrast to what he marksas the rhetorical ideals of Euripides. These emotional effects form Wieland's ex-planation for the innovation of a Singspiel in German. He understands musicalelements to address the viewer's affective stmcture directly, enhancing the in-herent musieality he attempts to build into the verses. Though Italian is a moremusical language, Wieland admits, the poets Hagedom, Uz, Rammler, Gersten-berg, and Jacobi have demonstrated that German is no longer the language thatCharles the Fifth would speak only with his horse {Teutscher Merkur 35). Thearticle is fiill of praise for Sch we itzer's m usic, which has effectively amplifiedthe music of the poetry and achieved the desired effect:


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1 0 JOHN P. HEINSrollenden Thranen bekennen werden, wie groB die Gewalt dieses Tonkunstlersuber unser Herz ist! Wie sehr er Maler und Diehter ist! (36)

This praise for Schweitzer's music illustrates the principles Wieland suggestsguided his own w ork: aiming at deep-seated emotions in the soul or the heart andattempting to conjure up "w ollustiger Schm erz" in a way that all the arts m ightdo equally. Though the ideal of "wollustiger Sch m erz" might remind us o fa gen-eral principle of tragedy, as explored for instance in Lessing's HamburgischeDramaturgic, Wieland's postulation of an ultimate equivalence of effect inmusic, painting, and poetry disagrees with Lessing's fine-tuned exploration ofthe differenees among the arts in his Laokoon. Rather, W ieland's aesthetic heresuggests that the differences among the arts are simply different routes to thesame centre, the heart and soul of the recipient.

In contrast to this focus on the emotional effects of artworks, Wieland sug-gests that the rhetorical norms of Euripides' art produce a Iong-windedness thatis bound to fail Wieland's postulated goal. Long speeches, Wieland maintains,simply have a bad effect:

[...] nirgends sind lange Reden weniger zu dulden, als im Singspiel. Hier, wo dieSprache der Musen allein geredet wird, muB alles warme Empfmdung odergluhender Affect seyn. Ein Liebhaber, der in schmelzenden Tonen seine Gefuhleausathmet, ruhrt uns; ein Sophist, der uns Vemunftschitisse vorsingen wollte,wurde uns ungehalten maehen, oder einschlafem. (40)This suggests that the change in genre from drama to musical drama mightaccount for the changes Wieland feels the need to make. But although Wielandgrants that Euripides was working with a different ideal of language, he assertsthat his own ideal is more in keeping w ith the potential o fthe legendary ma terialfor an emotionally effective theatre experience. Furthermore, he expands thispoint later to suggest that general ideals for literary language are involved:

Die meisten meiner Briider in Melpomene glauben alles gewonnen zu haben, wennsie wie Euripides sehon reden konnen. Ich glaube, dal3, zumal in einem IyrischenSchauspiel, die Kunst wenig Worte zu maehen, ungleieh grosser ist. Wie unendlichist die Sprache der Empfmdung von der Sprache der Rednerschulen verschieden!Was fur unaussprechliche Dinge kan sie mit Einem Blick, Einer Gebehrde, EinemTone sagen! (238)

Here, echoing sentimentalism's Unsagbarkeitstopos, its focus on emotion so


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Goethe versus W ieland 11play (Wegmann 4 6- 50 ). This is not simply a case of asserting the difference be-tween two art forms, but rather of insisting that the one presents human ex-perienee better than the other.More specifically, Wieland directs his writing towards the creation of"wollustiger Schmerz" as the appropriate response to the predicament of Ad-metus's gaining his life at the cost of his wife's and to the spectacle of her self-sacrifice. To create this effect, Wieland asserts, one must alternate scenes work-ing in different emotional directions.

In einem jeden Schauspiele, aber im Singspiele mehr als in jedem andem, istMancbfaltigkeit und Abwechslung ein Grundgesetz; denn sie ist ein Gesetz derNatur. Nach den heftigen Erschutterungen, die wir im zweyten Aet ausge-standen haben, bedtirfen wir sehlechterdings einer Erholung, einer Reyhesantter, angenehmer Empfindungen, weiche, ohne mit dem Ton des Ganzeneinen unsehicklichen Contrast zu maehen, uns einige Minuten von der Seenedes Jammers entfemen. Unsre Diehter vergessen nur gar zu oft, daB der Schmerz,den sie uns verursachen, wolitistiger Schmerz seyn muB; sobald es wtirklicherphysischer Schmerz wird, ist alles Verdienst des Dichters weg; er ist kein Ktinst-ler mehr, er wird ein Peiniger (56)

Here Wieland clearly goes beyond the desire for something different from Eurip-ides for his different audience by claiming that mimicking the common pattemof altemating em otional states in his work is adhering to "ein Gesetz der N atur."The idea that an audienee would potentially experienee "wtirklicher physischerSchmerz" as an effect of a theatre experience attests to the seriousness of Wie-land's conception of the emotional effects of drama, the strong "natural" con-nection he imagines between aesthetic experience or emotional/cognitive ex-perience on the one hand and direct physical or somatic experience on the other.While the fact that Wieland has eamestly thought through the theoreticalsuppositions in his dramatic method might not convince or satisfy Goethe, thisparticular Wirkungsdsthetik does help explain one of the most significantehanges Wieland makes to Euripides' material. Wieland suggests that whereasEuripides has the chambermaid report "eine der ruhrendsten Situationen - denAugenblick der fi^eywilligen Aufopferung der Alceste," Wieland presents thisdeparture directly, so that the audience might feel the emotional impact of thatact (42). Euripides' use ofthe chambermaid, Wieland argues,

ersetzt uns lange nicbt die starken Erschtitterungen der Seele, die wir erfahren,wenn wir sie selbst vor unsem Augen zwisehen Angst und zwiscben Hoffen


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1 2 JOHN P. HEINSScene zu erhalten (und ohne sie batte icb keine Alceste macben mogen) muBte ichin dem Plan des Griechiscben Dicbters starke Veranderungen vomebmen. (42)

Again, Wieland's reworking seeks to maximize the strong movements of thesoul that can be achieved by the direct presentation of emo tional situations, buthere he goes further in placing this particular em otional scene at the centre of hisenterprise ("ohne sie hatte ich keine Alceste maehen mogen"). Here it becomesabundantly clear that Wieland's literary aetivity is not intended to preserve orpresent any tme picture of the Greeks, nor to translate Euripides into a modemGerman idiom, but rather to use the legendary material for its human-dramaticpotential - and in fact, Wieland suggests, this potential is what makes thematerial valuable for the modem world. According to this principle (apparentonly in varying degrees in Wieland's use of characters borrowed from classicalantiquity in his other literary work), the historical and cultural content of literarymaterial is of little significance when com pared with the universal human dramait ostensibly clothes. Goethe, in his tum, will insist upon the implied irreduciblespecificity ofthe Greek historical content, though today's reader can easily seehis Greeks as exponents of Sturm und Drang.

Equally natural and universal for Wieland, it seems, is the criterion of"illusion of reality" that he attempts to create in his work, and for the lack ofwhich he faults Euripides. There are several related criteria in the TeutscherMerkur article that blend into one another in this regard: the criteria ofTduschung, psychologische Wa hrheit, and innere Wahrheit. Wieland suggeststhat the result of the intended emotional effects will be a convincing illusion,catching up the viewers and impelling them to suspend disbelief This ideal ofillusionistic theatre differs greatly from the Greeks' ritualistic theatrical pre-sentation of well-known legendary material, and hence it probably does not cor-respond to Euripides' intentions. Wieland wants to create psychologicallyrealistic characters who will momentarily convince the viewers of their reality.For instance, when Alceste retums from the dead, Wieland understands her tohave been in Elysium and thus feels the need to insert lines in which she refiectson the perfect beauty she has just left behind and dismisses the idea that it wasmerely a dream. W ieland w rites: "Die psychologische Wahrheit dieser Red e, vonder Magie der Musik und von einer lebhaften Action unterstutzt, muB, (wie mirdSueht) ganz nothwendig den Grad von Tauschung wurken, dessen der Diehterzu seiner Absicht vonnothen hat [...]" (52). The unexamined assumption is thatEuripides would agree with this ideal of psychological tmth and that his in-tention is indeed (or should be) to create the kind of illusion that allows theviewer to forget the fictionality or legendary nature of the scene. Going on to


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Goethe versus W ieland 13dadurch einen Grad von innerlicher Wahrheit, der den Zuhorer nie bis zu demGedanken, daB sie nur ein Mahrchen ist, erkalten laBt" (54). This particulardistinction between a Mdhrchen and the real may or may not correspond withEurip ides' view, but W ieland simply universalizes his own distinction and m arksEurip ides' failure to adhere to it as a fiaw. His criterion of realism be com es m ostpedantic when he defends his omission of the buming of Aleestis's body bysaying that, without a body, the audience cannot be convinced that her soulactually retums to life in the same form (241).

As in these points about the goal of a convincing illusion, Wieland d isplaysthe historically bound nature of his objections to Euripides and his claim ofcultural superiority for the mo dem s when he attempts to justify his partieularcharacterization of Admetus and Aicestis. For instance, Wieland accuses Eurip-ides' Admetus of cowardice in emphasizing that the character "accepts" hiswife's self-sacrifice and rejoices at his own survival: "Mitten unter den Weh-klagen, die ihm der Verlust einer schonen jungen Frau auspreBt, verrath erwider seinen Willen sein Behagen daruber, dal3 Er da ist [...]" (70). The impli-cation that Admetus m ight somehow prevent Alcestis's departure after she hascom mitted herself to it before the gods contrasts not only with the finality ofth egods ' decrees in Euripides, but even with the sense in his own play that theevents are unstoppable after Aleestis proclaims h er willingne ss to sacrifice her-self (79-80). For Wieland, the depth of Admetus's love could be proved per-haps only by his complete and permanent misery afier the death of his wife. Toexhibit any joy at having survived, to embrace life, is to demonstrate a lowcharacter. Finally, this character fiaw is tied to the question of realism: "Wirwerden immer nur eine sehr mittelmaBige Meynung von einem Manne haben,der, in dem Augenblicke, wo er eine Gattin, wie Alceste, verliehrt, eine wohl-gesetzte Rede in vierzig schonen Versen zu halten fahig ist" (70). If the fortypretty verses are meant as an accurate illusionistic reaction of a human char-acter to the death of his wife, then he is a particularly selfish character. This in-sistence on blaming the Greeks for violating the norms of the kind of psycho-logical realism emerging in eighteenth-century Gennan literature might betraced to Gottsched's notoriously pedantic critique ofthe way Homer's heroesdeliver long, eloquent speeches in the midst of heated battles (Gottsched 261).

Wieland's moral objections to the way Euripides' characters cling to the joysof life appears as well in the case of Aicestis herself, partieularly in the momentwhen she weeps as she bids farewell to the marital bed (compare Euripides 18):Wir sind zu weit von der Einfalt der unverfalscbten Na tur entfemt, als daB wireinige dieser Ztige, - wiew obl sie in einem scbon zw eytausend Jabre alten


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14 JOHN P. HEINSVerdorben wie wir sind, fmden wir in den Tbranen, womit Aleeste ibr Ebebetteuberscbwemmt, in der Mube, die sie bat, sich davon loszureissen, ich weifi nicbtwas eigenntitziges, das dem Werth ibrer Zartlicbkeit Abbrucb tbut. Vergebenswtirde man uns sagen: es ist Natur, scbone, keuscbe, unentheiligte Natur! UnsreSitten sind nicbt rein, unsre Begriffe selbst nicbt acbt genug, uns die moralischeSchonheit in diesem Zug empfinden zu lassen. Sie versteben mich also scbon,wenn icb sage, daB icb genothiget gewesen sey, die Alceste (auf Unkosten derNatur und Wahrbeit) zu verschonern. Es ist kein Verdienst, sondem einunfreywilliges Opfer, das jeder Dicbter dem Genius seiner Zeit darzubringengezwungen ist. {Teutscher Merkur 65-66; empbasis in tbe original)

In this particular argum ent for beautification against nature and tm th lies the gistof W ieland's view of the differences between the ancients and the mo dem s. Onthe one hand the ancients can be said to represent pristine na ture, but on the otherthey exhibit aspects that we must perceive as coarse, ugly, and primitive. Theexpression "verdorben wie wir sind" is meant sarcastically here, to imply that theculture Rousseau would see as morally corrupt has at least enough sense of"mo ral beau ty" to be offended by Alcestis's grief over the loss of her sexual pa rt-ner. One can see through Wieland's irony a preference for the moral refinementand delicacy of the modem age over the primitive tmth of nature. This pre-ference he ascribes to the necessary obeisance he must pay to the genius of hisown age, at the cost of the tme, natural image of humanity presented by theancients. Whereas ideally Wieland would see nature, tmth, and beauty all agree,here he must sacrifice nature and tmth to beauty, specifically a beauty that heimagines his contempo rary audienee w ill recognize as such.

If for Wieland the aesthetics of effect explains the changes he undertook inadapting Eu ripides, what happens to this carefully elaborated Wirkungsdsthetikin Goethe's satirical response? It becomes merely the courtly artist's panderingto the overly delicate taste ofthe courtiers, those pale weaklings with their hand -kerchiefs ("Eure Weibchen und Mannchen"). In his play Goethe proposes not abetter way to reach this audience through the antique Greek m aterial, but rathera way to use the incom mensurable alterity of the "accurately" perceived Greeceas a critique of that audience. This we might see as an early point in what be-comes an extensive German intellectual tradition of criticizing modemity by be-mo aning its failure to be ancient Greece. Som e ofthe high points in this tradition(as varying in historical accuracy and intellectual direction as they may be)would be in Holderlin's melancholic nostalgia for a lost Heimat of ancientGreece {Hyperion), in Nietzsche's eulogy for the form of tragedy before the riseof Socratic thought {Geburt der Tragodie aus dem Geiste der Musik), later in


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Goethe versus W ieland 15Romans), and in the critical gaze of Rilke's "Archaischer Torso Apolios," thestatue whose every perfection is an eye seeing the reade r's imperfection. Thou ghGoethe generally avoids nostalgia for antiquity, his use of a postulated Sturmund Drang-inspired Greece as a foil for what he portrays as Wieland's placid, un -natural civilization in Gotter, Helden und Wieland might be the exception to themle.

Though the German fascination with ancient Greece that began in thesecond half of the eighteenth century provided not only a tool for an ardentcritique of European society, but also a set of impulses for constmcting a newnational cultural identity over the course ofthe next century, the young Goethe'stendency in this early play emphasizes the critique side of the equation(Marehand 37). That critique directly addresses the relationship between thelegaey of the ancients and the Christian religion: where Goethe's farce assignsWieland's play to the tradition of forcibly reconciling the ideas of the aneientswith the precepts of Christianity, Goethe clearly uses the ancients criticallyagainst certain Ch ristian beliefs and tendencies. Specifically, Goethe pre sents theChristian religion as a school for narrowmindedness and as an unnaturalideology glorifying death. Confronted with the idea that he owes some respectto Euripides, Wieland's shade responds, "Unsre Religion verbietet uns,irgendeine W ahrheit, GroBe, Gtite, Schonheit anzuerkennen und anzubeten auBerihr," by which Goethe suggests that the exclusive tmth claims of Christianity ob-scure not just other religions, but entire other realms of human experience(205-06). In an almost proto-Nietzschean critique of Christianity as an ex-pression of disgust with life, Goethe suggests that Wieland's Christian prejudicesskew his treatment of death in particular. In his Alceste, Wieland significantlyreworks the discussion between Aicestis and Admetus before her death. In thisdiscussion in Euripides' original play, the weeping Admetus promises Aicestisthat out of respect for her sacrifice he w ill not remarry and that he will loathe hismother and father, neither of whom offered to die in his place, in effect forcingAicestis to do so (Euripides 23-24). But in Wieland's version, Aicestis andAdmetus both profess that they cannot live without each other, and they eachoffer to die first, each outdoing the other in self-sacrifice. This alteration Goethesees as a minimization of the disagreeable nature of death, and hence a mini-mization of Alcestis 's sacrifice, and he suggests that this falsification oft he issueproceeds from Christianify's glorification of death. In Goethe's scene, the realAdmetus in the underworld protests that, as much as he is upset that Aicestis hasto die for him, he would find it absurd to want to die himself as well. Euripidestries to make Admetus understand the handieap under which Wieland is work-ing: "Ihr bedenkt nicht, dal3 er zu einer Sekte gehort, die alien Wassersuchtigen,


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16 JOHN p. HEINSglaubt er " (209). Implicitly, then, the suggestion is that the Greeks have a healthydistaste for suffering and death that is more in keeping with humanity's physicalnature than is the Christian fascination with death (masking itself as a desire forwholeness in the afterlife). Today's reader can see this point in Goethe's critiqueas proceeding more fi'om Sturm und Drang vitalism and from its tendency toprobe the most sacred and tender points in eighteenth-century German culturethan from a necessarily clearer vision of the Greeks.

In terms of the argument against Wieland's sentimentalism, his Christianprejudices, and his lack of attention to historical difference in this piece, G oethedoes illustrate some of what still strikes modem readers as comical in Wieland'sSingspiel as an adaptation of Euripides, and he does exhibit a greater sensitivifyto the particularity of ancient Greece. However, the distinctly Sturm und Drangmanner in which Goethe does this suggests that his critique does not adhere toany pure objective interest in historical difference, as perhaps no appropriationof Greece can, but rather that every modem appropriation of the legacy ofGreece operates with its own particular interests. Of course the desire to exploreGreek antiquity in a disinterested way was emerging strongly in the 1770s and1780s, particularly in Friedrich August Wolf's establishment of classicalscholarship as an independent discipline pursuing historieal knowledge for itsown sake (Marehand 19). Many similar modes of thought were, like Goethe's,inspired by Herder's careflil attention to cultural and historical difference.Furthermore, Goethe overshoots the mark insofar as he attempts to paintWieland's work in general with the broad bmsh of "bad" Enlightenment uni-versalism, blind to the complexity and nuance of ancient Greek culture. Thebreadth and detail of Wieland's knowledge ofthe Greeks, demonstrated (amongmany other places) in his essay "Gedanken tiber die Ideale der Alten" of 1777,illustrates that, while Wieland may indeed be working with aesthetic notions heconsiders universal (and drawing conclusions about the artistic practice of theancients accordingly), this universalism is hardly of the blind and prejudicedfype presented in Goethe's caricature.This one moment of literary confrontation reveals more about the confiictbetween the Sturm und Drang on the one hand and Wieland's sometimes con-fiicting and inconsistent ideas about the ancients on the other than it does aboutthe Greeks. Specifically, it presents two distinct ideas of historical difference.The idea expressed in these two Wieland texts, the Alceste and its explication inTeutscher Merkur, is one that can see the category "virtue," ostensibly trans-historical and transcultural but actually strongly marked by eighteenth-centuryEuropean cultural assump tions, as the key to Eurip ides' drama. By virtue of hisposition in history, Wieland feels that he can justly refine the excellent but prim i-


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Goethe versus Wieland 17gressivism, a pattem characteristic of many "modems" (JauB 15). In contrast,Goethe's protohistoricist idea insists that Euripides must be understood withinhis own specific historical context. Today's reader understands that Goethe's"corrective" functions effectively in part because Wieland's alterations are soclear. If Wieland reads the classics for their modelling of universal humanisticideals, then Goethe's farce tries to point out the extent to which those ideals inWieland's Singspiel are not transhistorical universals, but rather moral ideals ofthe German Enlightenment superimposed over the ancient material. Goethe thenregards the aneients as objects of disinterested knowledge, which would try tounderstand them in terms of their fundamentally different value system. Indeed,Goethe's farce effectively reminds us of this difference, even as (in trying to"sympathize" with the distant culture) it violates the same rule, as he enlistsEuripides' help for his own stmggle for cultural identity in 1773. In doing so, hecan be said to set a pattem for Germans' attempts to demonstrate their own"Greek blood" over the next century and a half.

Works CitedBoyle, Nicholas. Goethe. The Poet artd the Age. Volume 1. The Poetry of D esire

(1749-1790). Oxford: Oxford UP, 1991.Doktor, Wolfgang. Die Kritik der Empfmdsam keit. Frankturt/M.: Lang, 1975.Erxleben, Maria. "Goethes Farce 'Gotter, Helden und Wieland.'" Christoph M artin

Wieland und die Antike. Stendal: W inckeimann-Gesellschaft, 1986. 77 -87 .Euripides. The Complete Greek Tragedies. Volume III. Ed. David Grene and R ichmond

Lattimore. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1992.Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. Autobiographische Schriften. Erster Band. Ed. Liselotte

Blumenthal, notes by Erich Trunz. Vol. 9 of Werke. Hamburger Ausgabe.Ham burg: Wegner, 195Iff. 14 Vols.. Dramatische Dichtungen. Zweiter Band. Ed. with notes by Wolfgang Kayser.Vol. 4 of Werke. Hamburger Ausgabe. Ham burg: Wegner, 1951ff. 14 Vols.

Gottsched, Johann Christoph. Ausgewdhlte Werke. Volume VI, Part 1. Ed. Joach imBirke and Brigitte Birke. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1973. 12 Vols. 1984.

Heins, John P. "Quixotism and the Aesthetic Constitution ofthe Individual in Wieland'sDon Sylvio von Rosalva." Journal of English and Germanic Philology 102.4(2003): 530-48 .

Herder, Johann Gottfried. Werke. Band 1. Herder und der Sturm und Drang 1764-1774.Ed. Wolfgang Pross. Munich: Hanser, 1984.Jager, Georg. Empfindsamkeit und Roman. Wortgeschichte, Theorie und Kritik im 18.


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18 JOHN p. HEINS'Quereile des Anciens et des Modemes.'" Introduction. Parallele des anciens etdes modernes en ce qui regarde les arts et les sciences. By Charles Perrault.Munich: Eidos, 1964. 8-81.Marehand, Suzanne. Down from Olympus. Archaeology and Philhellenism in Germany,1750-1970. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1996.

Norton, Robert E. Herder s Aesthetics and the European Enlightenment. Ithaca: ComellUP, 1991.

Panofsky, Erwin. Hercules am Scheidewege. Leipzig: Teubner, 1930.Petzoldt, Ruth. "Literaturkritik im Totenreich. Das literarische Totengesprach als

Literatursatire am Beispiel von Goethes Farce Gotten Helden und Wieland."Wirkendes Wort 3 (1995): 406-17 .

Pfotenhauer, Helmut, Markus Bemauer, and Norbert Miller, eds. Fruhklassizismus.Position und Opposition: Winckelmann, Mengs, Heinse. Frankfurt/M.: DeutscherKlassiker Verlag, 1995.

Purdy, Daniel L. The Tyranny of Elegance. Consumer Cosmopolitanism in the Era ofGoethe. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1998.

Sauder, Gerhard. Empfindsamkeit. Vo\. 1. Stuttgart: M etzler, 1974. 3 Vols.Sengle, Friedrich. "W ieland und Goethe ." Wieland. Vier Biberacher Vortrage.

Wiesbaden: Insel, 1954. 55 -79 .Wegmann, Nikolaus. Diskurse der Empfindsamkeit. Zur Geschichte eines Gefuhls in

der Literatur des 18. Jahrhunderts. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1988.Wieland, Christoph Martin. "Briefe an einen Freund tiber das deutsche Singspiel,

Alceste." Der Teutsche Merkur 1 (1773): 34-72 , 2 2 3 ^ 3 .. Werke. Dritter Band. Ed. and with notes by Fritz Martini and Reinhard Dohl.

Munich: Hanser, 1967. 5 Vols. 1964-67.


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