A Higher Language: Novalis on Communion with Animals Author(s): Alice Kuzniar Source: The German Quarterly, Vol. 76, No. 4 (Autumn, 2003), pp. 426-442 Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the American Association of Teachers of German Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3252241 Accessed: 28/11/2010 18:54 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=black. 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Blackwell Publishing and American Association of Teachers of German are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The German Quarterly. http://www.jstor.org ALICEKUZNIAR University of North Carolina-ChapelHill A Higher Language: Novalis on Communion with Animals Around 1800 Philipp Otto Runge fash- How is it that the dog can be emblematicfor ionedwith scissorsand paper a doggazingup human longing?Does it mean that animals at a full moon.Significantly, the dogholds his share in mankind'sintimations of a higher mouth closed,as if,were he to howl,we might being or immortality?Or is the anthropo- think him a wolf in the wild. Insteadhe is a morphismmore mundane,announcing the domesticateddog, to the point that he even sentimentalizationof the pet seen later in communicateshuman value: like a true Ro- VictorianEngland? mantic,he raises his eyes silentlyto the sky, Here,the animalundoubtedly represents his chest filled with a longing for transcen- neitherthe humantrait that Enlightenment dence.Art criticRobert Rosenblum has writ- thinkers conventionallydenied it (i.e., rea- ten that the silhouetteportrays a "strangely son), nor does the dog representthe feature haunting oppositionbetween terrestrialde- that the nineteenth century frequently sire and skyborneinaccessibility" (37). A de- claimedhumans and animals shared(i.e., a cadebefore C. D. Friedrich'snocturnal back baserinstinct). The dogis not an animalin a figures,Runge creates a dogtransfixed by lu- fairytale waitingto be retransfiguredinto a nar light. This substitutionof a dog for this human being and thereby saved from a archetypal Romantic pose is fascinating. beast's existence.Nor is he a talkinganimal who has steppedout of a fable to depicthu- man frailties. Instead the dog possesses a kindof spirituality,a sense of awe. His trans- fixed gaze suggests a bond with a transcen- dent world; perhaps his chest breathes in onenesswith nature.Even in the sparseness of the silhouette (or perhapsbecause of the evocativesublimity of its shorthand),Runge pointsto the mysteriousinterconnectedness of nature.All of natureis sacredand alive,a unity in which the dog participates. I shouldlike to arguethat this particular substitutionof animalfor humanoccurs not insignificantly in Romanticism, and that Novalis (Friedrichvon Hardenberg)was a majorthinker in realigningthe relationship between the two worlds. Of course, much scholarshiphas been devotedto nature,gal- vanism, and mineralogyin Novalis's writ- ings.1To be sure,there are fewerand less sa- lient referencesto animals than to plants The German Quarterly 76.4 (Fall 2003) 426 KUZNIAR:Novalis 427 and stones in his work. But what passages The 18th-Century Debates exist are extraordinary for their contra- on Animals dictionof the Enlightenmentdelineation of the boundariesbetween man and animal.If The arm of Descartes'sjudgment on the much Enlightenmentthought set out to de- animalreached far into the Enlightenment. fine the essence of man,then his uniqueness Descartesmaintained that animalswere nat- was often purportedat the expense of non- ural automata, incapable of thought, lan- human creatures.Even in writers such as guage,understanding, and feeling. Although Condillacand Reimaruswho elaboratedon he did not deny them life or sensation,they the similaritiesbetween beast andman, man were supposedlydevoid of soul and immune alwayscrowned the continuityand develop- to pain.Their bodies ran like clockwork.Pre- ment from one speciesto the next. dictably,significant challenges to Descartes's Novalis, by contrast,conceives of an al- mechanisticview of animalsand defensesof most instantaneous, imaginative transfor- their rights were presentedby such impor- mationof man intoan animal,plant, or stone. tant philosophersas Voltaire,Rousseau, and At one stroke, he casts aside the hierarchy Bentham,who in 1780 rephrasedthe semi- that governedthe eighteenth-centurybelief nal question as being not whether animals in the Great Chainof Being. The metamor- couldreason or talk, but whetherthey could phosis itself signifies a state of higher con- suffer.Yet Enlightenmentthinkers repeat- sciousnessthat transcendsthe human.Even edly adheredto the stark Cartesiandivision moreaudaciously, Hardenberg asks whether of man from animal. Even when Leibniz God, since he couldbecome man, could not claimedthat they could not, as monads,be also become a stone, plant, animal, or ele- denied an eternal soul, Hume that they ex- ment, therebyinstating "einefortwihrende pressed dedicationto each other and to hu- Erl6sungin der Natur"(2: 826). In short,in- mans, or Locke that they demonstrated steadof the animalbeing the abjectOther of some capacityto reason,still a fundamental Enlightenmentthought, it becomesthe "Du" separation and hierarchy dominatedtheir of Novalis's radicalpre-Rimbaudian state- classifications.Human reason defined the ment: "Ich bin Du" (2:332). The question essential difference between species.2Ac- then arisesas to whatpermits this shiftin in- cordingto Zedler,for instance, "theiletman tellectualhistory, one that involvesphiloso- die Thiere in verniinftigeund unverniinfti- phy, theology,and science. Could one per- ge, oder in Menschen und Vieh" (1334). haps searchfor an answerin centralRoman- Ironizingthis recurrenteighteenth-century tic tenets, even if they appearat first glance praise of man as animal rationale, Lich- to be far removedfrom the questionof what tenbergwrites that if dogs,wasps, and hor- distinguishes man from beast? In other nets had been gifted with human reason, words,do the Romantictheories on the frag- they would conquer the world (1:706, no. ment, organicity,chaos, pre-reflexive being, 360)!3 and poesispertain or even contributeto this Underscoring the eighteenth-century strikingshift? Are there other thinkers of the faith in reason, Kant in the Metaphysikder periodwith whom Novalis can be aligned? Sitten repeatedlycontrasts "Vernunft"and Can his uniquenessbe claimedby compari- "moralischesGeffihl" to "Thierheit"(6:216, son onlywith Enlightenmentwriters or also 387, 435).4His use of the word "Thierheit" with his contemporaries?These are the carriesa doublemeaning: at times it refersto questionsthis essay intends to address. "andere Naturwesen" (6:400) and at times to part of man himself, out of which he must raise himself, as when Kant says, "Es ist [dem Menschen] Pflicht: sich aus der Rohig- keit seiner Natur, aus der Thierheit (quoad 428 THE GERMAN QUARTERLY Fall 2003 actum), immer mehr zur Menschheit [...] In seeming contrast to Kant's Cartesian empor zu arbeiten" (6:387), or when he con- separation of man from beast, Herder begins trasts "Thiermensch" to "Vernunftmensch" Uber den Ursrpung der Sprache with the (6:435). Masturbation is euphemized as "Be- striking line "Schon als Tier, hat der Mensch friedigung thierischer Triebe" (6:425), "thie- Sprache" (697). This original language is one rische Neigung" (6:425), or "bloBethierische of "Empfindung, die unmittelbares Natur- Lust" (6:424). Yet far from conceptualizing gesetz ist" (698) and one that man shared likeness between the species, Kant's use of with animals. Herder,by opening his treatise such turns of phrase reinforces the differ- with a discussion of pain and its expression, ences between man and the lowly beast. Ac- whether it be in human or nonhuman be- cording to Kant, animals don't have "eine ings, is far from Descartes's mechanistic Wiirde (einen absoluten inneren Wert)" (6: view of animals and his denial that they ex- 435), whereas man is above possessing eco- perience suffering. But unlike Novalis, who nomic value. When Kant opposed cruelty to will later envisage a return to an Edenic lan- animals it was on the grounds that man has a guage common to man and nature, Herder duty to himself (not the animal!), for his demarcates man's progression away from an sense of morality or of his obligations toward instinctual language: what ultimately dis- other humans could be diminished and even- tinguishes man is his "Besonnenheit" (722) tually exterminated (6:444).5 and capacity for reflection, "daBer erkenne, Thus, although Kant cannot