University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2014 "Wir Haben Keine Mythologie": Dante's Commedia and the Poetics of Early German Romanticism Daniel DiMassa University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the German Literature Commons, and the Other Languages, Societies, and Cultures Commons Recommended Citation DiMassa, Daniel, ""Wir Haben Keine Mythologie": Dante's Commedia and the Poetics of Early German Romanticism" (2014). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 1259. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1259 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1259 For more information, please contact [email protected]. "Wir Haben Keine Mythologie": Dante's Commedia and the Poetics of Early German Romanticism Abstract This dissertation reinterprets the German Romantics' project of writing a new mythology by arguing that the project's theoretical and poetic contours, as they emerge around 1800, owe to the Romantic engagement with Dante and his Commedia. Positioning the neue Mythologie vis-à -vis mythographical discourses of the Enlightenment, I begin by showing how A.W. Schlegel's scholarship on Dante in the early to mid 1790s endorses the Commedia as the preeminent symbolic work of Romantic poetry, which in turn grounds Friedrich Schlegel's theorization of the Commedia as a work of universal symbolic value in the mid to late 1790s. Friedrich Schlegel's activity culminates in the Rede über die Mythologie, in which he, having defined the new mythology as a symbolic instantiation of absolute idealism, asserts that any new mythology would necessarily assume the form of the Commedia. In subsequent chapters on Novalis, Schelling, and Goethe, I show how these figures take up the challenges of the Schlegel brothers' literary historiography by adopting both poetic strategies as well as specific scenes from the Commedia in order to render the tenets of absolute idealism in a system of Dantean myth. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Germanic Languages and Literature First Advisor Catriona MacLeod Keywords Dante, Goethe, Idealism, Mythology, Romanticism, Schlegel Subject Categories German Literature | Other Languages, Societies, and Cultures This dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1259 “WIR HABEN KEINE MYTHOLOGIE”: DANTE’S COMMEDIA AND THE POETICS OF EARLY GERMAN ROMANTICISM Daniel DiMassa A DISSERTATION in Germanic Languages and Literatures Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2014 Supervisor of Dissertation ________________________________ Catriona MacLeod, Professor, Germanic Languages and Literatures Graduate Group Chairperson ________________________________ Simon Richter, Professor, Germanic Languages and Literatures Dissertation Committee Simon Richter, Professor, Germanic Languages and Literatures Kevin Brownlee, Professor, Romance Languages “WIR HABEN KEINE MYTHOLOGIE”: DANTE’S COMMEDIA AND THE POETICS OF EARLY GERMAN ROMANTICISM COPYRIGHT 2014 Daniel Anthony DiMassa iii Acknowledgments In the course of writing this dissertation, I had the good fortune of avoiding the scholar’s selva oscura because a great number of people kept me on the diritta via. I am deeply grateful to my incomparable Doktormutter, Catriona MacLeod, whose generosity, thoughtfulness, savoir faire, and — yes, fastidiousness! — not only contributed to the strength of the dissertation, but also to the immense satisfaction that came from writing it. I would like to thank Kevin Brownlee, both for his willingness to sit on a committee of Germanists as well as for his excellent feedback. Simon Richter has been a devoted mentor and friend whose faith in my work is more inspiring than he knows. In certain respects, the origins of this dissertation predate my years at the University of Pennsylvania. I would like to acknowledge those teachers who helped lay its foundations. As a student of religion, I encountered Dante for the first time in the unforgettable seminars of Traugott Lawler and Denys Turner, while Vittorio Hösle and Cyrus Hamlin introduced me in equally memorable seminars to the “great heathen,” Goethe. I remain grateful to all of them for their inspired teaching, as well as for helping me navigate what at the time seemed like a circuitous path between disciplines. At the University of Pennsylvania I have enjoyed tremendous support. Bethany Wiggin and Grit Schwarzkopf engaged me in important conversations that spurred the project forward in its earliest stages. I received generous feedback from Lisa Cerami and Leif Weatherby as I composed the prospectus. Peter Struck and David Wallace both led seminars that helped me to contextualize my work. Liliane Weissberg was instrumental in getting me to Italy, as well as in bringing me to present research in Weimar. A fellowship from the School of Arts and Sciences enabled me to complete the dissertation. Some of my most important mentors have been fellow graduate students: Melanie Adley, C.J. Jones, and Kerry Wallach merit special recognition. I would like to thank Nick Theis, in particular, for his friendship. My parents, Nana and Mike DiMassa, have for years now been unwavering in their support of my work, no matter how arcane. I thank them for encouraging me to follow my heart. My brother, Nick DiMassa, has been an invaluable listener, reader, supporter, and above all, friend. I thank him for taking such an earnest interest in what it is I do. This dissertation is dedicated to my wife, Victoria DiMassa, without whose love and patience it would have never come to fruition. iv ABSTRACT “WIR HABEN KEINE MYTHOLOGIE”: DANTE’S COMMEDIA AND THE POETICS OF EARLY GERMAN ROMANTICISM Daniel DiMassa Catriona MacLeod This dissertation reinterprets the German Romantics’ project of writing a new mythology by arguing that the project’s theoretical and poetic contours, as they emerge around 1800, owe to the Romantic engagement with Dante and his Commedia. Positioning the neue Mythologie vis-à-vis mythographical discourses of the Enlightenment, I begin by showing how A.W. Schlegel’s scholarship on Dante in the early to mid 1790s endorses the Commedia as the preeminent symbolic work of Romantic poetry, which in turn grounds Friedrich Schlegel’s theorization of the Commedia as a work of universal symbolic value in the mid to late 1790s. Friedrich Schlegel’s activity culminates in the Rede über die Mythologie, in which he, having defined the new mythology as a symbolic instantiation of absolute idealism, asserts that any new mythology would necessarily assume the form of the Commedia. In subsequent chapters on Novalis, Schelling, and Goethe, I show how these figures take up the challenges of the Schlegel brothers’ literary historiography by adopting both poetic strategies as well as specific scenes from the Commedia in order to render the tenets of absolute idealism in a system of Dantean myth. v Table of Contents Acknowledgments iii Abbreviations 1 Introduction 2 1. The Romantic Project of a New Mythology 10 2. Discovering Dante and Theorizing Myth: The Schlegel Brothers 42 and the Origins of the New Mythology 3. Dreaming of Dante: Novalis’s Heinrich von Ofterdingen and the 97 Poetics of Absolute Idealism 4. Mythologies of Nature: Schelling, Goethe, and the Reanimation of 135 the Commedia 5. Death and New Life for the Romantic Dante 217 Bibliography 235 1 Abbreviations AWSW = August Wilhelm von Schlegel’s Sämmtliche Werke. Edited by Eduard Böcking. Leipzig: Weidmann, 1846-1847. 12 volumes. FA = Johann Wolfgang Goethe. Sämtliche Werke. Briefe, Tagebücher und Gespräche. Edited by Dieter Borchmeyer et. al. Frankfurt: Deutscher Klassiker, 1985—. HKA = Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling Historisch-kritische Ausgabe. Edited by Hans Michael Baumgartner et. al. Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog, 1976—. Inferno/Purgatorio/Paradiso = Dante. The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri. Edited and translated by Robert M. Durling and Ronald L. Martinez. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996-2013. 3 volumes.1 KAV = August Wilhelm Schlegel: Kritische Ausgabe der Vorlesungen. Edited by Ernst Behler and Frank Jolles. Paderborn: F. Schöningh, 1989—. KFSA = Kritische Friedrich-Schlegel-Ausgabe. Edited by Ernst Behler, Jean Jacques Anstett, Hans Eichner (München: F. Schöningh, 1958—. MA = Johann Wolfgang Goethe: Sämtliche Werke nach Epochen seines Schaffens. Edited by Karl Richter, Herbert Göpfert, Norbert Miller, Gerhard Sauder. München: Hanser, 1985—. SBD = F.W.J. Schelling, Briefe und Dokumente, ed. Horst Fuhrmans. Bonn: Bouvier, 1962-1965. 3 volumes. Schriften = Novalis Schriften: Die Werke Friedrich von Hardenbergs. Edited by Paul Kluckhohn and Richard Samuel (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1960 —. SW = Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schellings Sämmtliche Werke. Edited by Karl Friedrich August Schelling. Stuttgart, Augsburg: Cotta, 1856-1861. 14 volumes. WA = Goethes Werke. Weimar: Böhlau, 1887-1919. 133 volumes. 1 I draw on the Italian text of these editions, but translations, unless noted otherwise, are my own. 2 Introduction In winter 1799, in the German university town of Jena, there convened at Leutragasse 5 a small community of friends, rivals, lovers, and intellectuals who together wended their way through Dante’s Commedia. By New Year’s, 1800, they had covered some