Goethe's Faust, Keller's Romeo Und Julia Auf Dem
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Modernity’s Pact with the Devil: Goethe’s Faust, Keller’s Romeo und Julia auf dem Dorfe, and Storm’s Der Schimmelreiter as Tales of Forgetting Thesis Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Dennis Schaefer, B.A. Graduate Program in Germanic Languages and Literatures The Ohio State University 2018 Thesis committee: Robert C. Holub, Adviser John E. Davidson Copyright by Dennis Schaefer 2018 Abstract In this MA thesis, I argue that the deal with the devil, as it manifests in 19th century German literary texts like Johann Wolfgang Goethe’s Faust: Eine Tragödie, Gottfried Keller’s Romeo und Julia auf dem Dorfe, and Theodor Storm’s Der Schimmelreiter, negotiates the experience of modernity and mediates the experience thereof through offering moments of forgetting. Upon approaching modernity with help from Jürgen Habermas, Friedrich Nietzsche and Karl Marx, the thesis explores the existential importance of Glück and forgetting according to Nietzsche’s second Untimely Meditation, Vom Nutzen und Nachteil der Historie fürs Leben. Subsequently, I posit that the deal with the devil, as an explicit component and, later on, implicit undercurrent of 19th century German texts, takes on the role of facilitator of moments of such forgetting. Goethe’s masterpiece Faust lays the foundation for this conflux of developments, motifs, and experiences in the wager its protagonists strikes with the devil Mephistopheles and in the various escapades that take Faust out of the Gothic halls of the university to the changing feudal world, where he encounters his lover Gretchen. The experience of Glück that he significantly does not seal with her drives him, first, away into the classical spheres of Greek Antiquity, where he cannot rest to be with Helen of Troy, and, second, into a proto-capitalist dam project through which he intends to atone for his failings with Gretchen and congeal the otherwise insubstantial forgetting. In Keller’s Romeo und Julia auf dem Dorfe, the devilish Black Fiddler offers Sali and Vrenchen, the two losers of an unfolding modernity, the chance for a tainted forgetting, an offer they do not take. In Der Schimmelreiter, the deal with the i devil materializes from the winning, bourgeois end to Hauke Haien, who builds a dam for purposes palpably similar to Faust’s. ii Dedication Für Fred. iii Acknowledgements To be fair, dedicating nine months of my life to a thesis might not rival the difficulties and rewards of a full-fledged doctoral dissertation, but I could not begin this Magisterarbeit without acknowledging the support I received from a variety of people or institutions. First and foremost, I would like to thank my advisor Robert Holub for his unfaltering honesty in all academic, professional, and personal matters, his untiring patience with all my linguistic and argumentative acrobatics, and his uncanny pace at reading papers and answering emails even at late hours of the night. His graduate seminars on Nietzsche and Marx steered my scholarship into the direction it will take in the future. I owe similar gratitude to my co-advisor John Davidson, who read whatever I gave him with a constructive eye for detail and provided more than one useful piece of advice along the way. Matthew Birkhold, when he read parts of the thesis, thoughtfully engaged my ideas, and further comments from Katra Byram, Sigrid Lange, May Mergenthaler, and Kristina Mendicino brought the project on course. Helpful friends, readers, and interlocutors, both in Columbus and abroad, include Stephan Ehrig, Kathrin Frenzel-Luke, Tina Grundmann, Hannah Luge, Clint Morrison, Caro Müller, Birte Pietsch, Mona Schubert, Evan VanTassell, and the participants and presenters of the German Graduate Student Conference “Reading Exhaust | Erschöpfende Lektüren” that was held in October 2017 at Brown University. Hannah Fergen deserves special mention for her invaluable assistance with the final formatting of this document. Moreover, I remain deeply indebted to the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures for awarding me a Dr. Henry Kratz Jr. Summer Research Fellowship, which gave me a summer off to focus on a variety of academic projects from which this thesis eventually emerged, and for funding my journey iv to Providence, so that I could present my research. Oftentimes, this rigorous intellectual, professional, and personal support made my job incredibly easy, and whenever it didn’t, everybody here helped me to proceed successfully – and convincingly, I hope – from one text to the other, from one argument to the next. Columbus, OH, 30. März 2018 v Vita July 2011……………………………… Europaschule Langerwehe Gesamtschule, DE 2013 to 2014…………………………... Visiting Student, University of Warwick, UK 2016…………………………………… B.A. German Studies / English Studies, University of Cologne, DE 2016 to present………………………... Graduate Teaching Associate, Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, The Ohio State University Fields of Study Major Field: Germanic Languages and Literatures vi Table of Contents Abstract ............................................................................................................................ i Dedication ..................................................................................................................... iii Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................ iv Vita ................................................................................................................................ vi Preface ........................................................................................................................... ix Chapter 1: Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This): Historical, Theoretical and Conceptual Premises .......................................................................................................................... 1 Moments of Modernity: Towards a Definition of Modernity with Nietzsche and Marx ............ 1 The Prospect of Perfection: The Meaning of Forgetting as Glück........................................... 17 Figurations of the Teufelspakt at the Crossroads in the 19th Century....................................... 23 Chapter 2: Never Gonna Love Again: Goethe’s Faust on the Dos and Don’ts of Modern Life ............................................................................................................................... 30 A Diagnosis of the Modern Condition: Revisiting the Gelehrtentragödie............................... 30 A Simple Life? With Faust and Gretchen to the Cusp of Modernity ....................................... 40 “Arkadisch frei sei unser Glück“: The Quest for Forgetting in the Sphere of the Classical ..... 50 Endgame: Faust’s Enactment of Capitalist Modernization for the Sake of Forgetting ............. 66 Chapter 3: I Got You Babe: The Case of Romeo and Julia auf dem Dorfe ...................... 83 Traces of Urbanization: The Impact of Modernity on the Seldwylian Hinterland ................... 83 “[G]egen Abend werden wir dann schon einen Tanzplatz finden”: Sali’s and Vrenchen’s Exhaustion of Glück .............................................................................................................. 93 Chapter 4: My Boy Builds Coffins: Turning the Tides of Time in Storm’s Der Schimmelreiter ............................................................................................................ 105 The Beautiful Mind of Hauke Haien: The Chains of Socratic and Bourgeois Modernity ...... 105 The Devil’s Last Laugh: The Specter of Temporality .......................................................... 115 Coda: The Deal with the Devil as a Metaphor for Modern Life .................................... 127 Bibliography ............................................................................................................... 131 vii She looked ahead, at the haze that melted rail and distance, a haze that could rip apart at any moment to some shape of disaster. She wondered why she felt safer than she ever felt in a car behind the engine, safer here, where it seemed as if, should an obstacle rise, her breast and the glass shield would be first to smash against it. She smiled, grasping the answer: it was the security of being first with full sight and full knowledge of one’s course – not the blind sense of being pulled into the unknown by some unknown power ahead. It was the greatest sensation of existence: not to trust, but to know. (220) – Ayn Rand: Atlas Shrugged LEONATO. Well, then, go you into hell? BEATRICE. No, but to the gate, and there will the devil meet me, like an old cuckold, with horns on his head, and say 'Get you to heaven, Beatrice, get you to heaven. Here's no place for you maids!' So deliver I up my apes, and away to Saint Peter fore the heavens. He shows me where the bachelors sit, and there live we as merry as the day is long. (179-180) – William Shakespeare: Much Ado About Nothing Three or four times only in my youth did I glimpse the Joyous Isles, before they were lost to fogs, depressions, cold fronts, ill winds and contrary tides. I mistook them for adulthood. Assuming they were a fixed feature in my life’s voyage, I neglected to record their latitude, their longitude, their approach. Young ruddy fool. What wouldn’t I give now for a never- changing map of the ever constant ineffable? To possess, as it were, an atlas of clouds. (384) – David Mitchell: Cloud Atlas viii