Baroque Expressions in Romanticism: Heinrich Von Kleist and Keats
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Baroque Expressions in Romanticism: Heinrich von Kleist and Keats (Thesis Format: Monograph) by Adrian Mioc Graduate Programme in Comparative Literature Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy School of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies University of Western Ontario London, Ontario April 2011 © Adrian Mioc, 2011 Library and Archives Bibliotheque et Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du Branch Patrimoine de I'edition 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington Ottawa ON K1A0N4 Ottawa ON K1A 0N4 Canada Canada Your file Votre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-89513-9 Our file Notre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-89513-9 NOTICE: AVIS: The author has granted a non L'auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive exclusive license allowing Library and permettant a la Bibliotheque et Archives Archives Canada to reproduce, Canada de reproduire, publier, archiver, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public communicate to the public by par telecommunication ou par I'lnternet, preter, telecommunication or on the Internet, distribuer et vendre des theses partout dans le loan, distrbute and sell theses monde, a des fins commerciales ou autres, sur worldwide, for commercial or non support microforme, papier, electronique et/ou commercial purposes, in microform, autres formats. paper, electronic and/or any other formats. The author retains copyright L'auteur conserve la propriete du droit d'auteur ownership and moral rights in this et des droits moraux qui protege cette these. Ni thesis. Neither the thesis nor la these ni des extraits substantiels de celle-ci substantial extracts from it may be ne doivent etre imprimes ou autrement printed or otherwise reproduced reproduits sans son autorisation. without the author's permission. In compliance with the Canadian Conformement a la loi canadienne sur la Privacy Act some supporting forms protection de la vie privee, quelques may have been removed from this formulaires secondaires ont ete enleves de thesis. cette these. While these forms may be included Bien que ces formulaires aient inclus dans in the document page count, their la pagination, il n'y aura aucun contenu removal does not represent any loss manquant. of content from the thesis. Canada THE UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN ONTARIO School of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies CERTIFICATE OF EXAMINATION Supervisor Examiners Prof. Angela Esterhammer Prof. Jan Plug Supervisory Committee Prof. Joel Faflak Prof. Calin Mihailescu Prof. Arkady Plotnitsky The thesis by Adrian Mioc entitled: Baroque Expressions in Romanticism: Heinrich von Kleist and John Keats is accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Date Chair of the Thesis Examination Board 11 Abstract This dissertation is configured around two main concepts: expression and representation. Understood in their strict yet technical Deleuzian definition, these concepts become productive as they are used to help understand major cultural phenomena. The first part explores on a theoretical level their ramifications within the context of both the baroque and the romantic movements, while the second part commits to a more practical task: to detect and explain the expressive features of two prominent writers of the romantic period, Heinrich von Kleist and John Keats. As expressive writers, Kleist and Keats are atypical within their own age: romanticism, particularly that of the Jena school, was an age bent on the repression of expression, that is, an age of representation. The singularity of the two authors is further contextualized by its relationship two major landmarks of baroque expressiveness: Kleist will find resonances in Leibniz's plural yet harmonic distribution and Keats in the solidity and compactness of Spinoza's univocity. Keywords: expression, representation, baroque, romanticism, Heinrich von Kleist, John Keats, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Benedict de Spinoza, Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Schlegel, Novalis. 111 Acknowledgments My deepest gratitude goes to my parents and my teachers. I want to express my utmost consideration to my supervisor, Prof. Angela Esterhammer, for her patience, understanding and constant encouragement over the years. It was her devoted reading that helped all my brouillon-Hke paragraphs come together into a thesis. A special place in my development is also owed to Prof. Calin Mihailescu who pointed me towards many of the theoretical aspects that eventually found their way into this dissertation. Note on translations: Most quotations are translated into English. Some were not translated in order to highlight specific aspects that only work in the original language(s). IV Table of Contents CERTIFICATE OF EXAMINATION ii Abstract iii Acknowledgments iv Table of Contents v Preface 1 Chapter 1- The Baroque: to be or not to be expressive 17 Baroque and Romanticism: Short History of the Comparative Approach 17 Evaluating the Comparative Approach 25 Critique of the Morphological Method: the mechanism of morphology 27 Baroque Expressiveness: beyond morphology and representation 29 Baroque Expression: Leibniz 36 The Leibnizian Monad 38 Interweaving the Leibnizian and the Benjaminian Baroque 40 The Benjaminian Baroque 44 Baroque Allegory 50 The Harp, the Ax and their Metamorphosis 54 The Allegorical Umschwung 56 Conclusions Regarding the Benjaminian Baroque 71 Spinoza's Place within Baroque Expressiveness 78 Integrating the Benjaminian Alternative 88 Preamble to the Next Chapter 90 Chapter 2 - Jena Romanticism and the Margins of Representation 93 Spinoza and Leibniz: their Reception in Romanticism 93 Romanticism and its Different Types of Representations: a Playground for Contradictions 97 Romanticism and the Baroque: possible bridges of comparison 100 Romanticism, Kant and the Platonic Paradigm 104 The Kantian Sublime and the Infinite Representation 109 The Religiosity of the Kantian Sublime 113 Kantian Formalism and Baroque Deformation 118 v Time in the Kantian Sublime and its Reflections into Jena Romanticism 125 Infinity within Representation: Kant and Leibniz 132 Analogy: Schlegel and the Infinite Fragment 137 Resemblance: Benjamin and the "Medium of Reflection" 144 Opposition: Paul de Man and the temporal dimension of allegory 158 Identity: Novalis and the Absolute 163 Chapter 3 - Dancing with Heinrich von Kleist 173 The Marionette in Kant 176 Freedom and Inner Spontaneity 186 The Marionette-like Monad in Leibniz 191 Kleist's Marionette 198 Kleist and Leibniz: the problem of death 207 Kleist's Marionette 227 Paul de Man and Schiller's Aesthetic Education 227 Kleist and the Kantian Sublime 240 The Romantic Marionette 245 Der Zweikampf 257 Die Marquise von 0 260 Conclusion 262 Chapter 4 - Keats's Vivid Imagination 265 Keats and Platonism: the problematic of identity and univocity 266 Keats's Formalism: between Kant and Spinoza 274 Keats's Ontological Identity 280 Keats and Coleridge's Imagination 291 Beauty and Power 295 Keats's Immortality 307 About Beauty and Love 317 Keats's Univocity: Apollo, Endymion and Adam 328 Conclusion 332 An (In)conclusive Conclusion 333 Bibliography 337 Vita 354 vi 1 Preface It has been said that prefaces should be read last because books should be approached from their conclusions (Deleuze, Difference XIX). Because a preface is placed before the argument, it is supposed not to be really an integral part of its construction and coherence; it is thought merely to map out general intentions without being able to stand as a true supporting authority. Even while roaming in such a generality, the preface must still earn its name (prae-fatia) as a text "spoken before" the argument, as an opening, a beginning that will be closed out in a conclusion that will retroactively confirm it as such. If the preface fails properly to prepare the stage and circumscribe the subject matter, to foreshadow the main ideas that will be implemented and proven in the course of the argument, it will remain an empty promise that will drift beside the argument. Hence it does not emerge as a postponed reading but rather invites a circular rereading, a hermeneutical coming back to it from the point of view of the conclusion. Establishing, or rather, pre-establishing the pillars of the argument, the preface will thus merely present or posit them without being able to properly contextualize them. And so it is in the present case. Drawing its theoretical underpinnings from Deleuze's thought, especially from his Impressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza (1968), the central concepts around which this thesis is configured are "expression" and "representation." These are two generally disjunctive modes: while expression is an unrepresentable form of manifestation, representation could, under certain conditions, become an utterly inexpressive one. 2 Expression pertains to sensibility, to the faculty of sense (and its subsequent logic), while representation pertains to the faculty of understanding, to what Deleuze calls an "image of thought" and its logic of non-contradiction. Representation deals with anything that has to do with consciousness using terms like reflection, comparison, reciprocity, or notions like general and specific difference.1 Expression tackles affect and its emotions, feelings, moods or sensations that generate impulses or stimuli that are quantifiable only by a power the intensity of which cannot be appropriated transcendentally.2 Thus it remains perfectly indeterminate. Expressive notions require a singular treatment from the