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

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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 point of view of their diversity, or what Deleuze calls pure

difference. Diversity transcends thought by being unable to be clearly boxed in,

structured, or broken down into categories and thus presented to understanding.

Expression will merely be able to differentiate itself by means of propagating or

distributing itself internally without creating either an inner medium of reflection or

transgressing and superseding itself In the case of an expression there is nothing to

supersede because there is always already the same expression that merely changes its

form, one being merely able to account for its transformation or metamorphosis.3 It

becomes henceforth clear why expression cannot be exported or transposed as such or

1 Deleuze's take on representation runs as follows: "There are four principal aspects to 'reason' in so far as it is the medium of representation: identity, in the form of the undetermined concept; analogy, in the relation between ultimate determinable concepts; opposition, in the relation between determinations within concepts; resemblance, in the determined object of the concept itself. These forms are like the four heads or the four shackles of mediation" (italics mine) (Deleuze, Difference 47). 2 The closest example of such sheer power in a Kantian context would be that of the earthquake from the Third Critique that cannot become sublime. "So far as sublimity is predicated of might, this solution of the concept of it appears at variance with the fact that we are wont to represent God in the tempest, the storm, the earthquake, and the like, as presenting Himself in His wrath, but at the same time also in His sublimity, and yet here it would be alike folly and presumption to imagine a pre-eminence of our minds over the operations and, as it appears, even over the direction of such might" (SS 28) (Kant, Critique cf Judgment 50). In this case, however, there is not even a law of force that Hegel describes in the supersensible as the "stable image of an unstable appearance" (Hegel, Phenomenology 90). 3 Expression is not necessarily monistic. If one posits the existence of two expressions, they must have what is called a "substantial vinculum." In such a context, expressions will engage in a different type of similarity. Benjamin calls it a 'similarity of substances," a similarity that is different from a (representable) "metaphorical similarity," a "similarity of relations," as we will see. from the point of view of its form into another context or onto a meta-level, each context necessarily generating a formally different expression. As expression revolves around indeterminateness, its status is un-determined at all times, while representation feeds off determinateness. The present project sets out to define expression while delimiting it from representation. In this case delimitation is not necessarily a search for a strict separation as contexts of overlapping will surface. It is more of not letting them be mixed up or confused with each other. In view of what has been said, one has to also leave an open promise for a continuation that would take under investigation the conditions in which representation can function - perhaps the way in which it would reach what Hegel calls "pure determinateness.'1 In this case one would have to examine how "pure shape, freed from its appearance in [this time] consciousness, the pure Notion and its onward movement, depends solely on its pure determinateness" (Hegel, Phenomenology 491).

An attempt to determine expression, to determine it as something or by means of an outside determination, is thus bound to fail because it implies merely representing it.

The only way to determine expression is through an immediate internal determination through which expression will merely determine itself by expressing itself while becoming what it truly is. This manner of determining, however, does not occur via a concept and its requirements (i.e., as the determination of the concept expression) in the way Kant and most of the German idealists understand it4 Looked at prima facie, images or figures are usually associated with representations. An image, however, can become a medium of expressiveness as well. The first example that comes to mind is twentieth

4 In his First Critique Kant is concerned with "die Bestimmung des Begriffs Objekt". in the Second with "die Bestimmung des Begriffs vom hochsten Gut". For a comprehensive view on the problem see Andrea Anderheggen's .JCants positive Bestimmung des Begrifles von Objekt in der Kritik der reinen VernunfL" Kant's concept (Begriff) is the 'tool' with which the faculty of understanding shapes, organizes, structures, unifies or synthesizes what is given in experience by means of representations (Vorstellungen). 4 century German expressionism, which used painting as an expressive vehicle. Fluid figures or loosely contoured images that lack clear and distinct borders as in the technique of the chiaroscuro,5 for example, can also become intensely expressive.

Without being annihilated, the representativeness of the image steps back and focuses onits own secondariness.

This thesis will henceforth analyze the separation between representation and expression, a separation that will be extrapolated onto the cultural landscape of the baroque and romanticism while conjuring the works of Kleist and Keats to concretely illustrate some of the peculiarities of this incongruence.6 The separation can be seen in two ways. From a representational point of view expression and representation become entities that can be strung together into an antagonist i.e., relationship of opposites, whereas from an expressive one they appear merely in their formal difference. In an attempt to be consistent with its subject matter, the present thesis will consider this separation mainly from an expressive perspective; it will use a representative point of view as sparsely as feasible. As purely diverse singularities, representation and expression could still be further valorized as either attributive or modal in a Spinozian sense. Hence representation itself becomes a modified expression and turns out to be merely implicitly expressive. This is a statement that cannot be generalized, though, as it is not applicable in all contexts. While handling expression and representation in such a monadic manner, one can still make use of representative 'tools' (like comparison or

5 In this context chiaroscuro does not focus as much on the antithetical contrast between hght and dark as on what is called "shading" or "shadow painting," or the gradation of color that adds a three-dimensional volume effect and more sensuality. 0 Kant's project to prove the unity of reason that brings together sensibility and thought as two distinct sources of knowledge not only discovers their fundamental mismatch but also ends up mixing them up in the sense that his sensible intuition becomes vcAens nolens 'intellectualized' and 'impure' in the sense of being co-mingled or combined with thought (and not what Kant himself calls an intellectual intuition of God) as it is caught in the reciprocity of the medium of reflection created by the unity-geared premise. 5 dichotomy, for example). After all, expression is predominantly inclusive rather than exclusive. At that, expression treats contradiction (i.e., representativeness) as subservient and ancillary, applying it locally without being constricted to a full-fledged generalization.

Unlike representation, expression becomes an image which is not ruled by what the early Nietzsche would call the principium individuations. Nietzsche's concept of the

Apollonian would apply merely to representation. Associating representation with the

Apollonian, one might be tempted subsequently to identify expression with the

Dionysian. But it is not the Dionysus from the Birth of Tragedy, the still

'Schopenhauerian' Dionysus, whose enthusiasm and ecstasy negates and annihilates individuality and subjectivity by letting it vanish into the underlying essence or

"primordial unity" (BT 37)7 Expression is still bearing the sign of individuality or singularity, but an individuality that lacks a principle. One cannot even assert a complete absence of a principle because expression is not random, or 'unprincipled'. But the principle is so immediately embedded in it that one is merely confronted with the incapacity of recognizing or distinguishing it properly as a principle. Expression will thus have a source, a beginning or origin, but this origin will always remain mysterious - so mysterious, in fact, that expression can neither be distinguished as directly descending from it, nor as being created ex nihilo. On one hand, the origin cannot be declared as the principle of this individuality, because it does not act like a truly distinct and thus clearly separable emitting entity. The expressant and the expression are ontologically one in the

7 In Birth of Tragedy, Dionysus is a dialectical counterpart of Apollo. Nietzsche himself recognized this later, when in Ecce Homo he writes of the book that it "smells offensively Hegelian, and the cadaverous perfume of Schopenhauer sticks only to a few formulas. An "idea" [Idee] - the antithesis [Gegensatz] of the Dionysian and the Apollinian - translated into the realm of metaphysics; history itself as the development of this "idea"; in tragedy this antithesis is sublimated into a unity" (270,271). 6 sense that the expressant is the expression - the producer is the product. On the other hand, expression is not created ex nihilo either, because even though this mysterious origin is it, even though it is spilling over into it, it is also producing it nonetheless, thus setting up a perfect parallelism or simultaneity that is, as we will see, a constitutive feature of an expressive point of view.

The spillover being ontological, it will merely ensure the preservation of existence, thus not leading to either a replication of the origin as a higher form producing a lower copy (a la Plato), or a unification of the parties into a whole, into a unity that would engulf or combine them (a la Hegel). Seen in their ontological unity,8 the expressive origin and the expressed product would still remain two different entities but they would not be considered as relatable to each other anymore. The origin that remains cannot constitute itself as a subject that is relatable to an object, a creator that is relatable to a creation; it cannot even turn into a general yet organizing authority that can still contain the possibility of framing such an implicitly bilateral or reflective relationship.

One cannot establish a relationship in which both terms determine each other reciprocally

because, even though they may be two separate entities, they cannot be clearly

represented and thus strictly delimited from one another. While the expressant is the expression, the two become so unrelatable or absolute that they cannot be declared either similar or opposed but can only be designated as diverse. This merely means that oppositions or similarities would not be able to be developed into a dominant point of view but cannot be completely excluded because they would act locally or partially.

8 Benjamin calls it "Einheit lin Sein" while distinguishing it from the conceptual or representative "Einheit im Begriff'. When speaking about the existential dimension of truth he says: "Als Einheit im Sein und ncht im Begriff ist die Wahrheit aufler alio' Frage" (Kairos 135). When he speaks about the presentation of truth he also mentions the two simultaneous components of expression: ontological unity and the singularity generated by formal difference: "DaB die Wahrheit als Einheit und Einzigheit sich darstellt, dazu wird ein lQckenloser Deduktionszusammenhang der Wissenschft mitnichten erfordert" (Kairos 137). 7

As such diverse and at the same time absolute singularities, the expressant and expression do not completely give up their formal aspect. This formal aspect turns out to be the only way of telling them apart. They will thus become formally different and ontologically one, form being a mere marker of difference and not a basis of recognition and thus of clearly distinguishing them one from the other. This dark or obscure origin will not be able create 'in its image' because even though its products will have a form, this form will lack formative underpinnings. It will appear so unformed that one cannot clearly figure out its formation, making it impossible to be copied or reproduced. This form is also not meant to harbor and contain in itself the condition of possibility of formation because the act of production is instantaneous and immediate with respect to its product, thus unable to accommodate an "in itself." The production as such will thus occur, like a happening, in the present moment only; the production being in fact merely the moment in which the origin produces regardless of whether it marks a completed act or an ongoing process, whether Spinoza would describe it as nalurata or naturans .

Hence even though this origin is productive, it can neither form nor be reproduced because when it comes to pass, the expressant is also the expression - its ontological immersion in it thus bespeaking a unilateral relationship rather than a two-way reflective one that would set them up representatively.

It is not enough to posit the individuality of expression as lacking a principle; from a perfectly parallel point of view, it can also be seen as abiding in the surplus of a principle. Not being able to act like a real principle, like a true beginning, this origin is

9 "By Natura naturans we must understand what is in itself and is conceived through itself, or such attributes of substance as express an eternal and infinite essence, that is ... God, insofar as he is considered as a free cause. But by Natum naturata I understand whatever follows from the necessity of God's nature, or from God's attributes, that is, all the modes of God's attributes insofar as they are considered as things which are in God, and can neither be nor be conceived without God" (Spinoza, Ethics 29). 8 still one in every moment. Karl Kraus' quip, that "the origin is the goal," keeps its validity in the realm of expression. This dark origin is a beginning that is an end at the same time; it is thus so imbued with its product that it satiates the need for conceiving it as a separately relatable entity. Hence the principle is already embedded in every expression. It is assimilated in such an intimate way that it will saturate the need to look for a ground or "first principle," for a universal foundation that would be able to properly validate it as individuality, is not imperative anymore. In short, expression will be so saturated with meaning as not to require the formulation of such a principle. This means that both its surplus and its absence will be perceived as pure mystery, as a mystery that does not require any revelation or understanding because, on the one hand, there is nothing to understand, and on the other, its manifestation is all there is to understand since there is nothing beyond it. The point is that the origin of expression will not become a lack that would cause an infinite longing for it, a lack that would end up projecting this principle under the form of an unknowable and unreachable goal. Merely allowing for such antithesis to be formed - the antithesis between expression and its origin - one will actually endanger the understanding of the ontological status of expression.

Understood on its own terms, expression can be said to be an ungroundable individuality, an utterly singular individuality that cannot be subsumed or conceived under any rule of construction. Nietzsche's radical individuality, while exposing it in an extreme form, is only different in degree from examples that we will find in the baroque.

Not being relatable to a unifying entity called the subject, this individuality cannot be pinpointed, strictly speaking, as egotistical as it may become both frantically egotistical in a Nietzschean sense, and utterly egoless or altruistic in a Spinozian or Keatsian one. 9

Since there is no defined entity 'behind' it, this individuality cannot turn into an appearance of that essence, but will end up just being what it is - its being and appearance being absorbed into each other.

Expression is also an expression of existence, of an existence or being that must be. This necessity of expression is internalized in such a way that it cannot accommodate negation. Pure existence cannot not exist, and thus cannot be negated, because pure existence is beyond negation and contradiction. In other words, existence can be negated only when it is represented, only when it is represented as existence, only when it is formed into an image of existence. Such "represented" existence, however, is no longer pure but becomes an image, an image that can trace its individuality to a defined principle. It has to be said, though, that from an expressive point of view, even non­ existence cannot be written off as an aberration, but must also exist. It must exist either because (1) everything exists, existence being everything (i.e., there is nothing outside existence in the sense that there is no outside with respect to an inside), or (2) it cannot not exist thus ending up being included by default as it cannot be properly excluded

(again, not configuring a dialectics between and inside and an outside).10

When it comes to the interaction between expression and representation, one can say in general that while expression includes representation, representation excludes expression. Looking more closely, however, the two cannot really be polarized in such a contradictory relationship since contradiction is a prerogative only of representation.

Strictly speaking, the expressive inclusion is absolute, or monadic, and thus it can no longer be related to an externality. Therefore, even though from a representational point of view expression and representation appear as contradictory - expression being thus

10 The first approach is Spinozian, the second Leibnizian. 10 subjected to becoming representable - they will not be able to enact a straightforward contrastive relation. Expression will not turn out to be a negation that can be managed dialectically but will appear more like an ungraspable negative spirit identified oftentimes

(since Plato) as demon or devil11 that threatens to unsettle the whole representative structure.

If expression can accept a formal aspect (a component that might get it confused with a representation), the impossibility of acknowledging its principle as a true or first principle will ultimately turn it into an unrecognizable simulacrum. This simulacrum cannot contain enough empirical information in order to be able to point back to what its model, its exemplary or original correspondent "in reality."" Granted, a Kantian perspective would rectify the justifiability of the Platonic "model" to act as a true ground, a real first principle for representation that dismantles it into a mere framework that merely makes it possible rather than directly creating or causing it. Nevertheless, expression would still not become an enactment that is enabled by such a condition.

Kant's 'amendment' would merely lead to fine-tuning the classification of representation into a finite and an infinite one, but, as we will see, it will never overcome representativeness as such - Kant remaining Platonic from this point of view.

As it is not possible for the concept of reason to be matched with the empirical intuition, representation (Vorstellung) cannot be joined and be directly turned into a presentation (Darslellung). Despite this, their relationship is such that even though the

11 As Deleuze writes, "Platonism as a whole is erected on the basis of this wish to hunt down the phantasms or simulacra which are identified with the Sophist himself, that devil, that insinuator or simulator that always disguised and displaced false pretender. For this reason it seems to us that, with Plato, a philosophical decision of the utmost importance was taken: that of subordinating difference to the supposedly initial powers of the Same and the Similar, that of declaring difference unthinkable in itself and sending it, along with the simulacra, back to the bottomless ocean" (Difference 145). "Simulacra or phantasms are not simply copies of copies, degraded icons involving infinitely relaxed relations of resemblance. The catechism, so heavily influenced by the Platonic Fathers, has made us familiar with the idea of an image without likeness: man is in the image and likeness of God, but through sin we have lost the likeness while remaining in the image... simulacra are precisely demonic images, stripped of resemblance" (Difference 127). 11 concept cannot live with the intuition, it cannot live without it either, as it would remain completely "empty" (or "blind"). Mutatis mutandis, a similar mismatch will also occur between the Platonic Idea and its copy, for the latter can never become perfectly identical with its model: it can only remain analogous to it, and thus it will always be leaving a remainder behind. Thus, representation is groundable, even though it may not be fully formed or not being able to be completely grounded in a stable model, as Plato's difficulty shows. Representation remains groundable because it does not exit the condition of possibility of being grounded (and thus implicitly formed). In short, representation becomes unformed yet still formable, ungrounded yet still groundable; only relatively but not absolutely ungroundable. Thus representation does not become expressive even from the point of view of its form, insofar as Kantian forms still function in a conditioning framework. The forms of representation are still formative, as they are necessarily related to their constructability; they are not mere non-relatable aspects of difference. While such formative forms will lose any ontological claim, expression as such will be 'outlawed' into a noumenal realm that can be merely conjured by means of phantasms or fanatical superstitions (Schwarmerei). Kant will prove more radically

'vigilant' in expelling expression than Plato would in banning the poets. Denying any ontological claim whatsoever, Kant promotes an even greater abysmal discrepancy between the noumenon and the phenomenon than between a recognizable copy and a simulacrum. As this thesis unfolds, we will see that this incompatibility can also be extrapolated to illustrate the relationship between romanticism and the baroque.

From the expressive point of view, representation must never be ontologically excluded. Even when it becomes a mere static and hollow mental construct, an 12 inadequate image generated by the imagination that virtually contains no essential information and therefore remains a pure exteriority that cannot be causally determined and homologated in sufficient reason anymore, it will still have existence or being.

Nothing changes ontologically, even in a more dynamic scenario. Movement will merely make forms become rather fluid or malleable, deforming them while inducing them to spill over into one another - this time, overflowing reason and perception with a surplus of information. Gaining such momentum, forms will trigger a confused apprehension, which is no longer able to distinguish and clearly delimit their external contours. But even this will not affect their existential status. While not being able to discern separate forms, an external observer will lose any sense of separation altogether. S/he will automatically be drawn in, implicated or transposed in an immediate manner in the perception. Without such a bridge with the outside, without a relationship between interiority and exteriority, such forms will be manifested as pure interiorities that cannot be observed from the outside. In one sense, these 'window-less' monads - even though they are created by something outside them granting them a representable component - will acquire a singularizing interior that is broken off from an exteriority. In another sense, the modes of thought will have an exterior without an interior. In both cases, such forms become aspects or markers of difference that merely help in differentiating without being able to ground any criterion or rule for this difference and thus to alter reality substantially.

From the expressive perspective, representation thus appears more as an extreme case, a sublime (state of) exception that cannot even be configured as a contradiction with respect to the given system, since expression has no externally given systematicity. As a 13 matter of fact, representation can appear in quite a few different (formal) aspects: as a necessary lie, or, in Nietzschean parlance, as a life-enhancing illusion, or, in Kleist's terms, as an "inevitable mistake." While being ontologically assimilated, representation will necessarily become one of the immanent manners of expressiveness. Such expressive representations will be perceived as mere appearances that will neither emerge from a framework dependent on Kantian a priori categories nor relate to a Platonic blueprint.

Hence they will be perceived as they are in themselves and not being formed into something they are not as they are perceived. These non-formative forms are presented as they are and cannot be recognized and thus represented as something, their existence turning detrimental with respect to their representability. They cannot possibly be referenced to empirical data and become (by default) identical with their presentation. As paradoxical as it may sound at this point, these representations, even though they are mere appearances or aspects that they have lost their intrinsic formative or poietical support, are their own Darslellungen (and do not present a Vorslellung, in Kantian terms). They cross no ontological gap as they become substantial presentations and no longer re-presentations.

The argument of this thesis will 'stress-test' both the baroque and romanticism against expressiveness. It will not try to provide an analysis aimed at describing either the baroque or romanticism as cultural or literary movements, thus implicitly creating representations, but rather will aspire to exclusively at detecting their expressive features; better said, to their ability of being expressive. Strictly speaking, one will not even be able to label them as expressive because such pronouncement would just represent their expressiveness (while cancelling their representativeness as well). In a nutshell, one will 14 merely probe the resonance of the baroque and romanticism (Kleist and Keats respectively) with respect to expression and representation seen as monadic Ideas that will ultimately be unable to engage in a relationship.

The theoretical part of the thesis will explore the expressiveness of the baroque movement by first tackling Spinoza and Leibniz as its main thinkers. Furthermore, it will shift its focus to the underpinnings of romanticism, paying especial attention to its nucleus as depicted by the writers of Jena romanticism, and discuss the reasons why this nucleus instrumentalizes the inability to overcome its representational reflexivity. For even when the Jena "reflection" leads to an open-ended, infinite horizon, it is unable to overcome the framework of representation. In more concrete terms, the expressiveness of the baroque explains the nature of its richer formal diversity and its rampant interpretations. Such generation of diversity cannot be matched by the representative romanticism that manifests more predispositions to being 'regulated'.

The theoretical backbone of my argument on baroque expressiveness will be based on Gilles Deleuze's The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque, but it will also find support in Deleuze's first book on Spinoza, in which the French thinker deals specifically with the problem of expression. Another important theoretical cluster is inspired by

Walter Benjamin's The Origin of German Tragic Drama, a treatise that, while referring specifically to a rather late stage of the baroque, still includes cultural references to major authors of the Spanish baroque of the siglo de oro. This analysis will pay particular attention to the obscure Benjaminian "one-about turn" (Umschwung) dealt with in the last pages of his book, a concept that has puzzled many critics. To anticipate, the Umschwung is the turnaround or the backward swing through which the baroque allegorist imbued 15 with the immanence of history suddenly awakens in God's world. Finally, our discussion regarding Jena romanticism will be informed by the criticism of Jean-Luc Nancy,

Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Paul de Man and by other texts by Walter Benjamin.

The second part of the thesis will be dedicated to the analysis of two romantic writers, Heinrich von Kleist and John Keats, who turn out to become un-romantic by

'indulging' in expressiveness. This part will focus on some of Keats's and Kleist's literary works that underscore expressive features and it will concentrate on how such aspects trigger the production of new readings. Both writers will become examples of such baroque expressions appearing like exceptions in the landscape of a representational romanticism. They will be related to the baroque in the following way: Kleist's mechanical marionettes will be shown to relate to the Leibnizian monads, while Keats's pantheism will find echoes in Spinoza's thought.

Kantian thought will be a recurring reference point throughout the thesis, since it turns out to be both the starting point for Jena romanticism and the demarcation line from expressiveness, especially in view of Kant's contentions with both Leibniz and Spinoza.

In this sense, I will occasionally have recourse to Salomon Maimon (1753-1800),12 a post-Kantian thinker who recuperates expressiveness by returning to the before- mentioned baroque philosophers. Kant's notion of the sublime will become important in the second part of the thesis as a 'testing ground' for delimiting representativeness and expressiveness in both Kleist and Keats.

Methodologically this thesis will approach the literary text with the purpose of trying to detect 'crumbs' of expressiveness contained in it. Given the fact that

12 Kant himself qualified Maimon as a one of his sharpest critics. Maimon formulates his objections to the Kantian critiques in his main work called Versuch fiber die Transcendentalphilosophie (1790). 16 expressiveness is unrepeatable and different in every context, it will make a constant recourse to theoretical explanations almost inevitable. Even though such monadic truths are seen as fragments included in the text, they are so absolute and intrinsically embedded in it that they cannot relate and thus presuppose a wholeness or unity of the text anymore. From such a point of view, the literary work can neither be conceived as a unity nor sustain an infinitely open-ended, progressive or sequential reading any longer.

The text is or becomes a text only in the very moment of reading it, a moment in which one is incapacitated in distinguishing a beginning or an end. In short, the text cannot ground the continuity of a construction or any such mediating representations. It becomes merely a goalless eternal journey that implicitly produces a sense of immediacy, an immediacy that implicates or immerses the reader in it in a more profound manner. 17

Chapter 1 - The Baroque: to be or not to be expressive

Baroque and Romanticism: Short History of the Comparative Approach

The title of this project engages the idea of a comparative approach of two important literary movements. The first challenge one is confronted with is finding a methodology that would overcome an impressionistic level and prove capable of tackling the complexity of the problem. The studies in the field that strive to find similarities between romanticism and the baroque lean towards a morphological point of view. Without going into the details of its origins (which go back to not only to Goethe and the romantics but also to Blumenbach and Linnaeus), morphology is, generally speaking, a study of form and structure. In biology, these forms and structures are applied to animals and plants - to the organism and its parts. In a linguistic or aesthetic context, morphology refers to the study of the structure of word forms and of aspects of word formation such as inflection, derivation and compounding. At the beginnings of the structuralist movement, morphology surfaces as the method of choice for the study of folklore and fairy tales, as evidenced by the research of Vladimir Propp. Its main aim is to discover and classify recurring structures that coagulate into defined forms.

The baroque is certainly not an easy nut to crack. In general terms, it is most commonly known as a cultural movement that began around the beginning of the seventeenth century. A large number of critics believe that the initial inspiration for the movement can be found in the ideas of the canon promulgated at the Council of Trent 18

(1545-63). The basic idea was that the Roman Catholic Church wanted such representational arts as sculpture and painting to speak a more universal language, which would include the large (and unwashed) masses of believers. Such a programme would entail a turn from the witty and intellectual mannerist art towards a more accessible visceral art aimed at the senses and, through them, to an increase in piety towards the

Roman Catholic Church. Thus the baroque movement is said to have started in Italy with the innovations of Caravaggio and the Caracci brothers before spreading quickly throughout Europe. One of the most illustrious literary expressions of the baroque was the so-called Siglo de Oro in Spain. Here Lope de Vega, Calderon de la Barca and especially Cervantes created a new type of literature. From the point of view of this

project, it is also important to mention a rather late manifestation of the baroque in

Germany in the form of the Trauerspiel.

In his well-known essay Lo barocco (1935), Eugenio D'Ors makes one of the

earliest attempts to tackle the idea of a relationship between the baroque and romanticism from a morphological perspective. In that work, the Spanish exegete splits the history of

human culture into two main "eons," or paradigmatic constants - classicism and the

baroque. These constants implement their stylistic patterns in alternating historical

epochs, each being brought about as a revolution or reaction to the previous one. For

d'Ors, classicism is closer to civilization whereas the baroque stands for the barbaric and the raw. As he says, "el estilo de la civilizacion se llama clasicismo. A1 estilo de la

barbarie, persistente, permanente debajo de la cultura, no le daremos el nombre barocco"

(21). The basic scheme is an equation of two opposed items: Rome vs. Babel, classic vs. 19 baroque. This dialectical point of view is projected chronologically as a cyclical recurrence in different historical literary movements.

Romanticism, not to mention modernity as such, thus stands as a descendent, continuation or reincarnation of the baroque. As D'Ors puts it,

Y el Barrocco, que iba pronto a encarnar en el romanticismo, recogio y adoro, a la vez como una novedad a la moda y como una eterna imagen, el grupo delicioso de Pablo y Virginia, de las madres viudas y los negros honrados, columpiandose todo en el proprio dolor, al cobijo de una naturaleza caliente, bajo un dosel de palmeras pomposas y de meteoros.... (47)

As a reenactment of the eternal baroque constant, romanticism thus loses all claims to distinctiveness. "Lejos de proceder del estilo clasico, el Barocco se opone a el de una manera mas fundamental todavia que el romantismo ; el cual, por su parte, no parece ya mas que un episodio en el desenvolvimento historico de la constante barocca" (D'Ors

78). For D'Ors, then, romanticism lacks originality and innovation. As he says, "puesto que el romantismo no innova, pero restaura, inclusive en sus mas precoces y mas ingenuas manifestationes, cual sera el esquema generico conveniente a la vez, a lo antiguo y a lo nuevo?" (76.) This statement may seem too exaggerated, but in his

morphological take, D'Ors does not appear interested in the finer discriminations that arise under a closer scrutiny. His presentation contents itself with distinguishing between different species within the baroque such as: barocchus pristinus and arhaicus, barocchus macedonicus and romanus, barocchus gothicus, romanticus finisecularis and posteabellicus (162). D'Ors does not deny the real differences that exist between these historic and geographic forms of the baroque, but he is convinced that these differences

are not sufficient to create a case for overstepping the common denominator of the

paradigm. All the various historical apparitions of the baroque share the same 20 morphology of movement and dynamism, of multipolarity and becoming, of recuperating an unmediated relationship to an untamed nature while at the same time projecting a naturalist sense of the supernatural. For D'Ors, this pantheist relationship with nature becomes one the most important points of comparison between the two literary movements. "En el otro extremo, el romantismo del siglo XIX contiene, igualmente, nadie lo ignora, una tendencia implicita hacia la divnisation de lo natural; tendencia cuya mas radical expresion afirma el 'Fin-de-Siglo', cuando llega el momento de la musica de

Wagner-panteistica por definition- y de la pintura impresionista- panteistica por metodo"

(D'Ors 100).

D'Ors is certainly not the only one to propose such a perspective. Almost fifty years before, in his pioneering Renaissance undBarock (1888), Heinrich Wolfflin had

put forward a central argument on the change of style that happened after the Renaissance that largely anticipates the position of the Spanish exegete. There Wolfflin identifies the

Renaissance with what can easily be called classicism. As he writes,

Die Renaissance ist die Kunst des schonen ruhigen Seins. Sie bietet uns jede befriedigende Schonheit, die man als ein allgemeines Wohlgefiihl und gleichmassige Steigerung unserer Lebenskraft empfinden. An ihrer vollkommenen Schopfung findet man nichts, was gedriickt oder gehemmt, unruhig und aufgeregt ware (...) Alles athmet Befriedigung und wir glauben nicht zu irren, wenn wir eben in dieser himmlischer Ruhe und Bediirfnisslosigkeit den hohsten Ausdruck des Kunstgeistes jener Zeit erkennen. (24)

When describing the baroque, however, Wolfflin's vocabulary becomes more or less an exercise in antonyms:

Der Barock beabsichtigt eine andere Wirkung. Er will packen mit der Gewalt des Affekts, unmittelbar, iiberwaltigend. Was er giebt ist nicht gleichmassige Belebung, sondern Aufregung, Ekstase, Berauschung. Er geht aus auf einen Eindruck des Augenblicks, wahrend die Rennaisance 21

langsamer und leiser, aber desto nachhaltiger wirkt. (...) Er giebt kein gluckliches Sein, sondern ein Werden, ein Geschehen, nicht das Befriedigte, sondern das Unbefriedigte und Ruhelose. (24-25)

With respect to both the baroque and the romantic opposition towards classicism,

Walter Benjamin seems to converge in opinion with both D'Ors and Wolfflin. As

Benjamin says,

the baroque reveals itself to be the sovereign opposite of classicism, as which hitherto, only romanticism has been acknowledged. And we should not resist the temptation of finding out those features which are common to both of them. Both romanticism and baroque are concerned with providing a corrective to classicism, as to art itself (...) By its very essence classicism was not permitted to behold the lack of freedom, the imperfection, the collapse of the physical, beautifiil, nature. But beneath its extravagant pomp, this is precisely what the baroque allegory proclaims, with unprecedented emphasis. (Origin 176)

For Benjamin, allegory and the allegorical perspective on reality thus express the essence of the baroque.

All three commentaries favor the baroque's expressive powers over romanticism.

Not only does the seventeenth-century baroque come historically before romanticism, it is also offered a position of spiritual preeminence over it.

It cannot be denied that the baroque, that contrasting prelude to classicism, offers a more concrete, more authoritative, and more permanent version of this correction. Whereas romanticism, inspired by its belief in the infinite, intensified the perfected creation of form and idea in critical terms, at one stroke the profound vision of allegory transforms things and works into stirring writing. (Origin 176)

Benjamin's contention is that the romantics were the first to understand the real meaning of the arbitrariness of the baroque allegory. Franz Xaver von Baader (1765 -1841) said that "it is well-known that it is entirely up to us whether we use any particular object of nature as a conventional sign for the idea, as we see in symbolic and hieroglyphic writing, and this object only takes a new character when we wish to use it, not to convey

natural characteristics, but those which we have ourselves, so to speak, lent it" (qtd. in

Origin 184). As von Baader's confession suggests, the process of conveying meaning in

baroque allegory is a manifestation of power that can be compared to a stern sultan in a

harem of objects or, as Benjamin says, to the sadist that is humiliating "his object and

then - or thereby - satisfies it" (Origin 184). By the same token, poetry can be extracted

from any object no matter how trivial it might appear. The most prosaic parts of life can

become, from this point of view, poetical. There is no striving for a so-called symbolic

totality and beauty when Novalis says that "business affairs can also be treated

poetically... A certain archaism of style, a correct disposition and ordering of masses, a

faint hint of allegory, a certain strangeness, respect, and bewilderment which shimmer

through the writing - these are some of the essential features of this art" (qtd. in Origin

187). Indeed most of the examples that Benjamin discusses in his Trauerspiel book are

taken from romantic literature, and Jean Paul is, to him, the greatest allegorist because he

sees poetical meaning even in children's nurseries and in haunted rooms. Both

romanticism and the baroque lack a sense of spiritualization and "the technique of

romanticism leads in a number of respects into the realm of emblematics and allegory"

0Origin 188). The way in which both the baroque and romanticism seem to treat realia

becomes for Benjamin an important aspect for showing "that there is an affinity between

the romantic genius and the baroque spiritual make-up" (Origin 187).

Gustav Rene Hocke's book on mannerism, Die Welt als Labyrinth. Manier und

Manie in der europaischen Kunst (1957), is among the finest studies of this period. For

Hocke it is not the baroque that opposes classicism and the Renaissance, but mannerism. 23

In this Hocke follows Ernst Robert Curtius, who identifies Michelangelo's late work as

one of the first attempts to distance itself from the classical notion of harmony. It was in fact Curtius who first put forward the concept of mannerism, pointing out "alle

literarische Tendenzen, die der Klassik entgegengesetzt sind, mogen sie vorklassisch oder

nachklassisch oder mit irgendeiner Klassik gleichzeitig sein" (qtd. in Hocke 9). In this

sense, Mannerism becomes "eine Konstante der europaischen Literatur, die

komplementar Erscheinung zur Klassik aller Epochen" (ibid.). Hocke does see that

"vieles von dem was wir als Manierismus bezeichnen, wird heute als Barock gebucht"

(Hocke 9). While he notes the contributions of Eugenio d'Ors and Benedetto Croce,

Hocke argues that the name "baroque" is too vague and has caused too much confusion.

In any case, what is important in this context is that Hocke declares romanticism to be

one of the five manneristic epochs ("funf manieristischen Epochen") included in the same

lineage: "Alexandrien (etwa 350-150 v. Chr), die Zeit der Silbernen Latinitat in Rom

(etwa 14-138 n. Chr ), das friihe, vor allem das spate Mittelalter, die bewuBte

manieristische Epoche von 1520 bis 1650, die Romantik von 1800-1830 und schliefilich

die unmittelbar hinter uns liegende, aber noch stark auf uns einwirkende Epoche von

1880-1950" (10-11). Even though for Hocke the baroque becomes almost synonymous

with mannerism, romanticism always ends up being on the same side.

All these considerations are indeed valuable for creating a strong case for proving,

on the one hand, the antagonism between the baroque and classicism and, on the other, a

close similarity between romanticism and the baroque. However these remarks do not

exhaust the complexity of the phenomenon under discussion. In specific historical

conditions, the two opposed cultural movements can learn to coexist. In Baroque et 24 classicisme (1957), Victor-Lucien Tapie offer the example of the French culture between

1660 and 1680. Considering the palace of Versailles, Tapie discovers that "le classicisme domine, mais sans exclure tous les caracteres baroques et ces caracteres s'affirmeront d'avantage dans le Marly aujourd'hui detruit, comme s'ils etaient indispensables au decor de la grandeur et de la gloire royales" (238). In this case, an Italian influence seems to coexist with the so-called typical French taste. "Entre beaucoup d'exemples possibles, on retiendra deux illustrant de fagon frappante la competition qui se poursuit entre les influences italiennes et le gout desormais declare de la France, comme aussi la coexistence du baroque et du classicisme" (Tapie 239). It is true that when one looks at particular works of art the theoretical frontiers between the baroque and classicism become rather blurry, as Marcel Raymond also suggests: "Mais cette opposition du classique et du baroque ne se maintient que sur le plan de l'idee, ou de l'esthetique. En fait l'oeuvre d'un meme artiste peut se partager entre les deux ordres. Du classique au baroque, la difference est parfois dans I'accent, elle est d'un degre de plus ou moins dans l'integration, la differentiation des elements mis en forme" (44). If the baroque is able to mingle with classicism (its contrastive paradigm), then surely the distinction between the baroque and romanticism risks becoming amorphous as well. The main concern, then, is to find some theoretical landmarks or guidelines that can help distinguish, in a particular work of art, the subtle and already overlapping characteristics of the baroque and of romanticism. For this reason, this chapter will remain on a theoretical level and resist plunging prematurely into the analysis of a particular work of art. The main goal here is to circumscribe a new method that will offer an alternative to the morphological one. 25

Evaluating the Comparative Approach

The previous approaches construct their argument in a dialectical way that splits the history of literature into two major contrastive trends. Classicism and the baroque thus become generic constructions, paradigms almost impossible to define precisely. For

Marcel Raymond, the whole configuration is just an abstract scheme: "Et il va sans dire que l'aeuvre-type ou l'ideal du baroque (d'un certain baroque!) se realiserait pleinement, n'existe pas!" (44). The baroque can thus never manifest completely; it exists only as an idea and all historical manifestations inevitably become, more or less, variations on the same theme. By the same token, the created work of art in particular can never gather and contain all the characteristics of the baroque. In a specific instance, one can at most distinguish a dominant tendency that allows for it to be recognized as belonging to one or the other ideal paradigm. The involvement of the work of art in such a mix of opposed tendencies does not affect its value, but merely shows the "imperfections" inherent in the process of creation/translation from the ideal paradigmatic form to a historical manifestation.

In the sense that there is always a perfect ideal model that lets itself be reflected in many different but still similar temporal hypostases, the pattern behind this type of perspective is fundamentally Platonic.13 Each historical emanation reveals a new shade of the paradigm, but it can never fully exhaust the latter's meaning. Identifying recurring or repeating tendencies in art, the morphological perspective thus projects cultural phenomena onto a general and rather ideal canvas. These tendencies become constants and offer an overview of the general relationships that are created in the historical

13 See, for example, the different types of baroque identified by d'Ors. 26 evolution. No one claims their absoluteness but these constants offer ways not only to understand, but also to order cultural phenomena.

More than once has Classicism been associated with Platonism. As Marcel

Raymond says in his book from 1955 called Baroque et renaissance poetique. "Ce qui n'est guere douteux, me semble-t-il, c'est que la vision classique, gouvernee par l'idee de symmetric, de proportionnalite, d'equilibre, peut etre rapportee a Platon, par une filiation ideale non necessairement historique. Au reste, n'a-t-on pas eclaire plus d'une fois l'arriere-fond platonicien de l'art classique?" (Raymond 38). The morphological theory of classical art as a manifestation of an idea clearly contains an embedded Platonic or classical structure.

The search for constants is always and already conditioned by a preconceived structure that is prone to find only what these conditions allow. The Platonic perspective will always find similarity and opposition between the different cultural movements because it is structured according to the model-copy relation. Hegelian thought is probably the most suitable theoretical reference to describe the linear alternation of these opposed literary movements; Platonism and Hegelianism would thus complete themselves while belonging to the same pattern of thought, their common denominator being their representativeness.

From such a (morphological) point of view, even the Biblical creation of man in the image of God could be rallied to belong to the same structure of thought. Among other things, this thought also implies that the creation can only be similar but never identical with God; it means that there will always be a coefficient of difference, a specific difference that relates to a generality in the form of a perfect model. Inevitably 27 reflecting a degree of imperfection (in the copy), this difference will also sneak in the condition for the possibility of the Fall, for Adam and Eve to sin and be banned from paradise. The devil's temptation is thus not gratuitous; the serpent offers the humans a higher condition. The devil raises the stakes, offering to make them gods, knowing that being created in His likeness they were mere copies of a divine model and not the latter itself.

Critique of the Morphological Method: the mechanism of morphology

Before engaging in a critique of the morphological method, let us mention Marcel

Raymond's well-balanced opinion from the same book regarding such a nominalist approach. While recognizing its limits, Raymond believes that one cannot view a work in its absolute uniqueness without a comparative configuration that would place it inevitably in a historical environment. This type of understanding can only become possible on the basis of the universality and generality of ideas. The morphological method is thus useful in discerning the major tendencies and their relationships between currents in the history of literature. However, when it comes down to analyzing the relationship between two such 'related' literary movements as the baroque and romanticism, this method remains on too general a level and overlooks some important aspects of the relationship. In short, the goal of finding so-called baroque expressions in romanticism requires another lens that will move away from this Platonic (or classicistic) perspective.

While writing his essential history of aesthetics in the Middle Ages, The Art of the

West (1938), Henri Focillon started reflecting on the general conditions of stylistic developments. Vie des formes (1934) presents Focillon's construction of a complex, often 28 underground movement that is occurring between two dominant and contrastive styles.14

The life of these forms in time bears witness of multiple crossing, overlapping and folding into each other, each one at different speeds and with different intensities.

Focillon challenges the notion of rhythm in the development of the stylistic forms and yet at the same time does not suggest that their history progresses randomly. Every form has its own internal rule, a rule of formation that is of a spiritual nature. At the level of the spirit, Focillon finds certain constants that are present in every historical period. The baroque is thus the ending phase of a cycle and implies the propensity towards summing up, towards contortions and narrating the formula of others. In short, he does not abolish the existence of certain constants but simply questions the rationale of periodizations in general.

According to the Platonic paradigm there is always a superior principle that projects its reflections. The morphological method does not deny that there are inevitable differences between these reflections; it asserts that these differences become noticeable only after their respective ideal reference has been identified. Hence any "reflection" constitutes a representation of its principle.

The first step in classifying the suitability of a literary movement derives from the similarities with one or the other ideal model or paradigm. It is the same procedure as the logical structure of definition that is given by the genus proximus and the specific difference. Differences always emerge afterward and are thus inevitably subordinated to

14 "Chaque ordre de Taction obeit a son mouvement propre, determine par des exigences interieures, ralenti ou accelere par des contacts. Non seulement ces mouvements sont dissemblables entre eux, mais chacun d'eux n est pas uniforme. L'histoire de l'art nous montre, juxtaposees dans le meine moment, des survivances et des anticipations, des formes lentes, retardataires, contemporaines de formes hardies et rapides. Un monument date avec certitude peut etre anterieur ou posterieur a sa date, et c'est precisement la raison pour laquelle il importe de le dater d'abord. Le temps est tantot a ondes courtes et tantot a ondes longues, et la chronologie sert, non a prouver la constance et l'isochronie des mouvements, mais a mcsurer la difference de longueur d'ondc" (Focillon 58-59). 29 the search for similarities. For d'Ors, for instance, the genus proximus is called baroque and the specific differences appear as the harocchuspristinus, arhaicus, romanticus, etc

As the relationship between the baroque and classicism is staged as a polar opposition, it is still based on similarity. In this context every model will have a counterpart in a so-called anti-model that will create its own specific differences. Both the model and its negative have to be defined as images or representations that interact in the course of the history of culture, the concept of representation being the common denominator.

Baroque Expressiveness: beyond morphology and representation

Understanding that the mechanism of the morphological method relies on the concept of representation brings the argument one step closer to grasping the principles of the new methodology that would help us reach beyond such a defined image. This new methodology would entail a perspective sensible to the obscure places and zones of twilight that are inevitably left behind and that the image cannot quite cover. In such a perspective, the image, no longer pertaining to a stable form that resembles (or contrasts with) an ideal model, becomes more volatile and problematic. Its contours start to lose their defined shape. Not being recognizable via a genus proximus, images begin to look different because they no longer rely on a model that would enable them to be classified as either similar or opposed. The loose ends of such imperfect copies will enable the exploration of new speculative territories in which one does not have to pay tribute to either sameness or opposition. In this way, the new methodology overcomes its representative Platonic (or Hegelian) lineage. 30

This protean movement appears so complex that every time one wants to catch it in its specificity it escapes. Wolfflin extracts some of the features of the baroque from what he calls a change of style from the Renaissance. He discovers in baroque art a greater propensity towards the visual, towards painting and image. Baroque painting becomes richer in the nuances of light and shadow, thus gaining an illusion of depth and mass that contrasts with the flat, linear art of the Renaissance. Baroque art loses any type of regularity and discovers the unlimited, the ungraspable. It has the effect of growing and tends to overflow its frame. In architecture everything becomes more heavy and massive. A never before encountered sense of movement is introduced that replaces the quiet and stable beauty of proportion from the old style. This movement gives way especially in architecture to all sorts of tensions and convulsions, such a perspective being responsible for shifts and precarious, even awkward contortions and twists on all levels.

All these important aspects are only outer manifestations of a change that took place during that period. The biggest puzzle, however, regards the cause that triggered it.

In a Hegelian sense, one can always invoke the result of a worn-out form (the thesis) that contains the premises for manifestation of the opposite (the antithesis). The aesthetic taste around that time must have had enough of the Renaissance "statism" and proportion and wanted to bring more motion into the picture. Wolfflin himself is conscious of the limitation of such an argument. As he says, "Der Barock ist aber ein wesentlich Neues, das sich aus dem Vorhergehenden nicht ableiten lafit" (60). Although the baroque movement rightly conveys the impression of being an entirely new apparition, almost like a creation ex nihilo, it does have its empiric grounds that can be enumerated and 31 analyzed. Wolfflin's exegesis derives the cause for this change from a shift in attitude towards the human body: "Die Antwort muss ausgehen von einer bekannten und leicht kontrollierbaren Tatsache. Jeden Gegenstand beurtheilen wir nach Analogie unseres

Korpers. (...) Uberall legen wir ein korperliches Dasein unter, das wir von unserem

Korper her kennen, deuten wir die gesammte AuBenwelt (. ..) Selbstverstandlich kann ein

Stil nur da entstehen, wo ein starkes Gefiihl lebendig ist fur eine bestimmte Art korperlichen Daseins" (62). The baroque attitude towards the body is quite significant as it reveals a fundamental change from a previous perspective. More than that, the attitude towards the body can show on a microcosmic level what is also happening on a more general, macrocosmic one. The German researcher himself does not remain on a pure physiological analysis and talks about the so-called "Lebensgefuhl einer Epoche."15

Hence even architecture develops immediate relationships with the human body.

Extrapolating Wolfflin's idea onto an even more general background, the convergent methodologies of Benjamin and Deleuze involve a change in ontological perspective towards a more immediate perception of existence that tries to stay away from preconceived models or ideals. For an expedited description of the phenomenon in discussion, I will let Benjamin and Deleuze speak in their own words first, while reserving the comments for later.

For both of these thinkers, the whole problematic of the baroque turns on the relationship between the two levels of existence: the ideal and the real, transcendence and immanence. It is well known that the Neo-platonic ontological model of the Renaissance

15 "Und die Architektur sollte and dieser unbewussten Beseelung nicht Theil haben? Im allerhdchsten Masse hat sie daran Theil. Und nun ist klar, dass sie als Kunst kflrperlicher Massen nur auf den Menschen als korperliches Wesen Bezug nehmen kann. Sie ist Ausdruck einer Zeit, insofem sie das kOrperliche Dasein der Menschen, ihre bestinunte Art sich zu tragen und zu bewegen, die spielend-leichte oder gravitatisch-ernste Haltung, das aufgeregte oder das ruhige Sein, mit dem Wort, das Lebensgefuhl einer Epoche in ihren monumentalen Korperverhflltnissen zur Eischeinung bringt" (Wolfilin 62). 32 was based on the image of the stairway. As Deleuze says, "The universe as stairway marks the Neo-platonic tradition. But the baroque contribution par excellence is a world with only two floors, separated by a fold that echoes itself, arching the two sides according to a different order. It expresses as we shall see the transformation of the cosmos into a mundus" (Fold 29). The main difference of the baroque from the previous tradition resides in the closeness of its ontological levels. The Neo-Platonic tradition is based on the eminence and the superiority of the Idea over its analogous reflection. The baroque, however, brings closeness and immediacy between the two levels. The "two floors" echo between themselves, making the previous separation almost inexistent. This is actually a pseudo-separation, because there is no gap to be bridged: the two floors fold over each other, interweaving into each other freely. The baroque defines their difference merely quantitatively based only on degree and intensity. Leibniz says: "Everything is always the same with degrees of perfection excepted" (qtd. in Fold 33). In a Leibniz- inspired Deleuzian tone, Michel Serres speaks of a disappearance of the metaphysical beyond: "The physical, natural, phenomenal, contingent world is plunged entirely in the infinite repetition of open linkages; in this way it is not metaphysical. The world of metaphysics is beyond, and closes repetition... the monad is this fixed point that infinite partition never attains, and that closes infinitely divided space" (qtd. in Fold 28).

Not being metaphysical does not mean that the baroque denies the eternal as such.

Benjamin reminds us that "the baroque art wants only to endure, and clings with all senses to the eternal" (Origin 181). Eternity merely loses its distant superiority and eminence and becomes quite mundane. One of the consequences of this change is that everything in a baroque universe becomes tied together. The baroque invents a new type 33 of eternity, an eternity of immanence and passage. This baroque eternity is no longer concentrated in the famous mystical instant (the nunc stans). It becomes a tendency that dies while being "recreated in the following instant" (Fold 117).16

In Benjaminian terms the same statement is linked to the two tropes of the symbol and allegory. "The mystical instant [Nu] becomes the [Jetzt] of contemporary actuality, the symbolic becomes distorted into the allegorical" (Origin 183). This particular mode of eternity is definitely temporal,17 unfolding horizontally and creating an impression of excess and overflowing.18 As the osmotic baroque universe makes them less and less distinguishable, unmooring them from their rigid neo-Platonic verticality, the two floors of eternity and temporality become more and more horizontally successive. Differently put, they describe a descending/ascending curvature mirroring the swings of a pendulum.

Talking about its continuous movement, Deleuze states: "That is the model of the pendulum or balance wheel, the Unruhe that replaces the scale" (Fold 69). The baroque discovers the possibility of the perpetuum mobile as matter itself turns out to be more fluid being stretchable ad infinitum; Deleuze's definition of the baroque being "the fold that goes out to infinity" (Fold 121). While the image of the fold is certainly one of the best ways to pinpoint the essence of baroque ontology, it must also be distinguished from

16 "But the iiistantaneity of the tendency only means that the instant itself is a tendency, not an atom, and that it does not disappear without passing into the other instant: that is why it is up to the tendency, or the inner unity of the movement, to be created or reconstituted at each and every instant, in accord with a particular mode of eternity. Tendency is not instantaneous unless the instant is a tendency to the future. Tendency dies ceaselessly, but it is only dead in the time during which it dies, that is, instantaneously, in order to be recreated in the following instant" (Fold 117). 17 Deleuze acknowledges Benjamin to be the first to bring in a real vision of temporality (not a Hegelian pseudo- succession of opposites) into the interpretation of the baroque. "Walter Benjamin made a decisive step forward in our understanding of the Baroque when he showed that allegory was not a failed symbol, or an abstract personification, but a power entirely different from that of the symbol: the latter combines the eternal and the momentary, nearly at the center of the world, but allegory uncovers nature and history according to the order of time. It produces a history from nature and transforms history into nature in a world that no longer has its center" (Fold 125). 18 "Thus matter tends to flow out of the frame, as it often does in trompe I 'ceil compositions, where it extends forward horizontally" (Fold 123). 34 other types of folds, especially the Greek one, since it belongs to a pattern of thought that

presupposes analogy and is not able to become open-ended and infinite.19

The baroque curvature does not have a stable center; rather, its center is more

mobile and open to an infinite movement. The idea of the infinite grows in importance in

this period. Most philosophers of the period are interested in defining the concept.

Descartes,20 for example, distinguishes between that which we cannot see or comprehend an end, which he termes 'indefinite', and that which we know in a positive way to be

without limit, which he termes 'infinite'. The divisibility of matter is for Descartes indefinite, while only God can properly be said to be infinite. Everything that is created

cannot be infinite because it has a beginning and will thus inevitably have an end.

Although our capacity may be limited as we cannot comprehend and reach this end (i.e.,

we cannot count the number of stars), we cannot simply discard it and doubt its existence.

As the baroque likes to roam in the created world, this idea of the indefinite will become a common-place and part of its Weltanschauung.

19"(...) the Platonic paradigm of weaving as interlacing is contained in textures but does not extract the formal elements of the fold. It is because the Greek fold, as the Politics and the Timaeus have shown, presupposes a common measure of two lams that are mixed, and thus operates through encirclements that correspond to the repetition of proportion. That is why, for Plato, forms are folded. The formal element of the fold is not attained. This formal element appears only with infinity, in what is incommensurable and in excess, when the variable curve supersedes the circle" (Fold 38). 20 Descartes, for example, in his Principles of Philosophy says: "In every case where we can find no limit to some aspect of a thing, we shall not assert that it is infinite, but we shall regard it as indefinite. For example, we cannot imagine an extension so large that we cannot understand the possibility of an even larger one. So we shall say that the size of possible things is indefinite. Again, a body cannot be divided into so many parts, that we cannot understand that each of these parts is divisible still further. So we shall make it our opinion that quantity is indefinitely divisible. Again, we cannot imagine that the number of stars is so great, that we could not believe that God would have been able to create still more. So we shall suppose that their number is also indefinite. And similarly with everything else. 27. The difference between the indefinite and the infinite. There are two reasons for calling these things 'indefinite' rather than 'infinite'. The first is in order to reserve the word 'infinite' for God alone, because in him alone and in every respect, we do not merely fail to recognize any limits, but we also understand positively that there are none. The second is that, in the case of everything else, we do not have the same sort of positive understanding of their lacking limits in some respect. We merely, in a negative way, admit that we cannot discover their limits - if they have any" (Descartes 1201- 202). 35

In the second part of the Ethics (1677), Spinoza writes that duration is indefinite.21 Although the indefinite cannot be determined through existence itself, it is not separated from it, as it cannot be clearly delimited. We will come back to Spinoza's individual expressiveness but, at this point, the difference between Spinoza and

Descartes, who is still a "man of the Renaissance," is more important. Descartes' insistence on clarity, the clarity and distinction of an idea, and on the regime of light, characterizes him (according to Deleuze) as a rather retrograde thinker who is not quite synchronized with his age.22 Involving such criteria as clarity and distinction only introduces relatedness that compromises the expressive immediacy of the baroque vision.

More than that, Descartes differs from Spinoza (not to mention Leibniz) in the way that he requires or rather cuts short the ontological proof of God's existence. For Descartes,

God is not determined internally (as Spinoza would say); He is not fully his own cause,23 becoming thus merely related to his creation. God as cause of itself is not attainable in himself but only through analogy, through representation as an intermediary. From this point of view, the thought of God's eminence is not far; God can contain, for Descartes, all reality, but in a different form than the things he creates. Thus the created infinite, the

21 "Duration is the indefinite continuance of existing. Proof. -1 say indefinite, because it cannot be determined through the existence itself of the existing thing, or by its efficient cause, which necessarily gives the existence of the thing, but does not take it away." Spinoza also underlines that the persistence of one's being has nothing limited in it. "The endeavour, whereby a thing endeavours to persist in its being, involves no finite time, but an indefinite time. Proof.-If it involved a limited time, which should determine the duration of the thing, it would then follow solely from that power whereby the thing exists, that the thing could not exist beyond the limits of that time, but that it must be destroyed; but this is absurd. Wherefore the endeavour wherewith a thing exists involves no definite time; but, contrariwise, since it will by the same power whereby it already exists always continue to exist, unless it be destroyed by some external cause this endeavour involves an indefinite time" (Spinoza Ethics 173). 22 "Wolfflin has summarized the lessons of this progressivity of light that grows and ebbs (as much as of movement), the inseparability of clarity and obscurity, the effacement of contour - in short, the opposition to Descartes, who remained a man of Renaissance, from the double point of view of a physics of light and a logic of the idea" (Fold 32). 23 "God is his own cause, but this in another sense than that in which an efficient cause is the cause of its effect; he is the cause of himself in the sense that his essence is a formal cause; and his essence is set to be a formal cause, not directly but by analogy, insofar as it plays in relation to his existence a role analogous to that of an efficient cause in relation to its effect" (Deleuze Spinoza 162). "Dieu est cause de soi, mais en un autre sens qu'une cause efficient est cause de son effet; il est cause de soi au sens ou son essence est cause formelle; et son essence est dite cause formelle non pas directement, mais par analogie, dans la mesure ou elle joue par rapport a 1'existence un role analogue a celui d'une cause efficient par rapport a son effet" (Deleuze, Spinoza 147). 36 indefinite, is only analogous to the divine infinite. It is only similar and thus it is separated and distinct from God. Of course, this is not acceptable from the point of view of Spinoza's baroque philosophy.24

Baroque Expression: Leibniz

The principle of non-contradiction (commonly taken to originate in Aristotle's logic) is the law according to which "one cannot say of something that it is and that it is not in the same respect and at the same time."25 In Scholasticism, this principle was considered irrefutable, so that even a delicate thinker such as Avicenna famously declared that

"anyone who denies the law of non-contradiction should be beaten and burned until he admits that to be beaten is not the same as not to be beaten, and to be burned is not the same as not to be burned" (Avicenna 105a4-5). The only exception to the principle of contradiction is God; Aquinas found that God would not fall under its jurisdiction because, being absolute, He cannot be contradicted, not being able to be described or related to in any way.

Without contradicting Aristotle, Leibniz came to the conclusion that another authority beside God would also be 'immune' to contradiction: the monad. Turning out to be ultimately undefined or indiscernible, the monad will become equally non-relatable

24 Deleuze also points to the similarities between Descartes and Aquinas, underlining their co-belonging to the Platonic/Hegelian/Christian paradigm. As Deleuze says,"( .. .) as in saint Thomas, the act of existing is in the cas eof created substances something analogous to what it is in the divine substance" (Deleuze Spinoza 163). "(...) comme chez saint Thomas, Facte d'exister sera par rapport aux substances creees quelque chose d'analogue a ce qu'il est par rapport a la substance divine" (Spinoza 148). 25 'ITiis principle was common knowledge of Greek philosophy as it appears also in Plato's Politeia where Socrates says: "It's plain that the same thing won't be willing at the same time to do or suffer opposites with respect to the same part and in relation to the same thing" (IV 436B) (Plato 676). 37 and should also be considered absolute as well. Such indiscernibility would produce an identity that is ontological and not an identity based on form or outer appearance. No two distinct entities can be identical or resemble each other exactly because then they would have to occupy the same space. This means that distinct instantiations necessarily turn out to be similar while remaining substantially linked; belonging to the same existence, they would be ontologically identical.

Conversely, when looking at something that cannot be clearly defined or exactly represented, it becomes indiscernible while regaining its substantiality, its ontological identity because it can only be 'compared' to itself. Thus, it can be identical only to itself.

Absolutely independent and singular, indiscernibles do not immediately allow for the establishment of a condition under which they could possibly be compared or contradicted with respect to each other. Ultimately, they can be compared; Leibniz does not contradict Aristotle (or Kant, for that matter), but any such relative interaction will eventually crumble, as it cannot acquire existence. For the author of the Theodicy, everything is being, albeit with differing degrees of perfection. Deleuze says these

"Identicals are a class of beings but a class with one sole member" {Fold 45).

Being identical does not mean having a recognizable identity. It does not imply having a conscious self-reflective dimension that posits duality (thereby bringing an element of specific difference into the equation). Being identical implies exhibiting a mere individuality or singularity. It is a mere marker of difference, a difference that would not let the instantiation be engulfed in a unity that would render it totally amorphous and indistinguishable. This difference is pure and not specific, it does not have a defined generality to fall back on. 38

The Leibnizian Monad

From the point of view of the principle of contradiction, Leibniz's monads have to be identical also because there is no way of conceiving them otherwise; there is no way of clearly positing any specific difference between them. Deleuze says: "And this is just what the principle of contradiction states: it states that since two distinct Identicals cannot be contradicted by each other, they surely form a category" (Fold 44).

The jump towards the identity of the monad and God is more problematic because the monad is not God as such, but exists only in a non-relative harmony with Him. Yet the monad is God while God is also a monad. In other words, the individual monad belongs to the same Being as God without being God, which makes their distinction merely formal. By introducing the principle of the identity of indiscernibles, Leibniz finds a way out of not only the logic of contradiction but also of the whole paradigm of thought that is based on relation and representation. In short, on the one hand, the individual monad is not God (because after all it is different from Him), but, on the other, it is identical with God nonetheless. Difference, in this context, is an absolute difference seen in itself and not the result of a comparison, a relation between two separate elements. The monad is no longer the copy that is only similar to God but should be regarded as being equally absolute because of their identity of essence, Deleuze will also call God and monad "pure disparities" or "diverse absolutes" {Fold 44).

Leibniz thus manages to accommodate and actually salvage individuality without making it an ontologically lessened copy. He sees the world in an infinite perspective and concludes that the monads are "not wholes and they do not have parts" (Fold 44). These 39 diverse absolutes simply cannot enter into any (dialectical) relation and, as Blanchot would say, are in a state of "non-relation" (Friendship 165). If they cannot relate to each other in any way, then there is no possibility of forming an image, a representation of them. As baroque expressions, monads acquire an attributive status. They become forms that are not fully formed.26 They neither indulge in ontological difference, nor suffer any loss of existence.

Having no gaps or hiccups, this expression is replicated in an aesthetic context by

Bernini's Saint Theresa27, who glows under the fire of a divine love that simply spills over in the sensual, becoming commingled and indistinguishable from it. This change is considerable if one only recalls the Platonic love preponderant during the Renaissance through its Ficinian rephrasing. Here the leading ideas are the paradoxical ones of "no separability" and identity of essence. Without being separated (sharing the same indivisible essence), Leibniz' monads are still absolutely separated because they cannot be in any way related to each other. This apparent paradox becomes the baroque's rule of thumb. The monads cannot enter into any relationship with each other because they are all already included or integrated in each other and this inclusion excludes relation. A relation can be made only between two separate and defined entities, but with their blurry contours, the monads all include each other in a chiaroscuro. The monads are conceived in a confusing grey zone where they lose any defined contours and determinations. They

26 "Now it is precisely because all absolute forms are incapable of being contradicted that they can belong to a same Being and, in being able to, they effectively belong to it. Since they are forms, their real distinction is formal and carries no ontological difference among beings to which each might be attributed: they are all attributed to a single and same Being that is both ontologically one and formally diverse. There the real distinction already does not involve separability" (Fold 44-45). 27 The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa (alternatively Saint Teresa in Ecstasy or Transverberation of Saint Teresa) is the central sculptural group in white marble set in an elevated aedicule in the Cornaro Chapel, Santa Maria della Vittoria, Rome. It was designed and completed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini (Naples, 7 December 1598 - Rome, 28 November 1680), the leading sculptor of his day, who also designed the setting of the Chapel in marble, stucco and paint. It is generally considered to be one of the sculptural masterpieces of the High Roman Baroque. 40 get 'con-fused' among themselves, at least from an ontological point of view. Still, they do not lose their individuality, as each expresses the infinite world in a finite way: "Thus every individual, every individual monad expresses the same world in its totality although it only clearly expresses a part of this world, a series or even a finite sequence"

(Fold 60). However, "every monad expresses the entire world, but obscurely and dimly because it is finite and the world is infinite" (Fold 86).

The paradoxical state of the monads can be restated as follows: they are absolutely fused ontologically yet totally broken off and distinct from each other as pure disparities. In Deleuze's words, they are "both ontologically one and formally diverse"

(Fold 45). In the same way as light can be either seen as a wave or as a corpuscle, one cannot catch the monad in a stable definition. Both ontologically one and formally diverse, the monad produces a "dialectical image" that freezes the dialectics. Referring to their essential identity with God, the monads are undivided. Referring to their formal differences, they are diverse absolutes, pure disparities.

Interweaving the Leibnizian and the Benjaminian Baroque

For Deleuze, baroque art is essentially allegorical. And like Benjamin, Deleuze finds baroque allegory to be governed by a sequential temporality. "Even in the worst representations, Fidelity Crowns Love, we find the charm of allegory, the presence of an event that makes an appeal to an antecedent and a sequel" (Fold 126). Sequentiality does not just dominate the realm of life. It also subtends the rift between the realms of life and death, as evinced in Johann Christian Hallman's scenario of the apotheosis in which the 41 body has to pass through all the meanders of life and to become a dead corpse first in order to be able to ascend to eternal life: "So muss man durch den Tod in jenes Leben dringen / Das uns Aegyptens Nacht in Gosems Tag verkehrt / Und den beperlten Rock der Ewigkeit gewehrt!" (qtd. in Origin 180)28. The line of existence between life and death is continuous. Life does not end abruptly while being saved into the transcendental beyond as this post-Renaissance world becomes allegorical and temporally sequential.

The baroque is no longer interested in the static eternity of myth but discovers history, temporality and duration.

However in artistic theory from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century, the imitation of nature means the imitation of nature as shaped by God. But it is fallen nature which bears the imprint of the progression of history. The penchant of the baroque for apotheosis is a counterpart to its own particular way of looking at things. The authorization of their allegorical designations bears the seal of the all-too-earthly. Never does their transcendence come from within. Hence their illumination by the artificial light of apotheosis. Hardly ever has there been a literature whose illusionistic virtuosity has been more radically eliminated from its works that radiance which has a transcendent effect, which at one time, rightly, used to define the essence of artistry. (Origin 180)

For Benjamin, the baroque eliminates the halo or radiance with its supernatural or transcendental effect replacing it with an artificially manufactured illusionistic one that is all-too-earthly. This sad and melancholic baroque presents a fallen nature, a mundus in which nature is not only fallen but decayed (verfallen), destroyed by temporality. The age of the baroque is full of magical powers of illusion, of creating artifices and hallucinatory perceptions. These perceptions are hallucinatory because they can never be crystallized in a clearly defined object.29 Although it is more toned-down in the late German baroque,

28 We will find the same image of penetration or piercing in Kleist's "Durchgang durch das Unendliche" (Scimthche Werke 2: 345). " "Every perception is hallucinatory because perception has no object. Conscious perception has no object and does not even refer to a physical mechanism of excitation that could explain it frcm without: it refers only to the exclusively 42 the feeling of incompletion and lack of an object, of stable forms or completed images prevails throughout the great Spanish baroque.

Because the contours of the "pulverized" world cannot be rigorously defined, perception itself is minute and becomes quite diffuse and confusing {Fold 87). As

Deleuze says, "two monads [never] perceive the same green in the same degree of the chiaroscuro" (Fold 90). The world of the baroque is not a world of black and white, of clarity vs. obscurity. It is a rather bleak world, a world of different shades of grey where one never catches the same shade, the same specific nuance twice because "clarity comes of obscurity and endlessly plung[es] back into it" (Fold 89). As the object turns more and more into a Quixote-like phantasmagoria, it reverberates on the status of the subject as well. The latter becomes 'infected', losing the firm ground that would affirm its identity, and being enveloped (or "prehended" in Whitehead's term30) in the predicate thus sliding into its own actions. The baroque functions according to a processual logic that has stoic ramifications, where verbs do not have a transitive aspect. The prefix "trans-" does not seem to function at all in the baroque, as "the predicate is the proposition itself' {Fold

53); the whole world becomes predication. There is no copula, no relation, no vinculum in Giordano Bruno's sense31, no universal chain of being32.

physical mechanism of differencial relations among unconscious perceptions that are comprising it from within the monad" (Fold 93). v' See Alfred North Whitehead Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology. Whitehead describes prehensions as concrete modes of analysis of the world. To prehend something is to have a concrete idea or concept of that thing. However, prehension is not merely a mode of thinking. A prehension is a process of appropriation of an element of an actual entity, or of an element which is derived from an actual entity. A prehension of an object, or of an element of an object, changes the internal constitution of the prehending subject Prehension is a process by which an actual entity, or prehending subject, becomes itself by appropriating elements from other actual entities. Thus, the becoming of an actual entity occurs through a concrescence of prehensions. " Giordano Bruno (1548 - 1600) emphasizes the importance of the creation of bonds or chains, called vinculo in magic. Of these the Erotic bond is supreme. Vinculum quippe vinculorum amor est or "Love is the bond of bonds". "All affections and bonds of the will are reduced to two, namely aversion and desire, or hatred and love. Yet hatred itself is reduced to love, whence it follows that the will's only bond is Eros." Giordano Bruno, Theses de Magia, Vol. L V] quoted in Coulianu, Ems and Magic in the Renaissance 91. 43

This world turns into a universal becoming or "passing through," populated by

Identicals rather than Definables. As Deleuze explains, "Definables are derived notions: they can be simple if they are first in their order, but they always presuppose at least two primitives that define them in a relation, under a vinculum, or through the intermediary of a particle that can be simple or complex (for example A in B)" {Fold 45). The presence of an intermediary alters the fundamental configuration because it inevitably introduces a gap that has to be connected, a point of reference that creates the necessity of a relation between two distinctly defined entities. The Identicals are utterly indefinable and can only be identical with themselves: "These undefinables are obviously not reciprocal inclusions, like definitions, but they are auto-inclusions: they are Identicals in a pure state, each of which includes only itself, each only capable of being identical to itself'

(Fold 43).

The baroque subject roams an immanent world of Identicals where relation or mediation exists in an overall non-relative Weltanschauung. The good aspect of relation is that it connects two separate items; the bad one is that it maintains their distance obstructing their ontological identification. Relation bridges a distance that it cannot dissolve because it becomes itself this distance. Moreover, unless it is an "implicated or enveloped distance" (Deleuze, Difference 237), distance marks a 'mediation between' and not an 'inclusion in'. Deleuze explains this idea of distance in elaborate terms as an effort not to combine contiguity and continuity. He says that "although they are not contiguous, singularities, or unique points, [they] belong fully to continuousness"

(Deleuze, Fold20). This recalls Betrand Russell's thesis, for Leibniz "sketched the

32 Benjamin also distinguishes between a so-called "Kette der Deduktion" and a "lOckenloser Deduktionszusammenhang" (Kairos 137) which Leibniz calls "vinculum substantiae". 44 notion of distance as a relation indivisible, irreductible to length and measure: space is made of relations of distance, while extension consists of measurable sizes" (Fold 145).

Ultimately there are no distinctive and strictly defined entities in the baroque. Everything is rather amorphous because even when one finds borders, they present themselves as flexible and fluid as the elongated faces of El Greco.

From this point of view, it is almost undeniable that the baroque brought a new type of attitude towards life and existence in general. Man begins to see the environment that surrounds him with different eyes. He begins to discover the beauty in nature, in what was previously labeled as an imperfect copy (not to say the realm of the devil). He develops a new type of receptivity and discovers that the world around him is dynamic and in constant movement. From a religious perspective, d'Ors sees the problem as a clash between the intellectualist classical tradition of St. Augustine and the new movements within the Christian church like Lutheranism, Franciscanism and the

Counter-Reformation. Although it was labeled heretical from the point of view of the

Catholic Church, although it does not recognize any transcendence, this new type of religious sensibility will not take an opposing position against the divine.

The Benjaminian Baroque

The baroque is so multifaceted and complex that it cannot be restricted to the perception of the divine in nature. It also partakes in rather obscure and esoteric practices, exploring the forbidden, the secretive and darker side of nature. The baroque mind enjoys nothing more than penetrating the mysteries of nature through occult sciences. It delights in experimenting with the resources of a darker side of magic.33 The best example is that of

Doctor Faustus, who exhausted all the humanistic studies and did not find any truth that could have satisfied his hunger for knowledge. This hunger for knowledge is considered evil and inspired by the devil. Benjamin quotes St. Augustine who links the hunger with

Greek antiquity. "The word Daimones is Greek, and demons are so called because of their knowledge" (Origin 230). Even the before-mentioned Francis of Assisi who, through his love for nature and animals, can be considered a baroque figure, says that:

"Unus solus daimon plus scit quam tu (One single demon knows more than you)" (ibid).

On first sight, this side of the baroque seems to actually turn away from the

Christian God altogether, developing a taste for pagan antiquity, which it quite often treats in an ironic and burlesque manner. As Benjamin says, "the baroque vulgarizes ancient mythology in order to see everything in terms of figures (not souls)" (Origin

187). One of the important examples would be Quevedo's Suenos (Dreams), where the netherworld is negotiated, through fun, sarcasm and desperation, as the ground of baroque irony. Before the Jena Romantics refashioned it as a metaphysical principle, irony was the main figure for the baroque folding (not integration) of the transcendental and the phenomenal. In its irony, the baroque is the least escapist ideology.

Generally speaking, the baroque avoids being caught into one single restrictive definition. Turning a spiritualized Neo-Platonic Christianity into a pantheist feeling of nature, it will also approach a pagan mentality that is, in turn, ridiculed as well. Its structure contains an affirmation that will be allegorized and thus transformed into something else in the next moment. In his La Litterature de I'age baroque en France:

33 This type is different from the white magic used in the Renaissance. One of the leading books in the field is loan Petru Culianu's Eros and Magic in the Renaissance. 46

Circe et le paon (1953) Jean Rousset would frame the protean baroque in the space between the magician Circe and the peacock; the main focus not being the image that it turned but rather the turn, the process of transformation itself.

According to Benjamin, medieval allegory had "its origin (Ursprung) in the conflict between the guilt-laden physis held up as an example by Christianity and a purer natura deorum embodied in the pantheon" {Origin 226). The baroque, however, resolves and leaves behind the concept of guilt as such, renegotiating a new type of relationship between the ontological levels. This idea will become so powerful that it will be retained even by Goethe in his "classicistic" treatment of the baroque theme: in Faust Mephisto is

"ein Teil von jener Kraft, die stets das Bose will und stets das Gute schafft." (Goethe

125) For Benjamin, the devil is the so-called "original allegorical figure" (in the sense of origin, f/rsprung, t/rallegorische Figur). No longer proffering the outdated temptations of lechery, gluttony or sloth, the baroque devil tempts with knowledge, freedom and infinity.34 He could have tempted even with virtue, for that matter, but any virtue has to have "an end before it: namely its model, in God" (Origin 230). Baroque allegory wants to break free from any restrictions that clearly recall the Platonic paradigm. Benjamin says: "What tempts is the illusion of freedom - in the exploration of what is forbidden, the illusion of independence - the secession of the community of the pious; the illusion of infinity - in the empty abyss of evil" (ibid).

Even in the Bible, the serpent offers Adam and Eve a hidden knowledge that God would not want them to possess because it would make them equal to God himself.

34 "Accordingly, physical temptation conceived in sensual terms, as lechery, gluttony, and sloth, is far from being the sole basis of existence; indeed, strictly speaking it is ultimately and precisely speaking not basic at all. Rather is the basis of existence revealed in thefata morgana of the realm of the absolute, that is to say godless, spirituality, bound to the material as its counterpart, such as can only be concretely experienced through evil" (Origin 230). 47

Baroque evil is not associated with the material; matter and everything made of it actually becomes the counterpart of this newly discovered devilish godless spirituality. Projecting it into the infinite, the devil plunges the created world into time, while aiming to point out its impermanence, its progressive yet inevitable state of decay. Hence a deplored world in ruins becomes the favorite image in the allegory of the baroque. The baroque is thus not concerned with cleansing matter, or casting it away and eliminating it. It is not interesting in the process that Benjamin would call the "de-Tartarisation" of the world (Origin 227).

What the baroque does is to challenge the divinity and eternity of God's world by inculcating in materiality this inexorable path of perdition. The devil's puts forth the overcoming (and saving) of this world from the inexorable decay by means of the allegorical process of signification, by means of a repeated production of meaning that starts from the created, from something that is already there and that will be transformed it into something else. His argument is that the process of turning into meaning is infinite

(i.e., a divine or neverending infinite that functions like a regulative idea); an argument that will eventually lead to his demise as well as he miscalculates the fullness of the baroque infinite because it will turn around being quite curvaceous, as we will see. This is the temptation through knowledge and infinity that the devil has in store, which can lead the adept to develop an attitude of pure mockery toward everything that is created.

Hence the well-known jocularity of the devilish courtier that Benjamin talks about. "This explains the jocularity of the intriguer, his intellectuality, his knowledge of significance.

The mute creature is able to hope for salvation through that which is signified" (Origin

227). Satan offers a kind of knowledge that would make man free from God's authority and at the same time would help him discover a true sense of infinity. "In the form of 48

knowledge instinct leads down into the empty abyss of evil in order to make sure of infinity" (Origin 231). This shows exactly how the baroque detaches itself, follows a totally divergent path which is consistent and rigorous in itself, and ceases to be a mere antithesis of a classical paradigm (recalling Eugenio d'Ors' statement that the baroque is an entirely new phenomenon).

No one denies that the devil is the actual culprit who is to be blamed for the fall,35 but the fall itself is being reevaluated as there is no nostalgia for a long-lost idyllic

paradise anymore. The baroque thinker decides to follow this new type of secret and magical knowledge in order to discover all the mysteries of the earth. The hero is not satisfied with Adam's fall but wants to mirror the fall of Satan in its "infinite progression into the depths" (Origin 231).

And yet it would be mistaken or at least it would be superficial to attribute to delight in being in antithesis for its own sake those numerous effects in which visually or only verbally the throne room is transformed into a dungeon the pleasure-chamber into a tomb, the crown into a wreath of cypress. Even the contrast of being and appearances does not accurately describe this technique of metaphors and apotheoses. {Origin 231)

It is true that the allegorical process of turning one thing into something else may seem similar to a dialectic negation, after all, the devil is "der Geist der stets verneint"

(Goethe 125) and allegory means something different than it presents. As Benjamin says, allegory "means precisely the non-existence of what it presents" (Origin 233). Baroque allegory does not simply replace the image with its negative, but rather aims at showing its hollowness. The negation of negation does not turn into a synthesis but into non­ existence. The object (etymologically = object from ob "against" + jacere "to throw")

35 "The allegorical has its experience in abstractions; as an abstraction, as a faculty of the spirit of language itself, it is at home in the Fall" (Origin 234). 49 does not become the "anti-thesis," because in the baroque one cannot form a stable object. The object rather acquires a more volatile and meandering status. In this sense

Deleuze says: "The new status of the object, the objectile, is inseparable from the different layers that are dilating, like so many occasions for meanders and detours. In relation to the many folds that is capable of becoming, matter becomes a matter of expression" (Fold 37).

More than that, the process of allegoresis aims at destroying representability, the possibility of representation, it ironically turns against itself destroying itself as an image that could resemble or be reshaped into an opposite. The rationale behind this gesture is at least twofold: on the one hand, it is a way for the object to achieve originality and newness by being reborn out of its own ashes and thus being recreated and transformed into another, into something completely different that cannot be traced back to its previous persona. On the other, it is an ontological statement: the transformed result becomes a testimony of the non-existence of what was supposed to be the object. It is a memento of the imminent decay and destruction and invites one to meditate on the vanitas of the world. One should not be surprised that this is still part of the teaching of the devil who says: "Ich bin der Geist, der stets verneint - und das mit Recht, denn alles, was entsteht, ist wert, daB es zu Grunde geht" (Goethe 125). The devil teaches the truth about the vainness of God's creation by revealing the impermanence of all material things. From this point of view, the devil becomes similar to a spiritual guide in the inferno-like world of the baroque. The alternative he offers is freedom, the exploration of the forbidden, infinity and what Benjamin calls godless absolute spirituality. The baroque 50 inferno-world depicted in Quevedo's Suenos feels more real than Dante's represented inferno.

Baroque Allegory

What is important is that the allegorical process of turning one thing into something else escapes any previously established rule. There is no dialectical opposition, no symbolic resemblance or correspondence that would, yet again, sneak the

Platonic pattern in through a 'back door'. The process of "tirelessly transforming, interpreting and deepening" (Origin 230) is thus subjective; the subject emerges as the sole authority that can institute a convention. Deleuze explains this subtle yet profound shift from a system based on recognition to one based on producing new meaning:

Above all, it is the meaning of resemblance that entirely changes. Resemblance is equated with what resembles, not with what is resembled. That the perceived resembles matter means that matter is necessarily produced in conformity with this relation, and not that this relation conforms a preexisting model. Or rather, it is the relation of resemblance, it is the likeness that is itself the model, that makes matter be what it resembles (Fold 96)

Baroque allegory does not rely on any preexisting model but produces everything arbitrarily in the very moment of creation. It does not have to account for any preexisting model because it always generates a fresh meaning in the act of production - a meaning that will be destroyed in the next turn, in the next moment and so on. It does not look backward (or upward) towards a given rule of creation but inevitably projects it forwards.

Production generates its own rule in the very act of producing, as it simultaneously projects and imposes its mark, just like leaving an imprint, a footprint in the sand.

The process of creation is thus the devil's inward freedom that produces an arbitrary and conventional meaning on the spot without any other preconceived or 51 external support. Benjamin says: "the allegory in the seventeenth century is not a convention of expression but expression of convention" (Origin 175). In a transient or mobile world with no stable reference point, changes in perception become the rule of the day. Everything depends on randomly picking a motive that can be actualized out of the

"infinity of subjective motives" that are possible. Deleuze's conclusion is that "in truth the soul is what invents its own motives, and these are always subjective" (.Fold 69).

From a religious point of view, this may sound quite heretical. It should not come as a surprise that this side of the baroque engages in a pact with the devil. In baroque allegory, one thing "can mean absolutely anything else" (Origin 175) because "it is incapable of emanating36 any meaning of its own; such significance as it has, it acquires from the allegorist. He places it within it and stands behind it; not in a psychological sense but in an ontological one" (Origin 184). Being so farfetched and sometimes forced, this expressive meaning will inevitably leave behind the impression of being more or less artificially created, almost manufactured.

The baroque process of creation "betrays and devalues things in an inexpressible manner" (Origin 185). It does not look for beauty but goes in the other direction by

"stripping it naked," thus leaving a mere ruin behind. The resulting emblem hollows out the so-called essence, remaining just an empty form. This happens even in the case of religious iconography: "The function of baroque iconography is not so much to unveil material objects as to strip them naked. The emblematist does not present the essence implicitly, behind the image. He drags the essence of what is depicted out before the

36 Deleuze confirms that Neo-Platonic emanation is quite different from expression. See Deleuze's Expressionism in Philosophy Spinoza ch. Immanence and the Historical Components of Expression. 52 image, in writing as caption, such as, in the emblem-books, forms an intimate part of what is depicted" (Origin 185).

Oftentimes the baroque leaves the meaning totally dislocated or suspended from the image. It will thus distort the image beyond recognition while merely aiming to produce an overwhelming and shocking effect, based on the intensity of feeling rather than on understanding. The purpose is to make an impression, to create an impressive expression. The baroque is not geared towards understanding but dives into a sensuality that exits the logic of the idea while entering in the "logic of sense." It can be understood only by means of the concetto, the poetic invention so bizarre that it cannot be defined

"by an attribute but by predicates-as-event" (Fold 42). The association of impossible situations (i.e., a simultaneous representation of the Pope and St. Peter) can only be understood beyond the actual image in its inner predication in which both elements lose any strictly defined contours to become mere events. One element prehends or includes the antecedent while including itself in the process (thus avoiding entering in a relationship with it), everything uni-directionally advancing in an uninterrupted predicative flow of time. Deleuze says that the event "is at once (...) potential and real, participating in the becoming of another event and the subject of its own becoming"

(Fold IS).

Baroque writers also tackle the value of sound and of musical effects or explore the sensual side of language. Benjamin gives the example of Jacob Bohme saying that

"where he speaks of language Jacob Boehme, one of the greatest allegorists, upholds the value of sound over silent profundity. He developed the doctrine of the sensual or natural language" (Origin 201). On the one hand, baroque allegory is expressive as it does not 53

reside in an impenetrable silence; silence always speaks. On the other, it does not reside in understanding either. The full power of a word nests in its onomatopoeic valences.

Only though its pronounciation can a word become what it is, a word, thus being able to

receive its quiddity or essence. This essence is the logos or what Benjamin calls "ein geistiges Wesen" that must be expressed in language37. Even though understanding may work on a certain level, it is always secondary or ancillary. Moreover Bohme's sensual or onomatopeic language shows that understanding may even be totally left out without a loss of essence.

The Greek etymology of onomatopoeia is a composite of the noun onoma (6vo|aa)

= "name" and the verb poiein orpoieo (7toieoo) = "to make". Naming an object couples the spiritual essence of the real thing with the essence of language. Even though the object as such is not touched (tactile sensuality itself can be quite deceiving because it can involve the representative mechanism), this expressive act will still convey and claim an ontological coverage for it. The object will have a factual value because of substantial affinity of the essences involved, an affinity ("fellowship" in Keats's terms) that is grounded in their common origin. What is important is that the object receives its reality in language thus ceasing to be a Kantian unknowable thing in itself38. Its name generates

37 "Es ist fundamental zu wissen daB dieses geistige Wesen sich in der Sprache mitteilt und nicht durch die Sprache" (Kairos 8). When Benjamin says that language communicates itself ("Jede Sprache teilt sich selbst mit") (Kairos 8), there is no inward reflection that entails setting up a medium of reflection (Reflectimsmedium) typical for Jena romanticism. Language does not turn into a medium through which content is communicated. The spiritual essence is expressed and at the same time embedded in language in such a way that language becomes simultaneously both its content and form. This can happen only if there is no ontological difference between the essence of language (.sprachlicltes Wesen) and the spiritual esscncc (geistiges Wesen), if they arc substantially (i.e., nonrelatively) linked. Their identity, however, is an ungraspable or unconceptualizable (i.e., concept in a Kantian sense that involves bridging or mediation) and thus ultimatelty unrepresentable. It is an unsolvable paradox that is in fact an affinity (Verwandtschaft) rather than an analogy (see Fragmente zur Sprachphilosophie und Erkenntniskritik. Analogie und Verwandtschaft)."(...), daB vielmehr die oft behauptete Identit&t zwischen dem geistigen und sprachlichen Wesen eine tiefe und unbegreifliche Paradoxic bildet deren Ausdruck man mit dem Doppelsinn der Wortes logos gefunden hat" (Kairos 8). 38 Besides Salomon Maimon's pertinent critique one can also recall Johann Georg llamann's (1730-1788) objection to Kant. He says, for example, that Kant totally disregarded the function of language, that his antinomies are not 54 its being and is at the same time its concept (Begriff) as a way of grasping it. The Adamic act of naming is symbolic and magical. Each subsequent pronounciation turns into an allegorical interpretation or formal repetition (i.e., a Deleuzian repetition into difference) that reenacts or apocatastically restores39 (albeit weakly) the originary power of the symbol in the present, in what Benajmin calls the "now of recognition" ("Jetzt der

Erkennbarkeit").

The Harp, the Ax and their Metamorphosis

Besides the uncontestable value of the sound effect that the allegorist aims at, there is also another secret ingredient inscribed in the conventional allegorical mechanism of the baroque. Theoretically the baroque wants to dismantle all the springs and triggers of the symbolic mechanism of correspondence and recognition that "remains persistently the same" (Origin 183). Arbitrariness is a sign of subjectivity but a subjectivity that is pushed to its extreme. It does not listen to any rule but aims at cutting itself off from any authority. The baroque violates all the rules of the symbolic transference based on correspondence. It treats truth in a Deleuzian manner as "a matter of production, not of adequation.... At this point, it is must be said, there is no longer recognition. To ground is to metamorphose" {Difference 154). Among the many examples of allegorical turns that

antinomies of reason but only of language. Because language can conceive them, their incompatibility cannot be declared utterly unsolvable and should receive a different status. Kant's antinomies are unsolvable only from the point of view of a hegemonic reason that works representatively which makes them merely relatively (not absolutely) unsolvable. 3<) The apocatastatical restoration is the restitutio in integrum, the real or effective restitution in which form and content are so inextricably frozen together that they cannot be distinguished and dialecticized anymore. This dialectical image, as Benjamin calls it, is more than a mere re-presentation because it restores the object concretely and completely (i.e., integrally) in its fullness. In short it conveys it existence that translates in a certain vividness or a sense of being alive. 55

Benjamin gives,40 the transformation of the harp into an executioner's axe (Mordbeil) taken from the German dramatist Johann Christian Hallmann seems unsurpassable in what he calls "unashamed crudity" (Origin 231). Normally the harp is a symbol of love in the form of lyrical art, poetry, and music. The harp has mythical connections to the Celts, representing the bridge of love connecting heaven and earth. In Norway and Iceland, harp strings formed a ladder symbolizing the ascent to higher states of love and pathways leading to paradise. King David played the Harp to the Lord to express his devotion and love. By allegorizing the harp into a killing ax (Mordbeil), the baroque disrupts all analogical expectations while creating a new and artificial effect. The two terms become antinomies that, as John McCole suggests, "involve a radical, despairing alternation between unbridgeable antipodes" (140). Hence there is no longer a relationship of resemblance between the two items: the ax shows simultaneously the non-existence of the harp (the ax literally and figuratively destroys the harp in the process of allegorizing it) and the lack of metaphorical carryover or transference of meaning. All of this produces a rather shocking effect.

Both the harp and the ax can therefore be seen as "diverse absolutes," totally broken off from each other as they recompose a monadic baroque universe. Making them merely absolutely identical with themselves, the baroque allegory gathers a class of items that turns out to be "a class with one sole member" (Fold 45). Paradoxically, this allows for a more immediate communication; they become both formally diverse and ontologically one.

40 "(...) the throne room is transformed into a dungeon, the pleasure-chamber into a tomb, the crown into a wreath of bloody cypress" (Origin 231). 56

At this point any mediation, any relationship (by means of a third term like image, representation, idea, etc.) is overcome. Each includes the other while auto-including itself at the same time: the harp becomes and signifies the ax at the same time while also leaving any usual pre-existing association behind. Hence they appear diverse and disparate, not to mention beyond being underwritten by any discernible rule of production.

For Benjamin, the allegorical arbitrariness and conventionality rephrases the

Biblical idea of signifying that is associated with the guilt brought on by the Fall from paradise. By means of the "unity of guilt and signifying" (Origin 234), the baroque writer repeats Satan's fall and becomes "as those who lose their footing turn somersaults in their fall, so would the allegorical intention fall from emblem to emblem down into the dizziness of its bottomless depths" (Origin 232). Once in the realm of the artificial creation, a creation that has lost its ideal model, the product will always be artificial. This fall projects the production of difference from difference while not going back to resemblance and sameness. These artificial emblems, copies of copies (simulacra from a

Platonic point of view), cannot but create other emblems and so on, until they lavishly stockpile, accumulate, agglomerate and eventually suffocate and exhaust the quantitative baroque universe. This scenario leads to what Benjamin calls the "one about turn"

(Umschwung), the turn to end all previous allegorical turns by becoming a turn that turns on and in itself. The English translation 'forges' a term that, beside its rather artificial construction, aims at singularizing it with respect to the common turn.

The Allegorical Umschwung 57

Before tackling the complexity of Umschwung, which has been quite poorly treated by criticism, some specifications are due. The reversal as such (Umschwung) is a technical term used in drama, similar to what in Aristotelian tragedy is called peripeteia. It marks a turning point, a retarding moment or plot point. It brings about a change of direction

(Richiungsanderung) in an action, process or plot: one will suddenly look to another end against the one expected. In its broadest sense every Umschwung is a turnaround, a reversal into a positive situation, from a downswing into an upswing. While the reversal becomes the hallmark of the Benjaminian baroque, it will also mark the difference from the Deleuzian/Leibnizian baroque.

For Deleuze the definition of the baroque is "the fold that goes out to infinity"

(Fold 121). Indeed Deleuze notes that as exemplified by Leibniz baroque thought "has ascribed a particular importance to the distinction of several orders of infinity":

And in the first place, if absolute forms constitute God as an infinity by itself, which excludes wholes and parts, the idea of creation goes back to a second infinity, through cause. It is this infinity by way of cause that constitutes wholes and parts, without there being either a largest or a smallest. It is no longer a whole, but a series that has neither a final term nor a limit. (...) But previously there exists a third order of infinity. The question involves series that do always posses a last term, but that are convergent and tend toward a limit. (Fold 46-47)

Generally speaking, then, baroque thinking is a cogitation of the infinite. Hence, it should not come as a surprise that other thinkers have concurred with Leibniz with respect to the idea of the infinite. As Deleuze writes, "Spinoza also distinguishes three infinities in

Letter XII, one by itself, the other by its cause, the third finally understood within limits.

Leibniz praised Spinoza in this respect although, on his account, he conceives otherwise the relation of this limit and infinity" {Fold 149). Without discarding the differences between Leibniz and Spinoza with respect to the idea of the infinite, it is important, at the 58 present stage of the argument, to elucidate their implications with respect to the

Benjaminian baroque.

For Leibniz the created world is infinitely infinite, made up of convergent series that interweave like fabric or textures, prolonging and continuing into each other as in a curvature that is mobile and has no stable center. But even in constant movement, the

Leibnizian world still creates in each moment a mobile center by means of a vision that descends from a single apex that emerges as the point of view of a monad. Thus each monad expresses the world in its entirety but can clearly express only one portion of the series at a time. This clear region of course extends or is prolonged infinitely into obscure zones. Not being infinite, the monad will have a tendency towards a limit. Even if this limit cannot be clearly localized, the monad still becomes a part of that "infinite series with extrinsic limits that restore an infinite whole (=World)" (Fold 51). After Leibniz the individual cannot be merely individual, as it "naturally has a presently infinite comprehension; it 'envelops the infinite'" {Fold 49). Placing the limit under the aspect of the virtual, the baroque world of Leibniz will thus not be able to have a limit as such. In this it becomes implicitly unable to conceive an (Jmschwung, a reversal or a swinging back of the pendulum. The Leibnizian system will thus abide in a "condition of closure," unable to accommodate a real salvation like Spinoza or Benjamin. The individual's realization will take place inside the illusion, inside the enclosed monadic perspective, as it resounds with other monads in a pre-established harmony. It has to be said though that none of the baroque perspectives - Benjaminian, Leibnizian or Spinozian - conceives of an escapist solution in a transcendent(al) beyond. 59

For Benjamin the origin of the German tragic drama is in allegory, and thus contains in nuce the mechanism that is valid for what he calls the whole baroque movement. Generally speaking, allegory is the process of conveying a meaning other than the literal one, even though the conventionality of the literal meaning is allegorical as well. This process of turning one thing into something else, however, is not used in the baroque as a mode of returning to Christian ideals, as a return towards representing religious ideas. The changes in baroque ontology reshuffle the priorities of allegory in such a way that it loses its reference to moral values to concern itself primarily with the contingency and immanence of the created world. It approaches this immanence only for the purpose of showing its obvious impermanence and inevitable decay.

It is thus not a mere contradiction or a statement that God's creation has no higher goal or meaning. Placing everything into an open and endless perspective, the devil's message could be summarized as a call for transgressing the limits of creation. He sees past the finitude of the world aiming to entice with a taste of the infinite; hence the temptation with the infinite. In trying to prove the hollowness of the created world, the devil's allegory will not remain in a mere dialectics of opposites, but will rather point to a void, to non-existence as such (or, at least, to what he believes to be non-existence). It may be true that the devil's agenda does contain a 'constructive criticism' but is not gratuitously destructive either. His continuous forward transformation or signifying will rather create the effect of a loss of a unity of meaning (thus not aiming at understanding) as there is no ideal and divine plan behind all his wanderings. Experiencing a fall in which one will lose all such reference points, the nausea of the void will disappear while turning into a positive experience, into an affirmation of the infinite. Hence everything 60 that recalls the fatidic corruption of a world 'coated' in melancholy as its necessary stimulus will eventually lead to a producing a real taste the infinite.

Benjamin finds that the myth of King Midas illustrative of the mechanism of the baroque allegory, which no longer listens to any higher precepts but becomes an immediate act of will. "Whatever it picks up, its Midas-touch turns into something endowed with significance. Its element was transformation of every sort and allegory was its scheme" (Origin 229). The baroque process of signification is a transformation, a deepening, an interpretation, a mortification41 and eventually a destruction. Midas' touch means immediate contact and is quite different from Michelangelo's touchless touch of the Platonic Renaissance42. Creation "in the image" always involves a substantial gap between the creator and his creation, a mediation of the two by representation. Even St.

Paul in his first Epistle to the Corinthians says: "For now we see through a glass (mirror), darkly (in a riddle); but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known" (1 Cor 13:12). By not being able to see God face to face, one is advised to enter into an even more distanced relationship involving a leap of faith, "for we walk by faith, not by sight" (2 Cor 5:7). Even though the promise of a future symbolical oneness and salvation may be uttered, the present situation is still partial and mediated underwriting merely a similarity (i.e., an "almost" identity) between man and

God.

What then happens when the intensity (or the degree) of this continuous allegorical process of turning into something else reaches its peak? This moment can be

41 "Criticism means the mortification of the works (...) Mortification of the works; not then as the romantics have it - awakening of the consciousness in living works, but the settlement of knowledge in dead ones" (Origin 182). This is actually a relevant aspect of the difference between romanticism and the baroque. We will come back to it. 421 am referring to the Creation of Adam scene from the Sistine chapel in which there is no contact between man and God. The fingers never touch each other. 61 perceived quite differently from perfectly parallel points of view. It can appear as a moment of exhaustion, when one realizes that the whole process of transformation and interpretation has become senseless or pointless. It can also be perceived in a Faustian way as a climactic and complete moment, as the most beautiful moment one wants to hold onto. Yet again, it can be perceived as a reaching of a limit, i.e., when the frenzy of destruction actually reaches its limit because there is nothing more left to destroy. "For it is precisely visions of the frenzy of destruction, in which all earthly things collapse into heaps of ruins, which reveal the limit set upon allegorical contemplation, rather than its ideal quality" (Origin 232). This individual vision of destruction can also be extrapolated at a universal level and imagined as the moment of the apocalypse when Mephisto's words actually come true: every beginning has to have an end, everything that was created is bound to be destroyed. From the point of view of the so-called infinite tendency, the reaching of such a limit is important. It is true that even Benjamin does not see this limit as a limitation but as a step towards something else. "For it is to misunderstand the allegory entirely if we make a distinction between the store of images, in which this about-turn into salvation and redemption takes place, and that that grim store which signifies death and damnation" (Origin 232). What is important is that it cannot be seen as a definite stop. The fluid baroque world is dealing with degrees of intensity thus transforming the moment of exhaustion automatically in a redirection.

When the intensity reaches a certain climactic point, it can also trigger temperance in the sense of Baltasar Gracian's ponderacion misteriosa 43

43 Gracian mentions the notion of ponderacion in his treatise called Agudeza y arte de ingenio (1648). On its importance see for example M. J. Woods "On Pondering la ponderacion in Gracian's treatise on Wit". 62

One way or another the limit or stop cannot be overseen or simply neglected. It constitutes a key moment in a correct understanding of allegory because it marks the passage to what Benjamin calls the "one-about-turn," the Umschwung. In Melancholy and Dialectics, Max Pensky calls the Umschwung "truly unexpected... a breathtaking reversal, a shattering synthesis" (131). For Pensky, this "theological caesura" immediately provokes an inquiry into its mechanism and dynamics (132). The "one about-turn" is clearly more than the 'usual' allegorical process of transformation, because it is the reaching of a limit, a limit that would vex even Satan himself. Even though in transit allegory means mortification, destruction or an utterly radical transformation, it is still functioning within the representative framework. The negation of the image and its reduction to nothingness is not enough to step beyond representability, beyond the conditions of possibility of representation. By means of the one-about turn, however, the

Benjaminian baroque becomes expressive.

And this is the essence of melancholy immersion: that its ultimate objects, in which it believes it can most fully secure for itself that which is vile, turn into allegories and these allegories fill out and deny the void in which they are represented, just as, ultimately, the intention does not faithfully rest in the contemplation of bones, but faithlessly leaps forward to the idea of resurrection. (Origin 232-33)

The anatomical observation of bones is merely a springboard for the meditation on the transience of the created world. In this context, it is also an illustration of the destructive aspect that is taking place inside the allegorical mechanism. Without relying on common associations (harp=love), baroque allegory will always project its 'randomly' created image (the ax) into a void in order to fill the gap left over by the previous image. This previous image had to be abandoned, since one could not find any recognizable reference or relation with it. Even so, its substitute will not be able to completely fill this void 63 because the difference between the images will not be able to simply exhaust the innate creative impulse of the human nature, the possibility of further producing meaning.

Hence the allegorical process of destruction, transformation or metamorphosis will be continued; all such new presentations, all such repeated presentations into difference, being after all still re-presentations, i.e., still reactive in their nature and not absolute in their diversity yet. They would be after all merely repeating the same process of transformation, the same turn, a turn that becomes rather 'usual' as it differs fundamentally from the "one-about turn."

In replacing or voiding its predecessor, the new image goes beyond the principle of resemblance. But even if it signals a total transformation into something else, and thus appears to emerge from a void, the new image is still an image of that void. In other words, even though a relationship between two contiguous images may not be obvious in the present moment, the repeated allegorical jump from emblem to emblem may, at some point, still reveal some recurring pattern. In this way, allegory is pulled back into the domain of representation. Although there is no obvious representation of the previous image, there is still a (condition of) possibility that the image will eventually recur and thus activate a search for hidden correspondences or associations. In other words, such repetitive transformation is not yet fully unconditioned or absolutely pure. It is not quite freed from all formative underpinnings or intentionality. Repetition does not repeat into pure difference yet, because the possibility for triggering the repetition of the same is still looming. Once they become absolute, however, the allegorical images will reach a moment of simultaneity in which they come to coexist in a non-relatedness that would constantly unsettle and overwhelm each other's representativeness. 64

As long as the void is recognized and thus represented as a void, it can never be filled. In the same way, one cannot reach out and grab realiter (i.e., concretely or factually) the object that is represented by its image. In a parenthesis let it be said that an expressive image that generates a sensation that impresses the soul does acquire a

(variable) degree of concreteness. Formation is the true impediment, since, as one mistakes it with the image as such, one cannot effectively arrive at the end of such a lack.

Any turn is thus apriorically powerless, unable to completely saturate the void with meaning. However, once one gets a feeling or a sense of the void (i.e., once it becomes sensual and thus concrete), one can have, at least temporarily yet still absolutely44, enough of it. The void will also become a mere allegory of itself; the usual allegorical turn will turn upon itself while being transformed into a "one about turn." The

Umschwung activates a reversal that is not only a 'usual' transformation but also an inclusion of all previous turns, an inclusion that monadically integrates the possibility for all of them: representation is thus included as an option and not authoritatively enabling the mediation anymore. The Umschwung is the moment when the allegorical evil realizes that it can only produce evil; it is the moment when even though it will appear each time under different forms and shapes, one will recognize it as the same (old)

'monochromatic' evil. It triggers the realization that no matter how formally different the product may be, it is still evil. What is produced will always be itself, because it cannot be different in an ontological sense. This means that the allegorical process will realize

44 Being fully expressed in it, that monadic moment is saturated absolutely. The baroque fullness is indeed existentially lull and is different from the romantic saturation that can be only saturated or satisfied relatively in its progressive striving ("nur relativ gestillf') (qtd in Frank Zeit 214), as we will see. Baroque thinkers treat time as what Salomon Maimon calls an "a priori form of difference" (i.e., a non-formative form) and not as an a priori intuition that forms experience (Erfahrung) thus preventing it from becoming a pure cognition (Erkenntnis), Kant being utterly unwilling to acknowledge a subterranean unity between experience and cognition. In his essay called Uberdie Wahrnehmung. I Erfahrung und Erkenntnis Benjamin puts it terms of a fear of a (real) abyss: "Diese Bedeutung der Metaphysik konnte nun leicht zu ihrem gtazlichen Zusammenfallen mit dem Begriff der Erfahrung ftlhren und nichts ftlrchtete Kant so sehr wie diesen Abgnind" (Kairos 39). 65 that even though it produces into difference, it can only produce itself; it can only allegorize itself or be an allegory of itself, a subjective illusion of itself. As Benjamin says,

Evil as such, which is cherished as enduring profundity, exists only in allegory, is nothing other than allegory, and means something different from what it is. It means precisely the non-existence of what it represents. The absolute vices, as exemplified by tyrants and intriguers, are allegories. They are not real, and that which they represent, they posses only in the subjective view of melancholy; they are this view, which is destroyed by its own offspring because they only signify its blindness. They point to the absolutely subjective pensiveness, to which alone they owe their existence. (Origin 232)

When evil realizes that it is only an allegory, it cannot act as the counterpart of God anymore, as the (represented) evil with respect to the good but turns into a rather diverse form of existence, a form that cannot be labeled either way, an allegory of being in its most general sense. Even though it may become a different way of expressing or of interpreting Him, a way of expressing Him in the sense of modifying Him by means of difference or otherness (Gk. alios) which means being utterly unrelated to Him, evil will still be yet another aspect q^Him, of the origin.

Filled as it is with itself, the void 'looks back' and unsettles its beholder. Indeed in beholding the void's blind gaze, representation turns upon itself and undoes its representativeness. Henceforth it becomes an expression of existence, realizing the ontological unity with 'the different' that it produces. After the Umschwung, allegory ceases to be exclusively representative and becomes inclusively expressive. Simply put, the one-about-turn merely adds another dimension to the previous equation that is so parallel and simultaneous that it perturbs the clarity of the representative framework to the point where one has to admit an embedded duplicity, an intrinsic ambivalence. This 66 ambivalence allows allegory to produce not only different representations as finished and separate creations, but also to discover their ontological unity even in their absolute separation. These two valences are so simultaneous that neither can be granted an eminence over the other. The mere fact that allegory can be more than representative will unlock automatically its expressiveness. Expressiveness is thus the marker of difference that distinguishes baroque allegory from the romantic one.

To spring outside representability, it is not enough for allegory to break with the

Platonic principle of correspondence, merely to produce difference. Allegory remains representative until the Umschwung turns representability itself into an empty form, a form that is so pure that it can no longer actually form anything. It cannot cause any such tentative attempt, any possibility of figuration. The "one about turn" is so radical that even the devil himself cannot be considered an opponent a negative that can be dialectically related to the positive. He becomes an allegory, yet another aspect or a different way of uttering God, a co-crescent attribute that discovers its real appurtenance, its substantial link to the divine that will make him shed his so-called creativity that springs from negating and contradicting the divine. By regaining such true ontological insight, the allegorist "awakens in God's world" (Origin 232). It cannot be otherwise:

God is existence or Being and everything is existence.

Beyond merely setting up an alternative antithetical path, the devil destroys or annuls God's Creation by voiding or hollowing it, by pointing to the non-existence of the object. This gesture provokes the fall into an abysmal nothingness. When, however, this void is filled or saturated, when one has reached a certain point of intensity in which one gets 'accustomed' to it, the void does not seem or feel like a true void anymore; the fall 67 stops being a fall and becomes mysteriously tempered. The nausea induced by such fall is inexplicably 'cured': reason cannot immediately understand or explain what has happened. It does not understand that when one loses all reference points, the fall has no reason to be a fall anymore, i.e., it cannot be pinpointed and thus represented exclusively as a fall because it might as well be called a rise. It can in fact be seen simultaneously as rise and fall, thereby acquiring a double meaning. By this time, all reasonable criteria of classification and judgment have been left behind as falling and rising become mere directionalities in the sense of Heraclitus's saying that "the way up is the way down". In this new posture, falling and rising merely mark a formal difference while describing one and the same path. They are aspects of the same path: the way down can no longer be distinguished as contradictory to the way up. In short, they spill over into each and become interlocked45 in the same substance, like two faces of the same coin that are existentially one while being merely formally different.

The allegorical devil eventually fills, saturates and exhausts this void, this non­ existence in which the "objectiles" are projected. It then backfires, because evil itself can no longer be clearly represented as evil. All of a sudden, the evil that was the prime engine for allegory appears to be unreal and turns into a mere allegory, an allegory of allegory. The devil is thus volens nolens included in his own allegory, in the same way that God is the world while simultaneously producing it. Such inclusions are internally determined and inevitable. We will see that Kleist repeats the same scheme by letting judges be included in their own verdict. In short, this continuous process of turning, of

45 From the point of view of the figures of style it is not a metaphor that merely "carries over" the meaning but a complex allegory that activates, or better, actuates at the same time a symbolical conjoining, an intertwining (ineinandergreifen) and not a conceptual understanding (begreifen. Begriff) testifying, yet again, its double significance. falling "from emblem to emblem into the dizziness of its bottomless depths" will eventually arrive at a moment when it realizes that it is "nothing but self-delusion"

{Origin 232).

With this new move everything changes: all the previous turns seem pointless, creating a reverse effect in which they point towards themselves discovering their essence, their quiddity, what they really are: mere subjective inventions. "They point to the absolutely subjective pensiveness, to which alone they owe their existence" {Origin

233). The subjective and conventional turn of the devilish baroque allegory ends up seeing itself for what it really is (a subjective and conventional turn) and thus loses its claim to mean anything but itself (i.e., what it is). As it thus becomes monadically identical with itself, all previous allegorical representations can no longer be taken seriously and retroactively lose their validity with respect to an external reference point.

Even though it may become an allegory of itself, the allegorical process as such does not stop being rather miraculously sublated, dissolved or merged into a higher unity

(e.g., of the Hegelian Aufhebung). Being fond of pendulums, the baroque sees this turn merely as a backward swing.46 As the transformation of one thing into something else, allegory voids itself. It goes away and returns "empty-handed" when there are no more meanings left to transform. This being said, it will simultaneously be filled and become

"the allegory of resurrection" (Origin 232). At its extremity, the void of allegory is so pure, so exhausted (or filled) with meaning that it cannot be even considered a void anymore. It cannot advance further in an infinite progression, as in the case of the romantic absolute. It becomes what it is and is thus transformed into fullness. This does

40 "Ultimately in the death-signs of the baroque the direction of the allegorical reflection is reversed; on the second part of its wide arc it returns to redeem" (Origin 232). 69 not mean that the void will merge with fullness in a paradoxical coincidentia oppositorum that forms a higher unity. In the same way one swing of the pendulum reaches its limit while returning as a formally different return, the void returns as fullness, damnation becomes resurrection, etc. Beyond being either infinite progression or a coincidentia oppositorum, the allegorical process itself is never annihilated: it stops only to start again in the return, producing more like the feeling of a perpetuum mobile. The human being cannot escape its ontological condition of homo allegoricus as the allegory of hell becomes the allegory of heaven: "For even this time of hell is secularized in space, and that world, which abandoned itself to the deep spirit of Satan and betrayed itself is

God's world. In God's world the allegorist awakens" (Origin 232). The bleak inferno-like world depicted in the baroque allegory is not the antithesis of God's world; it is not like

God's world; it is God's world. From this point of view allegory was 'used' as a vehicle, as a tool, as a means to arrive at a realization: "to clear away the phantasmagoria of the objective world" (Origin 232). The two floors touch each other, the divine spills over expressively into the mundane.

In essence the whole process can be described as fighting fire with fire; the goal of letting subjectivity run loose (quite rampantly) is only to arrive at a point where it exhausts itself, and starts seeing itself as a self-delusion. "By its allegorical form evil as such reveals itself to be a subjective phenomenon" (iOrigin 233). Thus the image of a world of things that have an objective existence separate from God becomes an illusion, too. "All this vanishes with this one about turn, in which the immersion of allegory has to clear away the phantasmagoria of the objective, and left entirely to its own devices, re­ discovers itself, not playfully in the earthly world of things, but seriously under the eyes 70 of heaven" (iOrigin 232). Retroactively one can see that the so-called "world of things" was also God's world all along.

Never running out of intriguing thoughts, Benjamin considers that "the enormous anti-artistic subjectivity of the baroque converges here with the theological essence of the subjective" (Origin 233). As a result of this process, former irreconcilable contraries appease their opposition; the 'devilish' baroque and Christian theology intertwine and agree on the idea that a transforming subjectivity, having no substantiality, will ultimately cave in. Such a subjective transformation of the world47 ultimately has no validity in either an artistic or a religious vision of existence. This subjectivity, however, will not be overcome or be transformed into altruism. It will be purified from any representative underpinnings to become an absolute singularity, as we will see in Theresa de Avila's vision.

The devil no longer wants to contradict God. He becomes just another face of the divine. The whole scenario can actually be understood both ways. Either the devil appearing as a positively daemonic figure has known all along that it would come to this conclusion, thus indeed keeping his promise to make the human being divine. Or else as a mere engine of spiritual progress that is eventually reabsorbed in the substantial unity48 of the divine. This time, God is the one who merely orchestrates a bet while knowing that

He cannot possibly lose. One way or another, after the Umschwung the allegorist awakens in a world that does not only belong to God but is God.

47 This subjective transformation is not to be mistaken with the purely monadic subjectivity that is consciously quixotic Having no relation to the outside, the latter cannot transform the world but remains absolutely in itself. I will come back to the distinction in relation to Benjamin's discussion of St. Theresa's confession. 48 The substantial unity is not a represented unity of two halves forming a whole but a rather undetermined, bare existence. 71

Conclusions Regarding the Benjaminian Baroque

One would miss a crucial stage in the scenario of the baroque if one remained exclusively at a description of continuous never-ending turns or seeing the baroque as a mere subjective conventional accumulation of artificial emblems. Benjamin's 'lesson' on the baroque could also be summarized in the following way: neglecting either the frenzy of destruction or the event after its exhaustion amounts to the same type of incompleteness.

For it is to misunderstand the allegory [or the baroque] entirely if we make a distinction between the store of images, in which this about-turn into salvation and redemption takes place, and that that grim store which signifies death and damnation. For it is precisely visions of frenzy of destruction, in which all earthly things collapse into heaps of ruins, which reveal their limit set upon the allegorical contemplation, rather than its ideal quality. The bleak confusion of Golgotha, which can be recognized as the schema underlying the allegorical figures in hundreds of the engravings and descriptions of the period, is not just a symbol of desolation of human existence. In it transitoriness is not signified or allegorically represented, so much as, in its own significance, displayed as allegory. As the allegory of resurrection. (Origin 232) (my addition)

This is actually the reason why Benjamin thinks that this vertiginous fall from emblem to emblem is not gratuitous. It is merely a preamble as it immediately and sequentially prepares the arrival of that special moment of epiphany. The baroque apotheosis has to go through the night, turning and turning, in order to reach the day. "So muss man durch den

Tod in jenes Leben dringen / Das uns Aegyptens Nacht in Gosems Tag verkehrt / Und den beperlten Rock der Ewigkeit gewehrt!" (Origin 180). Even though the Umschwung is usually seen as a coming back of the swing, a return, a so-called umgekehrt swing it can also become, as the baroque poet says, a verkehrt one, a divergently oriented swing, a

"dis-turn" that merely marks a passage.49 Benjamin says: "Ultimately in the death-signs

49 The verb "veikehren" is quite complex. It leads towards the idea of traffic, circulation or communication. 72 of the baroque the direction of the allegorical reflection is reversed; on the second of its wide arc it returns, to redeem" (Origin 232).

One can say that the baroque almost did not dare to see past the curvature of the upswing. Even though, unlike the world of antiquity, the dynamic world of the baroque does not have a center that is perfectly stable, it is nonetheless held together in its mobility from an apex. Baroque mobility bears witness to a unity that is produced in every moment while referring to one and the same center. In such a context, the idea of a reversal is indeed necessary. The mobility of the baroque world is bound to eventually reach an extremity that would cause a return. Still, the baroque Umschwung cannot be called a true return. It does not go back to a situation that is the same as before; a situation can never be absolutely identical with another because change, even an infinitesimal one, is inevitable. In essence, the Umschwung will turn upon itself while starting in another direction, as the turn itself is the one that returns. It is the same swing that has only a (formally) different directionality; one cannot clearly distinguish and represent two swings but rather a coming back of one and the same swing.

This is the point where Nietzsche's modern expressiveness literally pulls out all the stops seeing the eternal return in its full magnitude. Modernity will no longer need a reversal but will inaugurate the overturn, the "Uber-schwung" in which all previous values are overthrown. In this case, the swing of the pendulum does not come back but rather topples or flips over. In its identical turning upon itself, the baroque still points to one center (of gravity); in modernity, however, one cannot even assume such a centrality as one comes to dwell in a multidimensional world wherein all possible worlds, each with its own centre of gravity, can become real. In this new context, the center as such will be 73 imbued with what Deleuze calls pure difference. With each displacement, a different centre comes to be. Nietzsche's eternal return as a "swing over" that is different from the baroque "swing back" may even claim a certain circularity but only as a circle that can never be closed, nor recognized as a full-fledged circle. With its center always displaced, temporality itself will begin to 'melt' like Dali's clocks, making the modern eternal return purely a-dimensional.

With all its nuances and specifications, the idea of Umschwung is intimately interwoven with that of divine temperance, with the "ponderacion misteriosa, the intervention of God in the work of art" (Origin 235). The ponderacion misteriosa tempers the frenzy of destruction and acts on it the way that in Freud the reality principle acts on the pleasure principle or the death-drive, or better, in the way the Apollonian principle appeases the Dionysian principle, so that Apollo and Dionysus can no longer be conceived as two separate gods in a dialectical relationship. Nietzsche and modernity will need only Dionysus, the redoubling god who manifests himself in a will to power that overcomes itself in creating the pure affirmation that can only return as the Identical (not even as the same).50 The ponderacion misteriosa is not a divine intervention in the manner of Attic tragedy's deux ex machina. Benjamin is quite radical in distinguishing between the mythical and the historical.

In that special moment when one finds that the road has nowhere to turn to, that all the possible turns have been exhausted, one will also realize that the divine was never kept at bay by means of its negation. The Umschwung would thus not turn into a

(romantic) longing for it, but would rather lead to the conclusion that the representation

50 This is also the reason why God is perceived in modernity as a process, as the Borgesian labyrinth in the form of a straight line and not as the pendulum that swings back. 74 of the divine was the reason that prevented the human being from seeing it. But the dialectical process of allegoresis cannot be dispensed with once and for all. It was always an integral part of the ongoing pantheistic procession. From a baroque point of view, the devil and the divine were never two separate entities or substances engaged in a

Manichean conflict. The transitoriness, the mourning, all the vanitas and desolation of human existence that the baroque likes to deplore and dwell upon, should not only to be taken as a thesis that begs for its antithesis; it is also a necessary step towards realizing the resurrection. Later Benjamin would say: "Daher ist das dialektische Denken das

Organ des geschichtlichen Aufwachens. Jede Epoche traumt ja nicht nur die nachste sondern traumend drangt sie das Erwachen hin" (Benjamin Kairos 202).

While speaking about the contemplation of bones, Benjamin mentions a moment of so-called faithlessness (Untreue) in this Umschwung. Breaking the transformation/destruction 'routine,' baroque allegory "faithlessly leaps forward to the idea of resurrection" (Origin 232-33). Allegory (and the baroque) will eventually deceive and betray even the "urallegorische Figur," Satan, the great deceiver himself Just as the the legendary king Midas would eventually have to become a golden statue himself,

Satan, the prime impulse behind allegory, will also be turned into an allegorical figure.

This will happen even without being a matter of "reaping what one has sown" because every stage of this process is bound by an inevitable causal chain. Any such subjective inclinations would eventually be included in a greater mechanism that functions like clockwork. There is not even a question of a 'right' retribution, since God himself was never out of the picture. From an expressive point of view there is no 'out' separately distinguished from an 'in', God does not need to step in to make things right and re­ 75 establish the harmony. The harmony is pre-established and was never lost. There is no reward either: the turn is the return.

To Benjamin, Satan is being killed by his own offspring:

They (the absolute vices) are not real, and that which they represent, they possess only in the subjective view of melancholy; they are this view, which is destroyed by its own offspring because they only signify its blindness. They point to the absolutely subjective pensiveness, to which alone they owe their existence. (Origin 232, emphasis added)

Leaving the Freudian implications of the myth of Oedipus aside for the moment, the idea of a parent being destroyed by his offspring recalls an important situation in Greek mythology. There is a tradition among the gods of being dethroned by their offspring:

Uranus, Kronos and Zeus were each killed by their own children.51 Kronos, of course, started eating his own children because he was told that he would be dethroned by his offspring. The ancient Titan took all his children right after their birth (except Zeus, whom Rhea and Gaia saved) and swallowed them, retaining them in his body. The gesture is similar to a symbolic scenario where there is no real creation, where everything is merely retained in a self-enclosed non-progressive pattern based on sameness. The allegoric scenario, however, creates a real offspring outside itself that can grow to prove and affirm itself by means of its difference.

The son performs the turn by swinging back and killing his father in order to free himself from the father's authority. This gesture, however, signifies the son's own blindness, as he too may be killed by his offspring. (This scenario is recounted in Keats's

51 Benjamin brings up this idea in order to illustrate the mechanism of baroque allegory, but the idea itself recurs in other domains of dialectical thinking as well. Nietzsche, for example, alludes to the same moment when talking about Heraclitus: "[J]ust as Heraclitus conceived time, so also for instance did Schopenhauer, who repeatedly says of it that in it every instant exists only in so far as it has annihilated the preceding one, its father, in order to be itself effaced equally quickly; that past and future are as unreal as any dream; that the present is only the dimensionless and unstable boundary between the two; that, however, like time, so space and again like the latter, so also everything that is simultaneously in space and time, has only a relative existence, only through and for the sake of a something else, of the same kind as itself, i.e., existing only under the same limitations." (Nietzsche, 1890, The Greeks) 76

Hyperion, where Saturn predicts Apollo's downfall as well.) The devil's blindness thus lies in the fact that in the name of a so-called "absolute spirituality," a spirituality that wants to emancipate itself from any authority, he will miss his imminent self-destruction:

"The absolute spirituality, which is what Satan means, destroys itself in its emancipation from the sacred" (Origin 230). When realizing the self-delusion of such a progression, a progression that would merely replicate the killer-type and remain within sameness as well, the last offspring will perform the final "one about-turn" by allegorizing himself, by turning or converting himself.

At this point the 'fuel' of the allegorical engine is exhausted; the subjective pointing to something else empties itself by losing any relation to a ground and becomes absolute. In other words, it "points to its absolute subjective pensiveness" (Origin 233).

This does not mean that one will give up any form of individuality altogether; subjectivity is merely purified from its dependence on a unitary authority that could be called a subject. Cleansed from such unifying propensity, the act as such becomes pure.

Shifting gears at this point, Benjamin recounts the story of St. Theresa who, in a hallucination, "sees the Virgin strewing roses on her bed; she tells her confessor. 'I see none', he replies. 'Our Lady brought them to me', answers the Saint. In this way the display of manifest subjectivity becomes a formal guarantee of the miracle, because it proclaims the divine action itself' (Origin 234).

From an expressive perspective, the allegorical subjectivity of the devil and that of Saint Theresa coincide. The same mechanism of individualization, the same singularizing yet unverifiable process that cannot in any way be confirmed as such (since it cannot be grounded on a commonly shared mediating specimen that would be able to 77 confer it a universal validity), is at work in both examples. Relying on the same mysterious origin, their formal yet real difference consists in the fact that the saint will never lose the immediacy created by the intensity of her ecstatic vision while the devil's creativity produces finished and independently severed from their creator. In the same lineage as the devil, King Midas too cannot permanently stay 'in touch' with his newly produced object. St. Theresa's hallucinatory perception may seem empty to her confessor but, to her readers, it will be filled with God's grace. As long "the fire of ecstasy is preserved, without a single spark being lost, secularized in the prosaic," the roses on her bed are a "proclamation of the divine action itself' (Origin 234). The circumstances of the miracle imply the complete preservation of the divine ecstasy in the immanence. In the same way as nothing is lost in the downward translation between ontological levels, lavish ornamentation will produce such an intensifying effect that it can trigger a miracle.

"It is common practice in the literature of the baroque to pile up fragments ceaselessly, without any strict idea of a goal, and, in the unremitting expectation of a miracle, to take the repetition of stereotypes for a process of intensification" (Origin 178).

Two scenarios follow from this frenzy of production. In the first case, the producers loses his immediate contact with what they produce, letting it go as a finished product (Spinoza would call it natura naturata). As products pile up, this continuous quite prolific process eventually exhausts and suffocates the producer, as in the devil's case, with the proliferation of emblems pushing or forcing him into a resurrection into

God's world while making him retroactively realize that his independence was never independent. Creation here becomes more like a gesture of casting away, a frenzy of transformation, interpretation and eventually destruction that still needs to be 78 continuously reenacted and sustained in order to continuously fill up the overwhelming sense of melancholy, meaninglessness and the void. The other scenario will imagine the creator maintaining a vivid contact with his creation (natura naturans), so that everything becomes a matter of intensity. Saint Theresa's (or Don Quixote's52) visions become so absolute and singular that they will eventually ripen and develop a certain reality from within their illusory character. This pure subjectivity becomes the performer and also the only guarantee for such a miracle.

It has been said that the baroque seems to have a predilection for contrasts and extremes. From this point of view it either appears willing to cut all ties and consistently follow the devil's path of independence and subjectivity, or it appears never to acknowledge any separation at all. The ceaseless accumulation and overloading of ornaments has no preconceived plan, no constructive tendency in the way we will see in

romanticism. The baroque object does not get to be (re)constituted into a stable image, a

clear representation. It will be either the fata morgana, the hallucination, the

phantasmagoria, the object that catches speed ("the objectile") that is continuously

changing its shape, or a mere prehension53 that the subject always includes in itself. In other words, it is either a continuation or an extension of the subject or it is totally severed.

Spinoza's Place within Baroque Expressiveness

52 Deleuze would add Prospero to this list (Fold 77). 53 "Prehension is individual unity. Everything prehends its antecedents and its concomitants and, by degrees, the whole world" (Fold 78). 79

The baroque does not allude to an Idea that is placed in a transcendent beyond, to be reached only by means of a partial participation. On the contrary, the baroque approaches the divine by 'naturalizing' it. On the one hand, the divine is no longer conceived as a remote authority that leaves a mere trace or ontologically lessened copy behind it. It rather implements itself in everything quite intimately. It becomes what it produces, thus turning into what Spinoza would call "Deus sive natura."54 On the other hand, the devil himself acquires a certain familiarity, since he no longer appears as a supremely feared authority. Hence the irreconcilable tension between ontological realms becomes implicitly relaxed. As the devil eventually realizes that no matter how hard he tries to undermine God's Creation, he will never completely succeed, he comes to know himself and his former rival as just diverse expressions of the same reality.

In Spinoza et leprobleme de I'expression, Deleuze cites Spinoza's definition of

God: "By God I understand a being absolutely infinte, that is, a substance consisting of an infinity of attributes, of each one expresses an eternal and infinite essence" (13).

Expression is the immediate manifestation of God where God is folly present not only in himself but also in his attributes. Each attribute expresses the nature of God, i.e., his essence. Expressing his essence, it expresses implicitly his eternal existence as well.

Every attribute thus expresses (in its own way) God's infinity. What has been said so far about being absolutely 'in touch' and 'out of touch' likewise applies to Spinoza.

Restating the fundamental ambivalence of expression, the Jewish-Dutch philosopher also distinguishes two such levels: one is God's immediate and adequate expression in and through his attributes and the other is the expression of attributes, the expression of

54 Spinoza's metaphysics of God is neatly summed up in a phrase that occurs in the Latin (but not the Dutch) edition of the Ethics: "God, or Nature", Deus, sive Natura. "That eternal and infinite being we call God, or Nature, acts from the same necessity from which he exists" (Part IV, Preface). 80 expression, the expression as a mode, the latter being a second level of creativity that becomes a rather ossified modification of God's vivid process of creation, an appearance or illusion that is triggered by thought and imagination. The aspect of expression that produces finished creations is called natura naturata, whereas the one that is still 'in touch' with the origin, the attribute that is co-crescent with the substance, is the natura naturans.

From a Spinozian point of view, expression means both to explain and to envelop.

It is both an explanation and an enveloping of this explanation at the same time. Although it might seem an explanation that is separated from the object that it explains, an expression cannot allow any type of dichotomy or dualism. It does not distinguish any separation between what expresses and what is expressed, and thus contains both the transformation into meaning and the idea of transference without any mediation and without anything being lost in the process. As Deleuze says: "In short, what is expressed everywhere intervenes as a third term that transforms dualities. Beyond real causality, beyond ideal representation, what is expressed is sense: deeper than the relation of representation" (Spinoza 335). We have seen that the process of signifying (associated with guilt) is the heart of the Benjaminian allegory, too. Expression thus becomes synonymous with signifying and transforming dualisms. Not only does it connect or

(better said) relate separate items; it transforms them. The harp does not contradict the axe. Transformed into it, the harp becomes at the same time the axe's meaning.

For Deleuze, both Spinoza and Leibniz share the concept of expression in their reaction against Descartes. Both critique the French thinker's criterion of a "clear and 81 distinct idea."55 Leibniz would say that Descartes' theory helps only in recognizing an object without giving any knowledge of it. Distinguishing only its external appearances or external characteristics, it would not be able to reach its essence or real cause. "If

Spinoza's philosophy and that of Leibniz have a natural line of engagement, it is to be found in the idea of expression, in their respective use of this idea" {Spinoza 109). It must be stated that even having expression as their common terrain, Leibniz and Spinoza remain distinct. But this by no means suggests they become contraries. They retain their individuality even when they are considered to promote what was called a "new naturalism."56 This individuality makes them both unique and unrepeatable while still affirming a sense of belonging to the same project. Their individual way of expressing it, their expressiveness becomes thus the feature that distinguishes them from one another.

From such a point of view, Spinoza may not even be considered what is called a typical baroque thinker57 because he could still be appropriated by the baroque when engaging this period by means of its expressiveness, more precisely by means of its ability to become expressive. Measuring the degree of similarity between Spinoza and

Leibniz with respect to a concept of the baroque would only establish their relationship on a representative basis. Even though Spinoza and Leibniz concur in their overcoming of the Cartesian representativeness, Spinoza's philosophy is quite different from that of

55 In the Principles, Descartes explicitly defines and distinguishes clear and distinct ideas as follows: "I call 'clear' that perception which is present and manifest to an attentive mind: just as we say that we clearly see those things which are present to our intent eye and act upon it sufficiently strongly and manifestly. On the other hand, I call 'distinct', that perception which, while clear, is so separated and delineated from all others that it contains absolutely nothing except what is clear" (1,45). Here he's using the distinction in order to outline, articulate, and defend his theory of error ("if we give assent only to those things which we clearly and distinctly perceive, we will never accept anything false as being true(...)We always judge badly when we assent to things which are not clearly perceived" (1,43 & 44)). 56 "En fait Leibniz et Spinoza ont un projet commun. Leurs philosophies constituent les deux aspects d'un nouveau naturalisme. Ce naturahsme est le vrai sens de la reaction anticartesienne. (...) Leibniz formule parfaitement ce programme: contre Descartes, redonner a la Nature sa force d'agir et de patir, mais sans retomber dans une vision pai'enne du monde, dans une idolatrie de la Nature" (Deleuze, Spinoza 207). 7 In The Savage Anomaly Antonio Negri suggests that Spinoza is not a baroque thinker, while Saverio Ansaldi in his Spinoza et le baroque - Infini, desir multitude argues the exact opposite. I will come back to this aspect, especially because Deleuze himself does not consider Spinoza to be baroque either. 82

Leibniz as they describe two very different regimes of expression. As Deleuze puts it, they differ "in their manner of evaluating a phenomenon: here that of expression"

{Spinoza 310).

When looking at the two major baroque thinkers from the point of view of their expressiveness, one will recognize that Spinoza favors a conservative return to existential unity while Leibniz is inclined to give more credit to the progressively oriented formal difference. The philosophy of Leibniz focuses on the perspective of the individuality of the monad. While being separated from God by means of becoming indiscernible, the monad will nonetheless be able to enter into a non-relative harmony with Him. In

Spinoza, however, the emphasis falls on an overall univocal notion of an undivided God who permeates the entire universe. For Leibniz, each monad is a distinct and partial expression of an overall obscure and confused totality of the world. The monad itself does not tend towards a general truth because it can only express clearly just one portion of it.58 The so-called confusion of the overall totality makes Leibniz's expressivity equivocal rather than univocal and brings the problematic of the point of view closer to the notion of individuality, of an absolute subjectivity. Thus in the philosophy of Leibniz we can have different perspectives that are perfectly parallel,59 since his regime of expression functions by means of creation through difference. While being created in

God's image, the monad will ultimately also overflow its representative or relative similarity to God and become the inverse (not opposite) of God. (After all, God is a monad as well.) "The individual notion, the monad, is exactly the inverse of God to the

58 "Ainsi chaque monade trace son expression partielle distincte sur fond d'une expression totale confuse; elle exprime confusement la totality du monde, mais n'en exprime clairement qu'une paitie, prelevce ou determinee par rapport lui- meme expressif qu'elle entretiait avec son corps" (Spinoza 306). 59 "Et cela est encore vrai de Dieu, des differentes vues de Dieu, dans les regions de son entendement qui concement la creation possible: les differents mondes creables forment ce fond obscur a partir duquel Dieu cree le meilleur, en creant les monades ou expressions qui l'expriment pour le mieux" (ibid ). 83 degree that reciprocals are numbers that exchange their numerator and their denominator"

(Fold 49). Such a perspective is quite different from Spinoza's univocal universe where everything is permeated by divine substance.

Even if their respective systems evaluate differently the preponderance of formal difference and ontological unity, Spinoza and Leibniz are still both expressive thinkers.

For they both agree upon the components of expression.

From Leibniz's point of view a clear and distinct relationship between God and

the monad is constantly blurred, undermined or complicated by the fact that there are

always (at least) two competing points of view at work. The two options are so perfectly

parallel that they must be accepted as such as there is no way of pronouncing them either

similar or contradictory. Even though God is the inverse image of the monad, their

relationship will be prolonged forward and thus pushed into the infinite. Because the

infinite is not localizable from the point of view of the monad, it will 'backfire' confusing

the very foundation of their relationship. The ultimate point of view undermines the

notion of being able to establish a prevailing point of view. There is no point of origin,

Leibniz's origin being a non-relative harmony. These competing yet irreducible points of

view are the source of the insurmountable ambivalence of expression. The irreducible

fact of multiple points of view unsettles the very foundation of the relationship between

God and the monad because there is no way of proving that they can clearly engage in

one. For Leibniz they become indiscernible, ultimately un-represenatable, utterly

unrelatable "diverse absolutes," pure disparities that are identical with respect to their

existence. What is also important is that from such a point of view the difference between

monads can also go beyond describing specific features and turn into a purely formal sign 84 that depicts a mere change in aspect, difference thus remaining only on a formal level, not 'disturbing' the ontological oneness of the parties involved.

While it is an expression, Spinoza's mode does not progress forward, like its approximate equivalent the monad, by means of generated difference, but turns out to be a product that needs to be recalled and reabsorbed in God's essence. The mode's difference from substance is thus valued pejoratively as an inauthentic aberration. In his univocal universe, the modes, the natura naturata, express God by being contained existentially and not essentially. Thus, while Leibniz's system is set up on the idea of separation,60 on a separation that turns out to be absolute, Spinoza's system posits an absolute inseparability.

Nevertheless, these two absolutizations (of separation and inseparability) do not indicate philosophical opposition. Spinoza's univocity is not the antipode of Leibniz's equivocity. The regressive or conservative propensity of the former is not contrary to the progressive forward movement of the latter. Their meeting can be described more like sharing an idea so apriorically that it cannot be appropriated a posteriori in order to be able to be used as a basis for comparison. Not being even regulative, such a problematic idea is not able to posit a solution but rather becomes itself the solution. Like a force that does not get separated from its manifestation, the problematic idea remains always included in its solution. After his first book on Spinoza in which both baroque thinkers came out as expressive, Deleuze revisits their shared idea in The Fold, this time focusing on how both of them treat the "attributes" of God. He says that "there we find in fact the only thesis that ties Spinoza to Leibniz, their common manner of requiring in the

60 Deleuze says that "the baroque contribution par excellence is a world with only two floors, separated by a fold that echoes itself, arching from two sides according to a different order" (Fold 29). 85 ontological proof of existence of God a detour that Descartes had confidence enough to cut short" {Fold 44). Even though it is the only thesis, it is still enough to found their expressiveness because it refers to their ontology.

What is also important is that by becoming expressive or (attributive) thinkers, they will ultimately turn out to be not even relatable to each other. Seen as finished expressions, as products of an obscure yet expressive origin, their respective philosophical systems function completely independently and will be consistent and valid only with respect to their respective contexts. Not being able to be fully founded, any comparison would only catch partial or specific aspects. In other words, each one expresses a truth that is absolutely detached from the other. Leibniz's progression is not relatable to Spinoza's regression; Leibniz is not "more progressive" than Spinoza. While agreeing fundamentally with respect to ontology, they are still different in the manner they manifest it. Regression and progression become henceforth just formally different aspects, mere forms that are non-formative while springing from the same dark origin.

One should add that extracting the expressiveness of the baroque from two such diverse expressions offers the immediate benefit of fending off the danger of a representative point of view. For the most part, this strategy comes from Deleuze, who constitutes our main theoretical pillar. Still, two points need to be made with respect to

'adjusting' the notion of baroque expressiveness to Deleuze's thought. The first is that when he analyzes Leibniz separately (apart from Spinoza), Deleuze makes the mistake of taking Leibniz as exclusively representative. While in the book on Spinoza Deleuze posits

Leibniz's expressiveness, in Difference and Repetition Leibniz becomes a representationalist. In The Fold, Deleuze repents, and returns Leibniz to the expressivist 86 camp. The second point to be made is that Deleuze himself does not consider Spinoza to be a baroque personality, arguing that in his treatment of light, the author of the Ethics is closer to Byzantium than to the baroque.61 From such a perspective, Spinoza will indeed be automatically excluded from the baroque, since his philosophy is said not to be able to cope with a folded landscape in which clarity and obscurity flow into each other. In view of his univocity, however, Spinoza's light becomes rather absolute; light and darkness do not necessarily have to become opposites if they are not mixed up, if they do not dwell in a state of chiaroscuro. While correctly observing the predominance of light in Spinoza's thought, Deleuze would affirm that darkness appears at the periphery of light, as its shadow, as its limit or effect becoming rather an extension of it. Even though darkness is pushed back, it does not get to the point where it is completely severed and thus only relatable to light. If darkness cannot be clearly opposed to light, the two must share the same expressive immediacy. This immediacy is thus either mingled or in a perfect sequence. Without being able to completely dismiss it, a contrastive approach will work only on a representative level. Conversely, the inability to declare a mutually exclusive opposition would have to pronounce the Spinozian and Leibnizian scenarios as belonging to the same category. The mere fact, however, that one would establish a dichotomy between Leibniz and Spinoza betrays an overall representative point of view on the baroque, a perspective in which Spinoza cannot be indeed considered a baroque personality. Expressively speaking, Spinoza does not even have to be a baroque thinker

61 "If Spinoza differs essentially from Leibniz, it is because the latter, under a baroque inspiration saw the Dark ("fuscum subnigrum") as a matrix or premise, from which the chiaroscuro, colors, and even light emerge. In Spinoza on the contrary, everything is light, and the Dark is only a shadow, a simple effect of light, a limit of light on the bodies that reflect it (affection) or absorb it (affect). Spinoza is closer to the Byzantium than to the baroque" (Essays 141). 87 in the sense of partaking in a representative side of the baroque. Better said, not being considered a representative baroque thinker will not affect his baroque expressiveness.

Highlighting the diversity of the baroque, one must also mention the Spanish

Siglo de Oro: even though it employed the chiaroscuro, it also introduced a more severe and noble style in the use of light. Though undoubtedly baroque, the Siglo de Oro was a profoundly realistic art, preferring to the analytical approach of the sixteenth-century primitivists a broad visual synthesis, with a predominance of pictorial over tactile values.

In the Spanish baroque, painting light gained a lot of importance. Taking a step aside from strict Italian tenebrism (tenebroso), where light emerged from the dark in a more contrastive way, the phenomenon of light in the Spanish baroque served not only to lend brightness to external forms but acquired a rather sanctifying function. The art of

Velazquez developed irresistibly in the direction of what can be seen as an ever-greater synthesis. He painted the reflection of light in forms and colors rather than the forms and colors themselves, his drawing appears to illuminate his figures and details from within.

The Fable of Arachne, for example, is flooded with such light. The cold light of the foreground, which bathes the actual spinners, is collated yet correlated with the warmer and brighter atmosphere of the tapestry, in which their labor is reflected. His interest in portraying light was not the result of a preoccupation with technique, an attitude foreign to the aesthetics and even the optics of the seventeenth century, but developed out of a profound, inner religiosity, which had always been part of the Spanish tradition and was now to find new and vigorous expression. In a nutshell, from the point of view of the spectrum of light and darkness, one can even distinguish three types of baroque configurations: a Spinozian one in which light becomes preponderant, a Leibnizian in 88 which the conjunction of the two tend to resonate in harmony and a Benjaminian one present especially in late German baroque in which an utterly immanent darkness and melancholy rules a world that is completely immersed in temporality and "natural history," having lost all transcendent splendor and the possibility of conceiving a

(vertical) messianic beyond62 (the messianic being pushed forward towards the end when the inevitable Umschwung occurs).

Integrating the Benjaminian Alternative

Three forms of baroque expression have been put forward: the Spinozian, the Leibnizian and the Benjaminian. From the point of view of a rather superficial absoluteness or uniqueness (like Croce's notion of uniqueness that Benjamin critiques), each one of the three appears purely original and unrepeatable in its own way. Each stands as an expression of a mysterious origin that is absolutely unrelatable to the other. Nevertheless, one can still distinguish ways of relating them with each other. The absolute is not truly absolute unless it can include relativity. This does not mean that it is a relative absolute, an absolute that can be appropriated only relatively.

Examining the way in which each of these forms treat the two components of expression, the two baroque philosophers enter into an interaction which makes them borderline opposites, i.e., extreme reference points that cover a wider range of the expressive spectrum. The fact that each thinker is predisposed toward one of the two components makes it easier to consider them as 'poles' of baroque expressiveness.

62 This time, Saturn will have no gradation towards a "fresh perfection" in which the Olympian gods especially in Apollo would augment the great chain of being with more beauty and power, as we will see in Keats's Hyperion. In short, there is no translation (Ubersetzung) into a higher order of infinity that would add knowledge (Erkenntnis). Although not functioning in the same way as the relationship between the general and the

particular, the two components of expression can still be polarized with respect to each other.63 Thinking the two intricately interlocked yet absolutely independent systems together at the same time reveals a larger spectrum of what can be called baroque expressiveness.

But even though the combination of Leibniz and Spinoza helps in better defining the complexity of the baroque phenomenon as such, they are after all just two instantiations of expressiveness. Benjamin's 'formula' engages the baroque differently yet again. For him, allegory becomes the dominant tool that overthrows the (symbolic) rule of resemblance, and becomes a type of figuration that works on the basis of transfiguration or metamorphosis. Even so, what started out as such a transformative or a negative project with respect to the divine model turns out (after the Umschwung) to be not so radical after all. The "one about turn" will have no power to negate the previous

but realizes the inner, ontological identity of the turn and the return while rewriting them

as merely formally different. Baroque allegory is thus the 'story' of representation that discovers its expressiveness; the swing back includes and transforms representation while

revealing separately yet simultaneously the two expressive components. It shows that one must not stop at a mere relationship because the turn and the return are essentially the same. Any preponderance becomes harder to distinguish because allegory is primarily a scenario of overcoming. Briefly put, it is a scenario in which the same turn returns as the

return, because the same energy is behind both of them. Being pushed by the same

63 Deleuze does not distinguish formal difference and ontological unity as two components of expression but in Difference and Repetition, he talks about the univocity of being and individuating difference in the same manner. "The univocitv of being and individuating difference are connected outside representation as profoundly as generic difference and specific difference are connected within representation from the point of view of analogy" (Deleuze, Difference 304). 90 energy, an energy which even though it cannot be clearly defined or represented, will still let them acquire an (inner) identity of the forward and the backward swing by means exposing them as products or expressions of the same origin. In other words, it is, after all, the same turn that comes back albeit under a different form. The Umschwung is thus a turn that returns on itself like the backswing of the pendulum, without necessarily setting up a relationship (of similarity or opposition) between what is turned and what is returned.

Preamble to the Next Chapter

Benjamin's 'lesson' is that representation will never exhaust the baroque phenomenon, being able to ultimately jump over its own shadow. Testing this ability will be carried further into the next chapter on Jena romanticism. Focusing on the (vertical) leap of representation into expression was actually also part of the reason why Benjamin's baroque did not serve as prime example to describe (horizontally) the expressiveness of the baroque as such. Like his "dialectical image," Benjamin's expressiveness will be enacted only retroactively, by looking into the past, becoming thus truly prophetically or messianic, after representation ends up overcoming its reflexivity. The retroactive perception is not retrospection, a perspective that actualizes the past in the present by means of an image or what Benjamin would call an intuitive presentifying of images

("anschauliche Vergegenwartigung von Bildern")64 but a simultaneous activation and at the same time actualization of both past and present in an Now that triggers a recognition

64 Even when he is talking about the Platonic anamnesis he acentuates that: "Nur daB es nicht um eine anschauliche Vergegenwartigung von Bildern sich handelt" (Kairos 141). 91 that is beyond a relative or analogical similarity.65 The intensity of the moment thus produces the effect of an originary leap, of a jump that is proleptic or messianic while discovering the origin at the same time. As long as the devil merely opposes God, there is no simulated simultaneity, no ambivalence between the two components of expression.

The simultaneity or the parallelism of the two components will be enacted only post factum, after representation has exited "empty handed" the stage of the world, a theatrical setting it has itself built.

While representation will reject expression, expression will include it as one of its options. By becoming expressive, the baroque will not reject all its various representative personae. One would still fail to see the full range of possibilities if one were to restrict the baroque to an exclusively representative perspective. Conceiving the baroque as a representation and only as a representation means neglecting to perceive its pure individuality. As a representation, it can only be determined specifically with respect to a generality and not uniquely or singularly. It can be determined only in what it looks like and not as it is in itself, only in comparison to something else while not catching its unrepeatable individual identity. In the next chapter we will see that Jena romanticism can only be defined as a representation. This means that it can only be presented reflexively: either in a relation (of similarity or opposition) to something else, or relatively to itself. Without jumping too far ahead, one can say that Jena romanticism does not allow any encounter beyond a reflexive medium.

65 "Analogie ist vermutlich eine mctaphorische Ahnlichkeit d.h. eine Ahnlichkeit von Relational, wahrend im eigentlichen Sinne (unmetaphorisch) ahnlich nur Subtanzen sein kflnnen" (Kairos 68). Foucault also agrees. When speaking of analogy as the third form of similitude he says: "for the similitudes it treats are not the visible, substantial ones between things themselves; they need only be the more subtle resemblances of relations" (Foucault, The Order of Things 21). 92

From this point of view, Jena romanticism appears as a peculiar (Spinozan) mode that stubbornly persists in distancing itself from the substance. As an (infinite) representation, it does not let itself be perceived as it is, in its ultimate expressive singularity. One will thus inevitably miss its absolutely distinctive marker, the individualizing difference, and thereby implicitly prevent an immediate approach. While the baroque proved itself to be a tough nut to crack, romanticism becomes a nut that is impossible to crack; and this not because it would be more difficult, but because cracking it becomes synonymous to 'killing' it. In other words, romanticism makes an existential approach impossible, since it cannot disengage from the dilemmatic or "unfixable" position of being when it is not and not being when it is (Frank, Das Problem Zeit 222).66

Because such position cannot be pinpointed into a stable perspective, into a finite representation, it will unleash a rather Dionysian or infinite representation. Thus Jena romanticism will neither lend itself to be interpreted or clearly circumscribed like, for example, eighteenth-century neo-classicism, nor allegorized in a baroque sense (i.e., tackled by means of pure difference). In Jena romanticism, allegory is theorized merely as an approximation (of the absolute), and therefore it cannot be completely free from the principle of identity. Hence it will dwell in a double twilight zone - on the one hand, remaining representative while not being able to represent, and, on the other, being utterly unable to reach an absolute otherness like the baroque one.

00 Manfred Frank refers to the temporal condition perceived in romanticism such: "die zeithche Existenz ist indem sie nicht ist. Ihr Wesen ist Infixibilitat" (Frank Das Problem Zeit 222). 93

Chapter 2 - Jena Romanticism and the Margins of Representation

Before entering into the analysis of the romantic movement as such, the placement of Spinoza and Leibniz within the landscape of romanticism needs to be addressed in clearer terms. Understanding how the Jena romantic thinkers read the two baroque philosophers will help to distinguish the similarities and differences between the two cultural movements and to explore the possibilities of a romantic expressiveness.

This chapter will develop its argument on two separate levels: it will not only aim at detecting expressive traces in romanticism but will also try to analyze the inner springs of the romantic representative mechanism. Structurally, the argument will be divided into two. The first section will attempt to investigate the premises of Jena romanticism that reach 'back to Kant' and his notion of the sublime, while also delimiting it from any

Leibnizian influences. The second will be more focused on Jena romanticism, and will test the applicability of what Gilles Deleuze calls the four 'pillars' of representation:67 resemblance, analogy, opposition and identity.

Spinoza and Leibniz: their Reception in Romanticism

In the wake of the Kantian philosophy the theoretical landscape in late eighteenth century was quite multicolored. Fred Rush describes it best saying that it was "inhabited

6~ "There are four principal aspects to reason' in so far as it is the medium of representation: identity, in the form of the undetermined concept; analogy, in the relation between ultimate determinable concepts; opposition in the relation between determinations within concepts; resemblance, in the determined object of the concept itself' (italics mine) (Deleuze, Difference 29). 94 by pre-Kantians, Kantians and post-Kantians" (174). This diverse landscape is still branching out into four major tendencies.

1) an attempt to re-franchise Leibniz-Wolffian metaphysics, led by Eberhard and Mendelssohn; 2) Lockean claims that Kant had merely replicated Berkeley's incoherent empirical idealism; 3) counter-Enlightenment responses that either focused on claimed inconsistencies in key Kantian doctrines, i.e., the idea of a thing in itself (Jacobi, Salomon Maimon) or on Kant's inadequate account of the role of language in cognition (Hamann and Herder); and 4) thinkers who saw themselves as furthering the critical philosophy. (Rush 174)

In such a conflict-ridden environment, Spinoza and Leibniz became popular as they offered a response to the overwhelming influence of Kantianism. Spinoza was not only the one whose philosophy was supposed to offer some answers to the perceived shortcomings of Fichte's system (for example, his unilateral absolute subjectivity). He was also to unite romanticism in a coherent project that was eager to overcome and synthesize the opposing tendencies of idealism and realism. Hence the stage was set for a

"strange wedding plan" (Beiser Romantic Imperative 217), a unification ofFichte and

Spinoza. Although very generous in its goals, the attempt to hold a fragile balance

between such utterly different philosophical projects was doomed to fail, not least

because of the inaccuracies that it implicitly incurred. Indeed the approach became so

innovative that it ended up distorting Spinoza's philosophy. Although Spinoza was the

mentor who offered inspiration to an entire generation, "it would be a mistake ... to see

romantic metaphysics as little more than a revivification of Spinoza. For the romantics

profoundly re-interpreted Spinoza and indeed in ways that would have made Benedictus

turn in his grave" (Beiser Romantic Imperative 225-226).

One way romantic thinkers made Spinoza cease being Spinoza (and thus

implicitly expressive) was in the way they treated his concept of substance. The 95 substance that Spinoza carefully describes as lacking any determination is reinterpreted according to the new organic paradigm of explanation embedding what Kant called purpose in nature (Naturzweckf*. This change implies important consequences. While

Spinoza understood his substance in terms of an indeterminable force, in romanticism it would receive a sense of development in which it is no longer static and eternal but a living force that is active and temporal, undergoing a development from an inchoate state to an organized one. Hence Spinoza's substance receives a purpose, and this leads back to the notion that nature was designed by an anthropomorphic God. Such a substantive change brings about the idea of an eminence or hierarchy, of being included in a chain of being. The problem is that once a determination is introduced in the equation, once the substance is described as a living force it is not what it is, it is not pure existence or even an existing entity anymore. Thus it loses its ontological identity, its expressiveness. It becomes an image, mere representation that cannot be the thing it represents.

The romantic thinkers' treatment of Leibniz does not differ fundamentally.

Although the romantics appropriated his idea of an organic vis viva while recognizing in him the precursor of their organic conception of nature, they missed out on the expressiveness that ultimately echoes in Leibniz's non-relative pre-established harmony, wherein every notion of a clearly defined hierarchy ultimately vanishes. The point is that the romantics revived only one half of Leibniz, i.e., his organicity that presupposes a

unifying tendency that betrays God as an organizing authority. From such a perspective

68 Frederick Beiser in his book on Hegel pertinently summarizes what Kant means by "purpose in nature". Speaking of Hegel's concept of the organic he says: "In sections §§64-5 of the Critique ofJudgment Kant maintains that there are two defining characteristics of a natural purpose. First, the idea of the whole precedes all its parts in the sense that it determines the identity of each of them. Second, the parts are reciprocally cause and effect of one another. Kant argued that the first characteristic alone is not sufficient to define a natural purpose, since it is found too in works of art, which are also produced according to a plan, an idea of the whole. It is also necessary to add the second characteristic, which means that an organism, unlike a work of art, is se/^generating and se/fa>rganizing. In both respects, Kant argued, an organism is unlike matter. In matter the parts precede the whole and make them possible; and it is not self-generating or self-organizing because it acts only when acted upon by some external force" (Beiser Hegel 95). 96

Leibniz looks more like a Platonic or Renaissance thinker. Because God is Himself a monad, His authority is not absolute. Leibniz' main thesis is that there is not (and cannot be) such a thing as a supreme authority. As long as existence (and not essence) is posited first, every notion of authority or eminence has to be included or downgraded and thus relegated to a certain context that can be only relative. The best possible world does not mean it is the only possible. Even when they do not have essence or form, incompossible worlds still have existence; Leibnizian possibility comprehends incompossiblity. This means that even as the most dominant monad, God is still included in the non-relative pre-established harmony with other monads. In other words, while exercising his authority in this world, He still cannot be labeled as an overall supreme authority.

Ultimately his authority and any clearly defined organically unifying tendency become diffuse in that harmony. As many mystics distinguished between the impersonal Godhead

('Gottheit) beyond the personal God (Gott), one must juggle with the two aspects keeping both in the air at the same time (thus creating the impression of imponderability and a state of non-relation between them) in order not to let either of the two become an authority for the other and be henceforth subjected to it. One must ultimately admit one's inability to find a common ground for all points of view, the ground being thus turned into a mysterious origin.69

Summarizing, one can say that the Jean romantics missed or failed to understand the whole complexity of Leibnizian thought because their mode or framework of

understanding was representative. Making the Spinozian substance organic in a

Leibnizian way creates a rather 'dangerous liaison' that damages the expressiveness of

69 A more modern example would be the stock market, which, even as the sum of all individual voices, surpasses any active individual attempts to masta- it; it cannot be controlled in the way a puppeteer would manipulate a marionette. 97 both philosophers. An expressive philosophy is, after all, so absolute and non-relatable in its conception that its monadic truth cannot communicate with any 'peers'. It is only able to function in its unique and self-produced environment by means of an inner logic, coherence and consistency that cannot be even related to another expressive philosophy.

By trying to unify the philosophies of Spinoza and Leibniz, the romantics spoil their expressiveness, representing them one with respect to the other. Such a procedure should not come as a surprise, as it is nothing short of a (relatively) synthetic propensity that would become the "imperative" of the Jena romantics.70 Frederick Beiser writes that "its mixture of styles was now proof of that restless striving for wholeness, that eternal longing for unity that was characteristic of modernity" (Romantic 38).

Romanticism and its Different Types of Representations: a Playgroundfor Contradictions

Coming back to romanticism, one can distinguish at least two major trends, idealism, represented by Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, and realism, represented by the thinkers from Jena, the so-called salon des refuses. Even though this latter group had gathered around Fichte, they fundamentally disagreed with him, primarily on the matter of being able to find an ultimate ground for philosophy. The Jena romantics learned the

Kantian lesson according to which one cannot ground a first principle in experience, be it

Fichte's absolute subjectivity, Schelling's absolute identity or Hegel's 'synthetical'

Aujhebung. For Novalis and Schlegel, the absolute always remains a regulative idea that

70 Friedrich Schlegel says: "Der romantische Imperativ fordert die Mischung aller Dichtarten. Natur undWissenschafl soil Kunstwerden-Kunst soil Natur werden undWissenschafl Imperativ: die Poesie soil sittlich und die Sittlichkeit soli poetisch sein" (Notebooks 1797-1798) (qtd. in Beiser Romantic Imperative 38). 98 can never be reached but only striven for. "Simply put, one can never capture the immediacy and implicitness of the state as such by representing it as immediate and implicit" (Rush 176). In short, losing immediacy triggers the loss of ontology, of being able to grasp a thing as it is in itself. It has to be said though that the recognition of the impossibility of capturing immediacy (in an infinitely representative environment, as we will see) is closer to the truth than positing an unsustainable or pseudo-immediacy (in a finitely representative one).

In the context of the Jena school, one can discern at least two ways of approaching the loss of immediacy. Since there cannot be an absolute starting point, Friedrich

Schlegel suggests starting in the middle between two reciprocally determined entities.

Novalis, however, tries to approximate the ground through his notion of unconscious feeling that will never be able to become a concept. As Rush puts it, "One might experience the ground at best indirectly, through feeling (Gejuhl), to which Novalis assigns the epistemic status of'non-knowledge' (Nicht-Wissen) or 'faith' (Glauben)"

(177). But both Novalis and Schlegel agree that there is no first principle, be it within the divine or the human: "there is no intuitus originarius. Whether it was situated as arche or as lelos" (Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy 30).

This idea has important repercussions with respect to the concept of

representation: for without a stable foundation one cannot fully represent anything anymore. But this does not mean that attempts to capture the ground are outside representability; it only means that representation will always remain incomplete. The incompleteness of representation is caught between the necessity of striving for

completeness and the impossibility of reaching it. The infinite endeavor to form an image 99 never arrives at a complete formation, at forming a stable and clearly defined representation. The representativeness that thus becomes prevalent for the Jena romantics is formative but not capable of reaching a complete formation; it is creative without arriving at a full creation. Hence the focus or center (Mittelpunkt) of the Jena romantics becomes directed towards creativity as such, or poiesis. This aimed-at-a-goal process of creativity that Friedrich Schlegel thought of as "progressive universal poetry" (Kritische

37) turns into a means of reviving a closer and more vivid sense of immanence.

In his research on minerals but also in exploring notions like "feeling," the other crucial thinker of Jena romanticism, Novalis, is striving to get even closer to the sensible.

Even though his interests seem to be quite a leap from Kant's reason, the mechanism of thought works in the same way. Jane Kneller shows that his "other way out" is in fact still fundamentally Kantian, i.e., still within the framework of an infinite representation. As she concludes:

Kant, like Novalis, firmly believed that longing and striving for the absolute, the unconditioned, was an essential characteristic of human reason that neither could nor should be entirely resisted. Both also agreed that knowledge of the absolute could never be attained, and that claims to have done so were necessarily in error. The difference between Kant and Novalis was thus not a difference over the value of unattainable rational ideas or the need to avoid transcendent delusions. What really separates them is Kant's willingness to simply accept limitations of human reason and hence philosophy. Novalis took this resignation to be a kind of 'scholasticism' - a 'one-sided' approach that assigned philosophy to the domain of reason alone. His innovation, and that of his cohort in Jena, was to redefine philosophy itself as an 'unending free activity' that at its limits may become an aesthetic, creative endeavor. (Kneller 211)

Both Kant and Novalis acknowledge the unreachability of the absolute or infinite. But where Kant was more tempted to see a rather conservative or limiting limit that was supposed to reassure the unity of reason, Novalis dared to see in addition an opportunity to get a shot at the limitless. From this point of view, their misunderstanding seems more 100 like seeing the glass as either half-empty or half-full. Kant himself, as Jane Kneller points out, becomes more flexible in the "First Introduction to the Critique of Judgment," where he would recognize that even a predisposition to "empty desires and longings" could still be part of nature's plan and thus become quite useful in contributing to the development of capacities that are even unknown to the human being.71

What is important is that the infinite representativeness of the Jena Romantics would also become their distinctive marker with respect to the finite representation still dominant for foundation-oriented German idealism. Considering the magnitude of the problem and the space requirements for such a project, this chapter opts for focusing exclusively on Jena romanticism and the subtleties of its infinite representation.

Romanticism and the Baroque: possible bridges of comparison

In the previous chapter we have seen that, while being expressive, the baroque could not exclude being representative as well. In the case, however, even while remaining an image, representation loses its formative underpinnings. The baroque became expressive by finding a fold that would catapult representation quite literally into the infinite. In the aftermath of the Kantian philosophy, however, ideas like that of the infinite no longer

71 "In fact man can desire something most fervently and persistently even though he is convinced that he cannot achieve it, or it is perhaps even something absolutely impossible.. .and it is indeed an important article for morality to warn us emphatically against such empty and fanciful desires, which are often nourished by novels and sometimes also by mystical presentations, similar to novels, of superhuman perfections and fanatical bliss. But some empty desires and longings ... do have their effect on their mind .. .It is indeed a not unimportant problem for anthropology to investigate why it is that nature has given us the predisposition to such fruitless expenditure of our forces as we see in empty wishes and longings (which ccrtainly play a large role in human life), it seems to me that here, as in all else, nature made wise provisions. For if we had to assure ourselves that we can in fact produce the object, before the presentation of it could determine us to apply our forces, our forces would presumably remain largely unused. For usually we do not come to know what ability we have, and is often precisely this effort, which to that very mind seemed at first an empty wish, that produces that ability in the first place. Now wisdom is obligated to set limits to that instinct, but wisdom will never succeed in eradicating it, or rather it will never even demand its eradication" (Kant Judgment V: 235 qtd. in Kneller 211). 101 have an active function but become merely regulative. The notion of the infinite loses its reality and becomes a way of showing the disparity between the phenomenon and the noumenon. Even though one may not be able to literally reach the end of the baroque infinite, this end has to be there in reality thus letting one presuppose it as eventually reachable; the infinite that is referred to here is the created infinite, the indefinite and not the divine infinite. Not being able to establish an existential proof of God, Kant's infinite is not able to acquire a truly divine option but will find its usefulness within reason being turned (in the same way as God) into a regulative idea. Even when Jena romanticism adds progressiveness to the infinite in the sense of an alternation of allegory and Witz, in

Schlegelian terms (Frank Philosophical Foundations 206) the infinite will still not be reachable. In analyzing the Jena romantic concept of the infinite, Walter Silz finds that it can only be conceived in a relative manner; "the early Romanticists were fond of relating their abstract ideas to the infinite" (170). Friedrich Schlegel would say that "nur durch

Beziehung aufs Unendliche entsteht Gehalt und Nutzen; was sich nicht darauf bezieht, ist schlechthin leer und unnutz," and "jede Beziehung des Menschen aufs Unendliche ist

Religion, namlich des Menschen in der ganzen Fiille seiner Menschheit...Das Unendliche in jener Fiille gedacht ist die Gottheit" (qtd. in Silz 170).

In his First Critique, Kant shows that the concept cannot be completely matched to an intuition. Because such complete determination cannot happen, there is, as Deleuze states, an "extrinsic criterion of constructibility" (Difference 173) that overarches both entities, "a rule of construction which is established 'between' the concept and the intuition" (174). Even in the Third Critique when Kant tackles the problematic of art and when the sensible intuition is not supposed to accommodate a concept anymore, there is a 102 still regulatory principle at work. Although the previously mentioned "rule of construction" is not as obvious as in the case of the philosophical concept, the faculties involved in the artistic experience are not in disarray. They are still held together by a harmony that is merely relative to the faculties themselves and perceived as external to them. In short, in the example of the philosophical concept, the presentation always remains incomplete because the concept can never overlap and be perfectly matched to the intuition. In art, especially in the sublime, however, where there is no concept involved, the presentation is perceived negatively with respect to the sensible, as the imagination cannot find anything beyond the sensible to cling to. This means that imagination, having removed all limitations, becomes unbound and thus able to stage a presentation of the infinite. This presentation is at the same time an infinite presentation because, by not being able to complete the formation of an image, imagination will turn into a presentation of the act of presenting. Hence the mere act of presenting will be pushed or postponed into the infinite and turn into an infinite process of formation.

Whether in the First or Third Critique, Kant remains consistent throughout his system: with or without a concept, the presentation can never be direct and thus capable of establishing a proper foundation. It was the infinite that caught the attention of the Jena romantics because, although it is not able to present what it intuits, it still has the ability to sense a substrate of nature called the supersensible. Hence this pure presentation, this presentation of the very act of presenting, does not remain exclusively in the realm of sensation (i.e., on an "aesthetic" level in strict etymological terms); it can experience sublime momentary flashes of the supersensible. 103

Jena romanticism opts to continue that Kantian legacy of Enlightenment and

Bildung by furthering a progressive approach that is caught between the impossibility of attaining a goal and the necessity of striving towards it nonetheless. The tension between this impossibility and necessity is maintained by a reflexive reciprocity through which one requires the other: impossible yet necessary, necessary yet impossible. Here is not the place to approach a problem of such magnitude but a reciprocal determination does not have to be reflexive in a relative manner. While returning to Leibniz and Spinoza,

Salomon Maimon does not involve any relative reflexivity, any type of oscillation between two separate and contradictory entities. In Maimon, the relation itself produces the reciprocal determination, both poles simultaneously determining the relation as differential. Hence instead of saying that the progressive approach oscillates between necessity and impossibility, one can say that it is always generated differently. This genetic differential element becomes the "law" of production seen as an "ars invendiendi" that engenders pure singularities. It has to be said that, however different from Kant's reciprocal conditioning, such (expressive) generation also produces a forward progress that becomes synonymous with the generation as such. This time, though, this progress occurs in a context in which this differential is diverse, self- identical and self-sufficient, being what Deleuze calls "a veritable progression in which the reciprocal terms must be secured step by step" (Deleuze, Difference 228). It is not created from a tension, from an infinite lack of being (unendlicher Mangel an Sein) as

Manfred Frank calls it,72 or an insufficiency that cannot be filled properly because it cannot be properly represented in its continuous oscillation.

72 See Manfred Frank, Der unendliche Mangel an Sein. Schellings Hegelkritik und die Anfiinge der Marxschen Dialektik. 104

In Baroque Reason: The Aesthetics of Modernity, Christine Buci-Gliicksmann astutely takes up the Benjaminian the idea of the allegorical 'frenzy' of destruction and endless fragmentation that turns into an infinite representation, a representation that will never arrive at an end. Without appropriating the Umschwung, however, such a perspective conceives the baroque together with romanticism as branching out into modernity, the baroque not being able to overpower the dominance of representativeness by means of inclusion. It has to also be said that this is not the Nietzschean modernity of a pure "will to power," but an infinitely representative modernity. While exploring this comparative path, it can also be said that an infinitely representative baroque that is inclined towards destruction would indeed become the counterpart of the infinitely perfectible or constructive or poietical impulse that Jena romanticism inherited from

Kant. From such a point of view, both cultural movements remain representative, and could be compared analogically, through what Benjamin would call a metaphorical similarity of relations (Ahnlichkeit von Relationeri) {.Kairos 68). This suggests a morphological point of view akin to the ones presented at the beginning of the chapter on the baroque, one that would compare the two movements according to the structure and pattern of formation. Here Buci-Gliicksmann would appear correct in her comparison and in seeing a lineage between the baroque and romanticism. But however enticing, such interpretations still roam within a representative framework (which is the reason why this project will not engage them).

Romanticism, Kant and the Platonic Paradigm 105

While Kant's influence proved to be indeed decisive in establishing the theoretical landscape of Jena romanticism, one cannot neglect the traces that point to a return to

Platonism. Continuing a parallel perspective, one can schematically say that while the baroque roams in the realm of history and temporality, romanticism attempts to rediscover the atemporality of myth. Hence the baroque inclines more towards allegory, and romanticism towards remaking a symbolical unity; as Benjamin writes, "the allegorical must constantly unfold in new and surprising ways. The symbol, on the other hand, as the romantic mythologists have shown, remains persistently the same" (Origin

183). The new romantic mythology, however, is not a mere copy of the ancient one. The recuperation does not refer to an image but signifies an attempt to recover a lost link with the universe that can be accomplished only by going to the fountainhead (Urquelle) of what is generally called poiesis.73 Even Das alteste Systemprogramm des deutschen

Idealismus (1797),74 which is not, strictly speaking, a text generated by the Jena circle, says that the new mythology should be a mythology of reason, of unity between philosophy, religion (in the sense of re-ligio; the Bible is in this sense mythological for them), aesthetics (unity with the beautiful) and even sociology (mythological images should be explained in plain ideas to the people and accelerate Enlightenment and

Bildung).

Friedrich Schlegel clarifies his perspective on the creation of a new mythology in his dialogue Rede iiber die Mythologie (1800). While deploring the fact that his age has

73 Novalis, for example, will identify poetry and reality: "Die Poesie ist das echt absolut Reele. Die ist der Kern meiner Philosophic. Je poetischer, je wahrer" (Schriften 2: 647). ("The more poetical, the more real") 74 The Oldest Systematic Program of German Idealism is considered a manifesto of German romanticism. Its authorship could not be established, but the 'usual suspects' invoked as its producers are the Tubingen-Three: Hegel, Schelling, and Hfllderlin. Mythologie der Vernunft: Hegels "Altestes Systemprogramm des deutschen Idealismus 106 lost the grip on reality, he urges his generation to try to find a new center (Mittelpunkt)75 that will give them a fresh benchmark. In order to achieve such a goal he chooses love as his primary 'instrument'. Schlegel is quite clear in delineating between a sensual, youthful infatuation ("anbildend an das Nachste, Lebendigste der sinnlichen Welt") and a love that springs from the inmost depths of the spirit. This new spiritual mythology should be, generally speaking, the same as the old in the sense of tapping into the same fountainhead of eternal poetiy. "Es mufi das kiinstlichste aller Kunstwerke sein, denn es soil alle andern umfassen, ein neues Bette und Gefafi fur den alten ewigen Urquell der

Poesie und selbst das unendliche Gedicht, welches die Keime aller andern Gedichte verhullt" (Schriften 122) (italics mine). This time, however, it should be 'packaged' differently, in a new container, while becoming rather infinite and including potentially the seeds for all poetry. The new romantic mythology does not subordinate itself to an antique model (i.e., Greek and Roman mythology) as if to a Platonic Idea anymore; the

Kantian Copernican turn performed a reconfiguration that moved towards involving the subjective aspect more actively into the act of knowing. As Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy put it, "It is well-known that the Idea in Kant will be relegated as an unproductive and unattainable regulatory principle to a secondary role with regard to Knowledge (savoir)"

(31). The Platonic idea as a regulatory principle thus becomes, on one hand, unproductive but, on the other, still indirectly generates an infinite creative longing that creates the romantic infinite poetry.

Giving more credit to the subject does not involve a mere neutral reshuffling of priorities but will have important consequences. It will reveal a profound incongruence

75 The idea of the center (usually a circle's center) is crucial in Schlegel's philosophical configuration, which does not look for first principles but starts in medias res. 107 inside the act of knowing that will implicitly have repercussions with respect to the subject's integrity.76 In the aftermath of the Kantian philosophy, one will witness an acute phenomenon of crisis, the Cartesian cogito being hardly recognizable. Again, Lacoue-

Labarthe and Nancy say in this respect: "As a result, all that remains of the subject is the

I as an empty form (a pure logical necessity said Kant, a grammatical exigency,

Nietzsche will say) that accompanies my representation. This is so because the form of time, which is the form of the internal sense, permits no substantial presentation. The

Kantian cogito is empty" (30). The fact that the subject becomes an empty form merely means that it has been hollowed out of all content; it has not been fractured (yet) because

Kant will still be able to recuperate its unity via reason with the help of the transcendental imagination:

Transcendental imagination (.Einbildungskrqft) is the function that must form (bilden) this unity (of the empty subject), and that must form it as a Bild, as a representation or picture, in other words as a phenomenon, if by phenomenon one means that which is neither of the order of appearance (of the "mere phenomenon") nor of the order of manifestation, of Erscheinung in the strong sense, which can be found an ontology of that what is. What is formed or constructed by transcendental imagination is thus an object that may be grasped within the limits of a priori intuition but is nothing that can be thought under the concept of eidos or Idea, an originary form of reason itself (Lacoue Labarthe and Nancy 30).

The formative power of imagination is the synthetic capacity of the subject to create an image (Bild). The image is a construction, or better, a reconstruction of an object

(Gegetisland) that tries to bridge the gap between sensibility and reason, between intuition and the concept. But these irreconcilable incongruities ultimately push the

76 Integer (Lat.) = whole, untouched, unhurt, undamaged, complete. 108

• . • fj « • imagination to fail, since it can neither be itself nor be able to establish a first principle, a transcendental origin. Hence imagination will always have a relative or mediating role.

In Kant, one cannot therefore firmly establish a first principle. This of course disturbs the integrity of the image (Bild), turning it in a mere formation (Bildung) and triggers the infinitization of representation. Nevertheless, Kant remains "Platonic." The infinite representation relies on the same premises as the finite one, being still inside the framework of representativeness. Even if one cannot establish a direct causal link between the thing in itself and the representation - as was the case in the relationship between the Platonic model and the copy - representation still presupposes a thing in itself. In other words, even if the thing in itself is beyond any inquiry, it is still not absolutely unrelatable. By being merely relatively unrelatable, it must involve some sort of mediation that implicitly requires a rule of constructability. Thus Deleuze acknowledges that: "Kant himself is more Platonic than he thinks when he passes from the Critique of Pure Reason, entirely subordinated to the hypothetical form of the possible experience, to the Critique of Practical Reason in which, with the aid of problems, he discovers the pure necessity of the categorical principle" (Difference 196).

The same basic reflexes still shine through in the first two critiques. Even in the context of the Third Critique, when the concept is no longer necessary, Kant remains consistent in maintaining the impossibility of establishing a first principle. Although there is a new and progressive starting point, it cannot act as a true first principle, since it enters into the previously mentioned dilemma of not being able to sustain its existential 'grip'. One can thus say that while the expressiveness of the baroque destroys the subject by fracturing it

77 See in Jane Kneller's Kant and the Power of Imagination, the chapter "The Failure of Kant's Imagination" (95-122). 109 completely, Kant cracks it open only to patch it together, keeping its unity on a universal level. The question is which of the two options is more 'dra-bolicaP?

The Kantian Sublime and the Infinite Representation

Deleuze notes with great admiration that Kant produced the Third Critique at an age when most philosophers have exhausted their creative resources78. Indeed with The

Critique of Kant Judgment, Kant seems to engage in a relative (if not absolute)

"deterretorialization." In the First and Second Critiques, the infinite aspect almost imperceptibly recoils in the heart of representation, but in the Third, it appears to unfold towards continuity and progressiveness. As Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy write: "The infinite character of the process of Bildung (with which Kant, in the eighteenth century, departing radically from the Aufklarung, represents the first view of history that refers its telos to infinity)" (32).

As put forward in the Critique of Judgement, the Kantian problematic of the infinite becomes the "foundation" for the Romantic Movement.79 But if Kant's problematic of the infinite founds romanticism, then romanticism is tied up with the conception of the sublime (the exemplary form of the problematic). The sublime not only exceed the limits of the beautiful form, it actually points to the volatility of the contours

78 "But we see Kant, at an age when great writers have anything new to say, confronting a problem which is to lead him into an extraordinary undertaking" (Deleuze Kant XI). 79 Deleuze explains that "[If] the faculties can thus enter into variable relationships in which each faculty is in turn regulated by one of the others, it must follow that, taken together, they are capable of free and unregulated relationships in which each faculty goes to its own limit, and yet in this way shows the possibility of its entering into an indeterminate |quelconqueJ harmony with others. This will be the Critique of Judgement as the foundation of romanticism" (Essays 33-34). 110 of form as such. It is after such a literally groundbreaking event (breaking the stability of every ground) that form can no longer be seen as steady or constant, every image becoming thus an infinite representation. As a foundation, the sublime shows that there is no foundation; it reveals the essence of form, it shows that form is in fact formation.

Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy concur in establishing the 'transcendental' roots of romanticism. As they write, "In this context, and crudely translated, this means that Kant opens the possibility of romanticism (29). The problematic of the Third Critique tackles not only the problem of beauty but also that of the sublime. In Kant's own words the sublime "is the name given to what is absolutely great. But to be great and to be a magnitude are entirely different concepts (magnitudo and quantitas). In the same way, to assert without qualification (simpliciter) that something is great is quite a different thing from saying that it is absolutely great (absolute, non comparative magnum). The latter is what is beyond all comparison great" (Kant Judgment 42). The point that is relevant for us is that even if it is called absolutely great beyond all comparison, this absolute is still a magnitude "so far the mind can grasp it in an intuition" (44). In other words, the given is not given absolutely but becomes a given that must still be conceived in the confines of the a priori intuition of time and space. This compels it to require totality and be perceived as a phenomenon called by Kant "absolute whole, which, with it, regarded as a phenomenon, means infinity comprehended" (46). It is true that this absolute whole is infinite but the Kantian notion of infinity is still confined phenomenologically, as a representation.

Kant finds sublimity in anything that suggests the idea of the infinite or that exceeds the possibility of being grasped by the imagination. Thus, even though Ill imagination cannot perform its function properly and present the image positively, it can perform it "improperly," and present the infinite negatively. The negative presentation of the sublime produces a contradictory concept. On the one hand, it produces glimpses

(Kant calls them progressive syntheses, i.e., a succession of so-called partial representations of the absolute whole) but, on the other hand, it realizes that they are inevitably incomplete and fleeting. Kant describes the whole process in the following way:

Hence it must be the aesthetic estimation of magnitude in which we get at once a feeling of the effort towards a comprehension that exceeds the faculty of imagination for mentally grasping the progressive apprehension in a whole of intuition, and, with it, a perception of the inadequacy of this faculty, which has no bounds to its progress, for taking in and using for the estimation of magnitude a fundamental measure that understanding could turn to account without the least trouble. Now the proper unchangeable fundamental measure of nature is its absolute whole, which, with it, regarded as a phenomenon, means infinity comprehended. But, since this fundamental measure is a self-contradictory concept (owing to the impossibility of the absolute totality of an endless progression), it follows that where the size of a natural object is such that the imagination spends its whole faculty of comprehension upon it in vain, it must carry our concept of nature, to a supersensible substrate (underlying both nature and our faculty of thought) which is, great beyond every standard of sense. (Kant Judgment 46)

The free and unregulated relationships between faculties seem to point towards an excess, one that would unveil an allegedly unexplored similarity between Kant and the baroque.

The harmony that is thus created is exhibited, in Deleuze's terms, as a "discordant accord" (Essays 35). Kant himself illustrates the harmony of faculties from the point of view of the imagination as an excess that is not able to bridge reason and the senses anymore. In the realm of the supersensible, however, this process is not chaotically excessive, because it is still "conformable" to the law of the idea of rationality. Even if the genius does not listen to any law, he can do this only because he is bound to create his 112 own new law. He simply cannot step out of not having any relationship to the law: one either makes laws or abides by them. Even in the case of the sublime, aesthetic judgment still remains in the realm of representability. In other words, even though in its transcendental regression, it cannot hold onto a concept and form an image (Bild), aesthetic judgment cannot escape representability. It is still necessarily embedded in a priori intuitions of time and space, and still posits what Kant calls "purposiveness"

(Zweckmassigkeit), thus becoming the representation of this purposiveness.

By no longer acknowledging the purpose of conceptualizing the intuition of an object (Gegenstcmd), the sublime becomes purely subjective as it reaches the apex of

Kant's "Copernican" revolution. However by not being beyond a priori intuitions of time and space, and still having purposiveness, the sublime will inevitably have to presuppose a relative grounding that draws it inevitably into the realm of representability. Deleuze says that "the shortcoming of the ground is to remain relative to what it grounds, to borrow the characteristics of what it grounds, and to be proved by these" {Difference 88).

Kant calls this grounding merely subjective, as it is merely a play of the two mental powers, imagination and reason and their harmony relative to each other.80

Kant summarizes his notion of the sublime in the following way:

The sublime may be described in this way: It is an object (of nature) the representation of which determines the mind to regard the elevation of nature beyond our reach as equivalent to a presentation of ideas. In a literal sense and according to their logical import, ideas cannot be presented. But if we enlarge our empirical faculty of representation (mathematical or dynamical) with a view to the intuition of nature, reason

80 "The point of excess for the imagination (towards which it is driven in the apprehension of the intuition) is like an abyss in which it fears to lose itself, yet again for the rational idea of the supersensible it is not excessive, but conformable to law, and directed to drawing out such an effort on the part of the imagination: and so in turn as much a source of attraction as it was repellent to mere sensibility. But the judgment itself all the while steadfastly preserves its aesthetic character, because it represents, without being grounded on any definite concept of the object, merely the subjective play of the mental powers (imagination and reason) as harmonious by virtue of their very contrast" (Kant Judgment 47). 113

inevitably steps forward, as the faculty concerned with the independence of the absolute totality, and calls forth the effort of the mind, unavailing though it be, to make representation of sense adequate to this totality. This effort, and the feeling of the unattainability of the idea by means of imagination, is itself a presentation of the subjective finality of our mind in the employment of the imagination in the interests of the mind's supersensible province, and compels us subjectively to think nature itself in its totality as a presentation of something supersensible, without our being able to effectuate this presentation objectively. (Kant Judgment 52- 53)

In the context of the sublime, imagination and reason enter into a conflict that is still ultimately resolved by an overarching harmonious relationship between them. Kant compares this contrast to what he calls a vibration that has two rapidly alternating moments: one of attraction and the other of repulsion. There are therefore always two separately distinguishable yet relatable moments inside the sublime. On the one hand, imagination tries to grasp an idea of reason but, on the other, it sees that it cannot fully grasp it because it is merely regulative. The sublime has an infinite quality to it, as the whole is actually absolute oneness, an absolute totality that can never be fully presented.

The aesthetic judgment of the sublime is formed between a necessary strife and an incapacity, which Kant illustrates as "a pleasure that is only possible through the mediation of a displeasure" (48).81 He even quotes Burke, who defines the sublime not as pleasure "but a sort of delightful horror, a sort of tranquility tinged with terror" (Kant

Judgment 57).

The Religiosity of the Kantian Sublime

81 "The feeling of the sublime is, therefore, at once a feeling of displeasure, arising from the inadequacy of imagination in the aesthetic estimation of magnitude to attain to its estimation by reason, and a simultaneously awakened pleasure, arising from this very judgment of the inadequacy of the greatest faculty of sense being in accord with ideas of reason, so far as the effort to attain to these is for us a law" (Judgment 47). 114

When talking about the sublime as a presentation of the infinite, Kant's usually dry and precise philosophical language repeatedly associates this feeling with the metaphor of the abyss. The metaphorical use suggests not only openness towards something unbound, but also towards the possibility of interpretation, because the abyss was also one of the recurrent images of the baroque fall. When imagination reaches its highest peak of excess, it is as if it faces "an abyss in which it fears to lose itself' (Kant

Judgment 47). However every time this happens, the regulatory principle limits it, makes it manageable and conformable to the a priori law of pure reason that harmonizes our being with the law. The positive side of the sublime (the side that will be picked up by the romantics as the process of Bildung) is this: that one is thus confronted with the inmost recesses of the rational being that really makes us "what we are."82

The Kantian abyss has no depth or, better said, it is "not deep enough" to create a real horror vacui, a sensation of nausea or even a vertigo effect (as in some inferno-like landscapes of the baroque, for example Quevedo's Suenos). This is because the a priori intuitions are still in place and will always function like a safety net. The position of the

Kantian subject will always be secure. It can neither feel really threatened by the sublime, nor can it enjoy looking into the abyss or having the abyss look back into it, as Nietzsche used to say.83 Everything is still controlled by a pre-eminence of the mind that merely limits itself*4 and does not feel a real or unmediated sensation as in the baroque. The unavoidability of being a representation emerges as the savior of the subject. Hence

82 "It is, in other words, for us a law (of reason), which goes to make us what we are, that we should esteem as small in comparison with ideas of reason everything which for us is great in nature as an object of sense; and that which makes us alive to the feeling of this supersensible side of our being harmonizes with that law" (Kant Judgment 47). 83 In Beyond Good and Evil Nietzsche says: "He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee" (146). 84 Reading Schlegel and the early romantics, Benjamin will call this gesture "Selbstbeschrankung der Reflexion" (Gesammelte Schriften 74). 115 although Kant goes the farthest in the Third Critique, the whole scenario is still that of a self-di sco very, of a self-reflexive discovery of one's own limits and not one of a pure sensation of the event as such. Representability becomes both an inherent limit of the transcendental pure reason and its last refuge.

What would really pose a threat to destabilize this secure yet ultimately imprisoning system are the intrusions that come from the manifestations of nature and which become the showcase of sheer might. Kant makes a decisive distinction between his notion of the sublime in nature and such objective manifestations that cause real fear

(without any supplement of pleasure). This type of emotion overflows the dynamical sublime and cannot be perceived as aesthetic anymore but represents "God in the tempest, the storm, the earthquake, and the like, as presenting Himself in His wrath"

(Kant Judgment 50). The main difference is that in these latter cases we feel His sublimity, i.e., a sublimity that is completely outside the jurisdiction of reason and not the transcendental sublimity of our mind and our nature: "it would be alike folly and presumption to imagine a preeminence of our minds over the operations and, as it appears, even over the direction of such might" (Kant Judgment 50). This state seems to shift back towards a more passive posture of the mind, as if turning back the clock on the

Copernican revolution while showing that the Kantian judgments are after all context- dependent. Whatever falls outside the possibility of being 'tamed' and filtered through the a priori intuitions of space and time is cast out of Kant's notion of the sublime. In his view, religion is here only to offer such a harmonizing experience with a God who cannot be pure wrath anymore.

The man that is actually in a state of fear, finding in himself good reason to be so, because he is conscious of offending with his evil disposition against a might 116

directed by a will at once irresistible and just, is far from being in the frame of mind for admiring divine greatness, for which a temper of calm reflection and a quite free judgment are required. Only when he becomes conscious of having a disposition that is upright and acceptable to God, do those operations of might serve to stir within him the idea of the sublimity of this Being, so far as he recognizes the existence in himself of a sublimity of disposition consonant with His will, and is thus raised above the dread of such operations of nature, in which he no longer sees God pouring forth the vials of the wrath. (Kant Judgment 68)

The Jena romantics will also take up this meaning of re-ligion (the retying the knot to the sacred or rebuilding a new covenant with God). They include it in the general project of their new mythology. Kant's only example of the sublime that would have religious underpinnings refers to the passage in the Bible that introduces the so-called Bilderverbot or interdiction of images: "Perhaps there is no more sublime passage in the Jewish Law than the commandment: 'Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven or on earth, or under the earth', etc." (Kant

Judgment 56). Beyond the fact that it cannot ever complete forming any images, here imagination is not even allowed to begin forming them. Even if the difference between the incapacity to form stable images and an interdiction against forming them altogether is not relevant for Kant (his main concern being merely to maintain the sublime experience as a 'subjective' activity), this Biblical example still adds a conscious decision that would block out an image even if it were to be created.

The constant deprivation of images is not a gratuitous or neutral gesture. It inevitably triggers more consequences than a mere a priori inability to directly present something that exceeds the capacity of the imagination to form into a stable or finite image. In other words, it will turn out to be more than the failure of the imagination to perceive something that is absolutely great. It will become more than a negative presentation that would still point towards an infinite, towards God as an absolute 117 magnitude, leading to an infinite presentation. A sustained interdiction will eventually become an impossibility of presentation as such; when one cannot fathom any possibility of being presented, one is faced with an utter unpresentability that is similar to negative theology. Even so this unpresentability is still not absolute: although negative theology will expose God embedded in a mechanism of negation, it will eventually end up presenting His "inconceivable and ineffable mode of being" nonetheless. Derrida says that negative theology "is concerned with disengaging a superessentiality beyond the finite categories of essence and existence, that is, of presence, and always hastening to recall that is refused the predicate of existence, only in order to acknowledge his superior, inconceivable, and ineffable mode of being" (Margins of Phi los6).

From this point of view, God is no longer an infinite magnitude, as negation is no longer the means of presenting Him but becomes rather the goal. This means that one cannot posit any condition that would enable presentation as such. However by merely negating such a condition of possibility, by declaring it impossible, one is still 'caught' in the game of representativeness. By disengaging Him from any possibility of being presented, one still ends up presenting His unpresentability. Henceforth this unpresentability will step in and become the condition of presentation, the way in which he can be presented. Thus one still has not altogether exited the framework of conditioning, since one is paradoxically conditioning the impossibility of conditioning.

The blockage of'carved' images cannot remain neutral, but will reshuffle the power relations inside the Kantian sublime. In such a context, 'censorship' will be redoubled; on top of the unavoidable transcendental regulation, one will also consciously repress the formation of images. Such a reconfiguration would have to trigger slightly 118 different consequences in the manifestation of the sublime. A conscious obstacle or interdiction will implicitly create the conditions for a more forced transgression that will eventually release the accumulated and repressed images that would eventually burst more violently into consciousness and generate a more abrupt experience than the

'standard' Kantian sublime. In a religious context, the sacred would become a more terrifying experience, intensifying the moment of revelation and thereby reminding one selectively of Rene Girard's and George Bataille's ideas of associating the experience of the sacred with violence, as well as Benjamin's idea of divine violence. In Rudolf Otto's terminology such violence leans more towards the mysterium tremendum than to the mysterium fascinans,85

Kantian Formalism and Baroque Deformation

The baroque and romanticism diverge in the way they treat form. Even though an interdiction of images may seem a rather radical dissolution of form into an endless formativity, the distortion of an image affects and damages the condition of form more profoundly, as distortion targets the formation or constructability of the image. The distortion of an image reaches beyond representability, to the point of not being able to establish any condition under which an image could be formed, thus implicitly ruling out the possibility of formation. In such a distorted or deformed image, one cannot recognize the initial model; there is no trace of a reflexive principle at work. The deformed image does not present a Vorstellung but initiates a trans-formation that reaches beyond

85 Mysterium tremendum et fascinans ("fearful and fascinating mystery") is a Latin phrase which Rudolf Otto uses in The Idea of the Holy to name the awe-some (fascinating and full of awe) mystery that was the object common to all forms of religious experience. 119 formation into a non-formative form, a form in which one cannot discern anything beyond itself because it can be itself alone. Better said, this form acquires a singularity, an individuality that can only be itself while being always different every time it appears.

No general or comparative framework is able to circumscribe and comprehend it. Such a form constitutes a pure difference, no longer subordinated to sameness, a difference or diversity that does not allow setting up any condition possibility of comparison anymore.

In this context, formalism would not devote itself to the exploration of form (over content); it would also point to a more general sense of formalization as the activity that rigorously follows a set of rules previously defined. Thus it can refer to any set of beliefs in philosophy, art, literature, or music - the previously defined system of rules that acts like a blueprint. In the absence of the 'usual' mismatch between the intuition and the concept, Kant's aesthetics unleashes the intuitive potential of life itself, or what Kant calls Gemiit (i.e., animus, the vital or life-principle).86 Getting rid of an almost superegoic

'counterpart' and becoming the single element of the equation does not mean that the intuition is able to be inwardly determined and thus receive an absolute or complete determination (as in Spinoza's unisocal scenario). Even if the intuition does not have a defined purpose in the concept, it is still projecting a so-called purposiveness. Being relative to an infinite goal that proves to be a self-projection, the whole process of

86 Howard Caygill's A Kant Dictionary defines it as follows: "[animus] see also affect, body, feeling, identity, life, pleasure, reflection, soul, subject. Gemot is a key term in Kant's philosophy and is variously translated as 'mind', 'mental state' and 'soul', even though these translations fail to do justice to the term's significance. It does not mean 'mind' or 'soul' in the Cartesian sense of a thinking substance, but denotes instead a corporeal awareness of sensation and self-affection. Indeed, at one point in CPR he explicitly distinguishes Gemiit and Seele (A 22/B 37), a distinction expounded in Zu Summering ilberdas Organ der Seele (To Sdmmenng, Concerning the Organ of the Soul, 1796) in terms of the 'capacity to effect the unity of empirical apperception (animus) but not its substance (anima)' (1796c, p. 256). Gemiit does not designate a substance (whether material or ideal) but is the position or place of the Gemiitskrtifte (the Gemiit'i powers) of sensibility, imagination, understanding and reason. Kant's use of Gemiit remains close to the meaning the term possessed in medieval philosophy and mysticism, where it referred to the 'stable disposition of the soul which conditions the exercise of all its faculties' (Gilson, 1955, pp. 444, 758). This contrasts with Leibniz's restriction of the term to mean 'feeling' as opposed to understanding (Leibniz, 1976, p. 428). For Kant 'the Gemiit is all life (the life-principle itself)...." (Caygill 210). 120 intuition merely amounts to a self-reflective dedoubling that enters thus in a mismatch with itself. Starting from this premise, Kantian form cannot reach perfect neutrality, but becomes formative. In short, while form becomes synonymous or interchangeable with formation, Kantian formalism is still employing form actively.

The infinite goal that is presupposed by such a formative form cannot be determined clearly. The determination cannot frame and ascertain the infinite into a stable image and thus becomes indeterminate. Being determined as indeterminate, however, does not help in overcoming representation. The goal ends up embodying the incapacity of being fixed. It is thus turned into 'unfixability', the most general term for denominating the state of being unfastened, disengaged or uncoupled (in the sense of an ever-distancing that still leaves a trace to strive toward). Even when this goal is completely undetermined, it still caught within representability. It still caters towards the same framework of representation, because negating any determination sets up a reverse determination that works by means of negation. As Deleuze puts it: "to the extent that this pure thought remains undetermined - or it is not determined as differential - representation for its part, is not really overcome" (.Difference 178).

In the baroque scenario, a deformation can be 'saved' from representativeness, even though the goal remains infinite and indeterminate. For in this case, it is beyond any rule of formation. It does not abide within the formativity of form. It is not produced in such a way that one would still be able to recognize the initial model in it. With the deformation altered beyond the possibility of recognition, one cannot discern in it any intentionality or purposiveness, leaving the intuition truly blind (without a concept).

From the Kantian point of view, a deformation would not be considered aesthetic, 121 because it is not necessarily linked to beauty. Indeed it can be ugly or monstrous and it is usually called demonic.87 Such manifestation of the deformed expresses a pure thought that cannot be under any rule of production because it can and will always be determined as different. This does not mean that this pure thought (or what is called a concrete Idea) is determined as indeterminate. Thought would only construct the indeterminate into a formative form in which one could still discern a conception. In the case of the deformed image, it will not be determined as a constructible image. It thus remains a pure illusion, a pure potentiality that at the same time becomes actual (because potentiality and actuality are not separate and thus relatable). In this case, it is not a potentiality that will never become a full-fledged and completed act (or image) because of its infinite possibilities and that will leave it in a state of non-completion, open-ended and thus infinitely representable.88 Hence is it nothing more (or nothing less) than a pure appearance without an essence, idea or eidos supporting it. It would thus become a thought so pure that it must remain suspended, incapable of being related to any sensible intuition. Hence it would be turned into an absolute mystery that does not hide any

(essential) revelation simply because it is revealed as such, as mystery. In other words, it will always remain pure and unrevealed because it is at the same time revelation. A deformed image is a pure (sensible not intellectual) intuition that does not go beyond the sensible into the supersensible (to become sublime) but leads to an intensifying of the sensible. Henceforth the deformed image is just what it is: a unique, unrepeatable and singular expression that can only be itself.

87 "This ontological measure is closer to the immeasurable state of things than to the first kind of measure: this ontological hierarchy is closer to the hubris and anarchy of beings than to the first hierarchy It is the monster which combines all the demons" (Difference 37). 88 Deleuze says about the infinite representation: "(...) infinite and finite are indeed characteristics of a representation in so far as the concept that it implicates develops all its possible comprehensions or, on the contrary, blocks it" (Deleuze, Difference 178). 122

It should be said, though, that by determining it as different (or as differential), the determinable intuition still works within a mechanism of reciprocity. There are still two

'sides': intuition and pure thought. In this case, however, they become variable magnitudes that are not being constructed and explained one through the other in a medium of reflection. Rather, they become functions of each other. 89 This reciprocity is not bilateral (wechselseitig) as in Kantian formalism, a procedure that was also imported into Jena romanticism. There is no two-timed alternation or commuting between two poles but rather a simultaneous reverberation of both. Such movement affirms the fullness and not the hollowness of the medium that separates them. Pure thought is henceforth no longer held in check by the intuition, making the determination rather unilateral. In this a one-way scenario, presentation is purified of any reflexivity, of any possibility of being returned and re-presented. By annihilating reflexivity, it will produce an always formally different expression that is not even potentially recognizable. Each time presentation establishes a 'one-time' relation to something that must be regarded as an origin even though it will always remain perfectly indeterminate.

It is a poor recipe for producing monsters to accumulate heteroclite determinations or to overdetermine the animal. It is better to raise up the ground and dissolve the form. Goya worked with aquatint and etching, the grisaille of the one and severity of the other. Odilon Redon used chiaroscuro and the abstract line (...) At this point, in such a mirror, faces are distorted. Nor is it certain that it is only the sleep of reason which gives rise to monsters; it is also the vigil, the insomnia of thought, since thought is that moment in which determination makes itself one, by maintaining a unilateral and precise relation to the indeterminate (Deleuze, Difference 29).

Remaining indeterminate while keeping the relationship between pure thought and intuition unilateral is key to solving the problem of representability. Pure thought is the

89 "Power is the form of reciprocal determination according to which variable magnitudes are taken to be functions of one another" (Deleuze, Difference 174). 123

'effect' of such a unilateral determination, a determination as such because it cannot distinguish the determinable intuition from the determinant concept. Intuition is no longer potentially determinable but in a state of actual determination or pure potentiality. Just like an allegory that swings back to allegorize itself while exiting the stage empty- handed, intuition intuits its conditionality, and thus purifies itself from its conditioning status to become what it actually is: an absolutely pure intuition that is not supposed to be matched with a concept because it is already conceptual. Hence it no longer brings about a determination that can determine or carry out a determination outside itself but can only determine itself while being itself. In this way, it overcomes its own reflexivity. Being a relation that does not relate two entities, or a form that does not form,90 the act of determination will produce an effect only in as much as it is itself this effect and nothing else.

In such a context, there is no longer the possibility of creating a distancing effect that would appear as fleeing something that is always catching up. Space and time are no longer a priori intuitions in the sense of forming structures but become a priori Ideas. As such differentials they thereby unveil their mere formal nature that turns them into factors of instability or variation that inject (infintezimal) difference into experience.91

Functioning no longer as conditioning or mediating intuitions, as intuitions that are classified by a unifying reason, but rather as supplements or accessories that add shades to experience, space and time awaken the ingrained substantiality. Reason will henceforth not act as a mediating medium but rather as a pure medium without remainder ("ohne

90 "Difference is the state in which one can speak of determination as such" (Deleuze, Difference 28). 91 Deleuze is in great debt to Salomon Maimon who was one of the most astute critics of Kantian formalism. He becomes untypical by quoting Maimon quite extensively but I will extract from that quote only the idea that the concept of difference "is considered to be the relation between their differentials which are a priori Ideas" (Deleuze, Difference 174). In such a context, space and time are themselves presented in their formal nature as a priori "forms of difference." 124

Rest", as Benjamin would say) that reaches its essentiality by just being what it is: a medium that does not mediate and thus relate entities but merely fills the gap between them. In such a posture, reason will become truly factual or effective by being sufficiently saturated with being i.e., not having an (infinite) lack of it anymore. It should be said this lack resembles a "purgatory blind" (Keats, Poems 243)92 that is neither the plenum nor a deep enough abyss. The full-fledged reason will become and have sufficient reason to generate a real cause that will produce a true effect. This time, cause and effect are not connected on a chain of deduction that merely relates its components ("Kette der

Deduktion") (Kairos 137) but rather in an uninterrupted correlation or coherent consistency ("luckenloser Deduktionszusammen-hang") (Kairos 137) while reason is turned into a substantial or real origin.93 By not requiring prior conditions and posterior validations, by not bilaterally grounding and thus under-standing its expressions, this origin suspends laws with its divine violence94. Every trace of a sub-jectum (Greek hypo-

92 "Beyond its proper bound, yet still confined, - / Lost in a sort of Purgatory blind" ("To J.H. Reynolds"). 93 What one should conlude at this point is that Kant's reason cannot be subscribed under what is called in philosophy sufficient reason as it cannot generate enough momentum or power to become a real cause. I lis reason cannot produce facts and will forever be caught in its own reflective web because it will be drained by the hollowness of the reflective medium it builds. The same mechanism functions in Kleist's story of the Narcisssus who loses his grace. The notion of representation that this thesis analyzes springs from this particular hypostasis of reason and not from reason as such. Spinoza, Leibniz and Maimon are all rationalist thinkers. This specification is very important with respect to Deleuze's use of the term as well and it is here that one can trace back the limits of representation. The motive behind the incapacity of this representative (or rather badly calibrated) reason to acquire being is the discrepancy between the two faculties. Seen as orders of being or modes of existence, sensibility and thought are incompatible and cannot be related because they are diverse and should be treated separately (i.e., absolutely); each having their own set of inner laws. The only instance when they can be related is when thought becomes an expression of sensibility. This thesis is mainly concerned with this scenario. It simply means that thought cannot master feeling and must become ancillary as an interpretation or (baroque) allegory thereof. Still, because thought is dominating by nature, knowing is in essence a possessive act, it can, will (and must) exert this tendency on itself. Thought will master itself when it will think itself thus becoming absolutely identical with its object at this point it will turn into (absolute) spirit (Greek nous). Having learned this Greek lesson (i.e, Aristotle's noesis noeseos noesis), Hegel will unpack and proceed on this route, while Kleist will state their ontological convergence by saying that "only a god (i.e., infinite consciousness), on this field of contest, could prove a match for matter (i.e., no consciousness); and here is where both ends of the ring-shaped world interlock (ineinandergreifen)" (Abyss 412) (my additions). Thought can be identical with its object because they are both spiritual entities i .e., belonging to the same order of being. Hence there is no relation, no metaphorical transference between (uncrossable) domains and their synthesis can be indeed absolute. 94 In his "Zur Kritik der Gewalt," (1921) Benjamin distinguishes between mythical violence that "makes" laws and divine violence that "destroys" them by teleologically suspending them (see Kairos 87-110). Questioning the Kantian quid iuris is not enough; quidfacti is equally to blame of 'tainting' empirical facts. The deadlock is created by the quid. This note refers not only to Heidegger's understanding of Kant but to his ontological framework and deployment as 125 keimenon) that faces an object will henceforth disappear; no transcendental I can be

'partnered' with a thing-in-itself. Since there is no reflection involved, these metamorphotic or distorted forms acquire their substantiality by default, through their failure to become re-presented images, by defaulting from representation, by not being discernible and recuperated or retro-verted as representations.

Time in the Kantian Sublime and its Reflections into Jena Romanticism

Approaching the problematic of romanticism in stricter terms, this section will show that in Jena romanticism time is still an a priori intuition that determines or structures experience. It is formative (and thus implicity formed i.e., not pure) rather than a formal aspect as it unavoidably conditions experience. From such a point of view, time can be opposed to eternity as their tension turns out to rather oppressive making the latter utterly unreachable and incomprehensible.

When imagination is no longer forced to work with clearly defined or finite images, it becomes employed by pure reason in the sublime. Kant's theory of the imagination has deeply influenced romantic thought. In the Critique of Pure Reason, imagination is linked to time understood as the form of inner sense. Its function is to synthesize the progressive sequence of representations in time. However in the Critique of Judgement, when it is related to reason, imagination does not progress anymore but condenses

well. Recalling Salomon Maimon's objection to Kant, one can object that Heidegger's philosophy will also have no "factual value" as he merely questions the quid iuris, not so Benjamin. Heidegger's ultimate inability to describe Being is a testimony thereof, his thought being acknowledgeable in the same tradition as the representative romantic thinkers. 126

the comprehension of the manifold in the unity, not of thought, but of intuition, and consequently the comprehension of the successively apprehended parts at one glance, is a retrogression (Regressus) that removes (aufhebt) the time - condition in the progression of the imagination, and renders coexistence intuitable. Therefore, since the time - series is a condition of the internal sense and of an intuition, it is a subjective movement of the imagination by which it does violence to the internal sense - a violence which must be proportionately more striking the greater the quantum which the imagination comprehends in one intuition. (48)

This retrogression as an intuitive movement makes time stand still. It stops the sequentially of time. But it is not outside of time; the transcendental is not the eternal.

Time is merely regressed into its pure form, a form that is not yet filled with content, a

'frozen' form that is not forming anything yet. Deleuze describes it as follows:

"Everything that changes and moves is in time, but time itself does not change and move, any more than it is eternal. It is the form of everything that changes and moves, but it is an immutable form that does not change - not an eternal form, but precisely the form of what is not eternal, the immutable form of change and movement" (Deleuze, Essays 29).

The sublime moment, in its regressive movement,95 retreats in this immutable form, a form that seems indeed immutable because it catches a glimpse and intuits time the way it is given as an unavoidable a priori intuition. This movement is so radical that it sees time for what it really is, thus reaching time's own condition of possibility. The sublime cancels (aufhebt) this condition as a condition for something else (i.e., for movement, for change, etc.), thus turning merely turning into a condition for itself. Viewing time regardless of external determinations does not 'root out' condition as such. It will merely open an infinite within, an inner infinite propensity.

,5.J3ie Zusammenfassung der Vielheit in die Einheit, nicht des Gedankens, sondem der Anschauung, mithin des Sukzessiv-AufgefaBten in einen Augenblick, ist dagegen ein Regressus, der die Zeitbedingung im Progressus der Einbildungskrafl wieder aufliebt und das Zugleichsein anschaulich macht" (Kant, Kritik der Urteibkraft 74). 127

Hence it may be true that from the point of view of Kant's Copernican revolution, time is no longer (as it was in Aristotle) the external measure of movement. Still, by becoming an unconditioned pure form, time does not become completely pure or absolute,96 thus turning into what is called eternity. It is only relatively pure because even if unrelated externally, it will still relate to itself. As a pure form, in the sublime moment, the form of time is without content or, in other words, it reaches a form that does not form anything. There are two aspects that need to be mentioned here. The first is that being in such a relatively pure form it is merely in an infinite inner progression while the second is that it will eventually also have to create a content from itself; the sublime moment does need a beautiful form as which it can be manifested. In short, it is not beyond formation but just temporarily unable to fulfill the condition of its possibility, the condition for movement and change being still in the process of fulfilling it. One should keep in mind though that while the form of time is not yet (temporally) unfolded as movement and change, it still remains possible; it can still be claimed as a possible experience. One cannot simply write off time altogether. Not being able to fulfill a condition does not imply that there is no possibility for fulfilling it; it only means that this condition is not fulfilled yet, time having just transcendentally regressed to become a mere form of time.

This is merely a cessation of progression, a momentary lapse or suspension in which one merely "intuits" simultaneity. This simultaneity can only be intuited but never proven a posteriori in experience. Hence this is not the real simultaneity that we have encountered in the baroque, a simultaneity that does not need any confirmation because its potentiality cannot be distinguished from its actuality since it is always already actual.

96 "(•••) neither related nor relatable (...) an empty concept" (Deleuze, Difference 221). 128

What this regression accomplishes is the temporary arrest of time in the mind. The

Kantian "Regressus" reflectively turns around and splits the subject. Kant of course realized the split in Cartesian philosophy: the existing I is not the same as the thinking I.

This is the second Kantian reversal that is different from the first two critiques and which comes closer to the abyss that will haunt all modernity. Deleuze comments that:

There is a tempest in the chasm opened up inside the subject. In the first two Critiques, the dominant or fundamental faculty was able was able to enter into the closest possible harmonics with itself. But now, in an exercise of limits, the various faculties mutually produce the most remote harmonics in each other, so that they form essentially discordant accords. (Essays 35)

In the excessive sublime, even the concept of harmony is at the brink of disaggregation in which, as Deleuze puts it, "interiority constantly hollows us out, splits us in two, doubles us, even though our unity subsists" (31). In short, this split does not affect the transcendental unity; the split is not a real fracture or schizoid split, just as the Kantian abyss was never a real one. Imagination merely loses the capacity of accomplishing an image and an effect, but it does not lose its capacity to represent altogether. Rather, imagination comprehends in an intuition without images. Imagination is no longer a mediator, a bridge between two parties; it opens a path that looks at itself in an almost still alternating duplicity as path and goal. It becomes a relation that resembles

Kierkegaard's relation, which relates itself to itself while acknowledging the power (i.e., reason) that posited it (Sickness 13).

In late romanticism, Kierkegaard calls the faith in a God that needs no mediation through images an absolute faith. It should be said though, that when Deleuze speaks about Kierkegaard he still discovers representative "leftovers." Although the author of

Fear and Trembling tackles the absolute relation with God, his faith is still reflective. 129

What is important from our point of view is that Kierkegaard (along with Charles Peguy)

"are the culmination of Kant, they realize Kantianism by entrusting to faith the task of overcoming the speculative death of God and healing the wound itself.... For faith has its own cogito which in turn conditions the sentiment of grace, like an interior light.

Moreover, it is in this particular cogito that faith reflects upon itself' (Deleuze,

Difference 95) (italics mine). Kierkegaard's faithful opening towards an absolute revelation equals an opening towards absolute sin, towards an infinite possibility of offence. In Sickness unto Death, Kierkegaard says that such possibility of offence is tied to revelation in the sense that "there has to be a revelation to show what sin is" (83).

Inextricably related, sin and revelation become engaged in an insurmountable duality as well.

One can thus say of the imagination that even if it does not work with images, it still needs a reflective or bilateral relation. By looking at itself, relation would still turn into being the foundation.97 The point is that just as the pure form of time is not beyond time, merely showing how time is formed "dans son jaillissement" (Deleuze, Essays 34), the relation as foundation is not beyond the relative. Although in this extreme case, relation does not have anything to relate to anymore, it still retains the reflex to connect to something, it cannot escape having purposiveness. Turning around and becoming reflexively self-grounding does not help with respect to overcoming its conditioned status. Hence relation cannot go the distance and confront real a/terity or otherness: it is itself this distance. It cannot become truly a/legorical (in a baroque sense). Romantic allegory although not being able to know or reach the absolute, is still an approximation

97 Deleuze says: "Mediation itself has become foundation" (Difference 49). 130 thereof. More importantly for this context, romantic allegory will establish the romantic idea of the unknowability of the absolute.98

In the realm of pure reason, imagination is not outside time, but even so, it is still able to take temporary snapshots, or allow for '"comprehension in an instant'

(Augenblick) of what was successively apprehended" as Makreel puts it (74) " These snapshots are indeed absolute unities, but only in the moment when they occur. Being still in the flow of time, they are inevitably successive and can never lead to a complete and stable comprehension. What they can do is to drive towards what Kant will call the comprehension of multiplicity (Vielheit not Mannigfaltigkeit), the unity of indeterminate parts of the whole (Makkreel 308). These snapshots can only mark the objective progress of syntheses of imagination, and thereby trigger only a feeling of the supersensible destination, an intuition that still needs to be embedded in beautiful forms.

Of course, imagination still needs something to relate to in this infinite temporal succession, which, in fact, brings about only an approximation of the absolute but never the absolute as a reality as such. This detail leaves it, yet again, in the relative, in a realm that still recognizes a superior and distant existence that stops it from fully spilling over and becoming expressive. Even so the sublime is the closest one can get to grasp the infinite in the Kantian system. Rudolf Makkreel also points out other such qualities of the aesthetic sublime: "A negative presentation can elevate and expand the soul and at the same time guard against fanaticism, which is the 'belief beyond our capacity of seeing something beyond all bounds of sensibility'... (or of going mad with reason)" (314).

98 See Manfred Frank's thesis on the Jena romantics in his third lecture from his book The Philosophical Foundations of Early German Romanticism entitled "On the Unknowability of the Absolute" (55-77). Comprehending a multiplicity in a unity of intuition (i.e., comprehending in one instant what must be apprehended successively) is a regression, a type of mental Bewegung, that cancels time and makes simultaneity intuitable. Instead of moving from one perceived object to another in time, one can see them together, see them as together, in "same" time. This violent regression holds for any intuition of multiplicity in unity, that is, for any cognition. 131

Although the sublime moment is not temporal, it does not leave temporality behind while plunging into eternity. The Jena romantics discovered that eternity can be viewed as a mere empty concept that cannot even become a separate mythical realm in the sense of an antithetically representable golden age but, at the same time, eternity can only be realized in and through time. The sublime turns into an eternal moment that is, in a profoundly contradictory manner, felt in time. Hence Novalis says that, "eternity becomes realized through time, even though time contradicts eternity" (Frank, Das

Problem Zeit 215). Manfred Frank adds: "Ja, wir konnen sagen, dafi Novalis den Begriff der Ewigkeit nur als unerkennbare Voraussetzung der Einheit nur in der Zeit akzeptiert.

Wir sind auf die Zeit verwiesen. Die Isolation des AuBerzeitlichen muss in die Raume des Unsinns fuhren" (Frank, Das Problem Zeit 222).

Novalis's meditations on the subject are very relevant: "Die Zeit kann nie aufhoren - Wegdenken konnen wir die Zeit nicht - den die Zeit ist Bedingung des denkenden Wesens - die Zeit hort nur mit dem denken auf. Denken auBer der Zeit ist ein

Unding"(qtd. in Frank Das Problem Ze/7214). The moment that time is able to show eternity, thus presenting it in itself (in sich), time becomes a Darstellung of eternity, a presentation of eternity. But this presentation inevitably becomes a representation, as it is valid only in the moment of its presentation. It is not eternity as such (an sich). The interesting aspect, however, is that by not fulfilling the condition of possibility for creating temporality, time is able to point to eternity, and thereby overcome its conventional status as a mere mobile image of it.

Although it is the most intense event in the Kantian philosophy, the sublime is not an absolute escapist solution in a transcendent beyond, in a Utopia or golden age. This 132 scenario is retelling, more or less, the fairy tale of the boy who landed in a realm of eternal youth but who cannot dwell there forever because, sooner or later, he will stumble upon the condition for change and movement and thereby be thrown back into temporality.

Infinity within Representation: Kant and Leibniz

The present section will focus specifically on the relationship between Kant and Leibniz.

Approaching this relationship from the point of view of representation, it will also become possible to distinguish more clearly the similarities and differences between the baroque and romanticism.

It has been said that the innovation that sets Kant apart from other Enlightenment thinkers is the fact that he placed the telos in infinity, extending representativeness as well. The difference between finite representation and infinite representation is not to be underestimated or simply overlooked, though, because, in both cases, the concept of difference is still subordinated to the identical, the same, the analogous, etc. As Deleuze says:

Finite representation is that of a form which contains a matter, but a secondary matter in so far as it is defined by contraries. We have seen that it represented difference by mediating it, by subordinating it to identity as the genus, and by ensuring that subordination by means of analogy the genera themselves, by means of the logical opposition of determinations and the resemblance of properly material contents. It is not the same with infinite representation, since it includes the Whole or ground as primary matter and the essence as subject, absolute form or Self. Infinite representation relates at once the essence and the ground, and the difference between the two, to a foundation or sufficient reason. Mediation has become foundation. (Deleuze, Difference 49) 133

In Deleuze's reading, of course, Platonism exemplifies finite representation while Kant highlights the infinite one. But even though representation becomes infinite, Kant does not overstep the premises of representation; Kantianism remains within the confines of representability. "Pure" form is not beyond form; arrested time is not eternity. "The point is that in the last resort, infinite representation does not free itself from the principle of identity as a presupposition of representation" (Deleuze, Difference 49). Underlining the idea several times, Deleuze also wants to establish, on the one hand, a lineage of philosophers who step outside representability (such as Spinoza and Nietzsche) and who tackle difference as such without referring it back to similarity or identity. On the other, he discusses philosophers like Schelling, Hegel and Kierkegaard, who become interesting in their way of overcoming finite representation by making it infinite. From this point of view "it is therefore not illegitimate, therefore to summarize in this way the movement of philosophy from Plato to Fichte or Hegel by way of Descartes, whatever the diversity of the initial hypothesis or the final apodicticities" (Deleuze, Difference 197).

It is interesting that in this latter category Deleuze extensively discusses Leibniz as well. In Difference and Repetition, he says that Leibniz relates everything eventually to reason, thus making a representation out of it: "In these two ways, orgiastic (infinite) representation mediates determination and makes it a concept of difference by assigning it a 'reason'" (48). The Leibnizian sufficient reason, however, does not have to act as a stable ground; it can have what is called a "twist." "If sufficient reason or the ground has a 'twist', this is because it relates what it grounds to that which is truly groundless. At this point, it must be said, there is no longer recognition. To ground is to metamorphose" 134

(Deleuze, Difference 154).100 Truth becomes thus a matter of expression and not of recognition (or adequacy). When speaking about the Cartesian principle of clear and distinct ideas, Deleuze notes Leibniz's remark according to which a clear idea is in itself confused and is confused in so far as it is clear. It is true that this statement can be attuned to Cartesian logic, meaning that a clear idea is confused because it is not yet clear enough in all its parts. However the Leibnizian philosophy can also lend itself to another interpretation "according to which there would be a difference between the clear and distinct, not just of degree but in kind, such that the clear would be in itself confused and the distinct in itself obscure" (Deleuze, Difference 213). Deleuze himself is "not sure that

Leibniz does not go the 'farthest'" showing that "the ground rumbles with greater power" and "the Dionysian shores are closer" (264).

In The Fold, Deleuze revisits Leibniz and this time he sees him exploring the

"infinitely spongy and cavernous matter" in which "a cave is hollowed out by caves"

(32). Now Leibniz seems much closer to Nietzsche who will conclude that "as a German type Leibniz is more interesting than Kant (...) Leibniz is dangerous, a good German who needs facades and philosophies of facades, but bold and basically mysterious in the extreme" (.Fold 33). The concept of infinite representation is dropped as he sees Leibniz's philosophy in a lineage that leads to what he calls chaosmotic modernity. "We are still

Leibnizian, although accords no longer convey our world or our text. We are discovering new ways of folding, akin to new envelopments, but we all remain Leibnizian because what always matter is folding, unfolding, refolding" (Fold 137).

100 The Benjaminian example of such a metamorphosis in the baroque is Hallmann's transformation of the harp into an ax. 135

Keeping in mind Kant's unavoidable relativity, it can be said that when Leibniz's monads communicate there is no real interaction and no relation between them but rather a communion. There is actually no need for it, for their whole history has already been inscribed in them before they were even created. There is only an echo-like correspondence that resonates within the pre-established harmony that enables everything. The monads are thus independent centers of expressivity that cannot but express God's will. However this predetermined status remains rather equivocal because it does not exclude or negate a self-expressing individuality. In the Leibnizian world, the expression of an individual will always coincide with God's expression while still also remaining individual. Hence the monad is both related and unrelated; it is related through the perspective that it projects on the whole world. Any perspective requires a unity of focus, being thus relatable to a subject. But a monad can be absolutely unrelated as well.

It cannot be absolutely identical with another because it would have to coincide in both space and time and such coincidence would abolish their individuality; they would have to be one being.101 Hence even though the monad is relatable to something else, it will ultimately be only identical with itself in a way that is beyond any possibility of comparison and recognition. Leibniz' notion of harmony is non-relational, picturing as it does one monad in harmony with all other monads and with God at the same time. The baroque polyphony is based on the pattern of a choir "in which two monads each sing their part without either knowing or hearing that of the other, and yet they are 'in perfect accord'" (Deleuze Fold 133).102 This means that the monads are independent (i.e., absolute) from each other, separated by a "pathos of distance," an indivisible distance

101 See Leibniz, New Essays on Human Understanding. 102 In a more Leibnizian discourse, the damned are producing a music that although dissonant still resolves in a 'universal harmony" (Deleuze Fold 131). 136 that is not created by a bilateral relation of two points in space. It is a pathetic distance that is 'felt' rather than perceived visually by means of an image. Being a center of expression, the monad will relate to the world but the world cannot return the favor.

Having no real window that could bilaterally relate to an object while at the same time forming a subject, its individuality is essentially 'pre-subjective'.

Although the Kantian sublime is excessive and splits the I, it will eventually put it back together as a still unified transcendental subject. Even in disarray, the faculties hold together. Even when they stimulate each other, the whole process is still only an interaction between distinct entities that preserve their relationships which each other.

Such interaction merely triggers a distancing effect that prevents them from being absolutely separated, while existentially spilling over into each other thus becoming expressive. If there is a harmony in Kant as well, it is thus the effect of a relationship that is established between the subject and its faculties, even when the sublime experience is utterly dynamic as they bounce off each other stimulating each other over their usual limit in their progressive strife towards catching the infinity of the absolute whole. No doubt this creates the impression of a certain irregularity that can be illustrated as a

"discordant accord." Still this does not mean that they are completely irregular or discordant; after all, they are necessarily embedded in the framework of a priori intuitions of space and time. No matter, then, how discordant the faculties may seem, no matter how erratically they may act, even fracturing the I and opening a tempest in the chasm inside the subject, they are still transcendentally unified and regulated by the said intuitions. 137

Analogy: Schlegel and the Infinite Fragment

Before approaching the Schlegelian concept of the fragment and its relationship to the corresponding notion found in the baroque, which will be the main focus in this section, one should mention other examples of infinite representation. In a comparative discussion on Hegel and Schelling, Deleuze says about the latter:

The most important aspect of Schilling's philosophy is his consideration of powers. How unjust, in this respect, is Hegel's remark about the black cows! Of these two philosophers, it is Schelling who brings difference out of the night of the Identical, and with finer, more varied and more terrifying flashes of lightning than those of contradiction: with progressivity. (Difference 191)

Although Schelling's "progressivity in nature" is not interchangeable with Schlegel's idea of progressive universal poetry, their respective notions are still related by means of their common representativeness. Even when Schelling's thought manifests an acute presentiment of groundlessness, this very groundlessness is still determined as infinitely undetermined, that is, as a "completely undifFerenciated103 abyss, a universal lack of difference an indifferent black nothingness" (Deleuze, Difference 276). This means that it is still representable under the requirements of the identity of the concept, the concept being 'inconsolably' undetermined anyway.104 Not being able to incorporate or internalize pure difference, Schelling's abyss becomes an authority that can merely receive the label of indifference. In other words, he projects unto the groundlessness a

103 Not 'undifferentiated' because to differentiate is for Deleuze the "good" difference that forgets recognition (as opposed to differenciate). 1 4 "(• •) identity, in the form of the undetermined concept" (Difference 29). 138 determination that even though is not an image, it can still be represented as unrepresentable. Deleuze's conclusion is that Schelling, Schopenhauer and even

Nietzsche's first Dionysus, that of the Birth of Tragedy, are still caught within representation. In Leibnizian terms, becomes a defined entity that pertains to the order of the Definables and not to that of the Identicals.

Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy dedicate an entire chapter of The Literary Absolute to the importance of the fragment in romanticism. Supported by their reading, my present goal is to point out the significance of the fragment in view of its representative valences.

Although Schlegel says that "like a small work of art, [a fragment] has to be entirely isolated from the surrounding world and be complete in itself like a hedgehog" (Lacoue-

Labarthe and Nancy 43), the romantic fragment was never identified with what is called a

Bruchstiick, a detached piece pure and simple. It acknowledges not an absolute isolation, but rather the borders of an autonomous form. The fragment's individuality will thus be seen in relation to the whole in the sense that "the fragmentary work is neither directly nor absolutely the Work. But its own individuality must be grasped, nonetheless, with respect to its relation to the work" (ibid.). The fragment is thus ambivalent, alternating between a hedgehog-like isolation and inclusion in the whole. This inclusion is understood as complete annihilation in which "the Work must be nothing other than the absolutely necessary auto-production in which all individualities and all works are annihilated" (Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy 56). The fragment is thus annihilated in the sense that it represents "the Bild beyond all Bild of the fragment, or in other words of the absolute" (ibid). Even so, the fragment cannot be completely absorbed in the whole since 139 a true totality cannot be acquired. The whole is never simply the sum of parts and cannot be reconstructed as a mere finite representation.

The Jena romantics could not attain the spirit of antiquity, not because it was an ideal of perfection (as in neo-classicism) but because it could only be remembered as a ruin in need of reconstruction (and not as a ruin as such, as a ruin that was already completely presented as a ruin). Hence the spirit of antiquity "never attains the status of a true model or prototype [Urbild] - remains here that of fragmented Antiquity, the landscape of ruins. The individual - Greek, Roman, romantic - must first be reconstructed" (Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy 50). The ruin of the totality, of a finitely represented, is replicated in the ruined fragment.105 This totality is not an ideal whole.

Jena romanticism resists idealistic tendencies and rather orients itself empirically towards an immanence of sensation, towards intuiting a so-called organic sensible, a conceptualized sensible that is externally determined and that is not the sensible as such.

Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy say that "the idealistic step has been effected (in the motif of infinitization), but not without a kind of obscure resistance to idealism itself, or more precisely, not without a sort of (quite unexpected) folding of idealism into Kant, and of transgression of finitude into the finite itself' (64). Simply put, in Jena romanticism there is no transcendent beyond as everything becomes organic; and by "organic," one should understand that "in the Self all things are formed organically" (Lacoue-Labarthe and

Nancy 49). The fragment thus becomes related as a sub-work, an exergue106 of the Work, the organon:

105 "The philological fragment, especially in the tradition of Diderot, takes on the value of a ruin. Ruin and fragment conjoin the functions of the monument of evocation; what is thereby both remembered as lost and presented in a sort of sketch (or blueprint) is always the living unity of a great individuality, author, or work" (Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy 42). 106 Exergue = from the Greek ex-ergon, out of a work. 140

But the romantic orgcmon further aggravates its case, so to speak, in that its concept, its very conception, in its seminal system, is always given in fragments and therefore always, despite everything, as a sub-work. The organicity of the fragment also designates the fragmentation of the orgcmon and, instead of a pure process of growth, the necessity of reconstituting as well as constituting organic individuality. (Lacoue- Labarthe and Nancy 50)

The relationship into which the fragment and the whole enter is not one of identity. Not being its model, the whole bears no resemblance to the fragment. Although the fragment replicates the whole (Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy 44), their interaction is based on analogy. As the aspect of progressivity fades in importance,107 the two entities enter into a dialectic relationship, which, as Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy assert, "covers the thinking of identity through the mediation of non-identity" (46). The truth of the fragment is not grounded in the infinite "progressivity" but in the actual infinity that actualizes the work and lets it enter into a dialectical, bilateral relationship with the fragment. As an organon, the whole is understood not as an unattainable (idealistic) Idea but as an Idea that receives more reality. Becoming the micro-cosmos with respect to a macro-cosmos, the fragment in its organic individuality actually implies the work as an organon. The organon is at the same time the totality, the instantiation with which the fragment enters into a dialectic relationship and the organizing or totalizing principle that holds and maintains the totality of the scattered fragments. Hence the fragment is caught between two infinities. The first would be in its attempt to represent totality, to become as complete an analogue to the totality as possible. The second would be in view of its absolute isolation, of the implicit microcosmic infinity that the whole inculcates in it.

With respect to this latter sense, Schlegel says that "every infinite individual is god" and

107 "It is more that it posits the exigency of its total closure, basically in opposition to 'progressive' poetry" (Lacoue- Labarthe and Nancy 43). 141 that "there are as many gods as there are ideas [A406]" (qtd. in Lacoue-Labarthe and

Nancy 48). He also affirms that, "a thought is a representation that is perfected for itself, fully formed (ausgebildet), total, and infinite within its limits. It is the most divine element in the human spirit" (qtd. in Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy 64). Thought and idea are for Schlegel in the same process of "infinitization of representation (in the Kantian sense)" and "this infinitization operates within the limits of a philosophy of finitude"

(ibid).

But the romantic 'actual'108 infinite is not the baroque 'real' infinite. The relationship of analogy upon which the former is based does not reach a complete overlapping between the analogues, even if it has more reality than an unattainable ideal.

Organic analogy brings infinity closer to the senses and makes it more actual. It is more sym-pathetic than a Kantian regulative Idea that through its limiting function will still produce a distancing effect. Placed within such an organic model, the fragment shows

(deuten) a "center" (Mitlelpunkt), by becoming itself such a (relative) center (Lacoue-

Labarthe and Nancy 44). Analyzing the hedgehog-like isolation of the fragment that can actually act like a foundation, Jena romanticism attempts to find ways of grounding while avoiding being stuck in a first principle (i.e., without exiting Kantian or critical requirements).

The actuality of the fragment approaches the real; but it will never reach reality or claim an ontological coverage. While in the example of the baroque pendulum, it is the same power that reaches a limit and turns around in the backswing, in the analogical fragment there is a back and forth, a turn towards the organic whole and a return as

i°8 tj-yth 0f tjjg fragment is not, therefore, entirely in the infinite progressivity of romantic poetry, but in the actual infinite, by means of the fragmentary apparatus, of the process of truth" (Lit Abs 45). 142 organic individuality. Being merely a transferable or metaphorical similarity, a similarity of relations (Ahnlichkeit von Relationen) (Kairos 68), the analogy between the fragment and the whole can only produce an analogy of reality. Although it 'feels' organic, the fragmentary micro-cosmos is not the macro-cosmos. An analogical presentation inevitably loses the existence, the substance of the object it presents.

Not so the infinitesimal monad. Even as an abbreviation of the world, it still causes real or concrete progress as it enters in a substantial similarity with other monads.

The baroque fragment is a ruin, a memento mori that does not await any type of completion. Baroque ruins tap into the virtual domain to become objects of a past that is pure and absolute (because unrelated to the present). This pure past is so alien that one cannot establish any type of relation to it. Fragments that come from such a past become partial objects always missing the whole, remaining absolutely (and not just relatively) non-totalizable. Deleuze says. "This is why virtual objects exist only as fragments of themselves: they are found only as lost, they exist only as recovered. Loss and forgetting here are not determinations to be overcome" (Deleuze, Difference 102). There is no possibility of constructing a whole, organic, ideal or otherwise anymore because this loss is, was and will always be a loss.109 Not lost for the sake of being found, the baroque fragment implicitly sets up a dialectics of losing and finding. As a lost virtual object that comes from a pure or absolutely unrelatable past, the baroque fragment cannot therefore be represented as an image having formative underpinnings, it cannot be constructed under any rule of production.

109 The fragment is an "eternal half of itself, it is where it is only in condition that it is not where it should be. It is where we find it only on condition that we search for it where it is not. It is at once not possessed by those who have it and had by those who do not possess it. It is always a 'was'" (Deleuze, Difference 102). 143

As virtual objects, baroque fragments "have the property of being and not being where they are" (Deleuze, Difference 102).110 They exist both in an absolute indivisible distance to the present (as the pure past of which they are a part cannot be grasped and brought into the present and understood in any way), and they dwell in an immediacy that brings them too close to be clearly discerned and makes them always shift and metamorphose their appearance. Hence the baroque fragment is always different from itself, a fragment of itself, "being essentially displaced in relation to itself' (Deleuze,

Difference 103). The intriguing aspect is that this immediacy will almost paradoxically produce a more intensive effect than a ruin that comes from a past mediated by means of an image and constructed by means of a synthesis of the imagination. This is because the

'buffer-zone' has been erased. A baroque ruin becomes an event, a happening that acquires a rather sensual reality; it does not only 'feel' real like the ruin that can still recall an unattainable ancient greatness. Although coming from a pure past that cannot be established as lived, the baroque ruin spills over and releases its energy in the present, producing the present, causing a present to pass, to become. This ruin is not an object of meditation anymore. It is a mysterious sign of despair; it causes an inconsolable vanitas that has a real impact on the present. More than that, this traumatic fragment or sign will never 'back ofF; it cannot be blocked or repelled because the virtual object will always be there, pre-existing every moment that passes into the real while causing the said passing.111 It even produces its own present, its own presence that is (eternally) pre­

110 Deleuze follows Lacan who "shows that real objects are subjected to the law of being or not being somewhere, by virtue of the reality principle; whereas virtual objects, by contrast, have the property of being and not being where they are, wherever they go" (Deleuze, Difference 102). '11 "Contemporaneous with itself as present, being itself its own past, pre-existing every present which passes in the real series, the virtual object belongs to the pure past. It is pure fragment and fragment of itself. As in a physical experiment, however, the incorporation of this pure fragment changes the quality and causes the present to pass into the series of real objects" (Difference 102). 144 existing with respect to the present moment that passes. In this sense, it becomes, as

Deleuze says, "contemporaneous with its own present, as pre-existing the passing present and as that which causes the present to pass" (.Difference 101).

Even if the baroque landscapes of desolation, the pessimistic infernal apocalyptic visions (or the more optimistic Leibnizian perspective) fail and do not come to pass in the present of the world112 (i.e., do not become real), they would still have an ontological status. They remain incompossible (i.e., neither impossible nor inherently contradictory).

Baroque fragments possess an actuality that is "existing" or "existifying", it is an actuality that immediately contains the possible and is not split by presupposing it, as in the case of romantic actuality (particularly, the actuality of the infinite). It all comes down to testing a structure of thought against the (Aristotelian) principle of contradiction as the root of representativeness. While Leibniz manages to ultimately evade the principle by exiting through a back door,113 Kant will test positively Aristotelian. The

Leibnizian possible is actual, imbued with being. But the Kantian actual (even when projected into the infinite) cannot overlook to check the condition of possibility that inevitably makes it (indirectly) relatable.

Resemblance: Benjamin and the "Medium of Reflection"

'12 Voltaire showed this failure through his Candida while mocking Leibnizian philosophy 113 In short, Aristotle says that one cannot be and not be at the same time, one sentence excluding the other. "It is not possible to say truly at the same time that the same thing is and is not a man" (Metaphysics 1006b 35). From such a point of view, existence would be a result of being able to be contradicted and thus delimited from non-existence. Or, in other words, everything that exists must be tested by the principle of contradiction. However, Leibniz would say that if something cannot be contradicted, it will have to be declared both indiscernible and identical (and thus having still the same existence); such existence would be outside contradiction. The conclusion is that Aristotle's principle of contradiction should be restricted to logic, to a general logic not the transcendental logic of Salomon Maimon for example, and not pass judgments on existence because such judgments can never become substantial. The existence that they can fathom is not the real existence but merely the representation of existence. 145

The Jena romantic idea of perfection is embedded in a form that has surpassed its materiality, its present content, and emptied itself out to become what is called a pure form. This notion of form is thus not restricted to its material manifestation (to a form in which content is embedded) but will have a double meaning. The work of art has a form in which it is presented, but, with the help of irony, this form is sacrificed in order to reach the idea of form or what is called the eternal, absolute form:

The particular form of the individual work, which we might call the presentational form, is sacrificed to ironic dissolution. Above it, however, irony flings open a heaven of eternal form, the idea of forms (which we might call absolute form), and proves the survival of the work, which draws its indestructible subsistence from that sphere, after the empirical form, the expression of its isolated reflection, has been consumed by the absolute form. {Selected Writings, 1. 164)'14

This ironic capacity, which is another name for criticism ("Kritik"), proves that the work becomes an authentic work of art while acceding towards a so-called indestructibility:

"Indem es sich in seiner Form beschrankt, macht es sich in zufalliger Gestalt verganglich, in vergehender Gestalt aber ewig durch Kritik" (Benjamin Gesammelte Schrifien 1: 115).

Irony does not destroy the work of art, but rather dissolves it115 in order to bring it closer to its indestructibility. It helps the work transcend its material form, sacrificing it (i.e., making it sacred) in order to reach its absolute form. The romantic ironic reflection is a self-limitation but at the same time a self-overcoming (Selbst-Erhdhung). It is a limitation or a sacrifice of the materiality of the form through criticism, an emptying of any content, that is at the same time an enhancement (Potenzierung) and an intensification

114 Die bestimmte Form des einzelnen Werkes, die man als Darstellungsform bezeichnen mOge wird das Opfer ironischer Zersetzung Ober ihr aber reiBt die Ironie einen Himmel ewiger Form, die Idee da Formen, auf, die man die absolute Form nennen mag und erweist der Oberleben des Werkes, das aus dieser Sphere sein unzerstdrbares Bestehen schopft, nachdem die empinsche Form, der Ausdruck seiner isolierten Reflexion, von ihr versetzt wurde. (Benjamin Gesammelte Schriften 1: 86) 115 "Welche unwiderrullich und emsthatt die Form auflOst um das einzelne Werk ins absolute Kunstwerk zu verwandeln, zu romantisieren" (Benjamin Gesammelte Schriften 85). 146

(Steigerung), a spiritualization that has a compensative effect of diminishing the material content while exponentially enhancing the form. Romantic art strives towards reaching what is called "die Poesie der Poesie,"116 an equivalent of "das Ich des Ich,"117 that helps one discover that Archimedean point, that vantage point outside the world and the work of art from where one can perceive it as a totality. "Jene Stelle auBer der Welt ist gegeben, und Archimedes kann sein Versprechen erfullen" (Benjamin Gesammelte

Schriften 1: 93).

Romantic criticism is thus not a judgment on the work of art as such but rather a fulfillment that occurs by means of the work's dissolution in the absolute. Significantly, this type of irony is denominated by Benjamin as an "objective lawfulness" (objektive

Gesetzlichkeit), which cannot be defined exclusively by means of the subjectivity of the artist anymore. In this sense, the Jena romantic theory of art hints at moving away from the subjectivity born of the Kantian sublime. It thus prevents placing the aesthetic judgment solely inside the mind, within reason (everything depending on receptivity).

The early romantic scenario is determined to find a middle path viewing the aesthetic judgment, on the one the hand, as objectively embedded in the work of art while, on the other, being in need of recognition by the critical mind. The work of art would thus have its intrinsic qualities to which the critical mind will and must react. Residing in the space between the forma mentis and the form of the work of art, it will dwell in an infinite continuum of forms that progressively strives to approach what is called the absolute or the symbolic form, i.e., the idea of art. By attaching such objective ruling (objective

Gesetzlichkeit), by putting more emphasis on the work of art as such, the Jena romantics

116 The poetry of poetry is prose, the novel especially, because of its capacity to be both whole and progressive. 117 Novalis says: "Die hOchste Aufgabe der Bildung ist, sich seines eigenen transzendentalen Selbst zu bemachtigen, das Ich des Ich zugleich zu sein" (qtd. in Benjamin Gesammelte Schriften 93). 147 decrypt intentional ity in the work of art and thus foresee the modern Husserlian

phenomenology in its negotiation between noema and Hoesv.s.118

Aesthetic value depends on the recognition of the mind, relies on the mind as an a

priori regulatory principle. The author himself cannot transcend the limitation of this absolute form of art. "Der Author echter Kunstwerke ist in denjenigen Beziehungen eingeschrankt, in denen das Kunstwerk einer objektiven Gesetzlichkeit der Kunst unterworfen ist" (Benjamin Gesammelte Schriften 1. 83). The limitation is always on the formal level: "Die objektive Gesetzlichkeit, welcher das Kunstwerk durch die Kunst

unterworfen ist, besteht (...) in dessen Form" (Benjamin Gesammelte Schriften 1: 83).

The range of the author, his so-called originality, can only act on the level of content and

not of form: "die Willkur des wahren Dichters hat also ihren Spielraum allein im Stoff'

(Benjamin Gesammelte Schriften 1: 83). The romantic genius in his originality does not

have absolute freedom, because his subjectivity will always be regulated by absolute form. Although, on the one hand, it is liberation from a finite, accomplished form becoming an infinite approximation of the idea of art, it is still, on the other hand, a limitation on a transcendental level by this very Idea - the Idea of art being a universal framework that acts both as a container and as a medium that receives and holds the

"sacrificed" forms of the individual works of art.

In Jena romanticism, form is no longer understood as an aspect of style. It is no longer taken as the mere embellishment of presented content, or the medium of showing it (Mittel zur Darstellung des Inhalts) (Benjamin Gesammelte Schriften 1: 76). It does not show something else, but turns into a self-reflective medium that can merely show itself.

118 Husserl himself was inspired by Brentano and, especially, by Bolzano who, in his Theory ofScience (1835), criticized Kant's understanding of subjectivity. 148

It presents itself in what it shows; it shows itself in the act of presentation. But here a dilemma arises. The moment form shows itself, it ceases to be that which is shown. It cannot simultaneously be both the subject and object of the act of presentation. The moment it shows itself, it becomes an object with respect to a subject being forced to commute or oscillate (to use Kant's term) between being either a subject or an object

(thus merely exchanging roles). Hence it can never really catch up with itself and thus extends the presentation to the infinite. It becomes a presentation that cannot stop, always in a progressive strife towards an unattainable goal. It cannot finalize this process by finding a defined telos. The telos remains always distant, undefined yet still definable because the moment it reaches an end, this end will self-transcend itself by turning into a new beginning. As it cannot really exit this self-reflective framework or medium, form's infinite self-presentation becomes a (sublime) presentation of the infinite. There will always be a gap (temporal and spatial) caused by the fact that the act of presentation is inevitably embedded in a priori intuitions of time and space. The temporal gap is, in this case, more significant, since time is the form of inner sense and form's self-presentation takes place self-reflectively inside itself (in sich). The said objectivity of the work of art still functions as hors d'oeuvre,119 as something essentiality placed outside the work as such (while presupposing that the work will have an interiority of its own). The aesthetic experience is thus the meeting place where two interiorities intersect their exteriorizations.

In an important essay on Benjamin and romanticism, Winfried Menninghaus broaches the problem of reflection: "For the concept of reflection represents the nucleus

119 Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy speculate on the French idiom that suggests a process of undermining the created work which equals its opening towards the Absolute. "( . . .) bilden and gestalten, is here to work and to {resent, darstellen- tlie-outside-the-work [hors d'oeuvre] that is essential to the work" (Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy 48). 149 and central focus of the entire study, while criticism figures only as one of the systematic consequences of this concept of reflection, alongside form, the work, irony, transcendental poetry and the novel" (Hansen, Benjamin and Romanticism 19). In the context of Jena romanticism, accordingly, reflection takes place between enities that end up determining each other reciprocally. The reciprocity between the reflection and the reflected that occurs in such a medium actually activates their mutual construction. Both enter into an impossibility of being without the other, engendering a circular relationship without a true starting point. This means that the forms of thought that are supposed to be able to obtain the knowledge of the given, of the real, of something outside themselves, can only construct each other while being created reflectively inside this medium.

Salomon Maimon would say that such a relationship bespeaks an identity between the form of thought and its content that cannot allow any melange from intuition.

Understanding (Verstand) can merely construct pure concepts that are empty without being able to accommodate real intuition.120 What Kant calls sensible intuition is after all only rationally a priori and not purely a priori. As Gueroult explains in La Philosophie transcedentale de Salomon Maimon .

Les formes de la pensee, qui sont destinees a nous procurer la connaissance du donne, sont produites par la pensee, de la leur caractere rationnel et a priori, mais produites pour ainsi dire en vertu du choc de ce donne a penser, si bien que les formes tout en etant a priori ne sont pas pures (52).

One can thus say that the process of perceiving a form can be done only through reflection. Form and reflection are thus bound together, determining each other reciprocally such that one is not able to function without the other. Seen in its own

120 "Cette identity de la forme et de la matiere temoigne qu'ils sortent de l'entendement sans aucun melange d' intuition" (Gueroult 40-41). 150 reflection, the created form is surpassed by the absolute form. At this point the jump into the continuum of art occurs. The higher form, the idea of form that is beyond the visible form, can now be intuited rationally. This moment is at the same time an expansion and a restriction. While it expands the created work of art beyond the limit of material form by showing the higher or absolute form, it also implicitly restricts and regulates it by positing such an unreachable goal. There is thus another type of limit at work here. The limitation caused by the reflection with respect to the manifested form can be seen also as causing a temporary stop in the progressive process of infinite Bildung. In becoming a part of the infinite continuum, each individual form is literally taken over as it enters into a dynamic relationship with other forms making up the continuum. As this continuum has a mediating character, the works of art placed therein are still related among themselves.

The individual works are seen in a succession of forms being projected towards an infinite goal: the Idea of art. Criticism is thus not an evaluation; it is the discovery of the poieticity of the work. This poieticity is about unveiling singularity but rather 'makes' a work artistic by placing it in the continuum of art while relating it to its "peers" at the same time.

Yet this is, in truth, not so much a standard of judgment as, first and foremost, the foundation of a completely different kind of criticism - one which is not concerned with judging, and whose center of gravity lies not in the evaluation of the single work but in demonstrating its relations to all other works and, ultimately, to the idea of art. (Selected Writings 1: 159)121

The particular works of art are not completely dissolved in the Idea of Art. The status of this continuum is not one of pure ungrounding lacking any telos (like that of Heraclitus'

121 Diese (die Kritik) ist jedoch in Wahrheit nicht sowohl der MaBstab der Beurteilung, als zuvflrdererst und in erster Linie die Grundlage einer vOllig anderen, nicht beurteilend eingestelhen Art von Kritik, deren Schwergewicht nicht in der Einsch&tzung des einzelnen Werkes, sondem in der Darstellung seiner Relational zu alien ilbrigen Werken und endlich zu der Idee der Kunst liegt. (Benjamin Gesammelte Schriften 1: 78) (italics mine) 151 river wherein one cannot establish any type of continuity). The romantic works of art, like beads on a string, are merely placed in an infinite progression. They are not fully transubstantiated in the Idea of art; they function only in a relationship that presupposes an ontological and qualitative difference that keeps them formed as separately defined entities. Although the romantic absolute is supposed to be beyond all form, it is still receives a determination via the work of art, thus making it into a "relative absolute."

In this sense, pure form is the source of formation. It is the chaos that awaits formation. But it is not absolutely amorphous or indiscernible; one can still discern its systematicity. This so-called Kunstchaos will imminently expect and require the formation or unfolding of a harmonious Creation. As Schlegel famously says: "Aber die hochste Schonheit, ja die hochste Ordnung ist denn doch nur die des Chaos, namlich eines solchen, welches nur auf die Beriihrung der Liebe wartet, um sich zu einer harmonischen Welt zu entfalten" (qtd. in Benjamin Gesammelte Schriften 1: 92). As the ontological equivalent of the Idea of Art, this chaotic beauty becomes the ultimate inspiration for every individual work of art, the condition for everything artistic. Enabling the infinitely incomplete122 medium, it will also trigger its progressivity. This is because not being fully monadic (i.e., enclosed in itself), it will always have a remainder (Rest).

Its path being infinite, such a medium becomes a continuum in which, like 'bumps' on this road, the individual works of art appear in a succession of pure forms.

The individual work of art is part of this continuum as a form. It is not simply dissolved in this continuum. Retaining its formation inevitably acts as a brake or

122 Completion is the main reproach against the classical literature because "das abgeschlossene Gebilde" has to be conceived within the unity of form and content, form being in this configuration only a derivative expression, a side effect of content, an expression of the style of the author. The main point is that the static model-based classical literature is obstructing what the Jena romantics call "das ewige Werden in der schfipferischen Bewegung im Formenmedium" (GS 112). 152 limitation. Even though the pure form shows no image, no Bild it shows itself as formation in the process of formation of the image, the Bildung. While being true that this process places the work of art in a continuum that lacks a clearly established finality or telos, it will still end up determining the infinite path as its goal. Not only that, Jena romanticism further betrays its Kantian premises as it configures the infinity of its path as a unity:"Denn die romantische Einheit ist eine Unendlichkeit" (Benjamin Gesammelte

Schriften 1: 110). This higher form is the result of the created form collapsing into its own reflection. It is the moment when reflection and form are one and the same and when form limits reflection and reflection limits form resulting in a so-called self-limitation.

"Die hohere Form ist die Selbstbeschrankung der Reflexion" (Benjamin Gesammelte

Schriften 1: 76). The main idea is that it cannot go outside its own reachability. Benjamin quotes from a Lyzeum fragment the following:

Value and...dignity of self-restriction, which for the artist as for the man...is the highest and most necessary thing. The most necessary: for wherever one does not limit oneself, the world imposes limits, whereby one becomes a slave. The highest: for one can limit oneself only at those points and on those sides where one has infinite power - self-creation and self-annihilation. (Selected Writings 1: 157)123

The act of limitation has to be done inside the range of the I, since it perceives it as a self- limitation. A determination in itself (in sich) is still at a distance from itself and thus not completely itself by determining itself completely or absolutely. While being true that this determination is not external, it is still not the inner, complete determination; even internalized, there is still a regulatory principle at work. As a self-regulating principle,

123 Wert... und Wiirde der Selbstbeschrankung, die doch fur den Menschen... das Notwendigste und das Hochste ist. Das Notwendigste: denn iiberall, wo man sich nicht selbst beschrankt, beschrankt einem die Welt; wodurch man Knecht wild. Das Hochste: denn man kann sich nur in den Punkten und an den Seiten selbst beschranken, wo man unendliche Kraft hat; SelbsterschOpfung und Selbstvernichtung... (Gesammelte Schriften 1: 74). 153 reflection will thus limit poetic imagination from any excessive overflow or hollow rapture (Schwarmerei), cooling it off and making it more sober (nuchtern)124. Since it does not really overstep the boundaries of the mind, the form of the work of art will also not be able to go beyond its formal conditions.

The dialectics produced in this process of limitation/surpassing

(Vernichtung/Erhohung) is still present and holding back the romantic form. It is a two- step gesture that can only be resolved as a sequence and not in simultaneity. The Kantian sublime can only intuit simultaneity; it will never be able to validate it in possible experience and thus never be able to actualize what Benjamin calls "kristallinische

Simultaneitat."125 Thus, Romantic art criticism sees itself caught between the infinity of the art ("Unendlichkeit der Kunst") and the presentation of the individual work

("Darstellungsform des einzelnen Werkes") (Benjamin, Gesammelte Schriften 1: 73).

Even though the whole process does not lose its unity, the unity that it retains is a mere relative one ("relative Einheit").

But since every single reflection in this medium can be only an isolated and fortuitous one, the unity of the work vis-a-vis the unity of art can be only a relative unity; the work remains burdened with a moment of contingency. It is precisely the function of form to admit this particular contingency as in principle necessary or unavoidable, to acknowledge it through the rigorous self-limitation of reflection. (Selected Writings 1:

124 The Jena romantics are also against all the forms of Platonic mania or so-called inspiration by an outside muse. 125 There are still two alternating moments inside it: one of attraction the other of repulsion. "Die Zusammenfassung der Vielheit in die Einheit, nicht des Gedankens, sondern der Anschauung, mi thin des Sukzessiv-AufgefaBten in einen Augenblick, ist dagegen ein Regressus, der die Zeitbedingung im Progressus der Einbildungskraft wieder aufhebt und das Zugleichsein anschaulich macht" (Kant Kritik der Urteibkmfi 74). Again, the unity of the origin is not a unity of parts that form a whole. 26 Weil aber jede einzelne Reflexion in diesem Medium nur eine vereinzelte, eine zufellige sein kann, ist auch die Einheit des Werkes gegenilber der der Kunst nur eine relative, das Werk bleibt mit einem Moment da- Zufelligkeit behaftet Diese besondere Zufiilligkeit als eine prinzipiell notwendige d.h. unvenneidliche einzugestehen, sie durch die strenge Selbstbeschrtakung der Reflexion zu bekennen, ist die genaue Funktion der Form (Benjamin Gesammelte Schriften 1: 73) 154

Even though elevated with respect to its created form, the work of art still cannot shake off its formation. Its universality is still formal127 because the gesture of unbounding/unlimiting that transforms it into a limitless opus ("grenzenloses Werk") is done only inside the boundaries of the work of art. Benjamin quotes Schlegel saying that

"A work is fromed when it is everywhere sharply delimited, but within those limits is limitless ..., when it is wholly true to itself, is everywhere the same, yet (sublimely n.n.) elevated above itself' (Selected Writings 1: 157-158).128

The individual work of art will never become one with the absolute Idea of Art. In

Jena romanticism, the dialectics between the individual work of art and the infinite continuum of the Idea of art cannot be overcome and resolved in any kind of Aufhebung.

The individual work of art, bound to the self-limitation of its form, will never merge and substantially become the Idea of art and will thus never being able to fully express it.

Although the idea of art as such is absolute, the equation between an individual work of art and the idea of art can only be presented as a relationship that becomes necessary and unavoidable, "prinzipiell notwendige d.h. unvermeidliche (Beziehung)" (Benjamin

Gesammelte Schriften 1: 73).

From the point of view of its formation (and not of its finite form), the romantic work of art is an implicit arspoetica. By showing how it was made, it tells the

(transcendental) story of its own creation, of its own Bildung. But the attempt to look exclusively at form(ation) (thus implicitly minimizing its dependence to content) does not automatically qualify the realization of what is called an absolute or independent or non-

127 "In dieser Arbeit beruht sie auf den Keimzellen der Reflexion, den positive formalin Momenten der Werkes, die zu universal informal auflOst" (Benjamin Gesammelte Schriften 1: 73). 128 "Gebildet ist ein Werk, wenn es ttberall scharf begren/t, innerhalb der Greiizcn aber grenzenlos...ist, wenn es sich selbst ganz treu, uberall gleich und doch aber sich erhaben ist" (Benjamin Gesammelte Schriften 1: 76). 155 formative form. Trying to resolve the duality by focusing only on form still generates dependence: the dependence on a formative form is still a form of dependence. Even when looking at the form of form (or "die Poesie der Poesie," "das Denken des

Denkens," "das Ich des Ich"), at the medium, the framework in which all forms are created and where form as such is absolute and pure, the act of creation is necessary and unavoidable. This transcendental poetry must present itself in every presentation and thus it must be at the same time poetry and the poetry of poetry: "zugleich Poesie und Poesie der Poesie" (Benjamin Gesammelte Schriflen 1: 95). Reflection may be temporarily arrested in its bursting forth as a flash or a snapshot; its (progressive) dialectics will never arrive at complete rest or standstill, though. Benjamin speaks of a "Doppelnatur der

Werkes" and of a "doppelter FormbegrifF'129 that makes it both one and all, "Ein und

Alles"130 resolving itself in a permanent act of commuting between the two which can only be perceived as a relative unity {relative Einheit). This irresolvable discrepancy between the individual work of art and the absolute idea of art puts the individual work of art in a rather awkward position; it roams in an intermediary suspended, in an almost limbo-like realm in which it cannot be truly individual in itself (like the baroque monad), because it is a fragment that requires completion, systematization and Erhohung from its created form by means of irony and criticism.

Even though this scenario is not the same as the previously described, the resemblance created inside this reflective medium still strives for an overlapping,

129 One form is the created one, the form in the manifested work of art, and the other is the higher, the symbolic form that is the form of this form and arises as the result of the overcoming of the created form. The created form as such is sacrificed and elevated in the process of Bildung of the absolute form, the form that can never be reached but only approximated because it is just a pure medium that enables creation and not a spiritualized stable form like Plato's Idea that can be filled with content. 130 "Hier erhalt die Ant wort einen berichtigen Hinweis auf die Doppelnatur des Werkes: es ist nur eine relative Einheit, bleibt ein Essay, in wclchem Ein und Alles sich eingelegt findcn" (Benjamin Gesammelte Schriften 1: 75). 156 whereas the fragment or the part, standing in for the whole, will have tendency to merge

(or replace) the latter. However a simile-like analogy is relative in the same way as a synecdoche-like one: the overlapping of two similar specimens will never be perfect and the replacement of the whole by the part is not complete. In both cases the remainder

(Rest) is furthering and requiring additional continuation. Hence this stop is not a full- stop, a stop that by being fully finished in itself could put the dialectics to rest while sufficiently satisfying reason. Here "sufficiently" does not mean permanently, movement being substantially linked and only formally different from such a halt. The same happens in the baroque with a shift in preponderance. Even while predicting imminent movement, the moment of the swing back of the pendulum, the Umschwung in the Trauerspiel, is a completed stop nonetheless.

Romantic resemblance is not projected on a typical Platonic background of a double-decked universe in which resemblance takes place between an eternal Idea and its temporal copy. The Kantian/Jena romantic approach is different from the Neo-Platonic scenario in the way it redirects the causation from a spiritual realm of Ideas towards subjectivity integrating the cause inside the 1. This integration is still "/« sich" and thus points to an infinite inner reflexivity. Not having anything to do with what Kant would call "an sich," this "integration of the ground" and its subsequent temporalization is, according to Manfred Frank, an original idea.

Diese betonte Integration des 'Grundes' in das sich selbst entfliehende Ich ist ohne Zweifel eine neue, in der Philosophic vor der Romantik unbekannte Note. DaB Novalis, Schlegel, Schelling usw. diese Selbstflucht als Zeit erkannten, nahert ihre philosophischen Positionen auf eine merkwurdige Weise denjenigen der modernen Zeitphilosophien. DaB das Selbstbewusstsein sich verzeitlicht, ist etwas radikal anderes als die undialektische neuplatonische Spannung von Ewigkeit und Zeitlichkeit. (Das Problem Zeit 222) 157

The integration of the ground is neither a real ungrounding nor an absolute grounding

(i.e., neither dwelling in Heraclitus' river of pure difference nor discovering an authentic origin). It is an original affirmation of a subject that is not only the Kantian I, drawing its identity from its transcendental 'roots', but also an I that assembles while disassembling itself horizontally in every temporal moment in a sequential manner. Hence without entering into what Derrida would call a deconstructive process, this I constructs itself while residing alternatively in the unifying synthesis and in its dialectical deployment (in the overlapping identity as such and in the relating duality between the reflection and the

reflecting entities). The Kantian presupposition of unity will always strive towards

identifying the (two) separated parts and the reconstruction of a whole. The two states

however, identity and duality can only alternate, a simultaneous overlapping of the

reflected and the reflecting instantiation cannot last because they cannot be absolutely

identical. The impossibility of reaching an absolute identity coupled with a necessary

striving thereafter furthers this alternation and creates temporality in the process. The

relative separation of the two poles of reflection will not only create temporality while

inevitably immersing the subject in it, but it will also overcome the static, "undialectical"

Platonism based on a finite representation. Romanticism will inaugurate an alienation

process that unfolds in time and that will be carried over and augmented into modernity

as well, where temporality has become the alpha and omega of the human condition.

Thus the integration of the cause or ground in a self-reflecting I cannot solve the

dilemmatic existential condition of the subject. The romantic I turns out be to constructed

from two sides, yet at the same time also being constricted by them, by its own formative

limitation. 158

Opposition: Paul de Man and the temporal dimension of allegory

The idea of integrating the ground and placing the cause inside the self does not necessarily have to lead to an inner progressivity in a medium of reflection. If reflection fails and the self does not recognize itself anymore, the whole scenario can be perceived as an irresolvable conflict, as an opposition between two irreconcilable sides. It may be true that such allegorical progressivity together with moments of Witz beckons to self- knowledge, to the knowledge of the reasonable limits of who we are. This self- knowledge is not the antique yvtoGi aeaurov ("gnothi seauton") in which temporality appears as the mobile copy, the "moving image," of eternity. Rather it is placed horizontally on an immanent plane in which the relationships become more dialectic.

Jena romanticism was grounded in an acute feeling of loss, a crisis of presentation131 that still retains a propensity for reconstruction, for the "romanticization" the world. Rejecting the Neoplatonic notion of emanation from a transcendent realm, the Jena romantics ventured to recuperate their Ideas aesthetically and transcendentally.

Paul de Man is surely one of the most astute thinkers who have studied closely the romantic idea of allegory and its implications with respect to temporality. As he writes:

The dialectical relationship between subject and object is no longer the central statement of romantic thought, but this dialectic is now located entirely in the temporal relationships that exist within a system of allegorical signs. It becomes a conflict between a conception of the self seen in its authentically temporal predicament and a defensive strategy that tries to hide from this negative self-knowledge. On the level of

131 "Kant bequeaths this crisis of presentation to his successors by effectively depriving the subject of its being-subject, i .e., of its adequate presentation of itself to itself, reducing the subject to little more than the logically necessary, purely regulatory idea of the unity of its representations. This crisis of presentation provides an initial context for the development of idealism and romanticism alike" (Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy 5). 159

language, the asserted superiority of the symbol over allegory ... is one of the forms taken by this tenacious self-mystification. (Blindness 208)

Like analogy and resemblance, opposition still works within the margins of representation. While Benjamin conceives allegory to be entirely different from the symbol,132 de Man inherently links the two in reciprocal opposition. De Man does not therefore consider allegory to be totally separate and broken off from the symbol, spawning different forms, aspects or modes of conceiving and surpassing the linkage the subject and the object. In this sense, he stands apart from both Benjamin and Deleuze, who asserts that, "if we consider the logical relation of a concept to its object, we discover that the linkage can be surpassed in a symbolical and an allegorical way" (Fold

125). From this point of view, de Man's notion of allegory is still paying tribute structurally to Goethe and the romantics. More precisely, he opts for a rather romantic

(i.e., not pejorative) valorization of allegory. Benjamin points out correctly in his Concept of Criticism in German Romanticism that: "the theory of art propounded by early

Romantics and that formulated by Goethe are opposed to each other in their principles"

{Selected Writings 1: 178).133 From such a structural point of view, the difference between, on the one side de Man and the romantics, and Goethe on the other, is still specific (and not pure); de Man merely reverses Goethe's rather devaluing connotation, allowing allegory to take the upper hand with respect to the symbol. In short, while the symbol would create a rather illusory unity, a mere mystification, allegory is conscious of a gap that cannot be crossed in any way. De Man is thus right in saying that "early romantic literature finds its true voice" when it is expressing the inability of the self to

132 Deleuze is right when he says that "Walter Benjamin made a decisive step forward in our understanding of the Baroque when he showed that allegory was not a failed symbol, or an abstract personification, but a power of figuration entirely different from that of the symbol" (Fold 125). 133 "Die Kunsttheorie der Frflhromantiker und die Goethe's sind in den Prinzipien einander entgegengesetzt" (Benjamin Gesammelte Schriften 1: 110). 160 form an "illusory identification with the non-self, which is now fully, though painfully, recognized as a non-self' (Blindness 226). The Romantic project is thus most authentic when it expresses the stark separation by means of an uncrossable bridge between subject and object, man and the universe, man and God. Such a deadlock is created by the "inner absorption of mortality" (33) as de Man says in "Wordsworth and Holderlin" from

Rhetoric of Romanticism. We will see that as much as it emphasizes its uncrossability, such separation is still relative (and not absolute). The condition of possibility of a bridge, i.e., its constructability, is still not overcome; uncrossability being a mere inability in which the condition of possibility is still intact. It not an absolute impossibility to cross yet.

In the symbol, subject and object form a unity. As de Man says, "the symbol is founded on an intimate unity between the image that rises up before the senses and the supersensory totality that the image suggests" {Blindness 188-89). In allegory, however, subject and object are irreconcilably different and separate: "in the world of allegory, time is the originary constitutive category... The meaning constituted by the allegorical sign can.. consist only in the repetition.. of a previous sign with which it can never coincide, since it is of the essence of this previous sign to be pure anteriority" {Blindness

200). Hence de Man concludes that "whereas the symbol postulates the possibility of an identity or identification, allegory designates primarily a distance in relation to its own origin, and renouncing the nostalgia and the desire to coincide, it establishes its language in the void of this temporal difference" {Blindness 207). From this perspective, romantic thought seems to be consistent on all levels: the void of temporal difference created by an allegorical approach seen in itself is opposed to the unity of the symbol. More than that, 161 opposition, like a forma mentis, is projected on a horizontal level producing inner tensions between irreconcilable authorities established temporally. However, even if it manages to indefinitely negate and defer its tendency towards the unreachable unity of the absolute, this perspective still cannot upset the overall representative framework. It is only opposed to it, opposition being a category of representation. Opposition as such is a mere reversal that does not exit the conditions of the given framework. In other words, the negation of such an unreachable unity is still relating to it because in order to be able to negate something it, it must be presupposed and conceived.

In the wake of the Kantian aftermath, the Romantic age loses the upper level of eternity that is characterized by simultaneity, the nunc stems in the mythical eternal moment in which the unity is certainly realizable. We have seen that even the Kantian sublime can intuit merely simultaneity;134 it cannot hold onto it and thus acknowledge it in experience, though. The very barrier of perceiving the ontological status of temporality resides in its sequentiality. Understood as temporal sequence, allegory is unable to reach a symbolic unity while continuing to allegorize itself in a perpetual attempt to reach it.

Thus romanticism is caught in this "the inability of the self to form an illusory identification with the non-self, which is now fully, though painfully, recognized as a non-self' (Blindness 210) (italics mine).

The fact that the projection cannot be clearly identified as a non-self, its image being still in a process (Bildung) and not fully formed yet, betrays an infinite longing for a higher yet unreachable goal or Idea. The element of pain that comes with the recognition of the difference between the self and the non-self testifies to a deep-rooted

134 Kant speaks, in *|27, of the "Regressus, der die Zeitbedingung im Progressus der Hinbildungskiaft wieder aufhebt und das Zugleichsein anschaulich macht" (Kant Kritik der Urteilskraft 99-100). 162 incongruence. Such a posture is still different from a fully accepted Sisyphus-like ontological condition in which existence is pain. For there is still a hidden lament for a lost (absolute) synthesis, for the simultaneity of a divine eternal present where past, present and fixture would fully coincide.

Time and eternity cannot overcome their dialectical relationship. The romantic twist is that eternity can only show itself through time while contradicting it. As Novalis says, "Das ausser der Zeit Befindliche kann nur in der Zeit thatig, oder sichtbar sein"

(qtd. in Frank, Das Problem Zeit 220). Even though the relationship between time and eternity is contradictory or paradoxical, it is still a relationship. As Ideas, time and eternity are not absolutely unrelated, existing in "complete and immaculate independence" from each other135. Temporality thus triggers the act of the presentation of eternity while being a condition of it. It steps into the equation while being the condition of a synthesis136 that cannot be achieved because of its very conditioned status; a condition is not able to overcome or auto-annihilate itself, its essence being to make everything possible. In such a configuration, temporality seems indeed insurmountable.

Again, Novalis writes: "Die Zeit kann nie aufhoren - Wegdenken konnen wir die Zeit

nicht - denn die Zeit ist ja Bedingung des denkenden Wesens - die Zeit hort nur mit dem

Denken auf. Denken aufier der Zeit ist ein Unding" (qtd. in Frank, Das Problem Zeit

214). In this case, representation and its inevitable reflexivity are conjured by a

relationship of opposition.

135 An example of absolute unbridgeability is described by Benjamin in Leibnizian terms: (...) can stand in their own perfect isolation as mere words never can. And so ideas subscribe to the law which states: all essences exist in complete and immaculate independence, not only from phenomena, but, especially, from each other. Just as the harmony of the spheres depends on the orbits of stars which do not come into contact with each other, so the existence of the mundus intelligibilis depends on the unbridgeable distance between pure essences. Every idea is like a sun and is related to other ideas just as suns are related to each other. The harmonious relationship between such essences is what constitutes truth" (Origin 37). 136 Novalis says that "die Zeit ist die Bedingung der Synthese" (qtd. in Frank, Das Problem Zeit 159). 163

Identity: Novalis and the Absolute

When Novalis reproaches Kant with a certain "one-sided-ness," he is simultaneously correct and incorrect.137 Even though the sublime does not solve the Kantian problem of presentation, it is still pointing in the right direction. Like choosing to see the glass as either half-full or half-empty, this absolute, although not knowable, will still prove useful.

It is 'usable' in the way it generates, on the one side, a search and, on the other, a free activity. While being mutually exclusive, both sides prove to be commendable.138

Within the multifaceted romantic landscape, Novalis finds his distinctive voice by way of renouncing the search for the absolute, a search that results in "an unending free activity" (Novalis, Fichte Studies 167). Before arriving at the conclusion of this chapter, a closer look at Novalis' philosophical thought may offer some insightful clarifications of the idea of the romantic absolute. When approaching such a complex idea, the author of

Die Lehrlinge zu Sais often used paradoxical images like "die Quadratur des Zirkels" or

"der Stein der Weisen"(Novalis, Schriften 2: 104)139. He identifies the character of the absolute with a lack of change, opposition and becoming, with standstill and tranquility:

"Der Character der Absoluten ist - keine Veranderung - kein Gegensetzen - kein

Fortsetzen - Stillstand - Ruhe - Identitaf (Frank, Das Problem Zeit 158) (my italics).

1371 am referring here to his affirmation from his Kant Studies in which he wrote: "the whole Kantian method - the whole Kantian way of philosophizing is one-sided. And it could with some justice be called Scholasticism" (qtd. in Kneller 201). 1S! In truth, the opposition between Novalis and Kant is not to be understood in such definitive terms. Novalis felt that Kant was undervaluing the positive valences of the sublime. The note to the Introduction to the Third critique quoted by Kneller in Philosophical Romanticism (198) however shows that Kant himself was conscious that "another way out" is also conceivable. 139 "Sollte es nicht ein VermOgen in uns geben, was dieselbe Rolle hier spielte, wie die t este auBer uns - der Ather - jene unsichtbar sichtbare Materie, der Stein der Weisen - der Uberall und nirgends, alles und nichts ist - Instinkt oder Genie heiflen wir sie. - Sie ist (lberall vorher. Sie ist die Falle der Zukunft - die Zeitenfolle Oberhaupt - in der Zeit, was der Stein der Weisen im Raum ist - Vemunft - Phantasie - Verstand und Sinn (Bedeutmg 3-5 Sinne) sind nur ihre einzelnen Funktionen" (Novalis, Schriften 2: 104). 164

The absolute thus becomes the exact opposite with respect to the flow and the change of time. Because this identity is never reachable, Novalis begins to question the viability of such a quest. The absolute will always fall behind as an ever distancingmorgana, and will not give in to such impetuous or 'offensive' attempts. Being a mere regulative idea ("regulative Begriff, eine Vernunftidee"), the search for it turns into an absurd quest for a non-thing ("Wir suchen also ein Unding"). His conclusion is that this search has no real effectuality ("Reale Wirksamkeit") (Frank, Das Problem Zeit 214). As a process of infinite perfectibility, it is in fact nothing other than an eternal lack.

The unreachability of the absolute would only create a feeling of unhappiness in the searching subject. For Novalis, the fact that a succession of punctual and temporary

'victories' can convey only relative satisfactions, but never an absolute fulfillment, is not a positive or viable option. Wanting to find the right foundations for philosophy, Novalis sees himself confronted with the same profound contradiction. "Wenn dieser Begriff eine

Unmoglichkeit enthielte - so ware der Trieb zu Philosophieren eine unendliche Tatigkeil

- und darum ohne Ende, weil ein Bedurfhiss nach einem absoluten Grunde vorhanden ware, das noch nur relativ gestillt werden konnte - und darum nie aufhoren wurde" (qtd. in Frank, Das Problem Zeil 214, italics mine). Thus having no real end in sight the

progressive path towards the absolute could also become the stage for a profound

unhappiness caused by the "Unerreichbarkeit des Absoluten."

One of the solutions to the lack of real effectiveness of this search was found in mysticism. Novalis often uses a well-known mystical language of the union with God:

"Jeder Mensch, der jetzt von Gott und durch Gott lebt, soil selbst Gott werden" (qtd. in

Frank, Das Problem Zeit 206). This notion of God even finds similar features with one of Meister Eckhart's pronoucements regarding the soul or the higher self: "Gott ist der er ist, das ist mein, und das mein ist, das liebe ich, und das ich liebe, das mich leibet, und ziehet mich an sich, und das mich in sich gezogen hat, das bin ich mehr als mein Selbst" (Frank,

Das Problem Zeit 221). In this case, the self appropriates God as a "mehr Ich," as a higher self that is not and cannot be the absolute (substance). Novalis says that this higher self is "dasjenige, was als Gegenstand einer notwendigen Idee den einzelnen Sinnen zum

Grunde liegt und sie erklart und sie einer theoretische Behandlung fahig macht" (Frank,

Das Problem Zeit 222). The important point is that this higher I, while still abstract, is a personalized specimen nonetheless, an instantiation that addresses the senses individually, explaining, grounding and preparing them properly for a theoretical treatment. Hence it could be read an attempt to restore the subjectivity to the Kantian transcendental but rather empty (or maybe too moralized subject). It should also be said that Novalis involves "love" as well, a factor that makes the 1 become more empathetically linked to its individual actions.

A caveat resides in the fact that even these personal mystical experiences, however real they may seem, are still only temporary; they can only provide a relative satisfaction ("nur relativ gestillt") (qtd. in Frank, Das Problem Zeit 214). They can never conjure once and for all a so-called eternal salvation for the human being. Being merely relative, the mystical experience has the benefit of being able to become relatable. It can establish a relation and thus become narrative. In short, it can be told (by means of a novel as a progressive "Universalpoesie") and thus become relatively communicable. An absolutely incommunicable event would be that which Benjamin's retells about St.

Theresa telling her confessor that "the Lady" brought flowers only to her, for her eyes 166 only (making the act of seeing not conditionable with respect to any a priori intuitions).

This example shows how such a baroque mystical happening, completely engulfed in its own quixotic reality,140 can never be appropriated in possible experience. Even though

Novalis agrees with Kant that one cannot establish a first principle, he will not, like

Schlegel, settle for a solution in the middle, in a medium of reflection

(Reflexionsmedium) (Kairos 44). By integrating the ground, by becoming its own ground, a ground only for itself, Novalis' subject can avoid a grounding in an absolute first principle, without overstepping the Kantian status quo into fanaticism (Schwarmerei). It can thus dare to face a real abysmal ungrounding that would simply overwhelm and engulf it. In other words, Novalis is conscious that in such an equation, as long as one chooses141 to stick to the subject, one cannot get rid of the lack. Hence since this higher I cannot be absolutely grounded or become absolutely groundless, the best option would be to be its own ground. By being its own ground, Novalis sees its ability to posit, to invent itself: "das oberste Prinzip muss schlechterdings nichts Gegebenes, sondern ein frei

Gemachtes, ein Erdichtetes, Erdachtes sein" (Frank, Das Problem Zeit 222).

Novalis' original turn is not, like Kant, to start from the datum that is given in sensible intuition but rather to begin from an artificially created and paradoxical almost koan-like concept (like "the squaring of the circle"), only to attract or activate its intuition afterwards. In this way, it would more or less spontaneously 'crack' this concept by triggering its intuition, making it feel much closer to the lived reality of the subject.

Among all the romantic thinkers, one can even say that Novalis manages to come the nearest to the sensible. In Notes for a Romantic Encyclopedia, he writes: "Every artificial

140 "In a hallucination, St. Theresa sees the Virgin strewing roses on her bed She tells her confessor. 'I see none' he replies. 'Our Lady brought them to me(Benjamin, Origin 234). 14 This choice triggers representation. 167 form - every created character, more or less harbors life and the pretensions and hopes of life. Galleries are sleeping chambers of the fixture world" (Notes 126). Novalis' approach thus exhibits a more active freedom. His freedom differs from the rather passive Kantian variety, the latter always being measured and validated by morality first in order to be declared free. For Kant, actions are free only in so far as they are conformable to the law of morality, the law being posited prior to the verdict.

Novalis' turn originates in the same Copernican gesture as Kant, a gesture that can be almost labeled as the 'complex of Copernicus' since he merely reverses the order while remaining still within the same framework. By fabricating an empty concept prior to any intuition, he does not pose a 'systemic risk' to the edifice of representation. He just finds another way out, as an answer to Kant's one-sided-ness (a move that is indeed quite different from Kant).142 Novalis's option is closer to an apophatic via negativa that would eventually renounce the very idea of absolute: "Durch das freiwillige Entsagen des

Absoluten entsteht die unendliche freie Tatigkeit in uns - das einzig mogliche Absolute was uns gegeben werden kann und was wir nur durch unsere Unvermogenheit ein

Absolutes zu erreichen und zu erkennen, finden" (Zeit 214, italics mine). The I that is attached to such an infinite action is still a more human-like subject than the Kantian one, since it is, after all, an affirmative result following an infinite renunciation.143 "Ich bedeutet jenes negative erkennende Absolute - was nach aller Abstraction ubrigbleibt -

Was nur durch Handeln erkannt und was sich durch ewigen Mangel realisiert" (Frank,

Das Problem Zeit 220). This I becomes quite concrete and immanent, being closer to the

142 Such a bearing is also different from what Jane Kneller would even call "Kant's Romanticism." (Philosophical Romanticism 206-211). I4:' This scenario is similar to that of Ihe via negativa that even though it proceeds by means of negation it will still eventually end up in an affirmation, a "hyperessentiality" according to Derrida. (see also Derrida and Negative Theology ed. Harold G. Coward, Toby Foshay) 168 senses: not moral imperatives or duty, but feeling, faith and love become its commanding precepts. An act of faith (Glaube) that is based on feeling (Gefiihl) is not a given but rather a free leap ("frei Gemachtes, ein Erdichtetes"), a sign of a free activity that will also become infinite being fueled inversely, from behind. It is as if one has put the cart before the horse but only in order for the horse to push the cart. Novalis does not need the reciprocal confirmation to pronounce an act free. His act of faith is free because it is constructed as purely becoming, and thus only identical with itself. However even in this new context it is not absolutely free, it is still regulated negatively through the renunciation of the absolute that contains still an implicit affirmation of it.144

For Manfred Frank, "Seine Realitat (des Ich) besteht im ewigen Mangel des

Absoluten, der totalisierten konkreten Substanz (II 280, Nr. 611), als aktualisierte ,Sfare' gedacht" (Das Problem Zeit 220). Although its reality consists in the negation of eternal of the totalizing concrete substance, the acting I becomes more concrete and more immanent than the Kantian one because it actually affirms this concrete substance while becoming imbued by it. Deleuze also points to this important fact when he speaks about

Novalis' experiments with the tourmaline:145 "Novalis, with his tourmaline, is closer to the conditions of the sensible than Kant, with space and time" (Deleuze, Difference 222).

However, it should also be said that even though such free action is not the Kantian passive freedom, it is still not a so-called absolute freedom. It is not an absolute activity that springs out of an absolute power (absolute Kraft). This activity still only a theoretical freedom "theoretische Freiheit," "durch Reflexion gemachte Kraft" (Frank, Das Problem

144 See Denida's point regarding the via negativa (Derrida, Margins 6). 145 Tourmaline is a crystal silicate mineral compounded with elements such as aluminium, iron, magnesium, sodium, lithium, or potassium. Tourmaline is classified as a semi-precious stone and the gem comes in a wide variety of colors. 169

ZeitlM). The originary power (Urkrqft) would be a condition (Zustand) in which there is

no temporal movement ("ein zeitloser beharrlicher immmer gleicher Zustand") (ibid.).

The negativity of the renunciation no longer is an object of opposition, but is

integrated and necessary to the process. It actually injects the fuel that stimulates the

infinite free activity of the I. By positing such an artificially invented but functioning ground, Novalis challenges or dares the negative aspect of representation by turning it

against itself. He uses the negative aspect of the infinite (the bad infinity in Hegel's

terms), its unreachability, in a positive manner. In short, Novalis uses it to create an

infinitely free activity in the same way one would place bait in front of a donkey. In the

way he intentionally creates representation, it is almost as if he is intentionally keeping

his enemies closer while turning negativity into an opportunity of affirming the existence

and progress of the subject. From this point of view, his gesture takes on Faustian

undertones. Having said that, the baroque infinity cannot be labeled as either good or bad.

It cannot receive any such denomination. Infinity will be determined as differential in two

absolutely diverse ways that do not exclude one another since they cannot establish a

relationship towards one another.

In the same way Faust's actions cannot be labeled as either moral or immoral.

They cannot be judged against any type of higher eminence or authority (not even

something similar to Kant's still regulative absolute totality). Faust's path is not

necessarily "redemptive and sacred" as in romanticism.146 From a baroque perspective, it

does not really matter whether Faust is saved in the end (as in Goethe) or whether he is

forever damned (as in Marlowe). His damnation would benefit the universe in the same

[A" I am alluding to the quotation from Benjamin's Trauerspiel book: "What is typically romantic is the placing of this perfect individual within a progression of events which is, it is true, infinite but it is nevertheless redemptive and sacred" (Origin 160) (italics mine). way as his salvation, the two being only formally different, like two directions of the same road. One way or the other, the universe is (pre)served. Damnation would produce or release the necessary horizontal progress for the advancement of the world, while salvation would prove its vertical dimension, the immediate communication between the two floors. The bet over Faust can never be lost by God or won by the devil: from the outset, the matter was beyond chance or choice.

There is no mediation in the infinite free activity. The negativity of the absolute fuels the infinite free activity, injecting stimulus without any mediation. This action is identical with itself, as it is in fact a search for the identity in the concept. In this case

representativeness is furthered not by means of analogy, resemblance or opposition.

Although the infinite free activity is not the absolute as such, its identity is the closest that one can get to it nevertheless (identity being one of the aspects of the absolute). While being identical with itself, Novalis's faith is still only relatively and not absolutely identical. The cause for such a shortcoming does not even lie in Novalis's thought; the fault lies in faith itself.147 The point is that even though faith is a feeling that transgresses

any type of mechanical repetition,148 it still harbors the same tendency for newness. In short, the form of faith is repeated while its content is always renewed. Because each

repetition creates its own new content, faith will still repeat the same gesture. The same

plan is maintained. It is true that faith is not being conditioned from the point of view of

its content, content being indeed quite volatile. Its repetition, however, is still taking

place within the same formal conditions, within the same framework. Deleuze would say

147 While tackling the problem faith in Kierkegaard (and Peguy) Deleuze says: "This was not his (Kierkegaard's) fault but that of the concept of faith" (Deleuze, Difference 95). 148 Kierkegaard said that Christianity died on the cross; any ritualistic repetition by the Church kills its spirit. 171 that faith is not able to escape its own Cogito.149 Going "back to the cross" in order to renew his faith, Kierkegaard, for example, will (infinitely) repeat the same renewal, the same type of gesture that is placed always under the sign of a recovery. It is the same general recovery (with specific differences) because "it can be given only as 'recovered'"

(Deleuze, Difference 95).

Deleuze goes even one step further saying that such a determination develops out of itself a double-ness, a duplicity. Since the determination of the knight of faith is recognizable every time as a tragic sinner, it will inevitably have to project every time another Doppelgcmger. the comedian, the clown, the seducer and all other

Kierkegaardian (romantic) personae that also set up implicitly what Benjamin calls the

"medium of reflection." The fact that these projections are different every time demonstrates both that the representation has become infinite and that one stable element is enough to establish such an open-ended reflective relationship. The main point is that it will, yet again, end up as a mere reflective gesture that cannot escape its reflexivity. More than that, since the repetition of faith is, on the one side, reflexive (not touching the real) and, on the other, not being able to fundamentally escape its mechanical gesture, it will also generate a comical effect. Henri Bergson sees it as "something mechanical encrusted on the living" (Bergson 49)." Deleuze points out the comic duplicity, whereby "two believers cannot observe each other without laughing" (Difference 95). However even this statement is true only up to a certain point. The two believers will laugh at each other provided they have a sense of humor, provided (thus implicitly still conditioning) they

have a reality check that manages the distinction between form and content (or else they

will repeat the history of religious wars).

149 "Failh has its own cogito" (Deleuze, Difference 95). 172

Thus, not even the subject of faith manages to escape the framework of representation or the medium of reflection. While Jena romanticism provided new and innovative options with respect to subjectivity and the work of art, all such 'rebellious' attempts remained squarely within the generality of the 'I think', "the most general principle of representation" (Deleuze, Difference 138). 173

Chapter 3 - Dancing with Heinrich von Kleist

This line, however, considered from another point of view, is something very mysterious. For it is nothing less than the path of the dancer's soul, and he doubted whether it could be found except by the puppeteer transposing himself into the center of gravity of the marionette; or, in other words, by dancing.15 (Abyss All)

The first part of the thesis theorized the baroque as predominantly expressive and romanticism as mainly representative; the second part sets out to test the practicality and the applicability of the previously developed theoretical landmarks. In particular, 1 will engage with two untypical romantic personalities - Heinrich von Kleist and John Keats - projecting their works against an expressive background. But this will involve more than a mere mechanical application of a theoretical structure. Like the "ship of Theseus" that the Athenians kept rebuilding,151 their expressiveness will require constant redefining and reinvention.

Heinrich von Kleist is one of the most intriguing personalities in German romanticism. Here, however, I will try to disengage him from his romantic generation and thus dissociate him from a representative mode of thinking. Uber das

Marionettentheater will emerge as the "unseen center" (das unsichtbare Zentrum) that synthesizes Kleist's fundamental ideas (Fricke 100). As this monadic text echoes

150 "Dagegen ware diese Linie wieder, von einer andem Seite, etwas sehr Geheimnisvolles. Denn sie ware nichts anders, als der fVeg der Seele des Turners; und er zweifle daB sie anders gefunden werden k&nne, als dadurch, daB sich der Maschinist in den Schwerpunkt der Marionette versetzt, d. h. mit andem Worten, tanzt" (Sdmtliche Werke 2: 340). 151 Leibniz derived his Law (i.e., the identity of indiscemibles) from this example. In short, one can state that no matter how many transformations it had to undergo, no matter how unrecognizable with respect to its ideal form or model it might have become, Theseus' ship is still the same, it is still identical with itself. By having the same existence; it is still Theseus' ship. All subsequent reconstructions show, on the one side, the lack of constancy in view of a stable model while, on the other, they reveal their pure singularity that is paired with a substantial unity that is merely ontological. 174 throughout his entire body of work, we will be able to detect together with Lawrence

Ryan marionette-like behavior in the Marquise von O or in Prim Friedrich von

Horn burg,152

For the sake of continuity with respect to the previous part of the thesis, this

1 chapter begins with Kleist's Kant-crisis . Interestingly, in Kant, too, one finds the motif of the marionette. The exposition will then continue by moving towards the baroque by engaging the Leibnizian monad and its marionette-like features. Without entering into a philological study of sources, it is important to mention that Kleist knew the Leibnizian philosophy very well. Even from his first published story, Das Erdbeben in Chili, Kleist

"captures the labyrinthine complications of freedom that Leibniz explicates in his Essays of Theodicy" (Fenves 148). Hence the argument will also explore other paragraphs from the Theodicy, focusing particularly on the ways in which the problem of death becomes relevant for Kleist and his marionette. Moreover, this chapter will offer a reading of the

Marionettentheater that attempts to go beyond the interpretation by Paul de Man, who discerns aesthetic formalization in the grace of the mechanical puppet. The marionette will thus be read not only beyond its Platonic model but also beyond any

Schillerian/Kantian underpinnings. The analysis will also focus on the graceful movement of the marionette and the dance in which the puppeteer himself is implicated.

The Kleistian marionette will also be contextualized in its relationship with some of its romantic 'peers' like E.T.A. Hoffmann, for example. Before reaching the end of the

152 "Die gleichsam nur auf sich selber hfirende, ihren Schwerpunkt in sich selbst tindende Marquise laBt sich schon in mancher Beziehung mit der Kleistschen Marionette vergleichen" or "Lebt er [Homburg] am Anfang nur scheinbar in der Grazie des marionetten Geflihls...?" (Hinderer, Kleist s Dramen 111). 153 A key event in Kleist's education was his 1801 reading of Immanuel Kant's The Critique of Pure Reason (1788). Kleist's rationalistic belief in human perfectibility and immortality was challenged by Kant's ideas on the inability of reason to discern the truth behind appearances, and he entered a period of despondency that scholars commonly call his "Kant crisis." Critics note that Kleist's reaction to Kant set the tone for the metaphysical background of his creative work, especially his Novellen. 175 chapter, I will also try to analyze works like Amphitryon, Marquise von O. or Der

Zweikampf while trying to find traces of what is called baroque expressiveness.

Without excluding its ironical or fictional underpinnings, the text of the liber das

Marionettentheater can in itself be considered a valid theoretical statement. In particular, it can be considered as a valid theoretical statement on the concept of grace (Anmul). This is a concept that has deep-rooted implications in German theoretical thought. It is present in Kant's Critique of Judgment154 and also in Schiller's letters on man's "aesthetic education." However, I will argue that Kleist's concept cannot be seen as an extension of this neo-classical tradition.

Here 1 take my lead from Rolf-Peter Janz, who has convincingly asserted that

Kleist's allegiance does not lie with (neo)-classicism:

DaB er indessen das Ideal befreiter Subjektivitat, dessen asthetische Erscheinung wie Schiller Anmut nennt, nicht mehr in einer griechischen Skulptur, auch nicht im lebendigen Korper sondern in einer mechanischen Konstruktion versinnbildlicht sieht, macht deutlich, wie fragwurdig ihm (Kleist) die nicht nur der Klassizismus Winckelmanns, sondern auch die Weimarische Klassik geworden ist. (Hinderer, Kleist's Dramen 34)

Kleist's notion of beauty does not therefore reside in the harmony of the parts of a well proportioned human body, in what Benjamin would call a torso that would still be able to symbolically suggest its former completeness or unity (Einheit) by means of an archetypical image (Urbild)155 Not abiding by such neo-classical rules, one would think that Kleist would belong to the young generation of romantic writers. But this is not so.

Martha Heifer's research helps in correctly situating Kleist, noting that his well-known

154 "Mithin ist alles, was gefSllt, eben hierin, dafi es gefallt, angenehm (und nach den verschiedenen Graden oder auch Verhaltnissen zu andem angenehmen Empfindungen anmutig, liebUch.ergotzend, etfreuiich u.s. w.)" (Kant, Kritik der Urteilskrafl 117). 155 Benjamin says: "Im Verhaltnis zum Ideal bleibt das einzelne Werk gleichsam Torso. Es ist eine vereinzelte Bemtlhung, das Urbild daraistellen, und nur als Vorbild kann es mit anderen seinesgleichen dauern, nie aber sie zur Einheit des Ideals selbst lebendig zusammenzuwachsen" (Kairos 114). 176

Kant-crisis expands into an implicit critique of Fichte and the Jena romantics. Heifer says that by "calling into question the belief in Darstellung as productive (re)presentation,

Kleist's writings effect a literary critique of Kant's, Fichte's, and the Jena romantics' transcendental projects" (120). From a methodological point of view, the placement of

Kleist's work in such a void with respect to the historical and cultural context is by no means a refutation of the hermeneutical efforts of interpreters such as Hanna Hellmann,

Paul Bockmann, Joseph Kunz, Clemens Heselhaus, Lawrence Ryan, Benno von Wiese and others, who attempt to retain him in one or the other theoretical trends mentioned before. Still, this chapter will attempt to project his writings against a different background.

The Marionette in Kant

In Book Seven of the Republic Plato writes:

Behold! human beings living in a underground den, which has a mouth open towards the light and reaching all along the den; here they have been from their childhood, and have their legs and necks chained so that they cannot move, and can only see before them, being prevented by the chains from turning round their heads. Above and behind them a fire is blazing at a distance, and between the fire and the prisoners there is a raised way; and you will see, if you look, a low wall built along the way, like the screen which marionette players have in front of them, over which they show the puppets. (231)

In Book I of the Laws there is also an extended discussion on the status of the marionette.

"Let us look at the matter thus: May we not conceive each of us living beings to be a puppet of the Gods, either their plaything only, or created with a purpose-which of the two we cannot certainly know?" (253). Besides these well-known references, Ernst

Robert Curtius in his European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages finds the image of 177 the marionette in antique writers like Epictetus and Horace. Early Christian thinkers such as Saint Paul, Clemens of Alexandria, Saint Augustine up to the Middle Ages to Meister

Eckhart and Luther were also intrigued by the motif. The Spanish baroque, especially

Calderon, had a particular predilection in view of the theme of "world as a stage"156 or while rephrasing Biblical themes like fortuna labilis from Ecclesiastes. Even Kleist's early letters speak about it in similar terms. For example, in a letter to his half-sister

Ulrike from May 1799, he writes: "Entsetzen bei dem Gedanken aus, eine Puppe am

Drahte des Schicksals zu sein - ein unwurdiger, verachtlicher Zustand, dem der Tod bei

weitem vorzuziehen sei" (qtd. in Sembdner Studien 108). We will see that none of these

instantiations of the marionette will be able to describe the configuration that is presented

in Kleist's late text.

With respect to the Kant-crisis, Kleist's choice for the figure of the marionette

should not come as a surprise, since Kant has a hard time accommodating the figure of

the puppet in his system. In the Critique of Practical Reason there are two passages

where Kant mentions the marionette. The first is when he is trying to distance himself

from Spinoza while trying to save freedom as the basis for morality. As he writes:

In point of fact, if a man's actions as belonging to his modifications in time were not merely modifications of him as appearance, but as a thing in itself, freedom could not be saved. Man would be a marionette or an automaton, like Vaucanson's,157 prepared and wound up by the Supreme Artist. Self-consciousness would indeed make him a thinking automaton; but the consciousness of his own spontaneity would be mere delusion if this were mistaken for freedom, and it would deserve this name only in a comparative sense, since, although the proximate determining causes of its motion and a long series of their determining causes are internal, yet the last and highest is found in a foreign hand. (63)

156 I am referring here to Calderon's play El Great Teatro del mundo (The Great Stage of the World, The Great Theatre of the World) (1655). 1 7 Jacques de Vaucanson (1709 -1782) was a French inventor and artist with a mechanical background who is credited with creating the world's first true robots, as well as for creating the first completely automated loom. 178

If we were to know, to have cognition (Erkenntnis) of the thing in itself, freedom would be 'crushed' by the immediate intuition of it. While freedom is an idea of reason whose objective reality is questionable, we must, Kant says, presuppose it nonetheless in order to be able to think of ourselves as rational beings. Thus freedom and morality enter into a

"sort of circle," a reciprocal determination158, as we assume that we are free so that we may think of ourselves as subject to moral laws, and we think of ourselves as subject to moral laws because we have attributed to ourselves the freedom of the will.

In Kant's Theory of Freedom, Henry Allison correctly summarizes Kant's position:

Although these formulations of the Reciprocity Thesis differ significantly, they reflect a common underlying argument with roughly the following form: I) as a kind of causality the will must, in some sense, be law governed or, in the language of the second Critique, 'determinable' according to some law (a lawless will is an absurdity); 2) as free, it cannot be governed by laws of nature; 3) it must therefore be governed by laws of a different sort, namely, self-imposed ones; and 4) the moral law is required self-imposed law. (203)

In an attempt to avoid an external determination, a determination that would frame freedom into a finite representation, Kant posits a reciprocal determination (between freedom and morality). But the reciprocal determination involved is still not what

Spinoza would call inner or complete determination. While escaping the danger of establishing a direct causal relationship and thus founding a first principle, freedom is still reciprocally constructed with respect to and in the service of morality. In short, even though it is not determined by an external cause, freedom is still determinable while

158 The idea of reciprocity, which was correctly picked up by the Jena romantics, helps Kant to avoid to ground his system in a first principle while establishing a reciprocal determination in the middle (in medias res according to Schlegel), in a "medium of reflection" (Reflexionsmedium), in Benjaminian terms. In such a scenario, the idea of dichotomy is still maintained but without giving any stable (external) determination to any of the two poles involved, the determination being mutual and interdependent. 179 being turned into a regulative idea. In such a context, representation is not overcome, but merely rendered infinite.

Kant qualifies Spinozism as "absurdity"159 or superstition160 because, for him, it triggers the loss of freedom. However the complete identity between freedom and determinism does not necessarily imply that freedom is lost, it only means that because freedom is ontologically identical with determinism, it cannot enter into a dichotomist relation with determinism. Spinoza is in fact the farthest from negating freedom. His philosophy rather concerns itself with showing the impossibility of arriving at such a framing pronouncement. His substance is always one; even the modes of his attributes, which, as a modification of existence, receive another essence, are still embedded in the one and the same substance into which they will eventually be reabsorbed. In Spinoza's view, attributes are co-crescent expressions and differ fundamentally from the

Aristotelian or Cartesian attributes of an essence that would be able to accommodate accidents as well.161 It may be true that in Spinoza's world there is no room for freedom but, by the same token, there is no room for any marionette-like determinism either.

Freedom and determinism are simply incapable of being presented in a relationship in which they would be clearly distinguished from one another. From the point of view of a univocal ontology, existence can only receive an inner determination that still allows for different or diverse aspects, which are so simultaneous that they cannot even be related to each other. Freedom and determinism can thus coexist as attributes of existence without

159 "Thus, Spinozism, in spite of the absurdity of its fundamental idea, argues more consistently than the creation theory can, when beings assumed to be substances, and beings in themselves existing in time, are regarded as effects of a Supreme Cause, and yet as not [belonging] to Him and His action, but as separate substances" (Kant, Critique of Practical Reason 63) (my emphasis). 160 In a note to Was heifit sich im Denken orietttieren Kant says: "Der Spinozism ftlhrt gerade zur Schwarmerei" (Kant, Werke 5: 283). 161 "Hence, if this ideality of time and space is not adopted, nothing remains but Spinozism, in which space and time are essential attributes of the Supreme Being Himself, and the things dependent on Him (ourselves, therefore, included) are not substances, but merely accidents inhering in Him"(Kant, Critique of Practical Reason 63) (my emphasis). 180 being either antagonistic or without forming a unity in a coincidentia oppositorum. In such a context, freedom is no longer determined representatively (as freedom) but becoming a mere aspect of existence, it is determined as pure difference, as a differential of existence. Existence as such just is and can only be described by means of an inner or absolute determination, any external determination as freedom (or determinism) would only represent existence that is no longer pure.162

The second time Kant mentions the marionette in his Critique of Practical Reason he becomes more problematic and "obscure."163 He says that the price for gaining access to thing in itself would be to become as lifeless as a marionette. For Kant this would be like seeing unceasingly God face-to-face, and not through the reflective looking glass of consciousness. Experiencing immediately the full extent of His power and awe would paralyze the human being and turn it into a lifeless marionette. Kant's conclusion is that in a life that would be ruled by fear and hope, moral duty and freedom would have no place anymore. As he states:

Instead of the conflict which the moral disposition has to wage with inclinations and in which, after some defeats, moral strength of mind may be gradually won, eternity in their awful majesty would stand unceasingly before our eyes.. Thus most actions conforming to the law would be from fear, few would be done from hope, none from duty. The moral worth of actions, on which alone the worth of the person and even of the world depends in the eyes of supreme wisdom, would not exist at all. The conduct of man, so long as the nature of man remains what it is, his conduct would thus be changed into mere mechanism, in which, as in a

162 This argument becomes relevant also in response to Hanna Hellmann's compelling essay on Kleist's Marionettentheater, in which the author discusses Kleist's link to romanticism in view of a search for the unity between nature and reason, or necessity and freedom. As Hellmann conveys, natural necessity is overcome by conscious freedom only in order to return and eventually find their divine or ideal unity. "Natur zunachst, nach innerer Notwendigkeit wirkend und ruhend, in ewiger Einheit mit sich selbst der Mensch der Gegenwart sodann, der mit einer 'gewissen Wehmut' und 'erhabenen ROhrung' die Natur emplindet, von deren Einheit er durch Vemuntt und Freiheit entfernt ist, zu deren Einheit er durch Vemunft und Freiheit zurilckkehren soil, damit aus der Verbindung von Notwendigkeit und Freiheit, das Gottliche, das Ideal hervorgehe" (Sembdner, Studien 18). 163 Diane Morgan's book Kant Trouble: The Obscurities of the Enlightened talks about Kleist's Marionettentheater in the Introduction pp. 53-54. 181

puppet-show, everything would gesticulate well, but there would be no life in the figures. (Critique of Practical Reason 92)164

Kant agrees with Spinoza that causality can just work on the noumenal level where God can only cause the existence of acting beings.165 God causes the existence, not the actions of these acting beings, because actions can be perceived and determined (as freedom, for example) only on a phenomenal level. The phenomenon is thus not directly caused by the noumenon: actions are not caused by God and can thus be declared free, provided they follow the moral imperative. In a Kantian universe, God cannot act directly, as in Plato, because He is not the causally linked Creator producing the world of appearances. He is involved in Creation strictly through His appearance as a regulative idea, which together with the idea of freedom and immortality constitutes the framework for moral freedom

(as opposed to a mere free will).

While partially agreeing with Spinoza, Kant nevertheless associates the earlier philosophy with constrictive determinism. Spinoza's determinism, however, is not an outside imposition that would restrain and limit one's freedom; it is not (externally) determined as restraint. Adam falls from paradise the moment Adam understands God's commandments as an imposition coming from an outside authority. The fall records the loss of Adam's essential (not existential) identity with God.166 Spinoza applies this

164 The second quote is from a subchapter called "Of the Wise Adaptation of Man's Cognitive Faculties to his Practical Destination." It is analyzed by Slavoj Ziiek in Organs without Bodies. 165 "Consequently, when I say of beings in the world of sense that they are created, I so far regard them as nouinena. As it would be a contradiction, therefore, to say that God is a creator of appearances, so also it is a contradiction to say that as creator He is the cause of actions in the world of sense, and therefore as appearances, although He is the cause of the existence of the acting beings (which are noumena)" (Kant, Critique of Practical Reason 64). 166 In his Theologico-Political Treatise, Spinoza writes that "the affirmations and the negations of God always involve necessity or truth; so that, for example, if God said to Adam that He did not wish him to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, it would have involved a contradiction that Adam should have been able to eat of it, and would therefore have been impossible that he should have so eaten, for the Divine command would have involved an eternal necessity and truth. But since Scripture nevertheless narrates that God did give this command to Adam, and yet that none the less Adam ate of the tree, we must perforce say that God revealed to Adam the evil which would surely follow if he should eat of the tree, but did not disclose that such evil would of necessity come to pass. Thus it was that Adam took the revelation to be not an eternal and necessary truth, but a law - that is, an ordinance followed by gain or loss, not 182 pattern consistently throughout everything in nature, starting with God Himself. God is not determined by an outside force to create existence since there is nothing outside Him,

He may create freely, but His freedom must be distinguished from an arbitrary and undetermined act of free will. Spinoza's absolute determination is an inner, necessary determination, unavoidable only because it is the only one. God cannot do otherwise only because there are no other possible alternatives; there is only one existence that is absolute and necessary. This existence must exist because there cannot be any other alternative. The alternative of existence not existing is out of the question. It is true that the moment God's absolute determination is defined by the fact that God's will could not have been done otherwise, one will spot a trace of constriction that could be indeed be interpreted as a constrictive external determinism. However Spinoza's thought does not operate within the framework of Aristotle's principle of contradiction: a dialectics of contraries (freedom and determinism) does not come to pass. Even though one cannot completely exclude such an outside determination, Spinoza's absolute determination does not relate to it, because for him this distinction would be merely formal. The fact that

God does not have a choice does not automatically impeach His freedom of decision. In

Spinoza's case, there is no room for conceiving a true separation between freedom and constrictive determinism, since he is inclined to see their ontological identity. Firstly they are absolutely one while secondly they are formally different. Inverting the Leibnizian position, Spinoza opts for a devaluation of the notion of separation, labeling it as a

depending necessarily on the nature of the act performed, but solely on the will and absolute power of some potentate, so that the revelation in question was solely in relation to Adam, and solely through his lack of knowledge a law. and God was, as it were, a lawgiver and potentate. From the same cause, namely, from lack of knowledge, the Decalogue in relation to the Hebrews was a law. (...) We conclude, therefore, that God is described as a lawgiver or prince, and styled just, merciful, etc., merely in concession to popular understanding, and the imperfection of popular knowledge; that in reality God acts and directs all things simply by the necessity of His nature and perfection, and that His decrees and volitions are eternal truths, and always involve necessity (63-65). 183 modification with respect to the always one and only existence. Hence any such external determination attached to the absolute determination would end up being ultimately reabsorbed in it.

While Spinoza's God was not determined to create by an outside presence, He does not project his creation inwardly either. The outside cannot enter into a relatable contradiction with the inside. God therefore does not create by means of a self-reflexive projection as it would merely posit the premises for further progressive (romantic)

'speculation'. In Spinoza, the Kantian notion of a reciprocal determination would only lead to an existence that is perpetually striving and producing itself while never being as it is in itself, thus never completely fulfilling the ontological presupposition. From a

Kantian perspective, God can never be his creation because, as two separate specimens, they would end up defining one another in a perpetual commute that resides actually in a medium of reflection. As we have seen in the previous chapter such a relation would mark the mutual limitation of the two.

Kant says that in the noumenal realm, one can only encounter existence and not actions. Existence as such cannot be labeled as either deterministic or free because it is not able to retain any such (external) determinations. Despite that, one would still turn into a marionette-like being if one's actions, while lacking either freedom or free will, become deterministic. The question is when an action that implies the idea of constraint exerted by an outside force, like the moves of the marionette that are caused externally and therefore restricted by a master puppeteer, can one consider them as noumenal? Such action will implicitly carry an outside determination being represented as constricted.

Henceforth, because existence always includes its quiddilas or essence, one cannot say 184 that God will cause the existence of a (lifeless) marionette whose existence is deterministic. Better said, God causes the existence of any acting being (existence exists while producing existence) but once this acting being becomes 'a marionette' (i.e., a being whose actions can be labeled as restricted), it becomes represented and thus thrown outside the noumenal paradise.

Kant's so-called "wise adaptation"167 represents the only basis (this time, a genuine first principle) for his choice for freedom and duty over an existence in fear of a menacing higher authority, over a sublime encounter with God's power which would turn into a horrific, even mortifying 'experience'. More precisely, Kant cannot qualify such an event within the realm of possible experience because he cannot establish its conditions of possibility. Such an experience is thus beyond the possibility of being understood and represented; it is beyond representability. As an ontological event, Kant acknowledges that it cannot be completely excluded but, weighing his options, he concludes that conscious freedom is better than an existence ruled by what appears as fear and hope. At this point, Kant chooses between the 'usual' phenomenon described in the Critiques, the phenomenon of the phenomenal realm, and a new type of phenomenon, a phenomenon of the noumenal. The latter describes existence in the noumenal realm as a marionette-like existence. In this sense, Slavoj Zizek speaks that "one has to distinguish between noumenal reality 'in itself and the way the noumenal appears within the domain of appearances (say, in our experience and the moral Law)" (Organs without Bodies 43), thus "redoubling" the gap between the noumenal and the phenomenal.

1671 am referring to Kant's chapter called "Of the Wise Adaptation of Man's Cognitive Faculties to His Practical Destination" from the Critique of Practical Reason. 185

Kant's choice is between two phenomena. There is in fact no other choice possible in the sense that choice cannot accommodate otherness or pure difference; no true alterity can percolate into the act of choosing. The act of choice is thus bound to sameness, since it is only able to choose between specimens that are phenomenal. A choice as such becomes thus by default a choice for the phenomenal. Even though fear and duty may seem different, they are, as Deleuze would say, subordinate to a form of identity. Both of them relate to an eminence that, in the former case, exerts itself directly and immediately while, in the latter, regulated by rational morality, exerts itself through mediation.168 One's freedom of choice thus turns out to be a rather unavoidable choice for freedom. Even if one chooses freedom, this freedom can only be enacted in the confines of the phenomenal realm where alone its condition of possibility can be established.169 This consciously understood freedom will always be embedded in an already given framework to which it must always relate. This does not say that freedom is wrongly posited in such a framework. But one has to wonder whether this is indeed the better solution. More than that, going back to Kleist's letter, one can even say that the very act of deciding is fundamentally flawed because one cannot choose right, in the noumenal realm, however, decision-making is annihilated as one is completely determined by the necessity of an existence that cannot fathom conscious actions or experiences. From such a point of view, one can ask oneself if an always and already

168 When asked by a king to renounce his ideas about religion, Kant, as if practicing this time a more immanent "wise adaptation," transformed a potential fear with respect to a higher authority in a dutiful gesture of a loyal subject. Allen Wood describes the event in the following way: "In October Wollner sent Kant a letter expressing in the King's name the royal displeasure with his writings on religion, in which you misuse 'your philosophy to distort and disparage many of the cardinal teachings of the Holy Scriptures and of Christianity' (Ak 7: 6). It commanded him neither to teach nor write on religious subjects until he was able to conform his opinions to the tenets of Christian orthodoxy. In his reply, Kant defended both his opinions and the legitimacy of his writings about them, but did solemnly promise to the King that he would obey the Royal command (Ak 7: 7-10)" (Wood 19). 169 "questions of responsibility and freedom of associations cannot be decided upon a' choice' (Wahl) but require a transcendent decision " says Diane Morgan in Kant Trouble (189). She also quotes Kant himself who says "But freedom of choice cannot be detined.. .as the capacity to make a choice for or against the law" (Morgan 199). 186 framed conscious action is indeed better than an existence that is beyond the possibility of choice, beyond the Kantian Urteilskraft. Which is more deterministic or constrictive: a noumenal internal yet absolute determinism that may even appear as an unconscious marionette or the phenomenal that is conscious of its unavoidable limits? We will see that many of Kleist's heroes will find themselves in such a situation being faced with a rather noumenal impossibility of making a decision which brings them closer to baroque characters.170

Freedom and Inner Spontaneity

At this point, we must clarify Leibniz's notion of inner freedom, distinguishing it from both Spinoza's determinism and from the Kantian concept. This will allow to us to bring

Kleist closer to a Leibinzian context and help us understand the movement of the

Kleistian marionette. In part, the argument follows from Deleuze's analysis of Leibniz from The Fold, since the French philosopher has already placed the problem of inner freedom expressively in a baroque setting.

What has been said so far does not necessarily imply that actions must always be determined. Kant can only acknowledge experienced actions, but this does not mean that an act has to always be a conscious act. In other words, setting up the conditions for one's experience is not absolutely necessary. As the first expressive thinker after Kantian representationalism, Nietzsche raises this crucial problem, asking himself in Beyond

170 Kleisl's Elector in Prinz Friedrich von Homburg becomes quite Hamletian, reminding one of Benjamin's statement about the baroque prince: "The prince, who is responsible for making a decision to proclaim the state of emergency, reveals, at the first opportunity, that he is incapable of making a decision" (Benjamin, Origin 70-71). 187

Good and Evil whether the belief in synthetic a priori judgments is indeed necessary .171

For Nietzsche, the bottom line is that actions can also be seen as pure actions, provided they do not carry such representative labels or determinations. An action that is not determined as either free or constricted just becomes an action that is pure or absolutely undetermined. Similarly, Leibniz talks about inner actions that cannot be determined in any way, neither inwardly nor outwardly. The inner action of the soul knows no inner determination: "The soul is inclined without being necessitated. The motive is not even an internal determination, but an inclination" (Deleuze, Fold 70). The inner action can tolerate neither an inner necessity, a necessity that determines itself, nor a limitation by an outer force, an external determinism. Hence because it is neither inwardly necessitated nor outwardly constricted, the spontaneous inner action can be declared free: "The act is free because it expresses the wholeness of the soul in the present" (Deleuze, Fold 71).172

Eventually an inner action will require an outer determination, but without entering into an opposition with it. The internal spontaneity is to be perfectly reconciled with an external determination (Fold 144). Juxtaposed with an inner action, the external determination is thus correctly recognized as an externally constrictive necessity that is indeed imposed by an outside authority. In the noumenal realm, Kant posited the actions of the marionette as internally determined, but he neglected the trace of external determination that still crept into the mix. The Kantian marionette is thus not absolutely determined like Spinoza's God. Its actions still carry a deterministic connotation as they

171 "But such replies belong to the realm of comedy, and it is high time to replace the Kantian question, "How are synthetic judgments a PRIORI possible ?" by another question, "Why is belief in such judgments necessary?" - in effect, it is high time that we should understand that such judgments must be believed to be true, for the sake of the preservation of creatures like ourselves; though they still might naturally be false judgments! Or, more plainly spoken, and roughly and readily - synthetic judgments a priori should not 'be possible' at all; we have no right to them; in our mouths they are nothing but false judgments. Only, of course, the belief in their truth is necessary, as plausible belief and ocular evidence belonging to the perspective view of life" (Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil 11). 1 2 Also: "The soul is not determined to do it" (Fold 71) or "The monad is free because its action is the result of what passes through it and is happening withinit" (Fold 11). 188 delimit themselves reciprocally from (moral) freedom. These actions are not Leibniz's inner actions either, because the inner inclination of the monad cannot be determined in any way. Leibnizian inner spontaneity cannot be determined as either freedom or free will, in a Kantian sense. Kant himself referred to Leibniz's notion as the "freedom of a turnspit" (Kant, Critique of Practical Reason 60). Indeed the monad's inner spontaneity cannot be even determined as undetermined because it is absolutely undetermined. If

Spinoza's divine act of generating existence is completely or absolutely determined,

Leibniz's internal actions are absolutely undetermined: necessity is spontaneity in their ontological identity and formal difference.173 Leibniz's spontaneous action is not even determined in the way Spinoza determined spontaneity i.e., as an undetermined free will

(which would be the equivalent of his external non-contradictory determination that corresponds to his inner determination). Both Spinoza and Leibniz are expressive thinkers because they understand the intermingling of both the ontological component and the formal aspect. For this reason, even though Spinoza's outer aspect might seem more remote, the substance and its modes give the impression of being more 'estranged' from each other than Leibniz's God and the monad. But in both cases, it is still the same formal difference or diversity (not opposition) at work: both Spinoza and Leibniz work outside the dialectics of the negative. It is just that one is more inclined towards the

(ontological) identity of determinism and freedom while the other tends to see their individuality, their formal difference.

Being so absolutely prior that one cannot relate or attach any value to it, the inner action of the monad cannot be validated as either free or deterministic and thus understood by means of the Kantian Verstand. It will consequently emerge as an

173 Schelling intuited the absolute ontological identity but not its formal aspect. 189 unapproachable pure difference: "What vanishes is merely all values that can be assigned to the terms of the relation for the gain of its inner reason, which precisely constitutes the difference" (Deleuze, Fold 65). By default, the inner action can and will be called subjective, even without being confirmed as such, simply because it won't ever be able to establish any relation (not even to itself)- AH relation is already pre-established, thus pushing this pure action to always be 'on top' or identical with the relation itself. In logical terms, the inner action cannot be even attributed as an accident with respect to an essence. It becomes the predicate as such, "the predicate (that) is only a relation"

(Deleuze, Fold 52), It is an entelechy, an action that is completed in itself, existing in the way it is in itself (an sich). It is an interior that does not communicate with an exterior but is noumenal nonetheless because it expresses and includes existence in a purely subjective way: "it includes what I am doing right now - what I am in the act of doing"

(Deleuze, Fold 152). It is not subjective in the sense that it can be defined in relation to an object because the subject is always included in the predicate being merely that "what goes from one predicate to another" (Deleuze, Fold 53) in a purely predicative world.

This inner action singularizes the monad. It grants it individuality but without being able to fully represent and ground a stable subject that can be subsequently ratified in a posteriori experience. It is absolutely quixotic because even though exteriority exists, it will always stay internal. Hence no relation between an interior and an exterior can be established. It is thus a blind monadic interior without any windows to the exterior. For

Leibniz this is by no means a weakness. On the contrary, it is a "new kind of link of which the pre-Baroque architecture has no inkling, [which] must be made between the inside and the outside, or the spontaneity of the inside and the determination of the 190 outside" (Deleuze, Fold 29).174 In other words, it may be true that the interior is not related to the exterior but only because it is already linked in an even better way than through a relation; the interior is already so self-sufficient that it is inculcated in a correspondence, a resonance, a harmony with the exterior that is already non-relatively pre-established. In such a context, any other relation between interior and exterior would be superfluous, in excess of what is sufficient and necessary. In one word, they would only become what they already are: ontologically identical yet formally different. Such an interior without an exterior correlates with an exterior without an interior; an independent facade without an interior,175 a mechanical marionette without an inner life, a wooden puppet without consciousness resonating perfectly with a divine being that has infinite consciousness nonetheless. The marionette receives its 'material' soul (vis matrix) in motion, becoming graceful thereby.

From such a point of view, and foreseeing the conclusion of this chapter, one can say that while observing the marionette monadically, one discovers beyond its deterministic moves an inner action, a spontaneity and grace that is not the Kantian ingenuity. Although the relationship between the puppeteer and the puppet may seem deterministic at first, it takes on the inner freedom or spontaneity as the former steps into the same center of gravity as the latter, dancing synchronically the same dance through which it too becomes harmoniously graceful. This gesture turns out to be quite significant as it moves beyond a human affectation (Ziererei) that would betray a consciously or reflexively validated Kantian (or Jena romantic) subjectivity while unveiling an inner

174 "Entre Finteneur et I'exterieur, spontaneite du dedans et determination du dehors, faudra un tout nouveau mode de corresponsance, dont les architectures pre-baroques n'avaient pas l'idee" (Deleuze, Pli 40). 175 "The monad is the autonomy of the inside, an inside without an outside. It has as its correlative the independence of the facade, an outside without an inside" (Deleuze, Fold 28). 191 undeterminable spontaneity that allows the human being to become graceful as well and thus regain the noumenal paradise through a back door.

The Marionette-like Monad in Leibniz

Although Leibniz borrows the concept of the monad from Neo-Platonism, he extends the notion beyond the One or highest God towards the pure singularities of created souls as well. From this point of view, these latter appear as God's marionettes, individually pre­ programmed. Deleuze says that Leibniz's monads "have to be conceived dancing. But the dance is a Baroque dance, in which the dancers are automata" (Deleuze, Fold 68). What has been previously said about the relationship between Platonism and representation stands true even from this perspective. For even though Platonism may be representational, there are contained in Plato himself other kinds of Platon/s/ws that disallow the clear distinguishing of an overall representability. Before entering the analysis of Kleist's work per se, it has to be stated that this project will focus on three aspects of Leibniz's philosophy that will become relevant in our reading of the

Marionettentheater. 1) the Leibnizian predication or pure movement, 2) the absolute or non-relatable separation between the monads and 3) the inversely enacted harmony that reveals the ontological identity and the formal difference. 192

As noted above, Kant himself concedes Leibniz an automaton-like "freedom of a turnspit."176 From Kant's point of view, the freedom of the monad's spontaneous inclination, which cannot perceive anything beyond the present moment, but merely prolongs the same inclination forward by means of a purely predicative passing through, is so limited and rudimentary it cannot even be validated as freedom. Thus one cannot even add an attribute to it, an attribute in the Aristotelian or Cartesian sense that would be able to explain its essence (quidditas). For Leibniz, any relation between essence and accidents becomes irrelevant, because the monad is always seen predicatively, in a motion that precludes the disruption of definition or representation.

In this sense, Deleuze is quite clear when he exonerates Leibniz from using the attribute in a traditional sense.

When Leibniz uses the attribute model, he does so from the point of view of a classical logic of genres and species, which follows only nominal requirements. He does not use it to ground inclusion. Predication is not attribution.... The predicate is the proposition itself.... Thought is not a constant attribute, but a predicate passing endlessly from one thought to another. (Deleuze, Fold 53)

Leibniz thus "disenfranchises" form or essence, removes their privileges (Deloeuze, Fold

53). The attribute no longer has the ability to describe and explain the essence as it did in

Descartes. It becomes expressive, co-crescent or predicative, so that form cannot actively form anything. The attribute cannot be creative, formative or poietical, and therefore becomes merely an aspect, a mark of difference. It cannot conceive a split, a separation between two comparable entities. In this respect, essence cannot be constituted in

176 "We look here only to the necessity of the connection of events in a time-series as it is developed according to the physical law, whether the subject in which this development takes place is called automaton materiale when the mechanical being is moved by matter, or with Leibniz spirituale when it is impelled by ideas; and if the freedom of our will were no other than the latter (say the psychological and comparative, not also transcendental, that is, absolute), then it would at bottom be nothing better than the freedom of a turnspit, which, when once it is wound up, accomplishes its motions of itself' (Kant, Critique of Practical Reason 60) (italics mine). 193 distinction from appearance, as a form that can be discerned from content or a noumenon from a phenomenon. Leibniz thus overcomes in advance the formal conditions of

Kantianism, the conditions that also make aesthetic judgment possible and that were inherited by Jena romanticism.

Because there is no formation, one cannot recognize an essence or quiddity in baroque forms. Deleuze calls these forms 'diverse absolutes', since ultimately they are not able to relate to one another. The fact that they are still forms forces one to conclude that the only possibility of distinction would have to be formal after all: "their real distinction is formal and carries no ontological difference" 177 as "they are all attributed to a single and same Being that is both ontologically one and formally diverse" (Fold 44). In this way, they become expressive.

For Leibniz, however, the problem of freedom turns out to be more complicated and nuanced. As the monad's inner inclination cannot exclude change, it must implicitly include the possibility of representation. Any monad can change its course and take a different fold; a damned soul is not forever damnable; at any moment it could alter its destiny and be saved. However, such a soul will never really do that. This change will never happen and become what is called an event because, on the one hand, the

Leibnizian universe is in a condition of closure while, on the other, the damned soul constantly damns himself by enjoying (and thus prolonging) this state of damnation - a

177 From this point of view, it should not come as a surprise that the baroque can accommodate both the rather monotonous variations of the same theme and the almost excessively inventive metamorphoses and transformations. The difference between the mechanical toccata, where creativity or invention is minimal, aiul the monstrous or grotesque, where most of it is invention, is only formal, creativity or originality being unhinged from formative conditions. 194 state that actively contributes to the general harmony by releasing a certain quantity of

170 progress.

Interestingly, the condition of closure that Leibniz imposes on the universe, a condition that forbids the ultimate salvation of the damned, reveals a hidden or at least a double sidedness of his baroque. Giving more preponderance to this side, a side that can get paired with the desengano of the Spanish Siglo de Oro as pictured in Gracian's

Criticon or Cervantes' Don Quixote, his well-known optimism is not so serene anymore but becomes quite problematic. Looked upon from such a perspective, the enchantment of this instantaneous action is immediately followed by disenchantment {desengano) regarding the outer world's deterministic condition (i.e., the necessity of death). Of course, this (unconditional) optimism and disillusionment cannot be configured in a relation of opposition. Again, according to the logic of baroque thinking, the distinction is merely formal. Deleuze also questions Leibniz's optimism, since the "best of all possible worlds" is not a result of a conscious choice that results from a comparative approach.

God does not pick this world from other possible ones but rather the other way around: this world is the best by default, "it is the best because it is" (Deleuze, Fold 68); its fate must therefore be loved as such.179 Being beyond the princlpium comparationis, it is at the same time the best because it is the most powerful with respect to its being or existence. It simply becomes the best being expressed by most monads as an exercise of inner freedom. Hence this fate has been generated in a quantitative manner by popular

178 See Deleuze, Fold 74. 'Their worst punishment may be that of serving the progress of others, not by the negative examplethat they offer, but through the quality of positive progress thai they involuntary leave to the world when they renounce their own clarity.. .they liberate an infinite quantity of possible progress." 1 '9 Nietzsche coined the love of one's fate as amorfati. In Ecce Homo, he says: "My formula for greatness in a human being is amorfati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it - all idealism is mendaciousness in the face of what is necessary - but love it" (174). 195

'vote'; numbers make a difference as popularity coupled with power turns the actual world into the only scenario that can percolate through180 the divine representative screen.

This polyphony of monads voicing the same theme, albeit with variations, causes the consonance of their expressions to create "a prolongation or continuation" (Deleuze,

Fold 50). The world is thus prolonged monad by monad as a converging series of

(compossible) expressions, recalling the devil's progression from emblem to emblem in

Benjamin's account of the Fall. Such a prolongation makes the infinite itself appear more real and reachable, for it does not stop at a negative presentation of the infinite as in Kant and the Jena romantics. Still, these converging series cannot be understood as a totality, at least not as a totality that is the effect of a prior transcendent unity. Rather, it is like an assemblage.181 As Deleuze says, the world is not a "unity of converging series that would not diverge in the least from each other", but looks more like "a curvature having

(merely) a unique variable" (Deleuze, Fold 50). This "presently infinite totality of the world, or the transfinite" (Deleuze, Fold 51) is an absolutely totalizing totality and not a totality based on the relation between the convergent series. In this sense it is not a totality that would presuppose a transcendentally projected unitary entity. It thus resonates with Benjamin's notion of the constellation, or "montage" of "dialectical images."182 Although the created monad tries to express the world in its entirety and

180 The idea of percolating or penetrating will become very important for Kleist as well picturing the act of stepping beyond the infinite reflexivity of the representation of Jena romanticism: "(...) nach dem Durchgang durch das Unendliche(...)"(Siimlliche Werkel: 345). 181 The French original calls this 'totality', "ensemble" (Deleuze, Pli 67). 182 "How are we to understand the 'dialectical image' as a form of philosophical representation? Was 'dust' such an image? fashion? the prostitute? expositions? commodities? the arcades themselves? Yes, surely - not, however, as these referents are empirically given, nor even as they are critically interpreted as emblematic of commodity society, but as they are dialectically 'constructed', as 'historical objects', politically charged monads, 'blasted' out of history's continuum and made 'actual' in the present. This construction of historical objects clearly involved the mediation of the author's imagination" (Buck-Morss 221). 196 infinity, it can only express clearly one portion of it. The paradox is that the monads produce the world, but by the time the world swings back to be confirmed as such, the monads have moved on with their continuous expressive process, and the whole situation of the world has changed. Hence none of the monads will be able to take credit for what they express.

There is thus no possibility of instituting a law of convergence that pertains to all monads, because difference will inevitably distort any kind of reflexive mechanism, transforming a straight mirror into a rather concave one. By not reflexively returning as

"the same," this presently infinite assemblage of the world, this transfinite, will create the impression of a perforation, of breaking through the straight mirroring effect wherein the

'Thorn puller' would remain stuck in a circular repetition of the same, a repetition that is also reminiscent of what Kleist calls the "Durchgang durch ein Unendliches" (Samtliche

Werke 2: 345). From such a perspective, the return occurs by necessarily inculcating difference. Hence Leibniz implicitly acknowledges the inevitable river of temporal change and brings his whole configuration closer to picturing the real world. Thus one can begin to grasp how Leibniz's condition of closure ends up being unsettled, deformed or allegorized; how knowledge does not have to return in order to be understood but can return as grace.

Even though the inner expression thus becomes the marker of individuality, the only singularizing nuance that can distinguish one monad from its peers;183 it cannot offer any basis for creating a relation between monads. Leibniz's monads enter into a harmony with respect to their inner actions, in which each of them produces music without hearing

183 Deleuze savs: "subject-monads will now be distinguished only by their inner manner of expressing the world" (Fold 50). 197 the other,184 each being absolutely broken off and separated from the other. This situation will reverberate throughout the whole Leibnizian universe, 'contaminating' even the relationship with God as creator. From such a point of view, all monads are not completely dependent upon or related to a Creator (like a Platonic marionette). They do not reflexively respond to each other on the same wavelength, but rather share or enjoy the same existence. At this point, the puppeteer no longer only manipulates the puppet; he will also dwell in a mysterious coordination with it, an absolute, non-relatable harmony.

Hence the monad is both created and in a state of non-relation with its Creator. As a matter of fact it enters into an inverse relationship with God in the sense that "the individual notion, the monad, is exactly the inverse of God to the degree that reciprocals are numbers that exchange their numerator and their denominator (. . .) And God, whose formula is ) do not attract each other dialectically as extreme opposites that could also engage in a coincidenlia oppositorum that would form a higher, synthetic unity. They maintain their pure singularity or diversity, while gracefully dancing as (ontological) Identicals. At this point the similarities between the

Leibnizian monad and the Kleistian marionette not only includes their mechanical dance or their lack of consciousness due to their inner freedom. It can also be extended to their diametrically inversed positions within a graceful universe. Being mainly concerned with spatial configurations, Kleist's perspective does not primarily interest itself in such synthetic arrangements that involve imagination, but rather in purely immanent or empiric observations that merely describe the formal aspects that occur in the movement

184 "Each monad spontaneously produces its accords but in correspondence with those of the other" establishing "the concert of all these expressive spontaneities" (Fold 134). 198 and construction of the body (Korperbau), that pure 'body-language' which tells the story of grace. Kleist specifies that grace will "appear most purely in that bodily form that has either no consciousness at all or an infinite one, which is to say, either in the puppet or a god" (Abyss 216).185

Kleist's Marionette

Even though the theoretical underpinnings of this project are based on Deleuze's philosophy, the following interpretation of the Marioneltenlheater, a short text written in a dialogic form in 1810, one year before Kleist shot himself, does not rely on Deleuze's ideas on this particular subject as presented in ,4 Thousand Plateaus1*6 The following considerations will not go into the French philosopher's elaborations on the Nietzschean- inspired Godless war-machine or on the oriental influences187 that are recurrent in

Kleist's works. Our perspective will continue to draw from The Fold, and thus maintain a

Leibnizian-inspired baroque view. In particular, we will scrutinize the notion of the purely mechanical as it tries to explain the Kleistian text in terms of'point of view'.

Combined with a predicative movement, it creates a rather mysterious effect188 that overcomes representability and becomes expressive. Kleist's relationship to representation will be tackled in the context of his Kant crisis, thus building on previous

185 "so, daB sie (die Grazie n.n.), zu gleicher Zeit, in demjenigen menschlichen Ktfrperbau am reins ten erscheint. der entweder gar keins, oder ein unendliches Bewufitsein hat, d. h. in dem Gliedermann, oder in dem Gott" (Samtliche Werke 2: 342). 186 The image of the marionette appears in Thousand Plateaus, in Two Regimes cf Madness as well as in his discussions with Pamet, from Dialogues, proving itself to be a recurring motif in Deleuze's thought. 187 In a note in Thousand Plateaus Deleuze writes: " Treatises on martial arts remind us that the Ways, which are still subject to the laws of gravity, must be transcended in the void. Kleist's About Marionettes [... ] without question one of the most spontaneously oriental texts in Western literature, presents a similar movement: the linear displacement of the center of gravity is still 'mechanical' and relates to something more 'mysterious' that concerns the soul and knows nothing of weight" (Plateaus 561). 188 «yj^s jjne however, considered from another point of view, is something very mysterious" (Abyss 212). 199 comments regarding Kant's relationship to Jena romanticism as well. One of the more famous interpretations of Kleist's text is that of Paul de Man from The Rhetoric of

Romanticism called "Aesthetic Formalization: Kleist's Uber dasMarionettentheater"

(263-90). De Man's essay takes Schiller's Kantian-inspired Letters on Aesthetic

Education as its theoretical source. Hence de Man's interpretation of Kleist's text moves towards a representational point of view, which makes an 'expressive reversal' even more challenging.

Before approaching this task, I will look at some of the 'bread crumbs' that the text itself has to offer and that point in the direction of the baroque. Indeed the text of the

Marionettentheater contains some concrete indications that suggest Kleist looked back to the baroque for solutions to exit the Kantian deadlock. Beyond the fact that "das Baroque sah einen enormen Anstieg an Zahl und Beliebtheit der Puppentheater" (Compton 35), the text's references to Tenier the Younger and his painting Wedding Dance or Peasants

Dance (c. 1566) are indeed defining images for understanding the marionettes, especially since Tenier's figures barely touch the ground during their anti-gravitational dance: "He asked if I had not found certain movements of the puppets, particularly the smaller ones, very graceful when they danced. I could not deny this fact. One group of four peasants, doing a round dance in rapid tempo, could not have been painted more prettily by a

Teniers" (Kleist, Abyss 211). The text's reference to Bernini's Apollo and Daphne might be misleading, as he is mentioned in the negative context of the example of the dancer who loses her graceful footing. Kleist, however, merely makes a direct reference to a ballerina who was trying to play and thus imitate Daphne; in such a context Bernini's statue comes out as the imitated model. The statue of Apollo and Daphne depicts the 200 motion of the chase, but it does not create the impression of affectation (Ziererei); it does not seem de-centered in its moving force (vis rnotrix). As a matter of fact it is said that

Apollo was even more inspired and captivated by her beauty when he saw Daphne in motion, fleeing.

Just observe Madame P-, he continued, when she plays Daphne, and pursued by Apollo looks back over her shoulder: her soul settles in the vertebrae of the small of her back; she bends over as though about to break in two, like some naiad from the school of Bernini. Observe the young dancer F- when, as Paris, he stands with the three goddesses and extends the apple to Venus: his soul (in a manner fearful to behold!) actually settles in his elbow. (Kleist, Abyss 213)

The procedure of imitation will be revisited in the story of the young man trying to mimic yet again an antique statue, that of the Thornpuller. Benno von Wiese finds the reference to the statue in Goethe's Uber Laokoon (1798) where the idea of grace is also present.

Therein Goethe describes the boy as "der anmutige Knabe, der sich den Dorn aus dem

Fusse zieht" (qtd. in Sembdner Studien 197). But beyond Kleist's rather obvious discontent with respect to mimetic practices, seen as an implicit critique of neo- classicism, and beyond some 'implanted' textual references that would link him to the baroque, it still not enough to understand how exactly the baroque would fit in his artistic world.

Diving rather abruptly in the actual problematic of the text, one of the first unusual ideas that strikes the reader is that Kleist reverses the usual or obvious terms of the equation. Stating unequivocally and without hesitation that even though the puppet is the manipulated object (totally dependent on the puppeteer), it stands as the higher entity because of its grace, Kleist rather boldly proclaims a lifeless marionette as superior to a reasonable human being. That being said, this is far from being an inescapable situation. 201

Kleist already has an exit strategy in place. Even though the human has eaten from the

Tree of Knowledge, thus falling from grace, the character goes on to say that grace can be recovered. It is recovered at the conclusion of a horizontal journey "around the world," at the end of history, through a so-called back door to paradise. Kleist's immediate yet paradoxical advice would be to continue eating from the Tree of Knowledge, which would actually imply a continuous use of Kantian knowledge and understanding.

Translating it into Leibnizian terms, though, this situation would entail following the logic of sufficient reason merely until it would spontaneously flip over into the principle of indiscernibles, thus turning it into a mere forward inclination that is beautiful, free and graceful being, a completed act in itself. Moreover, this forward journey situates Kleist within a Leibnizian expressive baroque while not only distinguishing him from a rather retrograde movement of the Spinozian conatus but also delimiting him from nostalgic romantics like Novalis (or even Holderlin), who seek fulfillment in a golden age of the past. As long as freedom has no propensity towards understanding, which would involve reflexive consciousness, the representational reciprocity of morality and freedom, grace is

(p)re-established. That is, grace is no longer only an aesthetic component: it acquires existential underpinnings as well.

Receiving ontological status, grace should not be understood as a Platonic Idea that exists only in itself without being able to be turned (or allegorized) into something else, as when one argues that the Idea of Beauty cannot become ugly (i.e., the Idea of

Ugliness) because, being so absolute, the two Ideas are mutually exclusive. Kleistian grace can be lost and the human being can become ungraceful. The loss, however, is not absolute as in Kant since it still can be recuperated. In a Kleistian context, ungraceful 202 gestures are considered inevitable mistakes (Mifigriffe) that cannot be conceived as mutually exclusive with respect to the graceful ones. This is the reason why one should continue eating from the Tree of Knowledge. An interruption of this process would be even more damaging, as it would affect the predication of the world. Hence even a mere empty repetition will push things forward, because everything contributes towards an awakening of grace and will be eventually and retroactively included by being deemed as unavoidable yet necessary failures.

Beside the horizontal forward movement, grace can also be recovered rather instantaneously when the puppeteer, stepping down from a position of immovable and detached eminence, transposes himself into the mobile center of gravity of the puppet.

This means that he actively starts dancing the same dance, mimicking the moves of the puppet. In this case mimicry is no longer based on resemblance or on a relation between the two principals. They become so perfectly correlated that their moves become simultaneously identical, each answering equally to the other. Moving exactly like the marionette, the puppeteer no longer appears to be manipulating it; instead, the two dance synchronically the same graceful dance. Consequently they become engaged in a harmony that is not based on relation anymore, a non-relative harmony that allows an immediate transference of grace from the puppet to the puppeteer. This state becomes thus correspondingly similar to the paradisiacal one being in fact a rehearsal for what will be the apocalyptical end of the horizontal journey. In a baroque context, it will actually

'support' the back door entrance to paradise by revealing and adding a hidden verticality to the never-ending sorrow (Trauer) of an overwhelming exclusive horizontal existence.

Without being contradictory, the verticality and the horizontality in the swing of the 203 pendulum each have their given role in the gearing that brings about the movement. Both take it to 'the next level', reaching their completion and exhaustion as they swing back.

With the limbs of the marionette moving like pendulums,189 one can say that the horizontal and vertical movements are so interlocked that not only are they not contradictory to each other, they also cannot be synthetically unified by the return either.

The swing back (Umschwung) neither turns into the origin nor the goal of the movement.

It loses its Kantian apriori-ness by not becoming the presiding condition of possibility, the framework that enables the movement to actually happen because it is always already included in it. If one were still to analyze them separately, in their absolute or monadic singularity, one can also say that both the horizontal and the vertical movement have their own 'returns', while the final return or swing back being just more intensive and more real than its preceding 'peers'. Due to the fact that the horizontal and the vertical are so interlocked they are at the same time the return with respect to or for the other. One returns by being transformed or allegorized into the other as they are processed dialectically. The horizontal movement will not stay completely flat: by catching momentum, it will make a "leap" (Sprung) into a folded or curved movement. This dialectics is truly Heraclitian, purely generative or absolutely productive. What is important is that, quite literally, such 'adverting'190 returns offer an initial taste of what is going to be a real or ontological return: be it the actual swing back of the pendulum that will happen when the forward/vertical movement is exhausted or, in its emblematic interpretation, the return to one's paradisiacal home that is going to also take place quite concretely at the end of history. Regardless of the level of reading, while working

189 "The limbs, which are only pendulums, then follow mechanically of their own accord, without further help" (Kleist, Abyss 215). 190 Lat. advertere, adverti, adverstts = to turn/face to/towards; direct/draw one's attention to, steer/pilot (a ship). 204 towards preparing the final return by establishing a 'home away from home' this temporary return will still have its own, albeit mobile, center of gravity, completely present in every moment of the movement.191 In every such moment it is fully posited

(gesetzt) with respect to an origin (Ursprung).

From this point of view, because one approaches the matter titolectically,

Heraclitus' 'river of change' inevitably gets included or dragged into the problematic as well. For Kleist the static moment of the return is not separable from the backward movement. It is not a "joy forever" and it is not seen sub speciae aetemitalis. From a w/j/vocal point of view, the same situation (of endless change) can be represented as unchangeably eternal. In that view, the movement of the pendulum would not be able to acknowledge an inner tension as it has not really lost its 'paradisiacal state', being still eternally identical with itself while never losing its being or existence.192 However, if duality (or plurality) is posited first, and we know that everything resides in the starting point, in the initial point of view, change or becoming turns out to be eternal. Being absolutely unrelatable to the other, both scenarios are seen as parallel perspectives and as representations they are included in an overall expressive framework that cannot label them as either true or false. Even though they may be reversed with respect to the other, both are equally true while generating and functioning in their own context. The only

191 "Each movement, he told me, has its centre of gravity; it is enough to control this within the puppet The limbs, which are only pendulums, then follow mechanically of their own accord, without further help. He added that this movement is very simple. When the centre of gravity is moved in a straight line, the limbs describe curves" (KJeist, Abyss 214) 1921 am alluding to Spinoza's view of the merely phantasmagoric fall from paradise that happens only in the mind. 205 possible distinction would thus have to originate from their expressiveness, from the inclination, the sensation, the feeling or mood that they would stir. 193

Despite what has already been said, this does not mean that the ever-changing moment is totally worthless and be simply discarded as residual dross. Even as a preparation for the apocalyptic end return, an exercise for the real death, a melete thanatou for "the final chapter in the history of the world," it still appears as yet another chapter in that story and still adds to the big picture, moving one step closer to putting the disparate pieces of the puzzle (i.e., the ensemble of fragments) back together.

For Kleist, the reversal in the concave mirror is emblematic for the final return.

With this example, he believes that he can explain how knowledge can come back transformed or allegorized as grace. Knowledge does not come back as knowledge, as the same, as it would in a straight reflexive mirror. It does not bounce back directly, as if encountering the resistance of a solid ground, but instead 'pierces' the infinite, which modifies or slightly derails its trajectory by curving it, making it bounce off lightly or tangentially as in the cmtigrav environment of the marionettes that barely touch the ground.194 The point is that by losing any such firm footing, one cannot count on a one- to-one return anymore. The image (of knowledge) is thus pulled into an inner disaggregation with respect to its constructability that will lead to a rather inward reversal. Persisting on such a meandering course, the image can no longer be confirmed as the same upon its return. Caught in a 'river of change', it will be 'eroded' and its

193 This statement is not to be understood as "anything goes" in a rather unleashed relativism because this type of relativism has an agenda and is thus only representative (and not expressive). One is just acknowledging relativism as relative, as what it truly is; an absolute or divine intuition is indeed impossible in a human mind. 194 "Puppets, like elves, require the ground only to touch on, and by that momentary obstruction to reanimate the spring of their limbs; while we require it to rest on, and to recover from the exertions of the dance: a moment which is clearly not dance in itself, and with which there is nothing to be done except to make it disappear by all possible means" (Kleist, Abyss 214) 206 recognizability compromised. As a consequence, it will be allegorized into something else and thus turned into an utterly new presentation. It will no longer appear as a knowledge-bearing or understandable image. Having burned all its bridges, this purely accidental apparition that has no essence, no stable model or Idea in a Platonic sense behind it, will engender a singular experience of complete liberation, because it can only be compared to itself.

What is important for this context is that by becoming such a pure appearance this now rather skewed image of knowledge has fulfilled one aspect of expression: its formal difference or diversity. Due to their inseparable togetherness, it will immediately call upon and activate the other as well. Consequently, it will automatically also be able to claim ontological underpinnings that will reestablish the pre-established "existential vinculum" with God so that divine grace from the paradisiacal existence can be bestowed upon it. Former knowledge will return imbued with being. Plato's Idea returns while being allegorized into what Kant calls Idea, each of them having their own monadic truth as they are non-relatively harmonized and thus caught in a graceful dance of existence.195

As Kleist finds that the way back by means of acquiring infinite divine consciousness is closed, he tackles the other way, turning towards the marionette, towards the pure form without consciousness, the pure bodily (not ideal) construction (Korperbau), as if it would dive together with Lucifer into the abyss of (cumulative) empirical knowledge.

195 Hence Kant's idea acquires another dimension besides the mere regulative one while Plato's tones down its hegemonic representativeness. Harmonizing representative ideas in such a manner (i.e., nonrelatively) is a way of saving the phenomena that they shape while presenting them as such in one swing. Benjamin acknowledges the importance of this ontological dimension of the idea as its highest metaphysical significance: "Als Sein gewinnen Wahrheit und Idee jene hdchste metaphysische Bedeutung, die das Platonische System ihnen nachdrilcklich zuspricht" (Kairos 135). There is no contradiction between Benjamin and Deleuze because the latter extracts his Platonism via Nietzsche who extrapolates, maybe, too much the importance of Politeia. In his Trauerspiel book, however, Benjamin offers an interpretation of Symposion that is geared towards exploring a true intertwining between beauty and existential truth (Kairos 135-137). Straightforward expressive systems (like Leibniz and Spinoza's, for example) do not need the restorative Umschwung because they are always already in that perfectly parallel state of non-relatedness. This anulls, of course, the Copenucan turn. 207

Hence by miming (or mimicking) this form that has lost all similarity with respect to a model and has turned into a mere simulacrum of a human being, the human being itself will paradoxically be able to become graceful and discover the back door to paradise.

Kleist and Leibniz: the problem of death

From the point of view of human existence, death alone boasts real ontological necessity.

It is the only fact (or factum as completed fatum) that one can affirm with certainty.

Hence it can be represented as a final destination of life's progressive journey. If one considers that as a new beginning, life ends death, one will have to acknowledge a stop between life and death; one would thus be able to clearly distinguish them and represent them as separate and implicitly relatable entities. While it may be true that the created in(de)finite has to have an end (because it has a beginning), this end must not necessarily be a stop(page) (Hemmung), an interruption, a disruption of the movement, a rupture, a cessation in the flow of existence. When the end is turned allegorically into a beginning, when it is returned, reversed into something different as if seen in a concave mirror, the end is (at the same time) a beginning. Every beginning is thus the spillover of an end.

It can also be said that, one cannot catch both beginning and end at the same time in order to be able to relate them: the end (or death) 'dies' as an end, while being simultaneously reborn into a beginning. They are thus absolutely (not relatively) separated. They never interrupt the movement, the flow of the same existence that has just taken a different turn in its course, now appearing as an unrentable beginning. This aspect reveals a fact that will become very important for Kleist: that death is not an end. 208

To him, death is not an interruption of existence, as both life and death are just diverse forms of a truly eternal existence.

Kleist's questions about immortality and the possibility of existence after death become acute once he draws the conclusions from his reading of Kant. His famous letter to his sister Wilhelmine from March 22, 1801 voices his inmost concerns:

If everyone saw the world through green glasses, they would be forced to judge that everything they saw was green, and could never be sure whether their eyes saw things as they really are, or did not add something of their own to what they saw. And so it is with our intellect. We can never be certain that what we call Truth is really Truth, or whether it does not merely appear to us. If the latter, then the Truth that we acquire here is not Truth after our death, and it is all in vain striving for a possession that may never follow us into the grave. (Kleist, Abyss 95)

Kleist's main problem is that one cannot decide whether the truth that we know is indeed truth or whether it only appears to us like that. This almost Hamlet-like position of not being able to decide is not far from an 'antinomic' perception; a perception that, in

Hamlet's case, does not contradict and exclude his purely spontaneous actions. For Kant, the reality of antinomies (i.e., that everything can be proven both ways with equally strong arguments) would not cause a deadlock for human reason, but merely make one aware of one's embedded limits, one's epistemological confinement to the realm of appearances. Kleist, however, was not so ready to accept Kant's solution. For him, the problem of determining the reality of a thing as it is in itself still persists as a compelling problem.

Kant uses the antinomies to show that we cannot know things as they are in themselves and that our knowledge is subject to the structure of our minds. He argues that the antinomies can be resolved if we understand the proper function and domain of the various faculties that contribute to the production of knowledge and claimed to solve 209 these contradictions by saying that in no case is the contradiction real. The question is how could it have been real to start with since we, under no condition, can conceive any notion of reality? The problem had to have been declared not real even before tackling it

(i.e., being thus apriorically not real). In short, we faced the problem only to discover our limit, but never to actually find a true solution to it. Consequently, the solution as such has so far not even been approached. This means that it still possible. In other words, the terms under which one can conceive such a solution have not been properly addressed yet. Since the condition of the solution to problem of antinomies is still open for discussion, it can and will await, ask and eventually require answers.

It should then not come as a complete surprise that Kleist found little comfort in what Kant said as he realized what Kant actually did. Peter Fenves astutely remarks how

Kant's Laying the Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals "seeks to show the ground on which one can recognize one's duties as one's own" (Fenves 54). Hence Kant does not even venture to affirm, like Leibniz, how the world would appear to the dutiful.196 By not being able to account for any that might be produced by the moral conduct, Kant blinds himself as he is not able to foresee the actual consequences. He roams in realm of a possibility that can never become actual, applicable and concrete. More than that, metaphorically speaking the philosopher from Konigsberg could also be seen as the sorcerer's (i.e., Leibniz's) apprentice, who opened Pandora's box without being able to close it. The point is that consequences exist with or without being acknowledged; death being the prime example of an inevitable one. What is important is that Kleist cannot be

196 In Theodicy Leibniz says: "Do your duty and be content with what will come of it, not only because you cannot resist divine providence or the nature of things (which may suffice for tranquility but not for contentment), but also because you have to do with a good master. And this is what one could call Fa turn Chrislianum" (Theodicy 55) (qtd. in Fenves 54). 210 blamed for still wanting to find conclusive answers. At the same time, it is also perfectly understandable why he felt without having any real purpose (.Zweck) or true goal (Ziel)197 in life, all his hopes with respect to what is called Bildung in very Jena romantic sense of progressive development198 having indeed been shattered.199

As shown by his letters of September 13-15, 1800, Kleist becomes convinced that the understanding (Verstand) cannot secure any certainty of one's eternal existence

("ewiges Dasein"), of one's ability to retain and carry over after death any truth that one has collected (sammeln) in life. As a consequence, Kleist decides to focus on feeling or

"der herrliche Gefuhl," as it becomes what he calls a "mafigebebende und entscheidende

Macht." This moving away from the intellect is not new in the romantic landscape. For

Kleist, however, feeling will be centered exclusively in the heart,200 not being placed under a 'reasonable' authority as in Novalis, who is still concerned with not letting feeling turn into empty fanaticism (Schwarmerei). From this point of view Kleist will be

701 closer to Keats's "life of sensations" that will develop into a religion of love.

What seemed to trouble Kleist the most during the Kant-crisis is the possibility of not being able to establish any type of continuity between life and death and thus to be able to conceive things in their (immortal) truth beyond both, as they really are. The

19i "Ich hatte schon als Knabe (mich dilnkt am Rhern durch erne Schritt von Wieland) mir den Gedanken angeeignet, daI3 die Vervollkommnung der Zweck der Schflpfiing ware. Ich glaubte, daB wir einst nach dem Tode von der Stufe der Vervollkommnung, die wir auf diesem Sterne erreichten, auf einem andem weiter fortschreiten warden, und dafl wir den Schatz von Wahiheiten, den wir hier sammelten, auch doit einst brauchen kOnnten (...) Ach, Wilhelmine, wenn die Spitze dieses Gcdankens Dein Hera nicht triflt, so lachle nicht (lber einen andem, der sich tief in seinem heiligsten Innern davon verwundet filhlt. Mein einziges, mein hochstes Ziel ist gesunken, und ich habe mm keines mehr" (Kleist, Samtliche Werke 2: 633). 198 In a letter from September 15, 1800 he says. "Ja, Wilhelmine, wenn Du mir kdimtest die Freude machen, immer fortzuscheiten in Deiner Bildung mit Geist und Herz (...)" (Kleist, Sdmtliche Werke 2: 565) In a parenthesis let it be said that Kant himself was a convinced supporter of the (regulative) idea of Bildung, of moral perfectibility but only inasmuch as it becomes a sober "recognition of an impossibility that is nevertheless possible - by virtue of being demanded unconditionally" (Fenves 110) which is still not quite how Kleist imagined as immortality after death. 200 For a detailed analysis see for example John C Blankenagel The Attitude of Heinrich von Kleist toward the Problems of Life (1917). 201 In a letter to Fanny Brawne, Keats says: "Love is my religion" (Letters 2: 223-24). 211 problem of death, especially when realizing the prospect of facing it as a final destination without any possibility of continuation, suddenly becomes more relevant. While alluding to the German saying "Der Tod will immer einen Grund haben," Leibniz comments: "Der

Tag an dem ich sterbe, liegt zwar fest, aber der Tod wird zu diesem Zeitpunkt nur deswegen eintreten, weil ich zuvor das (frei) getan haben werde, was ihn (notwendig) herbeifuhrt"202 (Essaide Theodicee 55). As paradoxical as it may sound, Leibniz does not allow any necessary law to be enacted unless it is first enabled by one's inner nature: death can never become ontologically necessary unless it is 'activated' by an inner nature that is free and spontaneous. He is not ready to surrender unconditionally to death, granting it an absolute inevitability and necessity, before stipulating some provisions, before specifying some terms and conditions. He won't deny death its necessity per se but gives a certain priority to the human factor, to the inner subjective inclination or spontaneity. While it may be true that, especially considering his rather dark baroque age,

Leibniz goes the furthest in not recognizing a deterministic existence and straightforwardly accepting its fatality, he also won't simply turn everything into a manifestation of a conscious subjectivity. (That would have brought him closer to romanticism.) His statement could better be described as an infusion of clarity between domains, giving Caesar and God each their respective dues. In this sense, his starting point is always Creation's state of separation.

By absolutely separating death from life, Leibniz makes death truly absolute. In such a context, one cannot distinguish clearly a preeminence of one over the other.

Leibniz thus sets out to explore a terrain where freedom and fatality are not contradictory

202 "There is a German proverb which says that death will ever have a cause; and nothing is so true. You will die on that day (let us presume it is so, and that God foresees it): yes, without doubt; but it will be because you will do what shall lead you thither" (Leibniz, Theodicy 156). 212 but become rather 'synonymous.'203 Going back to the previous chapter's argument regarding Spinoza's determinism, one can now see that neither Leibniz nor Spinoza would polarize freedom and necessity, setting them off against each other.

In Die Ontologischen Grundlagen der Freiheitstheorie von Leibniz, Christos

Axelos claims that in the Theodicy Leibniz does not acknowledge a necessary chain in the sense of a relation between cause and effect because sufficient reason is in fact a substantial inclusion. Even though and actually because it is an "adamantine chain," sufficient reason liberates us from the fatality of cause and effect:

Der Zusammenhang der Ursachen mit ihren Wirkungen das ist, was uns von der Zumutung des faulen TrugschluBes und der Neigung zu der Annahme der Fatalitat aller Ereignisse befreit, wahrend es zunachst so zu sein scheint, als ob die adamantine Kette der Ursachen und Wirkungen fur die Geltung des Schlusses und die Akzeptierung der Fatalitat sprache. (308)

The sequence of cause and effect is thus not a chain of events that relate to one another.

Their complexity resides in the fact that, on the one side, the chain itself is inclusive while being at the same time also absolutely separating. It is inclusive from an ontological point of view, being predicated while having the same existence in a contiguous "substantial vinculum"204 which is more than a mere relation between representable entities. The chain is absolutely separating with respect to their formal appearance because cause and effect do not melt into each other becoming one or united.

As the ground that it seeks is not 'stable' or relative to what it grounds, death thus turns

2°3 p^t 0f entering into the labyrinth of freedom is, of course, to discover a way out - and thus Theseus, to recover the original freedom of action. Opposed to freedom, then, is not fate but, rather, the labyrinth in which freedom is caught" (Fenves 54). 204 Leibniz calls it "vinculum substantiale." For more information see Look Brandon Leibniz and the "vinculum substantiale Being based on an ontological unity this vinculum is gapless, without a break or interruption (lilckenlos) like the dance of the marionettes, as we will see. 213 into a representation of itself. As Deleuze says, "to ground is always to ground representation" (Difference 274).205

It is true that by becoming a representation, death is downgraded from an irrational to a more manageable anxiety. Such a rationalization of fear would not only transform death into a myth, but it would also inscribe death into a dialectical relationship with life. Once formulated in such a relationship, life and death become inextricably bound together, and thus stuck with each other as opposites in the framework of representation. This reciprocal determination perpetuates anxiety. As a result, life becomes related to death in Heideggerian fashion, as life towards death (Sein zum Tode).

In the end, the dilution of the fear of death into anxiety turns life into a nightmarish vision of a death that cannot be avoided. Death will henceforth 'catch' ground or find a relative position inside life, a position that holds them together in mutual reciprocity. One cannot die because life cannot exit this relationship. One cannot end life in order to allow for it to be turned into death. As if in a turnaround (Umschwung) at the end of a forward swing

(or as an ebbing wave that is reversely regressing towards its origin), it will become indefinitely open-ended. Even when life does end, its representativeness will not let it arrive at a true closure, at a real end, because it will return reflexively spectral or undead appearances that will come back to haunt from a limbo-like domain. Passing away is not necessarily synonymous to dying; a mere suicidal stop of life is not a guarantee to trigger a real or a 'good' death unless it is a true inner spontaneity.

In order for death to be able to find a true ground, an absolute ground in the sense of the Benjaminian mysterious origin and not merely a relative one that acts as the basis

205 Proceeding from a Nietzschean expressiveness, Deleuze is primarily concerned with defining groundlessness. He is not concerned with the notion "origin" that is actually a ground. 214 for a representation, implies for life to be able to abort its relativity with it as well The difficulty is thus figuring out an outcome that would help such alive-dead souls find rest.

If On the Marionette Theater is read as an attempt to find a way out of an enclosing situation, Leibniz could be called upon to offer some useful hints. Even though he cannot completely exclude a relative determination, he is still able to ultimately prevent creating a foil-fledged representation. For Leibniz, formal appearance becomes a purely subjective invention, a concetto (not a classic concept that would still be able to distinguish a conception) or emblem in which text and image are image are 'conceited'206, an allegory in Benjaminian terms or a point of view of an event in which the cause is assimilated to its effect in a reciprocal inclusion. Even though this immediate link seems relative, its pure spontaneity alleviates (Leibniz uses the verb aufheben) its unavoidability. He says:

"daraus ist zu ersehen, daB der Zusammenhang der Ursachen mit den Wirkungen nicht jede unertragliche Fatalitat mit sich bringt und daB er vielmehr das begriffliche

Instrument liefert, um sie aufzuheben (French lever, my addition)" (Leibniz, Essais de

Teodicee 55) (my italics).207 Leibniz's free inclination is not able to acquire any sort of determination (Bestimmung) that would label it as fatality or determinism because it is merely a pure inner action, a spontaneity that cannot even be validated as freedom. Its only possible determination is so constitutive to life as such that it becomes absolutely synonymous to one's determination or purpose in life, a determination that actually reveals one's eternal existence (ewiges Dasein).208 As Robert C. Sleigh Jr. notes, "The

206 Conceit is the English equivalent of the verbal emblem. The metaphysical conceit is especially associated with the English metaphysical poets, such as John Donne and George Herbert. In this sense also see Contemporary Poetics, where Louis Armand makes concise but precise remarks regarding the subject (Armand 248-49). 207 It is significant to point out that it was Leibniz who first used the term Zusammenhang. It will be used later by Benjamin when he distinguishes between "Deduktionszusammenhang" and "Kette der Deduktion" (Kairos 137). 208 Kleist's letters between 13-18 September 1800 are particularly concerned about this aspect of the eternity of existence: "Alle echte Aufklarung des Weibes besteht zuletzt darin, vernilnftig ilber die Bestimmung ihres irdischen 215 principle of sufficient reason requires a reason or cause for each state of affairs that obtains, but there is room within the disjunction - reason or cause - to slip in some version of libertarianism at any rate, some account of freedom according to which free decisions do not come about in virtue of natural causal necessities, ultimately beyond the control of the agent" (259-60). With respect to the same inclination that is ruled under the

principle of sufficient reason, Deleuze also sees traces of pre-critical freedom. He says that the condition of closure "is not a determinism - even an internal one [like in

Spinoza] - but an interiority that constitutes liberty itself' (Fold 70). The question is:

would such a free inclination towards death not alleviate its fatality?

More recently, Blanchot has differentiated two aspects or 'faces' of death: a

personal death and one that is utterly mysterious and unapproachable, as it

becomes that which is without relation to me, without power over me - that which stripped of all possibility - the unreality of the indefinite. I cannot represent this reversal to myself, I cannot conceive it even of it as definitive (...) it is toward which I cannot go forth, for in it I do not die, I have fallen from the power to die. (qtd. in Deleuze, Difference 112)209

Death needs a ground in order to enable one to die, since as Blanchot writes, death "is not

given but must be achieved" {Space 92). Granting death such an origin is an entirely

positive or affirmative gesture that unravels its expressiveness while preventing its

Lebens nachdenken zu kflnnen. Uber den Zweck unseres ganzen ewigen Daseins nachzudenken, auszuforschen, ob der GenuB der Glttckseligkeit, wie Epikur meinte, oder die Erreichung der Vollkommenheit, wie Leibniz glaubte, oder die Erfiillung der (rocknen Pflicht, wie Kant versichert, der letzte Zweck des Menschen sei, das ist selbst fur Manner unfruchtbar und oft verderblich. Wie kdnnen wir uns getrauen in den Plan einzugreifen, den die Natur ftlr die Ewigkeit entworfen hat, da wir nur ein so unendlich kleines Stock von ihm, unser Erdenleben, tlbersehen? Also wage Dich mit Deinem Verstande nie Uber die Grenzen Deines Lebens hinaus. Sei ruhig Qber die Zukunil. Was Du ftlr dieses Erdenleben tun sollst, das kannst Du begrcifcn, was Du ftlr die Ewigkeit tun sollst, nicht; und so kann denn auch kcinc Gottheit mehr von Dir veriangen, als die Erftlllung Deiner Bestimmung auf dieser Erde. Schranke Dich also ganz ftlr diese kurze Zeit ein. Kiimmre Dich nicht um Deine Bestimmung nach dem Tode, weil Du darflber leicht Deine Bestimmung aufdieser Erde vernachMssigen kdnntest" (Kleist, Samtliche Werke 2: 565) (italics mine). 209 In this context, one can also mention baroque mystics like Theresa of Avila, of who it has often been claimed that she died "of not being able to die." Without being the real event, such an intense and paradoxical 'near-death' experience do count as a rehearsal as it does have a clear albeit weak messianic character, in Benjaminian terms. This experience occurs when death is so absolutely stripped of all possibilities, that it would not even allow dying, thus begging for a ground. Denis de Rougemont, for one, analyses Saint Theresa's "inability to die" in relationship to the concept of "courtly love" (de Rougemont 159). 216 representation. As necessary and unavoidable as it might seem, death is still caused by a free gesture. For Leibniz, death is thus the skilled yet graceful or artful combination (ars combinatoria) of an event in which spontaneous freedom is engraved in an almost mechanical necessary chain. In other words, it is seen as both necessary and the result of one's free and unconscious gesture. The problem is then how one actually pairs or conjoins freedom and necessity. How can one really and effectively make this conjunction happen? How does one, as Deleuze asks when analyzing Leibniz's automaton, "conjoin liberty with a schizophrenic automaton's inner, complete and pre- established determination [?]" (Fold 69, italics mine). Deleuze's answer is that the two cannot be conjoined as attributes. Rather, '"the spiritual automaton' is programmed for voluntary acts, just as the 'material automaton' is programmed by determination for his mechanical actions: if things are enveloped in God's understanding, it is such as they are,

'the free as free, and the blind and mechanical still as mechanical'" (Fold 72).

Unlike Spinoza, then, Leibniz makes a distinction between a mechanical and a spiritual automaton. As Parkinson explains, "Leibniz does not think of a soul as a kind of immaterial clockwork; as he puts it (GP VI, 356) 'the operation of spiritual automata ... is not mechanical'. Rather, the word 'automaton' is used in its literal sense of'self moving', the point being that the soul has an internal force which makes it the source of its own actions" (17 n. 11). Having different types of automatisms, the material and the spiritual are separated and cannot be conjoined. Their separation, however, is so absolute that they become indiscernible with respect to each other and thus become Identicals.

Hence in Leibniz the self-moving soul is the prime mover of the mechanical body.

In Kleist's On the Marionette Theatre, however, one finds the story of an inverse 217 procedure: the mechanical marionette jumpstarts, as mechanical, the spiritual automaticity of the human being. In other words, the human being becomes a graceful spiritual automaton by its proximity with the marionette, by joining it in the same dance.

Pointing out their pre-established harmony, such proximity is more than a resemblance, an imitation of gestures that would still be able to distinguish them as two separated yet relatable entities. Rather, what emerges is a synchronized correlation that overwhelms the vision of their spatial distance. They not only meet, but as "the two poles of a circular world," they intertwine (ineitiamier greifen) as Identicals, each acquiring a monadic status. But grace is not being transferred from the marionette, strictly speaking, because the marionette is not the creator of grace. Indeed the marionette enables an immediate or absolute transfer of grace. But in this it is not even the intermediary, the medium (or condition) that enables it. Henceforth by becoming 'like' the mechanical marionette, the human being can find his spiritual soul. Strictly speaking, this does not occur by means of the marionette, because the marionette is not an intermediary that enables that to happen.

One thus iearns' to die through the marionette's existential grace. Without the possibility of having any common denominator or background to be reflected upon, forms become non-representative or non-formative. As such, they are no longer flat (like the shadows in Plato's cave) but gain more depth and complexity. They liquefy, as it were, losing their stability and the fixity with respect to their referent, engaging an ambiguity that becomes a sign of their expressiveness. One cannot look at one form without another entering into one's visual field; however, when one does focus the perspective on one, the other will completely disappear. Either way no relation can be established between them. What is interesting is that their simultaneity does not 218 contradict their alternation. Simultaneity cannot be perfect or absolute. Life and death can thus both be forms of existence while also alternating with one another. The end becomes that beginning while being identical with it. The spontaneous living freedom and the necessary death will appear as mere formal aspects abiding in a state of non-relatable pure diversity that bespeak their formal difference and their ontological identity. From such an expressive point of view, life and death become forms of an ever-changing existence. Subjectivity as an inner spontaneous action appearing as such an absolutely separated or monadic form will 'die' or vanish before the 'other' form sets in, thus never allowing a relation to be formed. One cannot establish a relation between them because the end of life is simultaneously the beginning of death: the end spills over into the beginning. Subjectivity is turned over into the necessity of death while still remaining absolutely separated from it.

Empty and unable to find any validation in understanding (Verstand), spontaneous subjectivity is formally different from necessity. As Deleuze says, "the soul is inclined without being necessitated" (Fold 70). Subjectivity does not need to be related to necessity because it has been already interlocked on a more profound basis. Hence it can still be considered a free inner action that is not determined by anything outside itself because the moment it is determined externally by something else, it has died as a free action. This type of subjectivity is a pure inclination and is not even determined internally the way it is in Spinoza.210 However, the inner, necessary determination (death for example) follows im-mediately. Leibnizian subjectivity invents its own motifs that

210 "What it does, it does entirely, that being what comprises its liberty. The soul is not determined to do it" (Deleuze, Fold SI). 219 cannot be constituted as defined goals, but seem more like empty hallucinations without

711 reference to any object.

As if aiming at Kant's theoretical and especially moral scaffolding, Kleist lets

Prince Friedrich von Homburg act spontaneously, without thinking, merely following a sheer impulse when he decides to attack. Any attempt to retroactively understand his motives in order to be able to judge his gesture as either right or wrong will fail.

Questions like: "What was he thinking?" are ultimately not applicable. The tension between disregarding an order and obtaining a resounding victory is so equilibrated that it remains unsolvable; the Elector in Prim Friedrich von Homburg will acknowledge it as well. His gesture cannot be ascribed under any law, under the Kantian quidjuris (i.e., the epistemic justification of a principle), a consequence that will blurr the "quaestio facti" as well. His motives seem closer to that purely subjective inclination and freedom that

Leibniz talks about. The Prince's action cannot be judged and have to be taken as such because no thinking principle can be applied to them in an efficient way. Being solely its own justification but not in the sense of the means being justified from the point of view of the end because it would be a two-timed (representative) judgement and not a simultaneous one,212 his courageous gesture will also escape being considered a

"principled" trespassing of reason and be labeled as Schwarmerei213 Michael Kohlhaas

211 Benjamin's example of an empty subjectivity can be found in the discussion between St. Theresa and her confessor (Origin 234). 212 There is no means to an end because there is no between. There is nothing in between that would mediate and thus enable a relationship. Just as the "origin is the goal", the means is at the same time the end as well. Leibnizian causality works in the same way. 213 "In its most general meaning, Schwarmerei is a transgression of the limits of human reason undertaken according to principles..." (Kant, Critique of Practical Reason 85).("Wenn Schwtirmerei in der allergemeinsten Bedeutung eine nach Grundsatzen untemommene Oberschreitung der Grenzen der menschlichen Vernunft ist") (Kant, Werke 7: 208). Thus even abiding outside of reason is still claimable in understanding. The said trespassing occurs according to principles that are (merely) contrary to those of reason. They are not completely different as Kantian or synthetic reason will never be able to jump over its shadow and escape its own mediality or its relative status thus finding everywhere "principled" scenarios as a propagation of its reflexivity. Plato's simulacrum is thus closer to conceiving pure difference. 220 becomes quite quixotic when he decides "in the flash of an instant"214 to go after the nobleman Wenzel von Tronka. It is true that, in this case, Kohlhaas eventually collides with different systems based on law, the law of the state and the religious law of the

Lutheran God. (Martin Luther was also a rebel while building a church from within a church, this time being actually asked to judge what he himself once did.) This is yet another example of an ironic scenario in which a judge becomes inevitably drawn into the verdict thus showing the inevitable inconsistency or the lack of foundation of law as such. What is important is that all these outside circumstances, however, will still not be able to affect Kohlhaas' inner freedom.

One can say that because of their pure or absolute subjectivity, these characters of

Kleist appear more baroque than romantic.215 They are characters of a Trauerspiel rather than of a tragedy. The tragic universe is double-decked in a relative way, tragedy presupposing a necessary fatum that acts in every moment as the implacable power that is relatable to the deeds of the characters. Baroque spontaneity is absolutely free because it is a completed act that expresses the entire soul at a given moment. This movement has an internal unity that cannot accommodate a goal (even a regulative one), or be framed under any law of continuity; it cannot be translated into a plan or a preconceived framework. One the one hand, freedom is thus not 'touched' by death, and, in a sense, it will not cease to exist even after death sets in, having an inherently virtual status. On the other, the absolute mystery of death is a revelation, because mystery being absolute is all there is, including revelation. In this sense, the secret contained in the message that

214 "We have to begin from all the smallest inclinations that ply our soul in every direction, in the flash of an instant, under the stress of thousand 'little springs': disquiet That is the model of the pendulum or balance wheel, the Unruhe, that replaces the scale" (Deleuze, Fold 69). 215 "The prince of Hamburg (sic), and all of Kleist characters are not so much Romantic as they are Baroque heroes" (Fold 125). 221

Michael Kohlhaas takes to his grave, becomes such a mystery. That is, it turns his

(personal) death into an absolute mystery. By spontaneously eating the letter, Kohlhaas undoes the eating of the apple from the Tree of Knowledge. He balances out the fall from paradise because producing such an absolute symbol or mystery simultaneously generates the most perfect revelation as well. This ambiguous mystery/revelation cannot even be considered inexpressible or ineffable (unaussprechlich),216 because being so mysterious it is at the same time so revealing. It therefore can only be expressed by means of baroque allegories and not romantic ones. By not becoming the direct or relatable effect of a representable cause in a Aristotelian causal chain (not in a substantial vinculum), they stand merely as so-called 'by-products' or 'side-effects'. The mystery conceived by Jena romanticism posits a general framework that serves as an enabling condition for the apparition of allegories. These allegories, even as negative presentations of an eternally unreachable absolute, turn out to still be creations that can be backtracked to that absolute, because they could not have come about without it. In Kleist, however, far from being approached by mere approximations, the mystery of conception is posted in such a perfect equilibrium and intertwining of forces that, as in the case of Marquise von O, it immaculately conceives a full-fledged and ontologically real offspring.

The fundamental ambiguity between freedom and necessity cannot ultimately establish a dialectics of opposition, but dwells in a rather unrelatable simultaneity. This ambiguity marks Kleist's suicide as well. In a letter to Ruhle, Kleist says: "Folge deinem

Gefuhl, was Dir schon diinkt, das gib uns, auf gut Gliick. Es ist ein Wurf, wie mit dem

Wiirfel; aber es gibt nichts anderes" (Samtliche Werke 2: 769). Like the beauty that

210 In Friedrich Schlegel's Gesprach uberdie Poesie, Ludoviko says: "Das Hochste kann man eben, weil es unaussprechlich ist, nur allegorisch sagen" (Kritische 505). 222 resides in a throw of dice, a throw that would later catch Nietzsche's attention as well, the beauty of death does neither overwhelm reason nor is it kept at a safe distance by a so- called "sobriety" {Niichternheit). Everything thus caters to the idea of a free and willful death in the sense that one's time to die is, after all, one's own, in its Pauline fullness As everything is grounded in feeling, Kleist takes his own life simply because he felt like dying, death itself being just a feeling. Not stopping at a labeling, representative (or

Kantian) morality but assimilating a rather Leibnizian "morality of progress" (Deleuze,

Fold 73) in which freedom is included,217 Kleist's act of suicide could not even be considered a stoic gesture that would emanate from tranquility,218 but would originate from a sensual fullness or contentment that would spring from pure feeling. It will thus be the immediate consequence of a life lived at its fullest in a very concrete way, the soul having the ability to freely invent its motives.

In such a context, the idea of suicide cannot even be conceived. Existence cannot not be, and not even God has the power to cancel it. There is no loss of existence because not even God has the power of not being. At the end of his essay, Leibniz dismisses any possible overlapping between "theodicy" and "theocide " As Peter Fenves explains:

Since God does not have enough power not to be and he cannot therefore overcome his own necessity, possibility - and therefore power - power cannot be the dominant element of the divine attributes (...) 'To complain of not having such power (to will without rhyme or reason) would be to argue like Pliny, who finds fault with the power of God because God cannot destroy himself (G, 6: 357; T, 365)". (60) (italics mine)

From the point of view of such a total incapacity to negate existence, Kleist's suicide is beyond both stoic affirmation and Christian condemnation.

217 "Liberty is not threatened in the system of inclusion. Rather, its morality" (Fold 73). 218 See Leibniz's defense of Christian content with respect to stoic tranquility (Fenves 54-55). On the relationship between Leibniz and the stoics see also Deleuze's chapter on "Sufficient Reason" pp. 53 and 56 and ch. "Incompossibility, Individuality, Liberty" pp. 69 in The Fold. 223

In the wake of a philosophy (Kant's) that could not even account for God's existence anymore, the act of choosing another attribute does not seem so improbable.

Switching the dominant attribute from love to power, Nietzsche would engage yet another path, mapping out a different plane of consistency that in its divergence does not collide with the previous. Nietzsche and Leibniz may disagree on their starting point, they will not in their expressiveness. It becomes clear how, from such a point of view,

Nietzsche will have sufficient reason to pronounce God dead, feeling perfectly entitled to kill Him. Since there is no absolute simultaneity (merely a simulated one) of attributes in

God, the choice of one over the other is inevitable. This fact, however, does not necessarily imply that the act of choice as such is apriorically flawed and should be blamed for the fall from grace. In his tremendous or earthquake-like impact, Nietzsche is merely recalibrating expressiveness. It is true that he will sweep away Christianity, shaking the very foundation of the Kantian, still representative morality, at the same time.

*1Q But his gesture will not affect the Leibnizian "morality of progress" per se. It causes an abysmal fracture in the very notion of principle (Grundsatz), which indeed widens the already present crack {Sprung) in the origin (Ursprung), leaving it devastated and deserted, unable to further generate products, utterly discontinuous, dispersed or displaced within itself, like an imprint without a source yet claimable ontologically in view of the eternal return.

The main point is that even the "waste land" of Nietzschean modernity is still imbued with existence. By changing the perspective and focusing on another attribute,

Nietzsche does not exit an expressive configuration. He merely exchanges the

219 The latter will remain intact because by being so monadic aiclosed in itself it cannot engage in a true bilateral relationship. It will appear thus as merely formally diverse because the principle of contradiction is not able to be established between them. 224 predominance of one for another, but still resists creating a representable eminence of one over all others. He knows full well that there cannot be a stable ground that would allow such construction. Since all expressive thinkers rightly affirm and posit existence, they implicitly generate a common 'platform' that disallows any fundamental contradiction, however divergent their subsequent arguments become. Their disagreements remain merely one-to-one, 'flat' discrepancies based on relating ideas locally. But they always and already agree that, while every expression has an origin, there is no such thing as a

'principled' ground.

Diverging from Nietzsche, Leibniz and Kleist still posit a continuity of existence, in the sense that the virtuous can follow up reaping what they sow. One is still able to collect (sammeln) what one has 'planted' in life. For Kleist especially, everything becomes merely a passing through one stage or aspect of existence into another, the end being thus merely the start of a recapitulation,220 a swing back of the pendulum. Life is thus not interrupted by death, but spills over into it in such an immediate way that one can no longer tell where one stops and the other begins. One cannot deny the presence of an actual turning point, but this point is so intimately included in the general movement of existence that it cannot be regarded as a stop or pause that would enable a clear act of distinguishing one from the other. Kleist will thus forever remain a nomadic personality who is in a pure motion travelling on a journey that cannot fathom any such goal or telos.

After reading Kant, Kleist's ideal of Bildung was shattered. Sydna Stern Weiss synthesizes quite eloquently Kleist's answer to the Kantian problem:

Kleist's Lebensplan with its absolute goal has collapsed; it had become meaningless. Dropping the term lebensplan from his vocabulary, he m "At the end of the treatise (Theodicy, n.n ) Leibniz therefore begins again, recapitulating his argument for the wisdom of God in the form of a fable, the central characters of which are a goddess and her pupil" (Fenves 60). 225

spoke only of a journey (Reise), the purpose (Zweck) of which he did not know. No longer speaking of an ultimate goal, truth, and acutely aware that he had no goal (Ziel). 'Ach, es ist der schmerzlichste Zustand, ganz ohne Ziel zu sein' (March 22, 1801), he settled for 'Bewegung auf der Reise', motion without reference to any goal. (Hinderer, Kleist's Dramen 119)

While Kleist would immerse himself in a pure Heraclitian movement, Novalis would settle for a mere change of direction that ushers in yet another goal together with an absolute longing: "Hiermit schien sein Lebensplan vernichtet. Er war es aber nicht sondern nahm nur einen Umweg, eine andere Richtung" (Silz 126-27). In the same sense

Weiss also points to Kleist's "Uber die allmahliche Verfertigung der Gedanken beim

Reden" (1805) as another example of an expressive manner of thinking that has a preconceived plan or idea of betraying formation, but focuses solely on the mobile present moment, because "in the process of speaking, the conclusion of a thought becomes clear" (Sembdner, Studien 125). Kleist illustrates the idea of the actual crossing over into the infinite using the concave mirror, a typical topos of the baroque. The concave distorts the straightforward one-to-one reflection, swinging back like the pendulum: "just as our image, as we approach a concave mirror, vanishes to infinity only to reappear before our very eyes" (Kleist, Abyss 216). The suggestion here is that there is no stoppage, no interruption in what is called infinite space, even after reaching a so- called limit.

For Kleist, death is like a passing through one room into another: "Es ist als ob wir aus einem Zimmer in das andere gehen" (Samtliche Werke 2: 768). There is no interval between life and death, no relation. The end of one spills over and becomes the beginning of the other. They are placed in an ontological or natural necessity that is, as

John Keats would say, "as sure to follow as night follows day" and that comes "as 226 naturally as the leaves to a tree" (Letters 254). This non-relation helps Kleist sustain a belief in an eternal existence ("ewiges Dasein") beyond his Kantian crisis. As we see, the movement of his marionette does not stop but rather glides and curves its movement, including any possible opposition in its graceful dance. In the same way, death is contained in life, life is integrated with death as forms of an eternal existence. If death disappears as a goal, Kleist's lament of not having a higher telos in life does not necessarily seem to be a negative thing anymore; the goal is included in the journey and gives the movement an inner unity221 as a completed act or entelechia.

This conception of death as an immediate passage from one room into another shows that even Kleist's death should not necessarily be labeled as a suicide. There are several examples of 'good' deaths that seemed like a suicide: those of Odin, Empedocles and Socrates, for example. The substantial linkage between the rooms leaves no time between them. If there is no time, there is no passage, since passage is time and time passage. Hence there is no mediation or relation between the two. In such a context, temporality was not apriorically embedded in the framework of experience but is merely synchronically dogging along the movement. By giving death a ground (Grund), an origin, Kleist actually is able to prevent giving it a relative ground, a Grundsatz that always comes 'pre-packaged' with its law or rule of construction. Hence without denying death its possibility, Kleist simply does not grant it a condition for this possibility. In this way he can avoid the reciprocity and be in turn conditioned by it as he simply forfeits engaging a causal relation based on a sequential chain. Death will henceforth be substantially linked to life as both become diverse forms of existence. It is true that in

221 "(...) a unity that can be interior to movement, or a unity of change that can be active" (Fold 55) 227 such a context, he is not able to 'critique' it in view of a possible experience. But is this a bad thing? Is it really even necessary or even wise222 to engage in such a critique9

Kleist's Marionette

Paul de Man and Schiller's Aesthetic Education

Divided into three parts, this section focuses on describing Kleist's marionette as it is seen through the lens of Paul de Man, through Kant's conception of the sublime, and through its relation with Kleist's romantic contemporaries.

Leibniz's freedom or spontaneity is an act that has no preconceived plan or model. It is unrepeatable, which makes a return to it quite impossible because the next moment is yet another such spontaneous act. Deleuze says that the spontaneous act expresses the wholeness of the soul in the present. "When Leibniz appeals to the perfect or completed act (entelechia), he is not dealing with an act that inclusion would require us to consider as past, and that would return to an essence" (Fold 70). In Kleistian terms this forward inclination would translate into the impossibility of going back to a paradise in the past. A way back to a paradise would be a mimetic repetition of the first gesture as in the story of the young Narcissus:

About three years ago, I related, I was swimming with a young man over whose physical form a marvelous grace seemed to shine. He must have been just sixteen or so, and only the first signs of vanity, induced by the favors of women, could be seen, as it were, in the farthest distance. It so happened that shortly before, in Paris, we had seen the famous statue called the Spinario, the youth removing a thorn from his foot - copies of it

2221 am referring especially to Kant's having to rely on wisdom when his thought sets out to become practical, when it turns out to be more than a pure diagnosis on the mechanism of knowledge. See for example his so-called "wise adaptation" or his "sober but wise" formulation while critiquing the morality of the Stoics from the Critique of Practical Reason (5: 86, qtd. in Fenves 109). 228

are familiar and to be found in most German collections. A glance in a large mirror recalled it to him at a moment when, in drying himself, he happened to raise his foot to a stool - he smiled and mentioned the discovery he had made. I indeed had noticed it too in the very same instant, but either to test the self-assurance of the grace with which he was endowed, or to challenge his vanity in a salutary way, I laughed and said he was seeing phantoms. He blushed and raised his foot a second time to prove it to me, but the attempt, as might easily have been foreseen, did not succeed. Confused, he raised his foot a third and fourth time; he must have raised it ten times more: in vain! He was unable to produce the same movement again. And the movements that he did make had so comical an effect that I could hardly suppress my laughter. From that day, as though from that very moment, an inconceivable transformation began in that young man. He would stand whole days before the mirror; one charm after the other fell from him. An invisible and incomprehensible force like an iron net, seemed to spread over the free play of his gestures, and when one year had passed not a trace could be detected of that sweetness which had once so delighted the sight of all who surrounded him. (Kleist, Abyss 214-215)

The idea of the deadlock of the necessarily incomplete reflection that becomes infinite is a Kantian one. "Kantian reflection is not a 'mirror stage'; it produces no jubilant assumption of the subject, no self-awareness as awareness of substance" (Lacoue-

Labarthe and Nancy 31).

The attempt of Constantin Constantius, in Kierkegaard's Repetition, to repeat a previous vacation in Berlin shares certain similarities with Kleist's baroque paradigm.

The repetition of a represented model can never be successful because a copy will

(always) remain only a copy of a model. A copy can only be similar to the model but never identical to the model itself. As it cannot be the model itself, a copy will therefore always contain an imperfection. Even though the first gesture is always spontaneous, free and beautiful,223 when it is reflected upon and understood as a model, it cannot be repeated. In the Kleistian tale, the grace of the young man diminishes as he attempts to go

223 In a letter to Otto August Rtihle von Lillienstem, Kleist says: "~Jede erste Bewegung, aller UmwillkUhrliche ist schOn; und schief und verschoben alles, sobald es sich selbst begreift. O, der Verstand! Der ungltickselige Verstand" (Samtliche Werke 2: 769). back to a previous model. For Kleist, grace and understanding (grace and reflection) seem inversely proportional: "We see how, in the organic world, as reflection grows darker and weaker, grace emerges ever more radiant and supreme" (Abyss 216). One solution is for the copy to break with the past; then the former copy can become a model that out of itself self-reflectively produces copies of itself. But the question remains: will this exchange of roles between copy and model be enough to conjure grace?

At this point, Kleist (along with Leibniz, but not Spinoza) is on the same page with Kant and the Jena romantics that one should continue eating from the Tree of

Knowledge, continue repeating even though repetition is an inevitable and acknowledged mistake (Mifigriff). Like fighting fire with fire, one can hope that the repetition that diminishes grace will be 'corrected' through even more repetition. By means of such a forward-looking repetition, the young Narcissus breaks the looking-glass, and thereby gets out of an enclosing mimetic reflection. His repetition no longer repeats a model (the statue of the Thornpuller), but merely repeats the act of repeating, thus becoming a purely formalized repetition that will eventually end up being gradually depleted of content. In the first stage, the act of repeating repeats the empty form of repetition devoid of any grace and beauty.224 After being voided of any previous content, the act of repeating gradually becomes so schematized and formalized that it turns into a technique. The point is that only through continuing to repeat will repetition become a conscious practice, a technique, a "sophistication and an awareness of self' (de Man, Rhetoric of Romanticism

264).

224 "From that day, as though from that very moment, an inconceivable transformation began in that young man. He would stand whole days before the mirror, one chann after the other fell from him. An invisible and incomprehensible force like an iron net, seemed to spread over the free play of his gestures, and when one year had passed not a trace could be detected of that sweetness which had once so delighted the sight of all who surrounded him" (Kleist, Abvss 215). 230

In his analysis of Kleist, de Man invokes the Kantian-inspired Letters on the

Aesthetic Education of Man, wherein Schiller stages a dance that bears an intriguing resemblance to the dance of the marionettes. One of the central ideas that de Man derives out of his comparison is that even when formal technique, through its pairing with mathematical and epistemological discourses, becomes machine-like, it will still produce, in a second stage, an aesthetic effect. As he writes, "[the] formalization of consciousness, as in a machine, far from destroying aesthetic effect, enhances it" (de Man, Rhetoric of

Romanticism 269). How does this occur? How does the reduction of repetition to a purely skilled technique create an aesthetic effect? De Man's short answer is that at a certain point the form of repetition will become so void of content that it will be forced to

(re)create one out of itself, a creation that is spontaneous and, like a first gesture, will have to be deemed beautiful. The only caveat is that such spontaneity will have also to be understood, thus starting the whole process all over again. This alternation of skill and spontaneity will constitute the essence of what Schiller and de Man call grace.

Although the form of a now mechanical repetition no longer has any content to copy, it will eventually and spontaneously create new and original content, projecting it self-reflexively out of itself. This pure form without content is an empty framework, exiting a causal determination with a previous content and regressing into what Kant would call its a priori condition of possibility. However it must be said that even though it regresses into its pure and transcendental form, this form cannot be completely emptied or cleansed of its constructive or poietic tendencies. In short, it still retains what Kant would call purposiveness (Zweckmafiigkeit). Even when the form is purified to its condition of possibility, it still cannot be taken absolutely or unconditioned as it is in 231 itself (an sich\ i.e., aside from any formative underpinnings. This means that the form of repetition is not yet absolutely empty and therefore cannot yet become an absolute form, a self-sufficient monadic entity that would not need or require any additional content.

Remaining only relatively empty, the form ends up in an inward self-projection (in sich) in which it would implicitly present itself. It is through this projection that it creates new and original content from out of itself, a content that will be considered

(transcendentally) free and spontaneous. This act will not be a repeated gesture but recovering the ingenuity225 of the first bite out of the apple, it will be a 'first' gesture all over again, recreating the initial beautiful spontaneity, and recovering its gracefulness. At this point the transcendentally spontaneous act is not yet conscious of itself. It will and must be, though. The same pattern is repeated in a similar way by Kierkegaard, who never got "beyond the cross" but was content to faithfully repeat or relive the same passion of Christ in a different way: a repetition that each time self-reflectively forms or projects new and original content forward.226

In his analysis of the Marionette Theater, de Man points out that in order to reach perfection, a beautiful dance, wherein "one dancer [has] already vacated the position by the time the other arrives" (Rhetoric of Romanticism 263), must submit to a high degree of technical formalization. For this to happen, the beforementioned unconscious spontaneity would have to become embedded in conscious skill. In Kantian terms, a spontaneously free gesture has to be understood as free within the limits of morality, because if it is not, it cannot be pronounced free. Hence the unconsciously spontaneous

225 Kant's notion of the genius is based on Latin ingenium, on the idea of an innate or natural ability or disposition "through which Nature gives the rule to Art" (Kant, Critique of Judgment 112). 226 Kierkegarrd's repetition is still into sameness (and not into difference) because he never dared to penetrate the Christie model. Deleuze says in this sense: "Kierkegaard and Peguy are the culmination of Kant, they realize Kantianism by entrusting to faith the task of overcoming the speculative death of God and healing the wound itself' (Difference 95). 232 becomes formalized; that is, it receives form while turning into an understood, conscious technique. However what is unconscious cannot simply spill over into conscious experience. The beautiful first gesture, that primordial spontaneity, can only be declared a spontaneous first gesture after it is validated in conscious experience. In the moment of validation, however, it is not that pure spontaneity anymore. The initial spontaneous moment has already passed. This does not mean that Kant will negate the possibility of spontaneity altogether; it only means that spontaneity needs to be validated in experience.

Freedom has to be validated as freedom by morality and thus be distinguished from free will. In return, however, this moment of validation would have to presuppose a purely spontaneous one that can be reconstructed only prior to it. This reconstruction would have to place the spontaneous moment as such merely as a condition for the experience to take place and not as a direct cause for it; becoming a cause would imply founding a first principle, a beginning and not an origin. In short, one faces a reciprocal self-reflective alternation of the two moments in which both are grounding each other, forever

'petitioning' a first principle.227 In this way, the dance becomes both spontaneous and skillful. "Everything has been arranged in such a manner that each dancer has already vacated his position by the time the other arrives. Everything fits so skillfully, yet so spontaneously, that everyone seems to be following his own lead, without ever getting in anyone's way" (de Man, Rhetoric of Romanticism 263).

In this scenario, cause and effect, beginning and end can trade roles.228 As everything takes place in the middle, there is no stable beginning or end. The spontaneous

227 In strict logical terms it would have been "petitio principii." However if there is an alternative grounding, the logical error can be avoided. This is the reason why Friedrich Schlegel will say that there cannot be a first principle to start with: philosophy should start, like an epic poem, in the middle, in medias res. 228 See for example the chapter "Der reflektierende Reflex" als "Rollentausch von Subjekt und Objekt" (155-157) in Manfred Frank Das Problem Zeit. 233 gesture cannot be the beginning because it becomes spontaneous only in conscious validation, while the conscious moment of validation, although being the crucial moment, seems to come after the unconscious spontaneity. In this scenario, the beginning is not the end, the end does not become or turn into a beginning by spilling over and disappearing into it, but the beginning and the end become interchangeable while relating each other.

Even though one does not know which is which, since one cannot distinguish or clearly delimit them as stable or finite representations but merely as infinite ones, one will still have to deal with two separate yet relatable entities. The main point is that the moment of validation and the spontaneous moment are not one and the same, simultaneous, because there is a space that creates a temporal gap between them, an inevitable yet insurmountable aesthetic distance of a beautiful work of art that is still not ontologically graceful. Such work of art is not graceful.

Each gesture is two-timed: a priori spontaneous and validated a posteriori as spontaneous, transcendentally free and morally free, involving practical reason. There is only a Schlegelian irony that involves "a constant alternation between self-creation and self-destruction" and that was later defined by Hegel as "a continuous alternation of negation and affirmation, an identity with itself that immediately succumbs to negation, but then is immediately reconstituted," as Ernst Behler puts it in German Romantic

Literary Theory (X). Two moments can only produce succession, a progressive succession that because there is no fixed cause will never end in a defined telos, in a completed effect. Thus succession remains narcissistically trapped in its self-reflective medium where reflection is merely reflecting its form in the process of formation

(Bildung). Such infinite representativeness is beyond the point of being able to deceive 234 itself with a finite one-to-one reflection into a stable image (Bild). This transforms

Schiller's dance into a succession229 of moments that can be related to each other and that merely becomes progressive because it is still aesthetically aiming not being absolute and independent of any conditions. In this sense, too, Schiller's Letters, while trying to reconcile "Sinntrieb" and "Formtrieb" into what he calls "Spieltrieb," aim at providing the guidelines for a formal education that would be needed in setting up an ideal aesthetical state, a state that is not just "a state of mind or of soul, but a principle of political value and authority that has its claims on the shape and the limits of our freedom" (de Man, Rhetoric of Romanticism 264). Having to rely on two moments, on two centers of gravity makes the dance jerkier, more disrupted or rather more fragmented

(in a romantic/Schlegelian sense). Destabilized, it may thus still fall. It is not able to completely shake off affectation (Ziererei): the German verb "zieren" means "to adorn, to ornate" but it can also imply a certain hesitation, reticence or reluctance that is always dragging or lagging behind,230 that is not always in the present moment, in the same center of gravity. However, this romantic dance is not as jerky as the mimetic dance of neo-classicism. The fluidity of a mimetic dance can only span between a determined cause and stopping in a completely formed effect. Starting from a given model, the copy will have little or no room for spontaneity; the beauty of the reflected form depends on how close it can get to the original.

229 "The perpetually repeated figures - so highly formalized that they can easily be recorded in notation - admit of only as much individuality in their successive execution by different dancers as can be expressed through grace of bodily movement" (de Man, Rhetoric of Romanticism 264). 230 Germ. „zieren" means „etwas aus gektinstelter ZurOckhaltung nicht tun". For example: Ziert euch doch nicht so lange, greift zu! or Sie zierte sich nicht lange und sprach ihn direkt an. 235

In a Schillerian sense, the mimetic dance is graceful because it incorporates a dimension of aesthetical education. As its didactic aim231 is not placed outside its own subject matter, but becomes embedded in it, one cannot learn what the mimetic dance has to teach while watching like a spectator at the edge of the dance floor. One has to join the dance in order to exist and learn the rules of the dance while dancing. There is a moment of understanding the skills involved, but this moment cannot be viewed as separate from the spontaneity of the dance. Skill and spontaneity rather determine each other reciprocally. The moment one dancer vacates his spot he creates the conditions for another dancer, in the next moment, to occupy the empty spot. Nobody steps on the toes of anyone else, because there is no external purpose in this dance, only aesthetic purposiveness. Every dancer is disinterested and as such is integrated into the dance. It has to be said, though, the dancers neither dance the dance nor does it dance through them; the dancers are neither the subjects nor the objects of the dance. Moreover, because they alternate or exchange their functions in the medium of reflection, they also cannot converge in a synthetic unity that would make them indistinguishable. The dance does not engulf them or erase their formal difference. In the famous line from "Among School

Children" - "And who can tell the dancer from the dance?" - William Butler Yeats (263) caters to this idea: because even when the dance becomes, as in Schiller, a medium, a general framework which enables the performance of the dancers, it would still leave them distinguishable from one another.

Because this dance is necessarily two-timed, the harmony that is created is still relative and regulated by reason (and not pre-established). It does not allow for a

231 "This didactic aim, however, can be reached if the discipline that is taught can itself be formalized or schematized to the point of becoming a technique. Teaching becomes possible only when a degree of formalization is built into the subject-matter" (de Man Rhetoric of Romanticism 270). 236 complete immersion of the puppeteer into the puppet's center of gravity. This center is situated in a medium in which nothing can be fixated.232 Still aiming at an education,

Schiller's aesthetically oriented dance is not the dance that Kleist has in mind, though.

Kleist's dancer will not even be graceful inside the dance, but becomes merely an implicit model that is not preaching (and practicing) but just leading by example. The dancer will be or become graceful by 'learning' to live and to die, as well. In such a configuration there is no room for accommodating even an internalized aim. Such a

'lesson' cannot be communicated in any way, but not because its mystery is impossible to be uttered. Rather it cannot be uttered because it is so singular for each human being that no rule, no example that can be followed, can be constituted. One has to live it because one is immersed in it. This life is simultaneously all there is and all that can be shown.

Kleist thus argues that the dance does not become graceful unless both puppet and puppeteer have the same center of gravity: "He doubted if this could be found unless the operator can transpose himself into the centre of gravity of the marionette. In other words, the operator dances. Marionette and operator thus engage into a situation that is similar to that of the stones of the arcades that are trying to occupy the same space at the same time. The point is that there is no alternation involved here, because space is not apriorically determined. In other words, because the two dancers must vacate the dancing place, they cannot occupy the same space both at the same time. Having the same center of gravity, they become "antigrav," a term that Kleist himself created (Samtliche Werke

23Z Manfred Frank says that Jena romanticism dwells in a hovering slate, in a "Schwebezustand zwischen der uneireichlichen Idee und deren Gegenstandlichkeit (...) Anders gesagt: die zeitliche Existenz ist, indem sie nicht ist: und sie nicht ist indem sie ist. Ihr Wesen ist Infixibilitat" (Das Problem Zeit 222). This "Schwebezustand" is a Novalisian "Stillstand". It is not a Benjaminian "Stillstand der Dialektik" that works in the same way as Kleist's "antigrav" state of imponderability or "Schwebe lm Sturz" because it stops the dialectics but without integrating the stop in the movement; integrating it in the unity or present mobile wholeness (Latin integer) of the movement. Henceforth the movement is not pure. Its becoming cannot re(con)stitute its being. The phenomenon cannot be saved and the allegorist cannot awaken in God's world. 237

2: 242)"\ Hence they generate the impression of being suspended in space. The synchronic gestures that the viewer apprehends in the motion of the dance has the effect that the puppet and the puppeteer seem to both be left hanging and suspended in a state of imponderability, making them become rather 'syn-topic'. (It is perhaps because the

Greeks did not have a clear notion of space they did felt the need to invent the spatial correspondent of'synchronic'.) When gravity becomes "antigrav," space becomes correlated with time creating a space-time continuum.

In joyous contemplation of such configurations as the arching gate in Wiirzburg,

Kleist writes, on November 16, 1800:

1 was walking back to the city, lost in my thoughts, through an arched gate. Why, I asked myself, does this arch not collapse since after all it has no support? It remains standing, I answered, because all the stones tend to collapse at the same time-and from this thought I derived an indescribly heartening consolation, which stayed with me right up to the decisive moment: I would not collapse, even if all my support were removed! That my dear Mina, no book could have told me, and I call it a true lesson from nature... (Abyss 76)234

The image of the arcade will be so crucial to Benjamin. In The Arcades Project, he proposes the famous concept of a purely presentational "dialectical image" in the form of a constellation of fragments that are interlocked together and that cancels the occurrence of understanding as it has "nothing to say but only to show" (Gesammelte Schriften 5:

574). In such a moment, one is propelled from the homogeneous, historical time into a messianic "Nowtime" (Jetztzeit) in which dialectics arrives at a standstill that cannot be

233 One of the reasons why I prefered Philip B. Miller's translation, is that he is very creative. He translates "antigrav" with "countergravity" (Abyss 214) which is correct because the state of suspension is not opposed to gravity but functions in a rather parallel way almost like the counterpoint in baroque music. The negative advantage (negativer V'orteil) uses the negative to its advantage thus transforming it or, better said, allegorizing or deforming it. 234 Da gieng ich, in mich gekehrt, durch das gewdlbte Tor sinned zurtick in die Stadt Warum, dachte ich, sinkt das GewAlbe nicht ein, da es doch keine SHltze hat? Es steht, antwortete ich, weil alle Steine auf einmal einsttlrzen wollen - und ich zog au diesem Gedanken einen unbeschreiblich erquickenden Trost, der mir bis zu dem entscheidenden Augenblicke lminer mit der HofThung zur Seite stand, daB ich mich halten wurde, wenn Alles mich sinken MCt. (Samtliche Werke 2: 593) (italics mine) 238 considered contradictory to the movement. The ontological movement of becoming does not actually even stop in the form of arcade; it merely becomes more 'internal' as the stones eventually decay and fall from their suspended state. Such a stop interrupts or disrupts neither the force of gravity nor what is called ontological flow or continuum (i.e.,

Heraclitus' river). It does not divide it in two separately distinguishable moments, as in the case of the two-timed movement of Schiller's dance. The main point is that the suspension cannot be considered a stop in the ontological movement; Benjamin himself treats it as a "weak" messianic moment. His "angel of history" is pushed into the future by the wind of time, but it cannot be overlooked, either. Henceforth what he called a

"dialectical image" becomes an expression, a (baroque) allegory or emblem of the non- homogeneous temporality that, again, does not align sequentially cause and effect. It turns into a form in which existence appears in that particular moment, the formal difference of the ontological identity. In the next section, we will see that the movement of the marionettes cannot conceive a (sublime) stop either, but glide through them.

Clemens Heselhaus finds that the notion of "Schwebe im Sturz" (qtd. in Hinderer,

Kleist's Dramen 117) is recurring as it returns in Penthesilea as well. For Heselhaus, these images of suspension are paradoxical only for the understanding. But they are perfectly viable existentially. The fact that all the bricks rely on one center of gravity and that they are set to fall simultaneously breaks their fall. In this example as well, gravity is used as a benefit. Just as in the example of death, determinism (of the law of gravity) is kept in check. This check, however, is not a temporary one that invites alternation or succession. Weight becomes weightless, gravity "antigrav." The basic idea is that having more freedom to move, one will also have more chances of losing one's center of gravity 239 and thus fall. That is why the wooden legs of the war veterans are better in making one aware of this center and implicitly of the possibility of falling. The prosthesis is more graceful because it tends to eliminate this possibility, or better said, the (Kantian) conditions of possibility of falling. From this point of view the simulacrum (of a leg) becomes more helpful in pointing towards what is real than a copy because it exits any relationship with the model, with representation being able to act independently, absolutely. As Kleist says, the invalid soldiers, "whose artificial legs made by English craftsmen for people who have been unfortunate enough to lose their own limbs," are still graceful; for even if the "The range of their movements is of course limited; [... ] within it they attain to a lightness, a serenity, and a gracefulness that must amaze every thinking person" (Kleist, Abyss 213). Consequently what was supposed to be a handicap, an impediment that would hinder or even stop one from walking normally is turned around, as in a Benjaminian Umschwung, and actually redirected towards a positive end, in the same way the marionette uses the ground as a support to bounce towards another destination. What was supposed be inevitable and have a negative connotation thus becomes quite beneficial: Kleist transforms contradiction into an advantage. Hal H.

Rennert intuits correctly that his "negative advantage" (negativer Vorteil) is close to

Keats's "negative capability" (Ugrinsky, Kleist Studies 177).235 In both cases, the

(represented) negative ceases to be an opposing force as it is included and transformed while being used as an integral part of the expressive mechanism at the same time.

235 See "Affinities in Romanticism: Kleist's essay 'Ober das Marionttentheater' and Keats's Concept of 'Negative Capability'" in Ugrinsky Heinrich von Kleist Studies pp. 177-189. 240

Kleist and the Kantian Sublime

We must now tackle Kleist's complex relationship with Kant, focusing on the movement inside the Kantian sublime and references to it in the Marionette Theater. The argument is building upon what has already been said, analyzing in particular Schiller's dance in view of the stop and the subsequent movement that it brings about. The insurmountable gap between these two different moments that can only be bridged by a relation comes again into focus.

Kant's notion of the sublime evokes such a transcendental regression, describing the experience in part as "the feeling of a momentary check to the vital forces

(augenblickliche Hemmung der Lebenskrafte)" (Kant, Critique of Judgment 40). The sublime is thus a momentary lapse in which imagination pushes reason to its limit. Kant does not see it as 'business as usual' but rather as a serious practice which, like an exception to the rule, pushes everything to the limit but only to come back and enforce the rule as a result. The sublime tests the limits of reason in order to reassert their validity and actually reinstate a refreshed rule that is one of reason nonetheless.

There is a second moment following the sublime one, strictly speaking, a moment that tries to make up for the previous stoppage or inhibition. Kant says that the sublime as such is "followed at once by a discharge all the more powerful (und darauf sogleich folgenden desto starkem Ergiefiung derselben erzeugt wird)" (Kant, Critique of Judgment

40). This second step has a compensatory character, as if it were bridging a gap between two moments (before and after) and thus implicitly disclosing this gap as a different and separately defined moment outside the continuum of life. The sublime is thus not felt as a game (ketn Spiel) but as something quite serious {Ernst) that threatens the life force and 241 the status quo of reason. In other words, Kant acknowledges the sublime moment as an interruption, as an extrasensory (ubersinnlich) perception that cannot be seen and thus included as part of the beautifiil dance, the sublime being quite different from the beautiful.236

While referring to the definition of the sublime, Kleist places Kant's exact same words in a context that marks the contrast between a human movement that is disrupted and the uninterrupted gliding of the marionette:

In addition, he said, the puppets require the ground only to touch on, and by that momentary obstruction to reanimate the spring of their limbs; while we require it to rest on, and to recover from the exertions of the dance: a moment which is clearly not dance in itself and which there is nothing to be done except to make it disappear by all possible means. (Abyss 214)237

The marionettes cannot recognize a stop as something that can be related to a movement.

In its sliding movement, the marionettes' dance is not interrupted by anything, it bounces off any obstacle that it might encounter, including it in its movement. Kleist uses the

Kantian phrase without recognizing a real inhibition (Hemmung), while seeing the turn as a new revival. Similarly, the marionette is using the obstacle as an opportunity (or origin) to push itself and gain momentum towards another destination. The stop becomes or is the beginning of the movement in another direction just like the swing back of the pendulum.

The movement of the marionettes is thus a perpetuum mobile of pure becoming that cannot actually stop. Stopping means merely lightly rebounding or bouncing off any

236 "Riihrung, cine Empfindung, wo Annehmlichkeit nur vermittelst augenblicklicher Hemmung und darauf erfolgender starkerer Ergiefiung der Lebenskraft gewirkt wird, gehOrt gar nicht zur Schonheit. Erhabenheit (mit welcher das Geftihl der Rilhrung verbunden ist) aber erfordert einen andern MaBstab der Beurteilung, als der Geschmack sich zum Grunde legt (...)" (Kant, Kritik der Urteilskrufi 226). 23 Die Puppen brauchen den Boden nur, vvie die Elfen, um ihn zu streifen, und den Schwung der Glieder, durch die augenblickliche Hemmung neu zu beleben; wir brauchen ihn, um darauf zu ruhert, und uns von der Anstrengung des Tanzes zu erholen: cin Moment, der olTenbar selber kein Tanz isl, und mit dem sich weiler nichts anfangen Mt, als ihn moglichst verschwinden zu machen. (Stimtliche Werke 2: 341) 242 obstacle that is still included in the dance. Being a pure becoming, the marionette's motion cannot concede a clear-cut distinction into two distinct and separately relatable moments: movement and stoppage. Hence, it will never allow one element to be defined

(dialectically) in function of the other, as movement in relation to a stop and vice versa.

The pure predication overwhelms the ability to represent the puppet, thus making it indiscernible and definable only as identical with itself - an internal, absolute determination and not a representation as something else. Through such an identity with itself, the marionette cannot be even compared or related to anything else, not even to another marionette, let alone a human being. Still, by becoming such a "diverse absolute" or "pure disparity" (Fold 44), the marionette will show the human being the way to become absolute, provided that the human being can transpose himself into such a posture. The self-identity that would follow from such a transposition would paradoxically be identical to the self-identical marionette. Thus, human and marionette end up belonging to the same league: that of Identicals, beings of a class with one sole member, simultaneously ontologically one and absolutely separated.

The interaction is so immediate that they both dance the same dance, sharing the same state of grace and the same center of gravity, a center that is no longer fixed like in antiquity is seen conceived in movement.238 Because this mobile center also has an inner unity in every moment, "a unity that can be interior to movement, or a unity of change that can be active," as Deleuze says, it will annihilate the distinction between movement and inertia as "difference is no longer between movement and inertia, but in pure variability of speed" (Fold 55, 65). Either in the Newtonian sense of the preservation of a

238 "For some time now the idea of an infinite universe has been hypothetized, a universe that has lost all center as well as any figure that could be attributed to it: but the essence of the baroque is that it is given unity, through a projection that emanates from a summit as a point of view" (Deleuze, Fold 124). 243 present state or in the traditional Aristotelian sense of idleness, the conception of the

"inertia of matter" becomes an obsolete determination. It cannot be effectively be seen as a separate determination; matter is neither inert nor has a tendency to preserve its state.

When there is a variability of speeds, one cannot apply a criterion of measurement anymore. Leibniz's view takes any predictability out of the equation. "And Leibniz will never hesitate to remind us of it: organic or no, no body can follow a law if it does not have an inner nature that enables it to do so. It would be stupid to believe that the law acts on one occasion or another: as if the law of gravitation 'were acting' in order to make things fall" (Deleuze, Fold 116).

Baroque movement is not pure because the moving object is in perpetual motion.

It is pure because it contains or includes the stop, the stop becoming a "zero degree" of movement: The "Leibnizian inclusion is based upon a scheme of subject-verb-object that since antiquity resists the scheme of attribution" (Deleuze, Fold 53). Hence the stop cannot be clearly distinguished and thus seen as separate from the movement. However, if they are ontologically one, they are also formally different. When the movement stops, it is not a movement anymore. Movement and stoppage cannot relate because one cannot take a snapshot of both at the same time, they cannot be caught simultaneously as comparable representations. This also means that the stop that would put an end to the movement cannot be grounded in the movement itself, just as death cannot be grounded in life: when the stop sets in there is no movement anymore. Producing such an abysmal fracture or unrelatedness, movement and rest can no longer be properties acquired from an overarching metaphysical entity called absolute space; any such overarching 244 construction will remain literally suspended or arrested in itself, not being able to determine anything.

Even though the dance of the marionette is seen as being in movement while the arcade looks more like a stop, each contains the other, both being expressive scenarios. It is only a matter of predominance. Neither can represent exclusively a stop or a movement because (as in the case of the marionette) it is always a stop in the movement or (as in the case of the arcade) a movement in the stop. They only 'look' different but are generated by a dialectics that does not become a relationship of opposites. Their difference is thus merely formal. The stop in the arcade only looks like a stop but it is not really a stop while the movement of the marionette is represented and can be recognized as a movement but is also more than that or not only that.

Kleist's marionettes do not stop. They use any obstacle to redirect their movement towards another destination; they are thus making a stop without actually stopping the pure movement, not stopping just as the force of gravity is stopped without actually being stopped as we have seen in the example of the arching gate. Better said, movement and inertia collide so immediately that they leave no space between them. They become

'colleagues' as their dialectics is indeed brought to a standstill or to perfect equilibrium.

Deleuze confirms that "Leibniz will make coexist, first, the tendency of a system of gravity to find its lowest possible equilibrium where the sum of masses can descend no further and, second, the tendency to elevate, the highest aspiration of a system in weightlessness, where souls are destined to become reasonable" (Fold 29, italics mine).

So in Kleist the impression is that puppet and puppeteer remain suspended not vertically like the bricks in arcades but rather horizontally. The moment the puppeteer steps into the 245 same dance and his gestures become synchronically correlated with the marionette, the two join in the same movement, the pure and ontological movement that can be only one, a movement with a mobile center. Thus they find themselves competing for the same space that they cannot occupy at the same time because it would lead to an overlapping of spaces that is not possible while having one center of gravity.

The Romantic Marionette

Now we must consider Kleist's marionette together with other romantic examples, focusing especially on their power relationship enacted between the puppet and the puppeteer. We will see that in Kleist's case, the idea of the puppeteer manipulating or exercising sovereign control over the puppet, without being canceled altogether, becomes secondary, stepping into the background.

Leibniz and Kleist place their starting point in the already separated creature.239

Just like marionettes, monads have to be seen in motion, dancing gracefully, their souls residing in them while at the same time being their moving force (vis motrix). Kleist shares with the Jena romantics (against the neo-classical mimetic aesthetics) the conviction that one cannot go back to a past paradise or golden age of antiquity, because the created part cannot go back to its former symbolical whole or unity. As Walter Silz says: "The Early Romanticists were hopeful of the future and believed, like Kleist, that paradise is to be regained by going forward" (91). Although such German critics as

Hanna Hellmann, Josef Kunz or Herbert Plugge speak of a triadic structure that would

239 Not so Spinoza, who abides in a different, non-contradictory expressiveness. While acknowledging Spinoza's consistency, in a letter to Bourguet from December 1714 Leibniz would say: "II [Spinoza] aurait raison, s'il n'y avait point des monades" (Leibniz, Die philosophischen Schriften 3: 573). 246 bring Kleist closer to Hegel, a structure containing three stages in which the fall from an unconscious state into consciousness should be followed by a synthetic unity (Einheit) that is also an overcoming (Uberwindung) of any dichotomy or duality, this thesis has merely set out to examine Kleist's possible points of juncture with the Jena romantics.

Without contradicting all these critical approaches, it should be said, however, that they all tend towards a representational stance, thus seeing Kleist from a perspective that would implicitly make him either similar or opposed to romanticism. From our point of view, though, it all amounts to the same conclusion because, either finitely or infinitely representative, one is never exposed to Kleist's expressiveness. (Hence the more detailed examination of de Man's interpretation was also based on the consideration that he goes back to Kant and thus implicitly to the Jena romantics.)

Kleist and the Jena romantics recognize correctly that the whole is not the unity of parts. In this they foreclose the possibility of returning to a lost unity, a paradise situated in the past, and thereby they also implicitly acknowledge the fallen state of nature. The

Jena romantics opt for a renewable newness, an alternation of what they call allegory and

Witz, an allegorical progressive way forward scattered with 'crumbs' of sublime Witz.

Kleist, however, prefers the absolute movement of the swing of the pendulum that is never disrupted, always in a state of unrest (Unruhe) 240 Here the fall can become a rise

(in a Heraclitian way); the swing of the pendulum does not stop to "rest" in order to recover from "the effort of the dance," but will swing back in a Benjaminian

Umschwung, just like the gliding movement of the marionette.

The created monad, the fallen creature in general, thus re-establishes itself in a non-relative harmony with God, and grace or (divine) existence can descend. Hence the

240 "That is the modd of the pendulum or balance wheel, the Unruhe that replaces the scale" (Deleuze, Fold 69). 247 infinitesimal calculus, which involves the non-representable irrational number/41 can pass "through infinity" (as Kleist would say), because this end is eventually reachable

By not recognizing the infinite or Absolute as a regulative idea, Kleist retroactively challenges Kantian rationality. He does not stop at a mere "presentation (Darstellung) of the infinite" that would in fact only remain a pure tendency towards the infinite and that could never get past having a relation to the infinite.242

The fact that Kleist cannot contradict formalization, aesthetic teaching, and

Creation as such, explains why he does not shy away from 'sharing' with Kant and the

Jena romantics a way forward by continuing to eat from the Tree of Knowledge. Kleist's grace reappears beyond knowledge (Erkenntnis).243 He does not stop a mere presentation

{Darstellung) of the unknowable infinite or absolute (die Unerkennbarkeit des

Absoluten), but goes through the infinite representation of Jena romanticism ("Durchgang durch ein Unendliches") in order to recover it. As Sydna Stern Weiss suggests,

"According to conventional thinking, one could pursue an infinite progression to its final

- or a Lebensplan to a goal or absolute truth. Non-Euclidian thinking incorporates the ideal point as a point on a continuous loop. The ideal point is made up of two coincident points at infinity" (Ugrinsky, Heinrich von Kleist Studies 123).

Adding another important study that tackles the image of the marionette, one can invoke Rudolf Drux's book Marionette Mensch. Ein Metaphemkomplex und sein Kontext von E. T.A. Hoffmann bis Georg Biichner. As his analysis sets out to analyze the motif of

241 "The adequate example, as the rest of the text affirms, is the irrational number because it is a root that has to be extracted, or even a differential relation because it involves quantities that are not of the same power. This is how Leibniz regroups the two cases of nonreciprocal inclusion: irrational and existent numbers" (Deleuze, Fold 52). 242 In the previous chapter on Jena romanticism, I have quoted Friedrich Schlegel saying that "nur durch Deziehung aufs Unendliche entsteht gehalt und Nutzen; was sich nicht darauf bezieht, ist schlechthin leer und unnutz" or 'jede Beziehung des Menschen aufs Unendliche ist Religion, namlich des Menschen in der ganzen Fulle seiner Menschheit .Das Unendliche in jener FUlle gedacht ist die Gottheit" (qtd. in Silz 170). 243 "'wenn die Erkenntnis gleichsam durch ein Unendliches gegangen ist" (Kleist, StSmtliche Werke 2: 345). 248 the marionette in the romantic and post-romantic era he does not even mention Kleist's essay. Can chronology be blamed? Or maybe such an omission may not be random, since

Kleist's marionette has nothing human in it, and since the human being is indeed encouraged to give up its "all too human" humanity. Moreover, Kleist takes to task the cliched image of the master puppeteer, taking aim at such contemporaries as Jean Paul,

Hoffmann, Brentano and Tieck, who were quite fond of marionettes and automata. In

Hoffmann's "Der Sandman", for example, Coppelius still betrays himself as as the eminence grise behind all the moves of his automaton. Whereas Olympia is still the

(Platonic) puppet of a puppet master, the Kleistian marionette is not the slave of its puppeteer, but harmoniously one with it. Shakespeare's Prospero seems constructed according to the same scheme, although ultimately he is not an absolutely controlling manipulator but reveals a playful side. His willingness to give up his magic, a typical baroque turnaround (Umschwung) reveals a genuine joy of exchanging masks, rather than a hegemonic tendency.

This overall or general point of view is of crucial importance for both Leibniz and

Kleist. It is not a usual perception but develops into a folded perception, a perception that dives into what it perceives and cannot distinguish or separate itself from it anymore.

This is the mysterious point of view that shows the soul (vis motrix) as the pure movement.

But Kleist's marionette is not the opposite of the romantic one, it is not absolutely independent of the strings of control. Even though Kleist says that it has more grace than the human being, the marionette does not reverse the tables to become the ideal to look up to or the model to copy. Kleist grounds his considerations on empirical observations 249 on the mechanical movement of the marionette. He says that to a certain extent the skill of the puppeteer may be required but it is not decisive: a better technique does not make the dance more graceful. Even though technique cannot be simply written off, the puppeteer has to go beyond technique, beyond aesthetic education.

I asked him if he believed that the mechanic who controlled these puppets must be a dancer in his own right, or at least have some conception of the Beautiful in the dance. He answered that we were not to suppose, simply because an operation seemed easy from the mechanical point of view, that it could be performed without a certain sensitivity. (Kleist, Abyss 212)

Although it has to be factored in, technique turns out to be rather secondary because the manner of handling the puppets that Kleist is aiming at "would demand no great skill on the part of the puppeteer" (Abyss 212). Any such 'technicality' would accordingly betray the presence of a puppeteer, and bring about what the author would call "affectation"

(Abyss 213). Instead, the operator controls the puppet from one center inside of it while all its limbs would follow suit, following in their "own accord," thus generating a relative

(in)dependence. In such a setting, the puppet is neither strictly dependent nor absolutely independent but in a relationship in which both dependence and the independence are contained while being able to be clearly delimited from one another.

I inquired about the mechanism of these figures and how it was possible, without myriad strings on the fingers, to control the separate members and their tie points as the rhythm of their movements or dances required. He answered that I must not imagine that each member, in the various motions of the dance, had to be placed and pulled individually by the puppeteer. (Kleist, Abyss 211)

Even though the puppeteer does not have absolute control, a control that would imply that each limb to has a string attached to it, the movement of the marionette does not turn into a chaotic movement; the limbs find their own way into harmony falling into place, on their own, in their own due time. This harmony cannot be accounted for by anything; 250 it sets in without the intervention of the puppeteer. This means that an utterly mysterious cause (ponderacion misteriosa) tempers or appeases the movement. Even though it cannot be distinguished as a causative authority or direct agency, this empirical cause or causality is not miraculous but still contained within sufficient reason "The reestablished harmony implies no outer relation among monads, but only ties regulated on the inside"

(Deleuze, Fold 111). Like Leibniz' monads, the limbs of the marionette, each having its own center of gravity, function non-relatively, as an absolutely enclosed world.

The puppeteer is no longer the model; his moves are not 'reflected' in the moves of the marionette but are mysteriously muffled as the increasingly gliding movements become absorbed in what can be called a groundless origin that cannot bring about an intentional intervention or volitional affectation (Ziererei). The same type of procedure sets in even when the puppet is intentionally moved in a haphazard way ("auf eine bloB zufallige Weise erschiittert") (Kleist, Samtliche Werke 2: 339); the movement itself diminishes its precariousness, dulling, dimming or damping its acuteness, sharp angles become curves with everything still being regulated from the inside.

But Kleist's crucial discovery is what happens when the puppeteer starts dancing the same dance as the marionette. In the motion of the dance, the moves of the two evolve into a strange parallel togetherness. In his Dialogues with Claire Parnet, Deleuze suggests that there occurs an "a-parallel evolution," "a block of becoming" between such disparates (2: 7). Kleist compares this evolution with the asymptote and with a hyperbole244 that is not directly tangential and yet permanently and infinitely touching,245

244 " Vielmehr verhalten sich die Bewegungen seiner Finger zur Bewegung der daian befestigten Puppe ziehmlich kiinstlich, etwa wie Zahlen zu den Logarithmen oder die Asymptote zur Hyperbel" (Samtliche Werke 2: 340). 345 Deleuze quotes Serres who says that: "The curve is not touched, it is touching, the tangent no longer either straight, unique, or touching, but now curvilinear, an infinite, touched family" (Fold 18). 251 in what Deleuze would call a "pregiven appurtenance" (Fold 106). This correlation of monads is more (or less) than a relation as "[they] can exist without the relation, and the relation can exist without them" (Fold 111). Through his hands and fingers, Kleist's puppeteer dances synchronically, transposing himself in the same dance that he was supposed to control and oversee. Kleist does not even clearly contradict the romantic perspective in which a Platonic paradigm still manages to shine through and in which the puppeteer is either manipulating or losing control over the puppet, a paradigm that is after all still based on a static point of view coming from antiquity. As soon as Kleist's puppeteer starts dancing, transposing his center of gravity in that of the marionette, the manipulating causality of the strings is transformed into an absolute identity between the two. The motion of the dance transforms and makes fluid the hitherto stable forms of both puppet and puppeteer. In other words, the antique statue of the Thornpuller becomes

Bernini's Ecstasy of St. Theresa, in which even the inertia of stone or matter begins to melt.

As puppet and puppeteer become indiscernible from one another, existentially one while remaining formally different, the former can no longer be understood as solely the function of the latter. Rather, each is the function of the other, interlocking as separate or diverse entities. Like riding a tandem bicycle, their gestures become so identical that another dimension of sight is suddenly opening. Their non-relative harmony creates a different kind of effect - an effect that does not seem to have a defined cause, or at least one that is not related to the initial cause anymore. This harmony generously invites looking at the big picture rather than paying attention so much to details. Obviously one of the riders is causing the movement, the one that is pushing harder at a given moment, 252 but the point is that it is not so important who exactly is causing it since the movement as such is what really matters. Agency as such is not excluded. However the agent steps into the background in a similar way in which the puppeteer is still the one pulling the strings of the marionette. From such a point of view it is not even relevant whether the marionette becomes the puppeteer of the human being; they would only exchange places, keeping the dialectic relation alive. The advantage in grace that Kleist talks about is an existential one and not an advantage that refers to their relation. From an absolute point of view, the movement becomes the linkage, the common term that expresses the two riders who retain their formal difference nonetheless. It cannot express them as two defined separate entities that would indeed cause motion. Doing so would end up arresting the movement in represented snapshots. The two riders become two inclusive differential forms that exist in this way only, in movement, in this pure becoming. In the example of the tandem bicycle, the linkage is just more visible or obvious than in that of the marionette, but both examples work according to the same principle of expression.

The big picture (re)-creates (and becomes) the pre-established Leibnizian harmony. This is the other point of view that Kleist is talking about in which the operator joins in the same dance.

This line, however, considered from another point of view, is something very mysterious. For it is nothing less than the path of the dancer's soul, and he doubted whether it could be found except by the puppeteer transposing himself into the center of gravity of the marionette; or, in other words, by dancing. (Abyss 2\2)

From this "other point of view," it becomes thus quite impossible to discern who is manipulating who. The idea of a relation between them thus becomes secondary. The movement as such is still caused by the attached strings (causality never excluded by 253

Leibniz). However, the perception of their perfectly synchronic moves gives the eerie impression of a masterfully choreographed dance that becomes, of course, graceful. This coordination turns every move, even ordinary ones, into a dance without any addition of skill or spontaneity. The eye that sees this "new harmony" between the puppet and the puppeteer is no longer interested in determining who is manipulating whom, as grace is indeed transferred to the human being who, by proximity, has no choice but to be simply contaminated or imbued with it.

Like the Leibnizian God, who is Himself a monad, or the judge who is included in his verdict,246 the puppeteer gives up the role of manipulator and becomes what he manipulates, a gesture reminiscent of Shakespeare's Prospero as well. In the same way, the expressive scenario tells the story of the origin that spills over in what it expresses, becoming the quiddity of its expressions, their "whatness." (One thinks of Jehovah's declaration "I am what I am ") This situation is not an artificial creation of such baroque thinkers as Spinoza and Leibniz or Cervantes. Don Quixote is not simply caught in or by his own little world that he ends up naming and thus becoming ontologically one with it.

This situation is not optional; it simply is like that. Even Jesus' example shows that while he was able to save others he could not save himself. By not saving himself, Jesus conveys his understanding that there is nothing to be saved from. Once in, there is no out

His advice to "judge not" aims at avoiding hypocrisy, even if that means becoming quixotic. There is no going back or nothing to go back to as even salvation becomes a one-way street; as soon as one is saved there is only (one) reality.

The last important point is that in such a configuration the observer himself is included volens nolens in the scenery. He will be implicitly permeated by the qualities of

246 For example, the judge in The Broken Jug or, in Prinz Friedrich o/Homburg, the Elector. 254 the marionette and thus will enjoy a purely aesthetic perception that will only partially accommodate aesthetic education. Up to a certain point there is a certainly degree of skill and learning in how to see the picture involved, but beyond this, the observer will simply be graceful as well. In such a perception, the observer is included in what he perceives because he himself becomes a monad that has no relationship to what appears. The reader of a Kleistian text becomes a dominating monad247 (that is, not a grey eminence) that can oversee composites of monads without any strings attached, like a general who sees the

"big picture" better and knows the general movement of the army while being part of that army nonetheless. As an observer placed inside the text, the storyteller of

Marionettentheater is integrated into the harmony of the events, but not in the sense of a

(Platonic) puppeteer-God who creates or manipulates a world. The relation between storyteller and story cannot become a full-fledged or representative domination of a master relative to a slave. Kleist's choregraphic arrangement does not allow for constant conditions to take hold. Seen in motion, one cannot be so sure anymore that the puppeteer is indeed the master. The whole configuration being more like "Theseus's ship 'which the

Athenians were always repairing'" (Deleuze, Fold 110).248 The underlying pendulum-like existential motion would constantly be undermining the ground of such a relation.

The perception of the dancing marionettes realizes a reality inside the theatrical illusion, a "spiritual presence" that endows the space of the performance with a

"collective unity" (Deleuze, Fold 125). It is true that the perception as such may be

24 "As a code of appurtenance, expression exceeds itself, moving toward domination as a cipher of appurtenances; each monad conveys the entire worid, and therefore all other monads, but fiom the point of view that links each one more strictly to certain others, which they dominate or which dominate them" (Deleuze, Fold 110). 248 According to Greek legend as reported by Plutarch "the ship wherein Theseus and the youth of Athens returned [from Crete] had thirty oars, and was preserved by the Athenians down even to the time of Demetrius Phalereus, for they took away the old planks as they decayed, putting in new and stronger timber in their place, insomuch that this ship became a standing example among the philosophers, for the logical question of things that grow, one side holding that the ship remained the same, and the other contending that it was not the same" (Plutarch). 255 considered hallucinatory by an outside entity, because such an external perspective cannot be totally excluded. The inside cannot be proclaimed completely absolute because even if one acknowledges the outside as a mere representation, there are still other such monadic or quixotic 'insides' that are not completely identical. If one were to continue speculating, one can say that even if Jesus wanted to save himself or even if he wanted to sin, he would be incapable of doing this. Besides being a positive aspect, this fact would still leave him somewhat 'incapacitated', begging the question about his ability to save his followers from sin if he does not know what sin is. Even if one discards such an relational experience as a 'second rate' modification of being and not as absolutely necessary (Jesus having always already assimilated sin), it would still make Him, in his historical context, a rather "weak" Messiah in a Benjaminian sense. The full-fledged one would come only at the end of time.

From such a point of view, Jesus's teachings can only be taken in a purely singular or personal way, without being able to be generalized. They only express His own monadic reality, a reality produced in the heart of illusion as like God would create the world ex nihilo by "reconverting nothingness glimpsed in presence" (Bonnefoy 29).

While He is (ontologically) one with the Father, he is still the Son, and therefore formally different. This virtual, inner world is so absolute and self-sufficient that it prevents any intention, establishing a bridge between the virtual and the real in the sense that the virtual does not become a condition that will eventually trigger the possibility for creation/formation (Bildung) of the real world. It is not a framework or blueprint that, sooner or later (as time is inevitably factored in as an a priori intuition), will become the building. 256

That being said, Jesus cannot be otherwise. He is the best He can possibly be, doing the best he can do while still looking "weak" from where Benjamin is standing.

Being simultaneous, His fragility and strength are so tightly yet gracefully constructed that they cannot even be perceived as opposites but remain suspended from judgment, bringing the dialectics to a standstill. Their truth does not abide in judgment but merely in such an a/nA/guous perception. Far from indicating a state of indecisiveness - because it actually does not exclude choice as a way of expressing the formal distinction, thus also ruling out a 'fused' unity - this perception merely entails an implicit acknowledgement that this is the way truth is presented to us. Hence Kleist's dilemma regarding the impossibility of deciding whether what we call truth is really truth or whether it only appears to us as truth249 comes to an end in a rather Wittgensteinian way: the solution to the problem equals the disappearance of the problem (and not the discovery of an answer to it). Like piercing the infinite or cutting through the 'Gordian knot' of relativism, one would give up looking for an overarching, unitary or synthetic entity that relates and unifies all points of view. Instead the so-called subject becomes an expressive origin rewriting the whole history of perspectivism by accommodating a double vision that necessarily contains two perfectly parallel foci. Deleuze says in this respect: "For

Leibniz, for Nietzsche, for William and Henry James, and for Whitehead as well, perspectivism amounts to a relativism we take for granted. It is not the variation according to the subject, but the condition in which truth appears to the subject. This is the very idea of Baroque perspective" (Fold 20). Since the subject gives up any (romantic or Kantian) formative propensity, any type of (Platonic) participative involvement, any

249 "Wir konnen nicht entscheiden ob das, was wir Wahrheit nennen, wahrhaft Wahrheit ist, oder ob es uns nur so scheint" (Scimtliche Werke 2: 634). 257 intentionality,250 there is no condition prior to the truth's appearance. The way that truth appears will be the way it is.

Der Zweikampf

Despite being categorized as "one of the weakest, or least interesting, of his stories"

(Ugrinsky, Heinrich von Kleist Studies 87),251 Kleist's last story Der Zweikampf exercises the same principle, but from a different angle. This time everything turns around as the result of a duel that is supposed to depict God's will. From an expressive point of view,

God cannot judge as a detached outside authority because He is included in every expression; He expresses (and at the same time impresses) Himself in what is expressed.

When God expresses a sentence (both in a grammatical and a juridical meaning), He is identical with this judgment. The word of God is God.

The same pattern was inscribed prosaically in the earlier works. Der zerbrochene

Krug comically pictures a judge who is forced to pronounce a sentence in which he is inevitably included. Prinz Friedrich von Homburg reformulates the same equation of the judged judge in a more serious register. The sentence thus becomes expressive regardless of its comical or serious context. The earthly judge is no longer seen as an authority above good and evil that has the power to separate the two; he no longer has the power to judge (Urteilskraft) and to pronounce a sentence (Urteil). He is inevitably drawn into the judgment, making an objective sentence impossible. Nietzsche's objection to Kant from

The Will to Power fits perfectly in a Kleistian context: "Is this not the Kantian

250 Benjamin says that: "Truth is the death of intention" (Origin 36). 251 James M. McGlathery reads it even as a comedy in his book Desire's Sway: The Plays and Stories of Heinrich von Kleist. 258 contradiction, making reason both the tribunal and the accused; constituting it as judge and plaintiff, judging and judged?" (1.185).

Telling the story of the duel between Friedrich von Trotha and Jacob Rotbart,

Kleist's Zweikampf depicts a situation that is quite problematic. On the one hand, one cannot conclude that the duel exemplifies God's punishment, because winning the duel does not deliver divine justice. The loser becomes the real winner but outside the context of the duel. On the other hand, one cannot simply pronounce God's justice unknowable and completely deny the use of the duel either. The act of winning becomes blurred; it loses any stable ground for establishing a clear truth-value. The winner of the contest,

Jacob Rotbart, although being validated as such, dies after complications of a wound that he received during the same contest. He is not the loser either as he did not actually lose.

Both winning and losing fail to become strict determinations that are clearly separated from each other as they become blurry and intermingled. In this context, winning inclusively folds upon losing; losing spills over into winning. Without being able to determine reality, winning and losing become existential events that, as expressions, are merely diverse without being able to receive any label, any clearly defined meaning.

Such expressions cannot actively shape, form or represent the events, winning and losing thus becoming completely uncoupled or "disenfranchised" forms that cannot reach beyond pronouncing their singularity.

Ultimately, the duel as such was never about winning or losing, in the same way as winning or losing was never a main issue in the story of the fencing bear. This was more about perceiving an (existential) event purely, i.e., beyond winning and losing, beyond good and evil. The story of the duel is more than about crime and punishment. It 259 becomes a way of seeing the 'big picture'. In the end one witnesses the reestablishing of an internally unifying harmony, a harmony in which unavoidable momentary lapses will, one way or another, be included and 'corrected' not through an outside direct intervention, but through an existential inner unity of the moving force, the soul or vis motrix.

Kleist's world does not have a preconceived stable framework as it does not have a predictable outcome; the wounds that were supposed to heal get worse. Kleist dismisses the idea of building expectations, of setting up the conditions of possibility for constructing or forming a plan (Lebensplcm), everything occurring or being just a mobile present moment of a journey (Reise). One cannot go back to a paradisiacal past but neither does one have a golden goal in the future to look forward to. An expressive universe regulates itself from within in and through its absolute movement. Each moment is a self-sufficient, completed act that does not let God's will to be pinpointed and represented. God's will is this mobile event that is a pure becoming and that can merely produce formally different allegorical interpretations in a Benjaminian or baroque sense.

This type of approach never strives at decrypting or unveiling the (absolute) meaning of one particular event because any such meaning would be totally disconnected from the event as such. While being an utterance of the unspeakable,252 the Schlegelian romantic allegory is still involved in the infinite progressive striving of formation (Bildung), of uttering a meaning. Thus, in Kantian terms, it never overcomes its formal conditions.

In the context of Kleist's story Count Jacob wins the duel because probably he has a better technique, better skill, and better formal training. This implies that he is more

252 In Rede tiber die Mythologie Schlegel writes: "Das Hochste kann man eben, weil es unaussprechlich ist, nur allegorisch sagen" (Schri/ten 505). 260 graceful in Schiller's sense. At the story's conclusion, though, the emperor puts up a plaque saying: "Wenn es Gottes Wille ist" (Samtliche Werke 2: 261). Kleist's final argument is not directed against the ritual as such because, after all, the duel is not abolished. The ambiguity (Zweideutigkeit) of the ordalium, of God's judgment, a judgment that does not arise from a moral imperative, its state of simultaneously allowing for two possible meanings, merely aims at avoiding the temptation that its outcome be turned into an ossified rule of truth, because then one would inevitably miss the event as an ontological happening. In this sense, it will remain either absolutely mysterious like the message that Kohlhaas took with him into the grave, or it can be interpreted both ways like an unsolvable riddle or like the prophetic words of Apollo's Pythia. Creating an image of the event is not the event, a clearly defined meaning, frames or freezes the event into a representation that cannot be the event because it becomes an ontologically lessened copy of it. God's will is only what it is; God's will is being or pure existence, which is His existence at the same time. This does not mean that the human being is at the mercy of an unflinching divine determinism that would turn him into a mere Platonic puppet of destiny. Whatever the duel's result is or becomes God's will, beyond right and wrong, justice or injustice, good or evil, beyond any possibility of generalizing it as a plan or a rule that could then be projected into a particular event. Every duel is a singular happening that should only be understood as such. Judging this result as either one or the other is only a representation that misses out on God's ontological or expressive will.

Die Marquise von O. The main reason which made us overcome the strict chronology in which the texts were written, Zweikampf (1811) being Kleist's last text, is that ambiguity is even more pregnant in Marquise von O (1808). It adds yet another un-judgeable scenario. Seen as the primary tool of his dualistic expressiveness, ambiguity, the simultaneous equilibrium of unresolvable opposites, polarizes the interpretation into such extremes253 that its tension can generate enough intensity to trigger the originary movement of the pure predicate, thus forcing one to acknowledge and implicitly reinstate, or better said, to apocatastically restore the pristine substantial vinculum. In Marquise von O, Kleist leaves the clarification of the denouement almost artificially open while remaining rather equidistant with respect to the two contradictory interpretations: either demonic or angelic. As a masterpiece of ambiguity, the story presents the events in such a way that it does not prescribe any direction for the interpretative path. Kleist leaves the interpretive endeavor entirely to the subjectivity of the reader. Such an invitation does have an educative purpose: it will show the reader what interpretation is. Although any interpretation becomes folly dependent on the reader, the reader will never be able to actually test the validity of his decision. He cannot ground and form his intuition into a concept or idea, because the conflicting meanings are so well balanced as to be simultaneous. It thus turns out to be utterly impossible to attach or represent any agency

(whether demonic or angelic) to the marquise's pregnancy.

Granted, this turns the story into a prosaic and immanent version of the

Immaculate Conception. The main consequence, however, is that the act of conception,

253 This propensity towards the extreme was recognized by Benjamin as well when in his "Erkennttnistheoretische Vorrede" he states the "necessary direction towards the extreme" (Origin 30). Such extremes help in producing the so- called •'liminal concept" (Grenzbegriff) that can only appear proclaimed by the sovereign out of such a state of emergency, a hesitant Hamletian sovereign who is not the supreme authority because he cannot escape being included. 262 by its very ambiguity, becomes an event as well. Without offering any clues to what happened to Mary, the Mother of God (because it does not relate to it at all, thus cancelling any parody, irony etc.), the pregnancy of the marquise automatically becomes graceful nonetheless, because, again, as event, it is existentially one with the biblical

Immaculate Conception while being only formally different from it. Kleist's story builds its plot in such an ambiguous manner that it will enable more than a relative recognition of the divine Conception (i.e., a recognition based on the resemblance between two images); this event will be able to become part of the same constellation, in Benjamin's sense.

Even if Marquise von O is pregnant with meaning, with sense and sensation and, in this case, even with sensuality, no 'educated' choice can prove itself to be fully reliable because of the intrinsic fragility (Gebrechlichkeit) of choice as such. Kleist's ambiguity has overcome the dilemma triggered by the Kant crisis: it does not really matter which of the options one chooses because they are both on the same level. All interpretations are mere allegorical forms and thus necessarily different from the ontological event. From such a position there is no maculation of the event as such. No interpretation can actually

'touch' the event; no interpretation can impose any meaning, any external representative determination upon it. Expressing the event through the absolute otherness of allegory does not stain its purity, because there is no relation to it. Thus the conception remains immaculate because it has not been maculated, 'spotted' or mingled with something else while being pregnant and full with meaning.

Conclusion 263

Even when one can say that Kleist's expressiveness works within the same parameters as

Leibniz's, it does not mean that they are identical. Expressiveness cannot be turned into a model to be copied, only to become an ossified representation. Within the same expressiveness, each deployment is irreparable, necessarily including difference. Kleist's originality consists in the fact that he approaches grace from the mechanical side, from non-consciousness. "Grace appears most purely in that human form which either has no consciousness or an infinite consciousness. That is, in the puppet or in a god" (Kleist,

Abyss 216). While Leibniz lets grace descend from the infinite consciousness of the highest monad, i.e., God, Kleist evokes grace immanently from a mechanical marionette that has no consciousness. In their synchronic motion, Leibniz's divine monads look like dancing mechanical automata, while the mechanical movements of the lifeless puppet turn out to be divinely graceful. Eventually the marionette proves to be the most reliable guide in Kleist's quest for the back door to heaven. In a universe in which the human being is placed between God and the lifeless marionette, there are two options. Coming from a Neo-platonic tradition in which a two-leveled world was still harmoniously folding upon each other, the philosopher can take up the path of God, of infinite consciousness. After his Kantian experience, which shattered and broke any such echoing reverberations, the artist will certainly be inclined to take a rather material path,254 the path of the marionette, of no consciousness. This is the aspect, the formal difference that individuates them within their expressiveness.

The expressiveness of both Kleist and Leibniz differs from that of Spinoza. In the equation that necessarily contains both formal difference and ontological identity, the two

German writers are inclined to give more preponderance to formal difference. Hence

2,4 "Nur ein Gott konne sich auf dem Felde mit der Materie messen" (Samtiiche Werke 2 : 345). their 'meeting' takes place within this aspect. In Leibniz's case formal difference is exemplified by the distinction between God and the monad and in Kleist's case, it is exemplified by the distinction between the puppeteer and the puppet. Spinoza tackles the equation of ontological identity and formal difference by starting from a rather robust conception of the former. Hence he tends to see the creative separation as secondary, even problematic. Because Leibniz and Kleist both start from creation, ontological unity becomes evident through the non-representability of separated entities that will have to be declared indiscernible. 265

Chapter 4 - Keats's Vivid Imagination

For since there are many things which we cannot at all grasp by the imagination, but only by the intellect (such as Substance, Eternity etc.), if someone strives to explain such things by notion of this kind, which are only aids of the Imagination, he will accomplish nothing more than if he takes pains to go mad with his imagination (Letter to Meyer, 20 April 1663) (Spinoza, Correspondence 119)

It has been said that in English romanticism, John Keats was the most theoretical and

philosophical writer of his generation (Thorpe 11). Lacking a systematic approach, his theoretical propensity appears at first glance as an intuitive grasping of ideas that are presented as personal impressions from his creative journey. In this chapter, however, I will argue that Keats's theoretical inclination is not to be understood as composed of eclectically gathered ideas from different philosophical texts (as was the case with

Coleridge), but rather as the stepping stone for new and original poetic statements. Even though Keats's scholarship stumbles in the absence of direct theoretical sources, his relationship to other philosophers will be seen as an elective affinity of ideas that have the same origin.

While the previous chapter tried to discover convergent expressive veins in Kleist and Leibniz, the present one will 'com-pair' Spinoza and Keats in such a way that the

Dutch philosopher will become neither a model, nor an anti-model for Keats. This chapter will first try to figure out why Keats does not partake in the dominant Platonic tradition, a tradition of aesthetical thought that includes people like Shaftesbury and

Burke among others, while finding other levers for his poetic perspective. For this 266 purpose, the idea of univocity will be approached chronologically starting from Duns

Scotus (even though the medieval thinker conceives it without the pantheistic underpinnings that will be developed by Spinoza and that can be found in Keats as well).

In an attempt to remain consistent with respect to the criteria applied so far, this chapter will also confront Keats with Kantian aesthetic thought, this time by explicating the difference between Kantian and Spiniozian forms that turn out to be relevant for Keats's images of beauty that, as we will see, cannot be called aesthetic anymore as they become purely sensual.255 The contextualization will continue by measuring Keats against the romantic tradition of Coleridge and Schelling and will also include an analysis that focuses on the relationship between imagination, beauty and power. The second part of this chapter will be dedicated to approaching concepts like that of immortality and love with special reference to characters like Apollo or Endymion. Addressing the amendments that would come from a historical point of view, this essay does not engage the relationships that are established between different stages of Keats's poetic evolution but will merely trace 'flashes' of expressiveness regardless of period of development.

Without entering into a full-fledged argument with an evolutionist or historicist perspective - Benjamin's critique being our main reference point - the thesis aims at consistently implementing its expressive premises thus undoing the homogeneity or continuity of time.

Keats and Platonism: the problematic of identity and univocity

255 The term "aesthetic" is used in a Platonic-Kantian meaning and not in an etymological sense. In a representative context sensed intuition can never become purely sensual as there is always an intellectual component that has to be factored in. In this sense Keats' beauty is closer to Nietzsche's Dionysian art that has completely overcome the Apollonian element 267

Keats did not read philosophy but was a thinker nonetheless. T. S Eliot is right when he says that "[Keats] had no theories, yet in the sense appropriate to the poet, in the same sense, though to a lesser degree than Shakespeare, he had a 'philosophic' mind" (Poems of John Keats 12). Hence the following exposition, while also trying to implement the theoretical argument from the first part of the thesis, will be more philosophically oriented. Keats's letters have become famous for their inspired insights into the poetic process, bearing witness to a meta-level of reflection that pushed his reception and reputation deep into modernity as well. In a letter to J. H. Reynolds from May 3, 1818

Keats compares human life to a large mansion of many apartments in which he can only describe two rooms.256 The first room is the infant or thoughtless chamber where we remain as long as we don't think. However, the moment the thinking principle has been awakened, we seem to be stepping into a second chamber, one which Keats calls the

"Chamber of Maiden-Thought." As soon as we step into this second chamber, Keats writes, we "become intoxicated with the light and the atmosphere, we see nothing but pleasant wonders, and think of delaying there forever in delight" (.Letters 433). The effect of the wonders created by the mind is double-edged: on one side, they are indeed delightful, and on the other, they sharpen one's vision into the heart and nature of man. In other words, one discovers the other side of the coin. One falls into a rather melancholic

25

Keats imagines this scenario as the story of evolution of the human being in the world, a development from an Intelligence into a Soul, the world not being the typical

Christian vale of tears, but rather a "vale of soul-making", soul being the monadic individual identity. In this respect, Robert M. Ryan states that Keats has "discovered for himself that natural religion provided neither explanation nor consolation for the sufferings that are inseparable from the human condition" (182). All the hardships one endures during this process signify the evolution from an Intelligence which is just a spark of divinity, an "atom of perception," towards what he calls a soul, an entity that "is personally itself' because it has an identity: "There may be Intelligences or sparks of the divinity in millions - but they are not Souls till they acquire identities, till each one is personally itself. Intelligences are atoms of perception" (Keats, Letters 2: 102). The identity of the soul is acquired by means of undergoing passions that make the heart mature and allow it to gain a more accurate vision of the "nature of Man." Achieving a more empathic and altruistic understanding of human suffering, the heart (not the mind) becomes the primary organ of perception as it turns into the "the Minds Bible," into "the minds Experience," in short, into "the teat from which the Mind or intelligence sucks its identity." One steps into a "sort of oneness" and feels oneself entering into a "fellowship 269 with essence," an essence that brings the soul closer both to its human peers and to the divine.

God exists in every human being, in both in Intelligences and in Souls. The difference between Souls and Intelligences is not ontological. Even though Souls are divine, acquiring their individuality from God, Intelligences are divine as well: "they know and they see and they are pure, in short they are God" (Keats, Letters 2: 102).

Intelligences are not broken off ontologically from God as they have existence. The catch is that being just "sparks" or "atoms of perception," they are not really or actually God.

They merely contain or implicate Him but they cannot explicate or manifest Him in reality. Intelligences are able to express Him ontologically in a rather generic way but not essentially. They cannot catch His essence, His individual way of appearing, of manifesting Himself. Being in a mere "fellowship with essence," they enter into a rather relative communion with Him, a mental communion dwelling still safely in the Chamber of Maiden Thought, they do not approach him in a sensible way by "feeling" these essences.257 Whether they can manifest Him or not, they still are Him in reality. Their ontological status will let them acquire an implicit truth-value - implicit because it is, after all, only implicated. Like the shape from Endymion's dream (or Eve from

Adam's258), Intelligences have a rather dream-like existence that has not manifested His essence yet because these undeveloped "sparks" have just a theoretical idea of suffering created by the mind. However, it is only a matter a time - time not being of the essence - before the inexperienced "atoms of perception" are 'schooled' into developing a more sensible and immediate personalized perception of pain through the heart and thus turn

2571 am hinting at the verse from Endymion: "Feel we these things? - that moment we have stepped/ Into a sort of oneness" (Poems of John Keats 126). 258 1 am referring to his letter to Benjamin Bailey from November 22,1817. 270 into full-fledged Souls that are personally themselves, that exist while being as they are in themselves, i.e., fully individualized while expressing God in reality.

The question is how does this Intelligence become a Soul that is able to participate and enter in a fellowship with essence? To be Platonically correct, one would have to say that one participates in the divine essence according to one's degree of resemblance with it; the more one participates, the more one becomes like God.259 C. L.

Finney's reading of Endymion sees the poem as a Neo-Platonic ascent towards the idea of essential beauty (291). With every step closer to the intelligible, one would have to give up one's individuality. Keats, however, is interested in Souls, in individually distinguishable sparks that are God while having an identity. Souls have developed the ability to have a personalized experience, "to possess a bliss peculiar to each ones individual existence," (Letters) an individual existence that will express God through their individuality. Keats says: "As various as the Lives of Men are - so various become their Souls, and thus does God make individual beings, Souls, Identical Souls of the sparks of his own essence" (Letters 280). The existence of the Soul, while being God, is still unique and different from other Souls. It is personal because it is able to experience a broader palette of sensations that make experience indeed more nuanced and refined and thus more individualized. Keats is right in seeing this scenario as different from the

Christian religion as well. The more one comes closer to God, the more one is individually and personally oneself, i.e., the more one has the capacity to enjoy a more

varied or diversified experience - an experience that is an experience of God's divine

259 Clarence Dewitt Thorpe makes a case for Keats' Platonism but admits that "Sir Sidney Colvin, Professor Bradley, and others have noted that the Platonic strain, but have dismissed the idea of Plato's influence as improbable. 'He had read no Plato', says Colvin,' though he was of course familiar enough with Spencer's mellifluous dilution of Platonic and Neo-Platonic doctrine in four Hymns'. And Mr. Bradley declares, 'He uses the name Plato for a rhyme in a jocular poem, but there is no sign that he read a word of Plato or knew that he had written of beauty as well as truth'" (Thorpe 149). 271 existence - which makes it implicitly more personalized as well. Generally speaking, the experience of pain and injustice is the teacher that furthers the evolution from

Intelligence towards becoming an individual Soul. The first impression is that Keats manages to combine two fundamentally opposed points of view, participation and individuality: while not losing the ontological participation to a divine essence that presupposes resemblance with God, he would also be able to discover a strong sense of individuality and identity.

Taking to task both the negative eminence of the Neo-Platonists and the affirmation through analogy of Aquinas, Duns Scotus declared that divine being is univocal. Univocity means that God can be said in the same sense through many different voices. As Gilles Deleuze explains, divine existence "is predicated in the same sense of everything that is, albeit not in the same modality" (Expressionism 63). Being does not change its nature while changing its modality. In other words, things cannot change their innate nature although they can change the way in which they appear.260 Metaphysically,

God is still the same while being predicated by different attributes or modes. The change is only a distinction of form, of what the medieval philosophers called quidditas, but never a change of existence. Different quiditties belonging to the same subject can still be

(formally) distinct from it. This distinction makes them different from God yet God is the same "other thing" for all its attributes. Although they have their individuality in and through their form while not losing God ontologically, we will see that Duns Scotus' univocity does not explain Keats's before-mentioned dilemma of individuality and divine fellowship.

260 Which is one step away from famous proverbs like Lat "Vulpem pilum mutare, non mores," Ital. "D lupo cambia il pelo, ma non i vizi." Also, Jeremiah 13:23: "Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil." 272

Duns Scotus' greatest achievement is to have conceived the formal distinction as a real one. However, given his historical context, his work was ideologically constricted to a given framework, i.e., a creationist scenario that had to avoid the dangers of pantheism as well. He would conceive the absolute oneness of God as indifference and neutrality with respect to all attributes. Allowing God to be determined as indifferent and neutral means the attribute is not completely distinct from God anymore; it means that the attribute can make a direct reference through an analogy that corresponds to God. Both the attribute and God would share the common ground of being neutral and indifferent. In other words, the mere fact of having a common ground would make them both accountable with respect to an even higher authority while both God and the attribute are being linked by means of an analogy, a sameness that would exclude the highly acclaimed distinction and difference of a consistent univocal thought process. Hence this grounding would only be a sublation into an even higher generalization, a higher God, a supra-substantial, supra-essential deity, like the shadowy or cloudy eminence of the negative theology beyond affirmation and negation.

The greatest loss would be the pure "otherness," the pure mystery of God, the mystery that does not hide anything because it can only be determined as itself, as mystery (which is for Spinoza a full determination), and not from anything outside itself.

This mystery can only be and cause itself (causa sui) thus generating even more mystery through the divine names, the logoi, like Spinoza's substance that causes itself while univocally - i.e., in the very same sense (eo sensu)261 - it causes all its attributes that are

261 "God is said to be the cause of all things in the very sense (eo sensu) that he is said to be the cause of himself' (Deleuze, Spinoza 67). 273 formally different from it. These attributes do have an identity, an identity that is not a particularity with respect to a generality, not the specific difference of a genus.

After this perhaps too sketchy excursion into the notion of univocity from which one can take away the differences between Spinoza and Duns Scotus and that was conceived as a better contextualization for what univocity will become in Keats, one can advance to the analysis of the work of the English poet per se. Keats's "fellowship with essence" (Poems 125) not only means a rather vague stepping into "a sort of oneness"

(.Poems 125) with the universe but also distinguishes two stages: friendship and love.

These stages may sound yet again Platonic but in the Keatsian context they are not based on resemblance of a copy to a model but on an increase of degrees of intensity. "But there are richer entanglements, enthralments far more self-destroying, leading, by degrees, to the chief intensity: the crown of these is made of love and friendship, and sits high upon the forehead of humanity" (Poems 126). Grounding his ascent towards the divine on intensity, on degrees of pleasure, is like grounding it on pure difference because intensity cannot have a real ground. Even in a Kantian framework intensity would push the faculties beyond the limits of mere empirical sensibility into a transcendental supersensory exercise that unsettles any attempt at representation. Keats's pleasure thermometer seems to have lost its scale as love, the peak of intensity, which causes one's soul to spill over, melting into "an orb drop of light" and henceforth mingling with the divine essence to become what Spinoza would call an attribute of the divine, an attribute that while being individually distinct from the substance is still able to express its essence.

But at the tip-top, There hangs by unseen film, an orbed drop of light, and that is love: its influence, thrown in our eyes, genders a novel sense, at 274

which we start and fret; till in the end, melting into its radiance, we blend, mingle, and so become a part of it, - nor with aught else can our souls interknit so wingedly: when we combine therewith, Life's self is nourish'd by its proper pith, and we are nurtured like a pelican brood. (Keats, Poems 126)

Growing into such a predicative aspect, in such in a live participation with essence as mtura naturans, love cannot see any contrasts or separation between realms anymore and as intensity causes "disagreeables to evaporate." Keats says that the "excellence of every art is its intensity making disagreeables evaporate" (Letters 262). Most importantly, however, love becomes at the same time creative of essential beauty. In a letter to

Benjamin Bailey, Keats says, "for I have the same Idea of all our Passions as of Love they are all in their sublime, creative of essential Beauty" (Letters 184).

Keats's Formalism: between Kant and Spinoza

Parting ways with the Neo-Platonic tradition, Keats' s notion of beauty does not look

beyond the (material) content, beyond the phenomenal, beyond an appearance relatable to

an essence, towards a pure spiritual form that is so pure that it becomes formless. The key to understanding this beauty hinges on a correct understanding of the ability to create essence. Imagination plays a decisive role in this process, becoming the vehicle for this creation. This fact, however, puts Keats in a fundamental disagreement with Spinoza for whom imagination was only a source of inadequate ideas. Imagination can only present imagined things without a proper knowledge of their causes.

Placing the work in a historical context, Keats's impulse to value imagination so

highly would come as a result of the romantic environment he was living in. The

romantic landscape, however, was not at unison with respect to the function of 275 imagination. In the German Pcmtheismusstreit, for example, the debate revolved around, on the one side, the belief that imagination can create existence, that it can become so intense that it can manifest in reality the imagined thing while, on the other, one would have a rather Kantian approach that would keep imagination in check within the limit of reason even in its sublime moments. Kant's only so-called direct intervention in this

German querelle is in his essay Was heisst sich im Denken orientieren in which he explains that his philosophy is interested merely in what falls under "the authority of reason" as he would never actually venture to make ontological claims (Zammito 237). In his Critiques and in other essays, however, Kant clearly labels such zealous upsurges into ontology as fanaticism or superstition (Schwarmerei). Kant's prime example of fanaticism is Swedenborg, but he does mention Spinoza in this context as well, saying that the latter would even reach the highest degree of fanaticism. Spinoza's fanaticism or superstition, however, proves itself to be is more problematic as it cannot overstep the boundaries of reason because it does not have anything to overstep. The author of the

Ethics cannot distinguish any boundaries, no real separation between reason and existence. His substance is its attributes; it is ontologically one with them having the same existence so that whatever is existential is (and must be) reasonable at the same time; attributes being merely forms of the substance designating its essence. Accordingly there is no crossing over beyond the jurisdiction of reason because there are neither any real boundaries nor any entity to witness such crossing. The Spinozian procession into attributes and modes cannot be labeled as either subjective or objective. It is not a question of having an option: God is necessarily expressive through its attributes and modes. Spinoza's God creates as He exists, and He thinks as he produces. "God does not 276 produce things because he wills but because he is" (Deleuze, Expressionism 104). Not being able to be anthropomorphically represented, Spinoza's God cannot have a will, making his pantheism necessarily being determined internally and completely in and through itself. By being its own cause, it receives a full determination while causing the world to exist. It cannot even accommodate an objective agency like the one that was claimed in the Pantheismusstreit, an "It is" that could be played against an "I am/think" because in Spinoza substance just is.

Romantic pantheism interpreted Spinoza's substance as an objective existence, as an "it is." In order to rationalize the space allocated to the description of romanticism and to be able to explore all the intricacies of Jena romanticism, this thesis has not undertaken a frontal description of the famous romantic philosophic systems. Instead I have focused just on Jena romanticism as a crucial theoretical event that would define romanticism in general. For a further and more complete definition of romanticism, one would have to include the full-fledged romantic (pantheist) philosophers as well: especially Schelling and Hegel. Without elaborating on this any further, the romantic systematic philosophers are (from the point of view developed in this thesis) only in contradiction with the more

Kantian Jena romantics. All of them still paid tribute to representation, unable to arrive at a truly ontological perspective, at expressing pure existence. Kant would implicitly call all such attempts Schwarmerei, and later Kierkegaard would declare that the "so-called pantheistic systems have often been characterized and challenged in the assertion that they abrogate the distinction between good and evil, and destroy freedom. Perhaps one would express oneself quite as definitely, if one said that every such system fantastically dissipates the concept of existence" (qtd. in McFarland 88). 277

John Keats seems to share with the Jena romantics the idea that imagination cannot create existence.262 His famous passage about Adam's dream in book eight of

Milton's Paradise Lost aligns itself with the latter, never claiming Adam to be the creator of Eve; Adam just awoke and found his beautiful dream come true as he found Eve alive beside him.

OI wish I was as certain of the end of all your troubles as that of your momentary start about the authenticity of the Imagination. I am certain of nothing but of the holiness of the Heart's affections and the truth of Imagination - What the imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth - whether it existed before or not - for I have the same idea of all our passions as of love: they are all, in their sublime, creative of essential beauty. In a word, you may know my favorite speculation by my first book, and the little song I send in my last, which is a representation from the fancy of the probable mode of operating in these matters. The imagination may be compared to Adam's dream, - he awoke and found it truth (Keats, Letters 184)

For Keats, beauty becomes thus linked with the truth of existence. His sublime moment becomes more sensual, more "material" and, again, quite significantly, "colourful":263 "O that our dreamings all, of sleep or wake, / Would all their colours from the sunset take: /

From something of material sublime, / Rather than shadow our own soul's day-time / In the dark void of night" (Keats, Poems 243).

Kant's sublime goes beyond the beauty manifested in form and progresses backwards to its a priori condition of possibility, to the pure form that becomes the presentation of the formless infinite. Being only a negative presentation of the infinite, it cannot reach immediacy; it is not a direct presentation that is the infinite. Kant's imagination will not have any 'coverage' with respect to ontology; it cannot say what a

thing is in itself; it cannot reach the what-ness, the quidittas and it cannot describe its

202 In a Kantian sense as human reason has no access to a so-called "intellectual intuition.' 263 See Howard CaygilFs Walter Benjamin: The Colour of Experience. 278

existence. Even so, the Kantian sublime will become the springboard of various interpretations nonetheless. Deleuze, for example, perceives the gap between the noumenon and the phenomenon as a pure difference saying that "there is no longer an

essence behind appearance, there is rather the sense or rather the non-sense of what

appears" (qtd. in Zizek, Organs 45). This purely sensual appearance is as nonsensical as

Benjamin's "nonsensical resemblances" ("unsinnliche Ahnlichkeiten")264

By reading such a total displacement or dislocation into the Kantian sublime

which turns out to be quite contrary to Kant's project of maintaining the unity of reason,

Deleuze unveils here a rather Nietzschean side of the philosopher from Konigsberg. The

present exegesis, however, inclines towards bringing the Kantian sublime into a more

Spinozan sphere of meaning. From such a point of view the Kantian equivalent of the

Spinozan divinity would reside in the a priori regulative idea of God that is not projected

in the noumenal realm but has its place and usefulness within reason.

What is significant, though, is that Kant's theory of the sublime engages a very

problematic zone that almost invites such speculation. It is true that, on the one hand,

Kantian formalism will not become creative in a direct sense as it cannot establish a

foundation and discern a creative entity. On the other hand, however, such formalism is

still not able to completely shake off its formative underpinnings. Harboring a

purposiveness, Kantian form cannot exhaust its poieticity and cannot be viewed

absolutely. The disinterestedness of art will still not be able to suppress such conditioning

as every condition of possibility will sooner or later be at least temporary fulfilled (being

264 Edmund Jephcott, in his translation entitled Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings, prefers the term "nonsensual." In such a reading Benjamin would become a Hegelian. I interpret him closer to the sensuous or what is called materialism. 205 In a parenthesis, let it be said that both readings would still be considered expressive even though they would not share the same expressiveness becoming thus non-contradictory but merely diverse. 279 inevitably embedded in time) thus turning volens nolens, in a typical Aristotelian way, into an act.

While it may be true that as a mere condition, form cannot be considered the creator as such (as it does not become the direct cause), it still cannot be ruled out as a formal or efficient cause. In others words, it will open the possibility for creation to take place, making it only a matter of time before it actually happens. Hence Kant's pure form, his empty framework, is not completely 'innocent'. It has lost its 'paradisiacal state' in the same way as a plan of a building is not be the cause of that building but it is still the condition of its possibility; without it the building would not be able to be built.

We will see that Keats's so-called creative scenario, having nothing to do with creativity, cannot even accommodate such a 'not-so-innocent' condition of possibility. In order to be able to be validated as an experience, the Kantian sublime, even though formless in itself, must still be manifested in and through a beautiful form; this pure form/formlessness will be thus the condition of the possibility for the creation of a beautiful form, a form that does have a (new) content. It will project in itself (in sich) its own form and content, but this does not mean that it can be understood ontologically as it is in itself (an sich). The Kantian pure form will necessarily be conceived as a condition for a possibility - thus not being able to be completely independent or absolute (i.e., not absolutely but merely relatively pure) because even if this possibility is manifested in itself, it is still relative to itself preventing form from being just what it is and be perceived as it is, a mere form that is neither actively forming nor being passively informed (as it is the case in Platonism). 280

Form can but does not have to be formative; it can also be merely attributive.

Nietzsche's question whether Kant's synthetic a priori judgments are indeed absolutely- necessary points in the same direction. Even though the author of Thus Spoke Zarathustra evaluates forms as indispensable, life requiring illusion in order to prepare the advent of truth, they still do not have to be formative. Forms would not fail or be totally annihilated, if they remained merely expressive. In other words, even when a ladder is not serving its purpose (aesthetic purposiveness included) as an instrument of climbing, it will still remain what it is. a ladder. While Leibniz's thought set out from the harmony of an already divided unity, a polyphonic Creation that enjoyed the chiaroscuro more than strictly defined contours, Benjamin, being influenced by a more rigorous, almost manneristic style of the Neo-Kantian era, had to commence from separated but more precisely delimited forms. Hence even though the expressiveness of both thinkers would favor the individualizing aspect, Benjamin's task resided in breaking out from a more constricting formalism by means of what he calls the "de-formation of that which is formed" ("Entstaltung des Gestaltenen") (qtd. in Fenves 181).

Keats's Ontological Identity

In the November 22, 1817 letter to Benjamin Bailey, Keats presents his poetical statement - "beauty is truth, truth beauty" -under his ideas about imagination by saying:

"what the imagination seizes as Beauty must be Truth whether it existed there before or not" (Keats, Letters 184). Imagination must become reality but it does not necessarily imply that it can actively create existence. Keats's statement merely refers to the fact that if everything starts from existence there can be no non-existence. Even before being 281 manifested, Eve could not have been non-existing. What imagination does is merely to know the way existence works. Hence it is not an actively creative entity; only existence can produce (while being what it produces).

As to the poetical Character itself (1 mean that sort of which, if 1 am any thing, I am a Member; that sort distinguished from the Wordsworthian or egotistical sublime; which is a thing per se and stands alone) it is not itself - it has no self - it is every thing and nothing - It has no character - it enjoys light and shade; it lives in gusto, be it foul or fair, high or low, rich or poor, mean or elevated - It has as much delight in conceiving an Iago as an Imogen. What shocks the virtuous philosopher, delights the camelion Poet. It does no harm from its relish of the dark side of things any more than from its taste for the bright one; because they both end in speculation. A Poet is the most unpoetical of any thing in existence; because he has no Identity - he is continually in for - and filling some other Body - The Sun, the Moon, the Sea and Men and Women who are creatures of impulse are poetical and have about them an unchangeable attribute - the poet has none; no identity - he is certainly the most unpoetical of all God's Creatures. (Letters 387)

Keats's creator is utterly uncreative and unpoietic. For him, the true poet is not

"egotistically sublime," one who creates everything subjectively, but rather a creature without identity. When talking about Byron, Keats says that the former "describes what he sees -1 describe what 1 imagine - Mine is the hardest task" (Letters 2: 200). By the same token Keats is also distancing himself from Coleridge when he says that the poet of

"Kubla Khan" is not "capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason - Coleridge, for instance, would let go by a fine isolated verisimilitude caught from the Penetralium of mystery, from being incapable of remaining content with half knowledge" (Letters 194). The latter cannot assimilate mystery as such, as a "burden" as he is not content with a heavier half-knowledge because he is always searching for a reasonable explanation that would be able to lift or lighten this burden. The true poet - and by true poet Keats means Shakespeare - is never 282 the creator of his characters. Keats's characters are not his creations in the sense of separate personae or alter egos that become speaking trumpets for his thoughts. The thoughts of the characters cannot be traced back to a separate entity called the poet. He lacks an identity but not because he is anonymous. The poet is his characters; he actually lives in them in the very moment, ontologically and not representatively.

Spinoza would say that an "expression (the attribute) is in God his very life"

(Deleuze, Expressionism 99). Spinozian univocity is not based a non-identity, on an identity that is negated, indifferent or neutral. He would not stage a histrionic actor playing different roles exhibiting masked identities,266 while preserving his real one

'apophatically' as a dark eminence. Keats's mask is the face as there is no possibility of setting up a de-doubling or reflective process, an interior separation, a self-contradiction or a relative opposition with itself. This utter impossibility of de-doubling will have no other choice but to turn upon itself and produce a redoubling effect that would act as an intensification of the same, of an absolutely non-representable unity267 that will, at the same time, also express, manifest or incarnate itself into diverse individual beings or

"Souls." The poet does not have an identity because he always takes up every time another one "filling some other Body." Having no identity does not mean that the poet is deprived of an identity; it simply means that this identity is always different as he

"continually in for" someone else. His identity knows no stability as it is 'baroquely' metamorphotic and chameleon, always spilling over and being fully contained ontologically in that particular or individual identity it happens to express. In another

266 McFarland talks about the two masks of Keats - the Hellenic and the medieval mask - but this is a typical Cartesian perspective ("larvatus prodeo," "masked, I come forth") that both Spinoza and Leibniz have fundamentally disagreed with. 207 Spinoza would call it "substance". 283 letter, Keats replays the same scenario, but this time, however, from a passive posture, saying that "the identity of everyone in the room begins so to press upon me that I am in a very little time annihilated - not only among Men; it would be the same in a Nursery of children" (Letters 387). The chameleonic nature of the poet resides in the fact that it expresses itself while being fully present and contained in what it expresses.

Even though this poet is not creative in a poietical sense, as he is not projecting an

I that would open up a transcendental level of poetry turning out to be a (Jena romantic) poetry that also poeticizes the poetic as such, he is productive nonetheless. This poet is productive because he is still generating the characters; this time, however, not by means of a temporalizing synthesis of the imagination (Einbildungskraft), but with pure fantasy in a process that is closer to what Benjamin will call "pure seeing," "pure perception" or

"pure intuition." As Peter Fenves writes,

Pure receptivity (reine Anschauung) is absolved of every synthesizing tendency. Instead of synthesis there is creation (Schaffen). Creation from pure perception - without reliance on spontaneously generated forms and without detour of discursivity in general - is the original mode of intuition, and it does without the 'I' on the basis of which,268 according to Kant, appearances are formed into phenomena through which the 'I' secures its constitutive self-consciousness (...) The creativity of fantasy does not therefore consist in an ability to form models (...). Creation from fantasy has nothing to do with images (Bilder) of any kind, all of which depend upon the distinction between itself and the thing of which it is an image. (Fenves 179)

From this point of view, Keats and Benjamin both dissociate themselves from the tradition of German idealism that maintains fantasy is not a "power of invention"

(erfmdende Kraft) because it can only act on what (already) exists.

268 Even though Kant wants to avoid grounding in a straightforward first principle because it is indeed impossible to prove such an entity, he, or better said, it is equally impossible to dwell without a ground. In other words, one cannot remain consistent about ungrounding; eventually one will be forced to ground in some way or another. The problem resides thus merely in how this grounding occurs, in the formal aspect this grounding comes to pass. If grounding is necessary, it will implicitly ground necessity. 284

For Keats, the poet cannot even relate to his characters. Being so "I-less," he turns out to be just the relation as such, the non-formative form of relation. At best, he can be seen like a dominating monad that is merely dominating the relation by being the relationship when it is not dwelling inside a synthetic medium (of reflection) oscillating between two poles that construct themselves reciprocally, but being a pure medium without remainder that does not even mediate. From this point of view, his mind would turn into a "thoroughfare for all thoughts," becoming more like a (Borgesian) library/archive that would be able to contain an infinite number of thoughts.

Keats's characters are still originating univocally from one single poet; they are still univocal thus implicitly partaking in the Spinozian expressiveness. There is no

'counterpoint' involved; there is no separation of parallel voices that would resonate in a

(Leibnizian) pre-established harmony. One can still locate one secretive origin behind the mask - and not yet another (Nietzschean) mask, for example. The nature of Keats's poet would only be schizoid in the same way that Mr. Hyde does not become an alter ego of

Dr. Jekyll. Not being able to remember and relate to each other, both Mr. Hyde and Dr.

Jekyll become voices of the same human being, attributes of the same existence, formally different or diverse yet ontologically one. Their relationship is more than a straightforward exclusion as it appears as an absolute separation simultaneously doubled by an equally absolute inseparability, simultaneity being the marker of expressiveness.

While being Mr. Hyde, Dr. Jekyll will disappear as representation but not as existence.

The judicial system would not be able to pinpoint the blame and condemn one without the other. Due to the fact that there is no common ground between them, no shared medium in which one can build a case, one cannot pass a judgment (at this point Kant 285 and any type of reflexive consciousness is left behind) that would either condemn or pardon, that would be able infinitely to label 'them' as either good or bad.

This type of (non-clinically) mad behavior unfolds similarities with Keats's unpoetical poet who is so intensely involved and absorbed in what he imagines that he becomes his characters. Although Iago is a villain and Imogen an innocent victim, they cannot be represented as opposites because the poet is so fully immersed or "incarnated" in a character that he cannot simultaneously be in the other as well. He is so expressed and at the same time so implicated or impressed in them, both aspects of expression being fully interlocked, that he is not able to gain distance and distinguish them as contraries.

From this point of view, their disagreeability will "evaporate" as they become merely different and diverse without being able to be framed by a normative authority. Any such recourse to morality would only compare them with respect to a stable model of moral values. Hence they are neither good nor bad but just different. This difference does not become specific, though, as it would not depend upon the generality of a moral framework that would engulf their "soul," their irreducible individuality, their complex diversity that is much closer to the reality of human nature than any clear-cut opposition.• • 269

Even though important thinkers such as Foucault and Deleuze were inclined to reevaluate these speculations as different regimes of madness (or mania),270 one will also recognize the Spinozian univocity shining through and working in the same way. The poet without identity exists in and through his expressed identities, which are utterly different and truly univocal. On the one hand, his own identity will forever be mysterious

269 Spinoza would say "non opposite sed diversa." 270 This in reference to Foucault's Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason and Deleuze's Two Regimes of Madness. 286 as it remains perfectly indeterminate - he merely mediates without ever accomplishing the process of mediating. On the other, he exists in what he expresses. This type of "non- identity" cannot be determined in any way, not even as Duns Scotus' neutrality or indifference, because the neutral and indifferenct could be still opposed to the sympathetic and passionate and thereby set up a reducing contrastive approach between the expressant and its expressions, i.e., the poet and his characters. Any such relationship would only thrust expressions into a Procrustean bed that would chop off their diversity.

The existence of a true poet with no identity will be in that of his characters, creating things of beauty that are truth or are real because they have an ontological status. The world according to Keats's chameleonic poet knows no romantic search for an absolute, no intentionality or even the possibility of setting up a purpose (or purposiveness). His existence in and through his characters is so that it is.

While it may be true that imagination cannot create existence per se, it can actually trigger it nonetheless. Perceiving "essential beauty" as an absolute form without formative underpinnings, imagination will implicitly realize that any attempt of placing beauty under the principle of understanding and reason would be a blatant mismatch. It will then have no choice but to give up on it completely. This gesture translates into a rather retroactive affirmation of existence: "What the imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth - whether it existed there before or not" (Letters 184). Even though both Spinoza and Kant would object, the main idea here is that even if imagination is not placed under the authority of reason, it is not necessarily banned from reason altogether. It will only be freed from relating or relying on understanding and reason in the sense of avoiding what

Keats calls the "irritable reaching after fact and reason" (Letters 193). This stand-alone 287 imagination will have no choice but to become reasonable by 'extracting' beauty from the truth of pure being, from perceiving what is. The forms it sees are not mere non- substantial whitecaps on the ocean that would madden like a siren song one's reason if one were to follow them. Overcoming its mediating position, Keatsian imagination does not start forming lifeless abstractions, becoming itself an authority. Imagination will

(re)discover its primary function: that of being a mere vehicle of perception

(Wahrnehmung). In this respect, it will not only be able to sense or "feel" the essence of an image but it will also actively fill it with sensual perceptions, thus actualizing it.

What imagination will perceive as beauty has to be whether it was manifested there before or not, because the experience as such is the expression or incarnation in that very moment. (Due to the consistency of his expressiveness, Spinoza himself missed the importance of the suddenness and its ontological fullness.) Such beauty will be thus independent of temporal relations, time not getting to condition experience anymore.

From this point of view it is not necessarily a "temporary check of the life force" any longer (as it used to be in the Kantian sublime), but becomes sensually intensive.

Imagination is not able to find any grounding principle that would make it mediate between sensibility and intuition, and thus to be able to present to understanding

(Verstand). Its images would be fully autonomous like Endymion's images from a dream.

The external referent would not be an image or a representation (i.e., a formative form) in the sense of Vorstellung but a mere "creature of impulse" that stimulates the imagination.

From the point of view of their unrelatedness these poetic appearances would be closer to what Hegel calls Erscheinung even though the German philosopher goes into the opposite direction, emasculating them of any trace of sensuality. In this case however 288

they produce their own internal intensity that would eventually generate their sensible

reality. Such an image is thus as if lost in what Keats calls in Endymion a "Purgatory

blind" (.Poems 243): it cannot be properly formed because imagination cannot subscribe and categorize it under any "standard law," either from earth of from heaven. Hence

imagination cannot represent a recognizable image but expresses an intensive image that

becomes a pure mystery in which one cannot distinguish "the balance between good and

evil" {Letters 280); it turns into a burden that the human being would have to just bear like Sisyphus, a burden that cannot be eased by relaying it to understanding, or by

handing it over to reason and knowledge (as it happens Coleridge's creative process).

This expressive image does indeed "tease us out of thought," as it cannot be an image of

thought anymore, but amounts towards its own suicide, towards its own cancellation or

destruction, towards its ruin as a representation.

Even though he has no place for beauty and imagination in his philosophy,

Spinoza still shares the same expressiveness as Keats. The author of the Theological-

Political Treatise starts from an already ontological notion of truth as "in reality God acts

and directs all things simply by the necessity of His nature and perfection, and that His

decrees and volitions are eternal truths, and always involve necessity" (Spinoza,

Theological 109), while for Keats beauty will turn truly ontological: Adam wakes up

from an imaginative dream and finds it alive and true beside him. By the same token,

Endymion will eventually 'consummate' his marriage to his celestial mistress while

Apollo will be turned into a God. In all these examples there is more than a harmonic friendship between participants, extrapolating between realms of existence. Keats's poetic universe is 'ruled' by love that leads to a blending into a true ontological unity.

271 See the chapter "The Image of Thought" (pp. 146-148) in Deleuze's Difference and Repetition. 289

Hence, as in Spinoza, there is a wwvocal perspective of existence that is able to

simultaneously express from one unitary origin attributes like beauty and truth. In a post-

Kantian era, an era in which imagination has lost its ontological coverage, Keats consistently and almost defiantly maintains a pantheistic vision of existence, while

avoiding becoming a 'typical' fanatic. It may be true that almost by default Keats could

be considered superstitious, but only for want of a better descriptor. His imagination

cannot fit into a Kantian framework. It is too much for reason to handle.

As long as imagination can see through the phenomenality of forms, canceling the

mediation or synthesizing factor so that they no longer appear as being formed by a

subsiding essence, it will perceive them simply for what they are. These beautiful forms

will henceforth be just as they appear, not beckoning to anything beyond them. This

beauty of appearance will become by default an "essential beauty," its intensity

producing its own essence. Such beauty will thus inevitably tap into God's necessity that

is the truth of existence. Needless to say, Keats's formulation seemed sacrilegious, indeed

some contemporaries considered him quite insane.272 Despite all that, Keats would, in his later period of poetic development, revisit the status of thought and philosophy and

conclude that even while functioning by means of "consecutive reasoning," one would still eventually arrive at an ontological truth.273 It has to be said though, that the

existential necessity implied here is coming from the notion of theoretical truth. Hence,

272 J.G. Lockhart called Endvmion in Blackwood's Magazine "a spectacle of an able mind reduced to a state of insanity" (Extracts 519), Shelley even accused him of murder precipitating Keats's premature death. m "I am more zealous in this affair because I have never yet been able to perceive how anything can be known for truth by consecutive reasoning - and yet it must be. Can it be that even the greatest philosopher ever arrived at his goal without putting aside numerous objections?" (Letters 185) (italics mine). 290 without making Kant turn in his grave, concepts, or, in Keats's terms, the "axioms" of philosophy, can be proven by our own "pulses."274

Keats imagines his scenario as a "regular stepping of the Imagination towards a

Truth," a stepping beyond the "realm of Flora and Pan" into the Chamber of Maiden-

Thought, a stepping toward a nobler life of profound insight into the heart of Man with all its strife and agonies. It is a scenario that does not follow a representative Platonism.

On such a path, one first becomes "a dreaming thing" a "fever of [one]self' {Poems 482) that cannot have a home or a safe haven on earth, because for him joy and pain are no longer distinct but are bound together, one being necessarily followed by the other. "The dreamer venoms all his days, / Bearing more woe than all his sins deserve" pouring

"balm upon the world" (Poems 482). Still caught by his subjectivity, the dreamer cannot yet reach a truth. If his imagination is not powerful enough to "see what gods see," he stays stuck in the realm of the mind, unable to break through self-reflexivity into existence, reality and truth. Adam's dream can become real because his imagination is intense and powerful and "real are the dreams of gods." Apollo is no longer a dreamer but becomes a poet who "vexes the world" and "shocks the virtuous philosopher." The poet is not one of those persons "who find a haven in the world, / Where they may thoughtless sleep away their days" (Poems 482). He does not regress into the Thoughtless

Chamber, but exits even the Chamber of Maiden-Thought, to be "schooled" in becoming a Soul. He accepts mystery as such with its true burden, not going for the half-understood and thus watered-down version that is mixed with knowledge. For Keats sense perception turns out to be treated monadically and does not have to be understood becoming thus purely expressive. The poet bases his ascent solely on the power of imagination, which in

274 "[F]or axioms in philosophy are not axioms until they are proved upon our pulses" (Letters 279). 291 this "pleasure thermometer" cannot enter into any dialectic relationship with something else and ends up intensifying itself; this imagination is truth as it turns into reality.

Keats and Coleridge's Imagination

In an attempt to better understand the incongruence between Keats and other English romantics, especially with respect to the mechanisms of imagination, this section will engage a discussion on Coleridge's theoretical ideas regarding the subject. While the

Keatsian imagination differs from the Kantian one through its decoupling from being synthetically mixed with (or related to) knowledge and understanding, Coleridge's definition tends to extend the Kantian definition by adding Schellingian undertones.

Where Keats avoids tackling an organizing reason that requires unity (and not from reason as such since it cannot quite be classified as fanatical superstition), Coleridge truly oversteps reason, as he seeks existential underpinnings without having adequate ontological coverage.

In his famous yet too short fragment from Biographia Literaria describing the different types of imagination, Coleridge writes:

The imagination then, 1 consider either as primary, or secondary. The primary imagination I hold to be the living Power and prime Agent of all human Perception, and as a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I AM. The secondary Imagination I consider as an echo of the former, co-existing with the conscious will, yet still as identical with the primary in the kind of its agency, and differing only in degree, and in the mode of operation. It dissolves, diffuses, dissipates, in order to recreate; or where this process is rendered impossible, yet still at all events it struggles to idealize and unify. It is essentially vital, even as all objects (as objects) are essentially fixed and dead. (Coleridge 202) 292

Assuming the possibility of a repetition based on correspondence between the human perception and the eternal "I am," Coleridge is closer to Schelling than to Kant.

However, Coleridge's perspective differs from Schelling as well. He concurs with

Schelling only selectively, i.e., with respect to the human or finite sphere but not with his claim on ultimate reality. Schelling opts for a theory that finds in Truth a correspondence between an object and its representation within the knowing subject. He argues that if subject and object are to come into a knowledge relation, they must share a common ontological basis. This basis is an act and has a dynamic nature and becomes the absolute identity of the former relation. The absolute identity makes the former relation an illusory abstraction from this dynamic act, from the unconscious pantheistic God. Schelling's absolute or God is eminently subjective as in reality there are no selves-as-objects because objects cannot be known through rational inquiry, as in Hegel, but only through transcendent apprehension, mystical intuition or artistic creativity. For Schelling (at least, in his positive philosophy and with direct reference to Keats), art becomes existential as it reaches what he believes to be an ontological level of reality. At this point, Coleridge's perspective on imagination differs from Schelling's. The English poet is not ready to give up the reality of the distinction between subject and object, inclining again towards a more Kantian perspective of separateness. But he is not a typical Kantian, as his separateness is still based on the underlying continuum. In short, Coleridge grounds the correspondence between the mind and the world in a different way than Schelling: for him it is real because it is being produced by this underlying act. For Schelling, however, it becomes an abstraction, as the underlying act is also absolutely identical with its 293 infinite limitation; their correspondence would appear later, as the emergence of consciousness, as Nicholas Reid says (22).

For Coleridge, primary imagination is the unconscious yet necessary link between the human being and the world. It is the living power that fuels every perception while stirring the understanding of the world. This type of imagination translates while matching the innate capacities and powers of the mind with the external presence of the objective world that the mind receives through the senses, thus presupposing a common denominator. This common denominator cannot be a thing since it is prior to the categories of logic but must be a dynamic act that evades any opposition or polarization because it will only truly exist in a single continuum, in the eternal "1 am."

From the way he handles the ontological "I am," Coleridge distances himself from any pantheistic underpinnings. His primary imagination is merely a repetition of the infinite "I am" in the finite mind. Coleridge still speaks of an / that exists and not of pure existence. I am not the infinite "I am" as such, but as it can be perceived in the finite. In other words, human perception is not ontologically identical with God's creation or existence: the human being may be God-like (being created in his image), but he is not

God. He is just a downsized repetition, a copy of Him. Even so, Coleridge is not following the requirements of Kantian formalism either. Coleridge's primary imagination works in a Platonic way as it merely contains the infinite that can be perceived in the finite. What Coleridge describes here is not Kant's concept of experience, which proclaims its remoteness with respect to the existence of the thing while forming at the same time an object befitting the experience. In an almost paradoxical way, Coleridge goes beyond the Kantian categories to engage rather directly the dynamic act of creation. 294

But he is still Kantian, not quite ready to claim an absolute identity with it, not reaching immediately this pure act as such (like Schelling), because it would mean acquiring ontological knowledge.

Interestingly enough, Coleridge's secondary imagination becomes more active.

What was described until now as act of merely passive perception turns into voluntary activity. His secondary imagination is what is commonly understood as romantic creativity and artistic genius, not only passively perceiving, but consciously willing its way into actively creating. Granted, the secondary imagination is identical with the first

"in the kind of its agency," because the difference between active and passive is for

Coleridge only a matter of degree of implication in experience and in the way it operates.

A possible Kantian equivalent would be the imagination as presented in the Third

Critique, where it is not subordinated to the requirements of the concept anymore. No longer passively mediating towards understanding the world, it rather actively pushes itself to reach the limits of experience as "it dissolves, diffuses, dissipates, in order to recreate; or where this process is rendered impossible, yet still at all events it struggles to idealize and unify" (Coleridge 202). Thus, almost in the same way in which the Kantian unity of experience is maintained, the unity between Coleridge's primary and the secondary imagination is also preserved.275 The secondary imagination is the one that is actually and actively reshaping the object, conveying a new sense because it based on a correspondence between the subject and the object, the mind and the world. It envelops the object, surrounding it with a new halo by dissolving, diffusing and dissipating it, all in order to recreate it.

275 If Coleridge had not mentioned the repetition of the eternal "I am," if he had not made an ontological claim, his imagination would have been a quite close to the Kantian one. 295

Imagination - like M.H. Abrams' lamp - can project a new light onto the object, reshaping it rather than reproducing or mechanically mirroring it (which, of course is all that the fancy can do). Although this active imagination can be seen even as reviving the object, it still cannot actually give life to an "essentially fixed and dead" object. It is after all only a metaphorical revival in the imagination and not in reality. This creative act is after all only mimicking or "repeating" the existential act; it can therefore neither create it, like Pygmalion or Frankenstein, nor jumpstart its existence, as in Keats's dreaming

Adam. Coleridge is merely trying to find a correspondence between the subject and the object. His imagination has no sensuality; it does not trigger or release any sensation.

Being only a repetition, it cannot be the real thing. It is true that it counts on the deeper unity of existence (which is the dynamic act), grounding the correspondence between the subject and the object of this unity, but it still cannot spill over and reach it. It still cannot become ontologically identical with it. The beauty that can be fathomed by means of

Coleridge's imagination is not the beauty of the object as it exists in itself, but a beauty of an imagined object. To summarize one can say that, Keats's perspective cannot be localized anywhere in the spectrum ranging from Kant (and the Jena romantics) to

Schelling. Simply put, his unique take cannot be drawn near to either a gnostic or agnostic alternative with respect to allowing the possibility of experiencing an intellectual intuition.

Beauty and Power

Keats's theory of imagination is placed on totally different coordinates as it quite boldly advances the idea of an existential identity or unity between beauty and truth. He says 296 that when Adam awoke from his dream, he found Eve beside him: "The Imagination can be compared to Adam's Dream - he awoke and found it true" (.Letters 185). What the poet imagines comes true. He himself does not even have to lift a finger. It is not Adam but the dream, the mere capacity to have such imaginative dreams of "essential beauty," to step into a "fellowship with essence" that awakens or stirs existence. Since one is not

'in touch' with the immediacy of one's origin, existence has to be awoken by means of its essence. Thus imagination awakens an existence that is not non-existent, but merely dormant like the slumbering or hibernating Titans. The point is that this divine essence of beauty can still be awakened, divinity not being dead yet. Keats is therefore still baroquely expressive and not modern (in a Nietzschean way). The creative process that the English poet describes is thus utterly uncreative or unpoietical. Being or becoming his characters, the poet cannot be considered the creator of his characters because he does not have a fixed or represented identity that could be regarded as a distinct point of emergence that would be able to create the characters. Such uncreative scenarios reverberate throughout Keats's work.

The cosmogony in Hyperion, the epic fragment that he began in 1818 but which was not published until 1820, cannot distinguish any creative principle either. Oceanus' speech reveals that there is no creator, no mind or will behind the universe; it is only a matter of natural growth, a (gradual) ripening that excludes an outside intervention:

"Thou art not the beginning, nor the end. / From chaos and parental darkness came /

Light, the first fruits of that intestine broil, / That sullen ferment, which for wondrous ends / Was ripening in itself. The ripe hour came, / And with it light, and light, engendering / Upon its own producer, forthwith touch'd / The whole enormous matter 297 into life" (Poems 346). Eternal truth is the law of nature; it is existence as such. There is only a process that couples light "with its own producer," chaos, primeval darkness.

Vincent Newey says that "Oceanus' philosophy is decidedly un-Miltonic, because un- theological. Questions of good and evil, of vice and virtue, of damnation and redemption from sin, do not figure in his account of universal destiny to progressive 'perfection'"

(Wolfson, Cambridge Companion 73). His poetic universe cannot sustain a dialectical relationship between master and slave, conqueror and conquered:

nor are we Thereby more conquer'd, than by us the rule Of shapeless Chaos. Say, doth the dull soil Quarrel with the proud forests it hath fed, And feedeth still, more comely than itself? Can it deny the chiefdom of green groves? Or shall the tree be envious of the dove Because it cooeth, and hath snowy wings To wander wherewithal and find its joys? We are such forest-trees, and our fair boughs Have bred forth, not pale solitary doves, But eagles golden-feather'd, who do tower Above us in their beauty, and must reign In right thereof; for 'tis the eternal law That first in beauty should be first in might: Yea, by that law, another race may drive Our conquerors to mourn as we do now. Have ye beheld the young God of the Seas, My dispossessor? (Poems 347)

As grammar becomes more elliptical pivoting, on chiasmic constructions (Wolfson,

Cambridge Companion 148), there are no agonistic tendencies in this universe; there is no tragedy in Hyperion's fall. It turns out to be merely a natural process. In this sense, it is indeed poetic, as poetry should come "as naturally as the Leaves to a tree" (Keats,

Letters 238). In such a scenario, there is no "affectation" (Ziererei, in Kleist's terms), no intrusion of a reasonable principle. Everything is completely determined and has its given 298 role in place and time. Hyperion's fall originates in an inner necessity; it does not even have what Kant would call a purpose in nature (Naturzweck). Each link in this chain of being is necessary; both the Titans and the Gods from Olympus are playing a role in it.

This does not mean that there is no war between the two parties. However, it is a polemos in a Heraclitian sense, a war as "the father of all things," constitutive of a true dialectics and not a dialects of contraries. In absolute terms, or sub specie aelernitatis (as Spinoza would say), no one will be able to claim supremacy and eminence over another because everything rests on the polemics as such, on the Deleuzian war-machine that cannot clearly distinguish winners from losers or sustain a defined telos. Even "conquering

Jove" will be dethroned by other successors. What is important is that this so-called progress - which is only a pure process without a goal - is still governed by an eternal yet impersonal law: the law that "first in beauty should be first in might" (Poems 347).

Bernard Blackstone says that "destruction is only a seeming destruction or rather we may say that the destruction of the husk (of the fruit as an individual, and a very beautiful individual) is absolutely necessary for the release of the seed and the beginning of a new cycle of growth" (379). Death is thus a not a mere stop of life (forces) but a graceful

"dying into life".

In this natural beauty contest, the winner will not only assert himself as the most beautiful but also as the one with more power and knowledge.276 Apollo will become a

God but he will be conquered by the next generation of Gods who will be more beautiful and thus more powerful merely by virtue of intensity. Intensity not being absolutely quantifiable, Apollo's newly acquired divine status is not a complete guarantee for eternal happiness. Oceanus does not unconditionally believe in the progressive vision that

276 Apollo says: "Knowledge enormous makes a God of me" (Poems 355). 299

Apollo brings about. Seen only as a progression towards a goal (even an absolute one), truth will also have a rather melancholic or painful side: "the pain of truth, to whom 'tis pain" (Poems 346). Deeming Oceanus' assertion as stoic, Walter H. Evert says that, "the only way to rise above life's evils is, in effect, willingly to acknowledge their inescapability" (237).

In a context in which beauty is determinable in relationship to a reference point

(like pleasure) that can be dialecticized (i.e., represented) it will merely be a "beauty that must die" (Poems 374) (and not "a joy forever"). Even if this reference point is not stable, becoming an ever distancing one (i.e., infinitely representative), still the same rule applies: pleasure will eventually turn into its opposite as one will have to eventually "bid adieu" to all such delights. Nevertheless, despite the fact that any delightful progression will be turned into a poisonous and painful regression, this regressive aspect should not constitute a reason for despair. For it is just as necessary as the progression. Because the law of nature includes both contraries there is no resolution in the collision between the two necessities. Like the clash between the Titans and the Olympians, regression and progression constitute two aspects that cancel out their opposing polarity, their

"disagreeability," leaving the "naked truth," a unitary perspective on bare existence behind, a perspective that cannot truly recognize any such (external) determination anymore as it turns out to be fully determined in and by itself. In such a context, a regression is only formally different from a progression. As aspects or attributes that are ontologically one, they become like two different sides of the same coin that draw their individuality from the same substance - the way up being the same as the way down.

Hence the "pain of truth" is pain only when perceived by those who see the polemos as a 300 war between two opposing sides that manifests itself as a dialectics between two contradictory entities and not a pure dialectics that deals only with diversities (non opposita sed diversa) and that expresses "something other than the negative" (Deleuze,

Difference 63 ).277

For the Titans, the fall into a melancholic slumber is not death or a loss of existence; it is only a mere decrease in degrees of intensity. Hence suffering is accordingly caused by perceiving the negative, and is propagated as if being caught in the vicious circle of repeating its representative dialectics.278 The ontological condition of the

Titans is merely a nostalgic regression towards a rather slumbering substantial unity, towards a so-called zero degree of existence which is not a state of non-being since it is not devoid or outside existence.279 In turn, this condition will necessarily generate its individuality by acknowledging itself, in a rather Neo-Platonic emanative configuration, as a lower infinity. Benjamin would see the difference between realms as a translation

(Ubersetzung) from a lower order of infinity into a higher, more perfect one that would add knowledge (Erkenntnis).280 With respect to the distinction in expressiveness, one can say that Keats is yet again closer to Spinoza rather than Leibniz. Knowledge is redemptive for both Spinoza and Keats as it can lead to a revelation while not merely

277 "Dialectics is the art of problems and questions, the combinatory or calculus of problems as such. However, dialectic loses its peculiar power when it remains content to trace problems from propositions: thus begins the history of the long perversion which places it under the power of the negative" (Deleuze, Difference 157). 278 The knight from "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" also exemplifies such a repetition of the same and from this point of view, is close to Kleist's young Narcissus. 279 A complete regression cannot actually be reached, except in one extreme case: an apocalyptic vision in which the highest degree of progressive perfection is reached as well. However, even in such a scenario, wherein both progression and regression would be completely annihilated, the substantial unity cannot remain simply indifferent and neutral (as in Duns Scotus); it would have to become univocally expressive (yet again). In other words, in its "intestine broil" it will "ripen itself" (Poems 346) and will eventually (and necessarily) generate yet another world all over again being triggered by the eternal return. 280 "The translation of the language of things into that of the human being... is the translation of an imperfect language into a more perfect one, and cannot but add something to it, namely knowledge (Erkenntnis)" (qtd. in Fenves 213). 301 perpetuating a status quo like Leibniz's damned souls who even when they contribute to the overall harmony would still be deemed to be beyond salvation.

Oceanus' speech aims at convincing his fellow Titans of the inextricable substantial unity of the rise and the fall, that for every rise there is also a fall and vice versa. This unity is not made up by means joining two separate entities, it is merely a

"nudge toward a fusion," as Earl Wasserman writes. It is not based on a (represented) relationship between them: a rise becomes necessarily a fall as well. The rise and the fall are in fact the two necessary aspects of what is called nature's law, the law of becoming.

From the perspective of this non-formal unity, the antagonism seems to fade away and one becomes more inclined to accept this determinism of existence as reality or truth.

Without being able to ground any contradiction, the substantial unity cannot establish an agency, either a subjective or an objective creator, either a beginning or an end. Being necessary without being externally determined, no agency can be attached to this determinism. Nature's law or existence is thus so absolutely deterministic that it does not need to be related to anything outside itself, a perfectly independent absolute determinism. Hence determinism is existence, and existence is determinism.

What has been said about the rise and the fall can also be applied to fate and freedom. Fate loses its melancholic fatalism or fatality, while freedom cannot know whether it is free or not, as it cannot be played against an agency driven determinism.

Existence becomes an object of pure affirmation, an affirmation that cannot be negated

(as non-being), because it is absolutely necessary. It must be; it cannot not be. This pure affirmation, which is the only relief that Oceanus can offer to the Titans, can only express

281 "stasis and flux are not sharply juxtaposed. Each of the term of the opposition is blunted by containing its own contrary for Keats is shaping the term, not to mark a dichotomy but to nudge toward a fusion" (Wassermann 116). 302 itself univocally through diversity but cannot be staged as an opposition to anything else because there is no such thing as an "other." The Titans and the Olympians are thus seen as mere diverse manifestations that become as the trees that cannot rebel against the birds, each having its own role in the grand scheme of things, in the great chain of being.

From such a point of view, the rise and the fall, freedom and determinism cease to be antagonistic; their disagreeability cancelled, they are transformed into expressions of existence. D.G. James says about Hyperion that it is "the greatest achievement of romanticism, in it Romantic mind beheld its own perplexity and condemned itself'

(Wolfson, Cambridge Companion 84) being unable to represent such complexity.

The clash of the two generations is thus only a quarrel of two (equally) generated expressions of existence in which the "energies are fine" and quite "graceful" but absolutely unromantic. As an expressive poet Keats finds the same instinctual impulses not only in the mythical realm of Titans and Gods but also everywhere in nature. In a letter to George and Georgiana Keats from March 19, 1819 he describes them in the following way:

The greater part of Men make their way with the same instinctiveness, the same unwandering eye from their purposes, the same animal eagerness as the Hawk. The Hawk wants a Mate, so does the Man - look at them both they set about it and procure one in the same manner. They want both a nest and they both set about one in the same manner - they get their food in the same manner - the noble animal Man for his amusements smokes his pipe - the Hawk balances about the Clouds - that is the only difference of their leisures. This it is that makes the Amusement of Life - to a speculative Mind. I go among the Fields and catch a glimpse of a Stoat or a field mouse peeping out of the withered grass - the creature hath a purpose and its eyes are bright with it. I go amongst the buildings of a city and I see a Man hurrying along - to what? The Creature has a purpose and his eyes are bright with it... May there not be superior beings amused with any graceful, though instinctive attitude my mind may fall into, as I am entertained with the alertness of a Stoat or the anxiety of a Deer? Though a quarrel in the Streets is a thing to be hated, the energies displayed in it are 303

fine, the commonest Man shows a grace in his quarrel. {Letters 2: 80) (italics mine).

From this perspective, one will have access to a superior view which reveals that even in a quarrel the energies are "fine" because they are expressions of the same

"instinctiveness," the same will to power that becomes a graceful dance of existence. It is true that one can argue that this superior view is only a matter of perception, caused only through the distancing and detachment from the immediacy of the situation. For Keats, however, the perspective on existence is existence. The difference between the antagonistic perspective and this one is only one of degrees. From an expressive point of view, the superior perspective not only does not exclude the antagonistic one (as they cannot become contradictory and thus be turned into representations); it actually proclaims or extracts its diversity by maintaining the other as a valid option. One merely causes a greater intensity of pain than the other. Although perception might be different there is no change in what actually happens. The "whatness," the quidditas, the essence stays the same; the changes are merely a matter of degree of participation, of

"fellowship" in that essence. In Spinozian terms such difference would reside merely in the way existence is expressed: attributively or modally. If it is attributive, the essence is unaltered; if, however, the manner is modal, existence is modified setting up a hollow, inauthentic abstraction that, like whitecaps on the ocean, will eventually be reabsorbed in the substance.

Coming back to the Keatsian poetic (or rather unpoietic) universe, there is no represented creator, no outside, detached authority that could merely witness and perceive without being ontologically included in it. Keats himself can never just observe 304 like a zoologist the stoat's eyes filled with a purpose; he actually becomes or is what he sees - be it a sparrow'JO'J or a child in a nursery.

In his study The Imagery of Keats and Shelley: A Comparative Study, Richard H.

Fogle convincingly links Keats's oneness to Hermann Lotze's concept of empathy thus bringing the English romantic writer one step closer to Benjamin, as well. This empathic perception is also important because it refines and "sharpens the vision into the Heart of

Man" but has no unifying subjective undertone to it. At this point, "friendship" or sympathy that still maintains a harmony based on the relation284 between with the object turns into empathy, into "love," into a harmony that is not relative anymore because its expressions are formally diverse which Keats understood correctly while reading

Hazlitt's essay "On Gusto". Walter Jackson Bate says the following: "By 'gusto', Hazlitt means an excitement of the imagination in which the perceptive identification with the object is almost complete, and the living character of the object is caught and shared in its full diversity and given the vital expression in art" (Bate 53). Hence such altruistic inclusion is not restricted to human beings but to everything that has a soul, to Being in general. One can thus perceive a lifeless marionette in the same way one perceives a work of art or an animal. From this point of view, one can also understand why Michael

Kohlhaas' crusade was unleashed not only by the search for (the ideal of) justice, but also out of a pure empathy for the damage that has been done to his horses. One remembers that Nietzsche's madness was also triggered while he was trying to protect a horse.

282 jetting 5^ ajwayS set me to rights, or if a sparrow comes before my window, I take part in its existence and pick about the gravel." (Letters 186) (italics mine) 283 "When I am in a room with People if I ever am free from speculating on creations of my own brain, then not myself goes home to myself: but the identity of everyone in the room begins so to press upon me that I am in a very little time annihilated - not only among Men; it would be the same in a Nursery of children" (Letters 387). 284 The harmony in the Kantian sublime is also relative with respect to the faculties involved. It is not the Leibnizian pre-established non-relative harmony. 305

As soon as the negative is no longer perceived as negative, Keats's "negative capability" kicks in. In other words, the negative is no longer linked to a so-called self- development, becoming thus dialectically involved with the positive in a Boehmian or late Hegelian pantheistic scenario. This time antagonism has been overcome, but only because the "disagreeability" of opposites "evaporates." Everything that is ontological becomes implicitly "fine" (or refined). Formerly antagonistic parties now gracefully engage in a necessary dance of existence by means of their diversity. But even though the gracefulness of Keats's "essential beauty" resonates with Kleist's grace of the marionettes, it is still expressed through a different aspect. With Keats, it is not nature or existence that shines through the mechanical. Rather, the generation of nature becomes a mechanistic repetition. When Keats uses the word "fine," one recognizes that this is a concept that cannot be negated: "fine" means free from impurity. But here purity cannot be dialectically juxtaposed and antagonized with impurity; any energy, even a destructive one, is still "fine."

And this consideration has further convinced me - for it has come as auxiliary to another favorite speculation of mine - that we shall enjoy ourselves hereafter by having what we called happiness on earth repeated in a finer tone and so repeated... Adam's dream will do here, and seems to be a conviction that imagination and its empyreal reflection is the same as human life and its spiritual repetition. (Letters 185)

For Keats heaven is merely a spiritual repetition in a "finer tone," refined yet ontologically identical with our earthly existence. Hence it is not a repetition into pure difference (the repetition of modern expressiveness). The difference between the happiness here on earth and that in heaven is only formal, not ontological. It keeps the origin or the unity of existence intact. Keatsian repetition is based on something that is already fine undergoing a process of intensified refinement. On the one hand, it is not the 306 repetition of a lower version into a revised and improved one. Repetition does not does not iterate by renewing but intensifies the same on scale of degrees of perfection.

(Newness or improvement is always measured by comparing two separate versions, but

Keats's heaven is the higher model of a lower copy.) On the other hand, this repetition repeats into difference only in as much as it cannot quite relate to a representable ground.

Not being able to thoroughly ground "the condition of a prior resemblance, identity analogy or opposition," it does not repeat into a fully displaced difference that is absolutely ungroundable (Deleuze, Difference 117). If Keatsian repetition is unable to establish such a prior condition, it is because the condition is always already there.

Repetition is (identical with) the condition, which is immediately inscribed or impressed.

It does not 'preach' the impossibility of establishing such a condition yet. In this configuration, the forward movement of this repetition appears more like an unconditional reflex, a rather mechanical reflection that, while not aiming at reaching any goal, does not stop either because this is its existential status (the act of repeating being necessary in repetition).

In the context of Apollo's ascent, the repetition in a finer tone is after all only a natural process of progression towards a "fresh perfection."285 There is no reciprocal exclusion of the material by the spiritual, the former finishing where the other starts. If there were, one would have to die first in order to be able to feel spiritual happiness. In such a sequence of events, imagination would have to remain just "pre-figurative," as

Newell Ford says (28) "a hope beyond the shadow of a dream," "a shadow of a reality to

285 "Marie well!/ As Heaven and Earth are fairer, fairer far / Than Chaos and blank Darkness, though once chiefs; / And as we show beyond that Heaven and Earth / In form and shape compact and beautiful, / In will, in action free, companionship, / And thousand other signs of purer life; / So on our heels a fresh perfection treads, / A power more strong in beauty, bom of us / And fated to excel us, as we pass / In glory that old Darkness" (Poems 347). 307 come," and thus not be able to concretely embody, or in Keats's own words, "incarnate" truth.286 But the future is now; it is real, in the same way as the past. This reality is an ontological truth, not merely a representation. Like Eve or Cynthia, it is incarnate and not merely prefigurative or romantically prophetic. Without excluding such representative instruments as they will have to eventually lead to the same truth they are not Keats's

'cup of tea'. They simply require another framework in the sense of another path, the path of thought, of "reasoning" and philosophy rather than Keats's path of sensation and imagination.287 In Keats's view, heaven and earth do not even intermingle in the sense that Coleridge sees "the translucence of the Eternal through and in the Temporal" (202).

Keats does not perceive the two levels as one; they do not touch while overlapping, because they are still able to repeat one another and thus maintain a (certain) distance.

Even so they are still very much connected, just as the imperfect, or better, the less perfect Titans are not annihilated or completely overcome but are actively included in the chain of progress that forms a stairway to heaven. Keats thus proposes we can reach heaven on earth although the spiritual is not on earth. The core of the problem turns around understanding the process of spiritual refinement.

Keats's Immortality

In Rome, Keats had a conversation with his friend, Joseph Severn, about the Greek spirit, in which he proposed an intriguing theory on immortality. As Severn retells it,

286 "I never cease to wonder at all that incarnate Delimit" (Sharp 29). 28' "I am more zealous in this affair because I have never yet been able to perceive how anything can be known for truth by consecutive reasoning - and yet it must be" (Letters 185). 308

Rome would never have become a joy to me... had it not been for Keats's talks with me about the Greek spirit, - the Religion of the Beautiful, the Religion of Joy, as he used to call it... 'I never cease to wonder at all that incarnate DelightKeats remarked to me once. He made me in love with the real living spirit of the past. He was the first to point out of me how essentially modern that Spirit is: 'It's an immortal youth', he would say, just as there is no Now and Then for the Holy Ghost. (Sharp 29)

Although in the past, the Greek spirit still pervades Keats's present. The reason for its immortality is, however, not a revival, a newly recreated mythology like the romantic attempt. Keats's immortality tackles what he calls "the real living spirit of the past" that is presented as a materially or sensually "incarnate Delight."288

Keats imbues his description of this event with a sensuality that conveys a real taste of the past, a taste that overwhelms the creation of a mere representation of the past

A perspective sub specie aeternitatis (or that of the Holy Ghost) becomes possible only if the past and the present are fleshed out as two temporal moments that are not conditioned by an a priori intuition of time. For this latter would implicitly and inevitably establish their sequence. Such an event would happen only if time (and space) were not a formative form of human intuition but became an a priori idea. Then time would serve the purpose of showing conceptual differences between thoughts, a manner through which such "forms of difference" as Salomon Maimon calls them in his Versuch einer neuen Logik oder Theorie des Denkens are presented, a mere way of expressing pure difference. Empirical things could then be determined conceptually as well, as they

288 One cannot help but recall that in his Theses on the Philosophy of History, Benjamin suggests the same concrete contemporanness using the concept of incarnation as well in order to depict the immediacy and the sensuality or materiality of the experience: "History is the subject of a structure whose site is not homogenous, empty time, but time filled by the presence of the now. Thus, to Robespierre ancient Rome was a past charged with the time of the now which he blasted out of the continuum of history. The French Revolution viewed itself as Rome incarnate. It evoked ancient Rome the way fashion evokes costumes of the past. Fashion has a flair for the topical, no matter where it stirs in the thickets of long ago; it is a tiger's leap into the past This jump, however, takes place in an arena where the ruling class give the commands. The same leap in the open air of history is the dialectical one, which is how Marx understood the revolution" (italics mine). (Writings IV 395) Benjamin used the verb "wiederkehren" that leads to his apocatastatic vision of a restitutio in integrum that also occurs on a material level. 309 would not depend on any rule of (external) construction, which in the first place creates the mismatch between the intuition and the concept.289 Things would henceforth be able to be presented a priori to reason, i.e., in their conception or construction. In this way the incompleteness of cognition would be overcome and things would receive a complete presentation (Darstellung) that is the presented thing (i.e., that presents it as it is), a presentation that would no longer need a representation (Vorstellung), as it would turn the thing into an expression.290

As time would cease to be a condition for temporality, for change in general, because it would not be able to change anything substantially (but only on a formal level), moments in time would acquire a purely formal aspect. Every moment would only be formally different from the other. In Keats's example, a moment in the past would become merely formally different from a moment in the present. The notion of eternity in discussion here resides neither in the stasis (as nunc starts) nor in a repetitive sequential prolongation of such moments into the infinite. Even though the sublime moments that are creative of essential beauty may seem scattered in time, the immortality of such

'bread crumbs' of "fine suddenness" is incumbent upon their pure existence. This means that when they are, when they happen, they are immortal because existence is eternal.

Each time something happens, it occurs in the same way with respect to its substantial nature or quiddity. Things voice univocally the same origin (Ursprung) ("endless fountain of immortal drink") (Poems 103) while being released as a different end effect

289 Deleuze would say that: "In Kant, therefore, difference remains external and as such empirical and impure, suspended outside the construction between 'between' the determinable intuition and the determinant concept" (.Difference 173). 290 The demonstration originates in Salomon Maimon's thought who claims that our perspective of time comes only from our incomplete conception of the world, from the fact that we have not conceptualized it completely, and not from the fact that there are wholly independents things whose conceptual content cannot be given to us. He also claims that the representations of space and time as intuitions arise as the result of the faculty of imagination, which is, as he describes it, the faculty of fictions. Maimon is right to come from a Spinozian perspective but Keats would certainly raise an objection with respect to the problem of imagination. 310 or product, always and necessarily manifested in a different expression. This difference can also be used as a tool to distinguish which of the two inextricable components would gain more preponderance: one would thus either incline towards the ontological unity of things, affirming the "endless fountain" that forges the "fellowship with essence" and allows beings to drink the "immortal drink," or towards the aspect of singularity, the

"identity" of a Soul that can be "personally itself," which would pedal difference more towards showcasing the pure diversity of expressions, their absolute separateness and variety with respect to each other.

There is no correspondence between such a moment of contemplation in the past and the one happening in the present. Keats's conception of immortality cannot accommodate a division between two moments related in time, a "Now and Then," as there cannot be a representative distinction between a present and a past. By the same token, there cannot be a distinction between a spatial here and there.

In a neglected letter from June 26, 1818, Keats actually exposes his philosophical ideas on time and space:

I merely put pro forma, for there is no such thing as time and space, which by the way came forcibly upon me on seeing for the first hour the lake and mountains of Winander -1 cannot describe them - they surpass my expectation - .. the two views we have had of it are of the most noble tenderness - they can never fade away - they make one forget the division of life; age, youth, poverty and riches; and refine one's sensual vision into a sort of north star which can be never cease to be open lidded and steadfast over the wonders of the great power. (Letters 298)

The question at the heart of Keats's theory of imagination and truth is how exactly can the "incarnation of Delight" take place? How does Eve come to be actually present when

Adam awakes? If a bold statement like "there is no such thing as time and space" cannot generate considerable backing up in theoretical thought, it will seem, at best, dilettante­ 311 like, especially considering the fact that Keats himself confessed that he did not come to this conclusion as a result of his meditations. Fittingly for a poet without an identity, the idea came upon him as a revelation while looking at a landscape (i.e., the lake and mountains of Winander), a revelation that is not dissimilar to Nietzsche's experience of the eternal return at Sils-Maria. But despite the fact that Keats himself did not actually prove his insights theoretically - his approach being based on pure imagination and not on reason and philosophy - one should still not treat his intuitions as mere artistically beautiful figures of speech utterly devoid of truth.

Not being the creator or the initiator of sensation, Keats felt that immortality was given to him.291 The intensity of the experience came quite "forcibly" to him, recalling both Benjamin's notion of divine violence and Kant's lack of it in the sublime. In such a moment of "fine suddenness," when time receives a mere formal nature, it will no longer be considered a formative component of experience. What is given is thus given unbiased, as it is in itself, noumenally (an sich). It is no longer given in by means of an a priori structure thus acknowledging the requirements of the Kantian two-timed cognition

(a priori and a posteriori). Without such preconceived framework the so-called happening has no choice but to become cognition: the cognition of the infinite in the finite. In that moment the "disagreeability" of eternity and temporality simply

"evaporates"; with such simultaneity there is no space for a relation between them (i.e., space having a formal nature as well). By becoming only formally different from each other, they will actually overlap and become co-crescent; they will find a way to cohabit and keep their distance at the same time. This means that the infinite is presented in the finite as infinite, and no longer as a negative presentation, a presentation that will never

2,1 Even Apollo, although a God who has mastered his destiny, will receive such 'passive' initiation. 312 be able to present substantially the infinite. In such a context, the presentation is executed still under the requirements of (sufficient) reason since it can happen, since it receives sufficient reason for it to occur and not to be proven otherwise. Accordingly, it becomes quite clear why in finite understanding one can merely presuppose the possibility for it to happen, while the actual happening will always be given lo us. What is also important is that it will become a full-fledged positive and affirmative presentation that expresses the immortal and divine infinite as such, and not by means of an ever-incomplete presentation of it as was the case with the concept of the Absolute in Jena romanticism.

Coming back to Keats's description, one can say that the claim of a heightened intensity is sustained by an overwhelmingly powerful impression that seems to be beyond any possibility to be described in words - such beauty being "more beautiful than it was possible " However, this does not take away anything from the experience, since the more powerful the more beautiful as well. The expressive moment is so intense that it leaves an (ontological) impression durable enough to compel Keats to say that it "can never fade away." The question is how can this occur since any such moments, no matter how intense, will eventually be forgotten? Whether or not they are recoverable is a different matter, but it is a common fact that change is inevitable and nothing is eternally sustainable on earth: even Apollo will eventually be overcome by the next generation.

Melancholy is at the heart of human existence. Beauty itself is not forever, but "must

(also) die, / And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips / Bidding adieu" (Poems 375). Kleist would say that only the first time is beautiful and every repetition would be a deterioration that betrays the original impression. However, an expressive impression that carries the "seal of the origin" (Ursprungssiegel) cannot fade completely, even when 313 diminishing in degrees of intensity. The existent cannot not exist. Not being dependent on something external to it, the expressive impression can never disappear.

A few months later, Keats will further develop his idea of such a steadfast impression by writing a poem in which a sleepless eremite watches "with eternal lids apart" a "bright star" (Poems 121). In the same way as the marionette cannot fall (from grace), Keats's experience cannot be lost. The author of the "Ode to a Grecian Urn" will not only say that this revelation will never fade into forgetfiilness but that it will also make one actually forget about the temporal (and spatial) divisions of past, present and future. The experience of such a sublime moment is for him so overwhelmingly unutterable and indescribable292 that it remains a pure, untouchable mystery. It becomes an ontological event and existence is always one and eternal. One cannot say anything about the overwhelming Beauty because it annihilates or "obliterates any consideration."293 It is a mystery that cannot be revealed, because one is unable to form(ulate) any terms or conditions in which the revelation would be able to take place.

The revelation is thus, at the same time, also the condition under which it is revealed; this time, the condition being no longer prior and enabling but simultaneously interlocked with the revelation as such.

From the point of view of its ontological unity, the pure mystery is thus an

"unravish'd bride" of silence, while from the point of view of its form, it only as a

"foster-child," a baroque allegorical expression that was not created by that silence. This mystery cannot be revealed, not because it is beyond any possible revelation, not because it cannot be fully explained, but because it obliterates or cancels even the possibility for a

292 "I cannot describe them - they surpass my expectation" (Letters 298). 293 "the sense of Beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather obliterates all consideration" (Letters 194). 314 revelation. It erases revelation even before it can be conceived or planned. It does not hide a meaning because it is the meaning. Such mystery demands to be treated in itself, absolutely, becoming like a "burden" that cannot be unloaded and must be accepted as such. From this point of view, Keats' s so-called poetic evolution towards conferring more emphasis to reason (rather than sensation) does not affect his overall perspective. It does not overstep or contradict his initial premise, everything boiling down to understanding his expressiveness.

The mystery that hides a meaning would merely activate the romantic infinite longing for the absolute that, while not being reachable, still contains a relative predisposition towards it. The condition that cannot be fulfilled still remains a condition.

Keats's absolute mystery, however, cannot receive any such external determination in which it becomes a condition for a revelation, for something outside itself. It can only receive a full determination: a mystery that is mystery while generating even more mystery. This mystery will henceforth produce itself while being itself and thus being able to only determine itself It becomes a noumenal or essential mystery (Beauty) because it is necessarily perceived as it exists in itself. This mystery is an event that is so far beyond words that it can be described only through the silence of "unheard melodies."

This is not a preparatory silence but a silence that speaks because it is impenetrable, impenetrable yet at the same time radiant. It provokes a kind of muteness that as muteness becomes indeed expressive. In Hyperion, Apollo will receive his final initiation just by staring at Mnemosyne's mute face. In that face, he will see the greatest /Mystery: reaching the highest peak of intensity in a sublime w^ical moment he will be able read the final lesson, the ultimate myth of existence. 315

Mute thou remainest - Mute! yet I can read A wondrous lesson in thy silent face: Knowledge enormous makes a God of me. Names, deeds, gray legends, dire events, rebellions, Majesties, sovran voices, agonies, Creations and destroyings, all at once Pour into the wide hollows of my brain, And deify me, as if some blithe wine Or bright elixir peerless I had drunk, And so become immortal. {Poems 355; italics mine)

The ontological myth is not a story, as many current researchers on myth still believe, but rather a happening that is what it expresses. Myth does not engender a unity of being, "an unbroken continuous whole which does not admit of any clean-cut and trenchant distinctions" (Cassirer qtd. in Jones, Adam's Dream 50). In Keats's configuration, one cannot establish any type of continuity or wholeness; one cannot even determine it even as synthetic thus contrasting it to the analytical in the way James Land Jones does.294

Myth is not a product of an undifferentiated holy or sacred that can, in the vein of Rudolf

Otto or Mircea Eliade, be regarded as primordial with respect to the formed gods

(understood merely as entities of an established mythology or religion). It is not even the universal energy or power that "is never personal," as Gerardus Van der Leeuw would describe it.295 For Keats, the individual or singular component has to be factored in as well. In Keats's sense, the sacred is not "camouflaging" itself It cannot be distinguished from the profane because it is the profane. The sacred incarnates itself so intimately, becomes so material or sensual, that it spills over and blends ontologically with the profane.

294 "The mythical view is synthetic, not analytic" (Jones, Adam s Dream 50). 295 "Power is never personal. It becomes a universal Energy whether in the psychological sense and in direct application to humanity, or on the other as cosmological. In the first instance Power becomes Soul, but a superpersonal Soul closely akin to Power, in the second it assumes form of a divine agency immanently activating the Universe" (qtd. in Jones 54). 316

The mythical words that Apollo utters are mere baroque (not romantic) allegories,

'other-speeches'' that cannot catch anything of the mystery. They cannot do justice to that sublime moment because if they could, they would only betray it (i.e., its existence). The words are thus pure conventional allegories (expressions of this convention, in

Benjaminian terms). They cannot carry anything over nor retain anything of that reality, not even the slightest analogy. That is why the mystery can be in no way considered the creating entity of the words that are uttered by Apollo. In Keats's poetic universe, there is no such thing as a defined creator that would manifest something outside himself like a more or less remote copy of himself that can be called creation. There is no such thing as a creation that could be back-traced to its creator, thus validating it is as a (represented) principle, as a beginning. Keats gives the example of Shakespeare's characters which because they are not his, become expressions of the same, the one and only, human nature.

For Keats, it all boils down to perceiving forms of Beauty as merely formal aspects, not as formative or understandable and thus relatable to reason. The "thing of beauty" can become "a joy forever" only if it exits the Kantian aesthetics. Keats's imagination does not perceive Spinozian modes (of thought) but attributes that have been

"wingedly interknitted" in experience by means of the intensity of friendship and love.

These images 'repair' their causal link with existence. Keats postulates the ontological after the imagination has been purified of all formative or conditional reflexes - once the level has been reached, the 'before' and the 'after' will balance themselves out as merely formally different aspects. 317

Keats is not "romanticizing" the world. His poet is not the creator of romantic worlds in an "egotistically sublime" way, a poet that creates by projecting his own image, a projection of himself in which he can still recognize himself. He will overcome romanticism not by relying on an underlying unity (like Schelling) that is a non- existential whole, a unity of parts, but by 'castrating' the representative valences of the imagination. By not allowing it to become a vehicle of modification of existence, Keats makes imagination an attribute. Keats undertakes an artistic path that re-evaluates imagination by reversing or neutralizing the damaging effects that Spinoza's philosophy was talking about (and which are still true from the latter's perspective). Exploring a novel path, Keats is thus merely 'updating' the expressiveness of the Jewish philosopher in a post-Kantian and post-romantic era.

About Beauty and Love

If all attributes have the (same) existence of the object to which they are attributed, then anything that can be declared an attribute will implicitly and necessarily gain an ontological status as well. From this point of view, the actual starting point loses its relevance. Keats does not go about in a Spinozian way treating imagination as inadequately generating imperfect (waste-) products that will eventually be recalled and recycled, dismantled and dissolved in an all-absorbing conservative substance. Instead, he treats imagination as a legitimate option, as a valid instrument for generating

"essential beauty" (Letters 184). For Keats, imagination acquires the same functionality as the marionette did for Kleist, as it will be used to reach the ontological grace or beauty. 318

Keats indeed dares to take imagination where neither Spinoza nor Kant would. He would not let it go quietly into the 'nightly' substance in a rather shameful retreat, as something capable merely of fathoming modes of existence. Instead he redeems imagination through its "authenticity" while conferring it a fiill-fledged claim on ontology: "O, I wish I was as certain of the end of all your troubles as that of your momentary start about the authenticity of the Imagination. I am certain of nothing but of the holiness of the Heart's affections and the truth of Imagination" {Letters 184). Capable of creating essential beauty, imagination will not just roam in the realm of a Kantian aesthetic experience. It will reach out, being almost able alchemically to turn the inadequate into the adequate. In other words, the imagination produces an illusion that does not step back and surrender, only to be engulfed by an overwhelmingly powerful reality. What it produces becomes real; the same holds for former contraries like appearance and essence, beauty and truth.

Keatsian imagination will transform the imagined object until it is completely unrecognizable, "a thing of (unutterable) beauty," an "ethereal" appearance "folly alchemized and free of space" and an immortal object that cannot abide according to spatial divisions anymore. This object can no longer be regarded as a creation that becomes a source of inspiration for poetry, as it ceases to be the material "Sun, the Moon, the Sea"296 that would still be "creatures of (poetic) impulse" being still 'caught' in a beautiful form. Beauty becomes essential when it becomes purely sensed, when it is felt as an intense object of attraction. This intensity will overwhelm its stable form until it

296 "The Sun, the Moon, the Sea and Men and Women who are creatures of impulse are poetical and have about them an unchangeable attribute." (Letters 387). As "creatures of impulse" they become expressive pertaining to the affect. 319 remains just "some shape of beauty,"297 an almost maddening form of a greater,

"ethereal" or uncreated thing298 that beckons beyond Creation itself, "an endless fountain of immortal drink, / Pouring unto us from the heaven's brink" (Poems 103). Hence Leon

Waldoff astutely remarks that "the experience is essentially one of an image and an emotion recollected less in tranquility than in intensity, where processes of feeling and thought are silently at work in the imagination and remain unconscious" (2).

This beauty is not the beauty of outer form; it is an empathetic beauty that feels that the thing of beauty is alive and already attached to the perceiver from the inside. It thus becomes part of the destiny of the perceiver. In short, one feels so existentially bonded with it that one can hear it 'speak'; the silence that surrounds the Grecian um acquires a 'univocal' voice becoming an expression. Being beyond any mediation through the image it represents, this bond becomes an immediate "substantial vinculum"

(Deleuze, Fold 126). This closeness appropriates the object while blurring the perception or, better, the division of space (and time) while transforming it into a pathetic distance, a distance that is merely felt. In such a posture this mysterious beauty engenders love, an expressive love that cannot turn into hate since it can no longer have a counterpart.

The material form acquires a complexity that invites an expressive doubleness.

Being the springboard for the leap into the uncreated, unpoetical essential beauty, the form does not leave its materiality behind but becomes the immanent place in which the material and the spiritual are so intimately embedded (as its aspects) that any relation between them is no longer conceivable. In other words, while remaining completely

297 "yes, in spite of all, / Some shape of beauty moves away the pall / From our dark spirits.../ Some shape of beauty moves away the pall / From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon" (Poems 103). 298 "the looking upon the Sun the Moon, the Stars, the Earth and its contents as materials to form greater things - that is to say ethereal things - but here I am talking like a Madman greater things that our Creator himself made!" (Letters 143) (italics mine). 320 material, it is also more than that. In Keats's early epic poem Endymion first published in

1818, the moon is the visible planet but it is also the divine lover who teaches the hero how to seek.

O Cynthia, ten-times bright and fair! From thy blue throne, now filling all the air, Glance but one little beam of temper'd light Into my bosom, that the dreadful might And tyranny of love be somewhat scar'd! (Poems 137)

Hence it becomes a greater object, an "ethereal object" that is greater than a mere spiritual object because it retains its materiality. This complexity activates the loss of its representable form, making it impossible to be localized in time or space. At this point, imagination has lost its mediating role (between the empirical data and the concept) through which it could strive to maintain the unity of experience under the rule of reason.

Time and space are no longer a priori intuitions that condition the form of such an experience. Liberated from any impositions or constraints with respect to unification, imagination is "free" to express itself through diverse forms, being at the same time both the moon goddess, the divine Goddess Cynthia and the Indian Maid. Such ethereal objects are felt objects and have to be seen so absolutely that they can no longer be an inspiration for something beyond themselves. They become pure "prototypes," before- types, types of a noumenal and immortal past that is still alive because it can be felt.

Keats's essential beauty is a thing that is stripped of any possible external determinations, to become completely determined in and through itself. Like the pure mystery that ceases to even be mysterious, essential beauty is not beautiful anymore because it cannot establish any outside reference point that could confirm and validate its form as aesthetically beautiful in a Kantian sense. Because it cannot accommodate such an 321 outside reference point, it ceases to be created or made while turning into an even greater thing than "our Creator himself made" (Keats, Letters 143). What imagination perceives as essential beauty no longer has a phenomenal character, an illusory appearance that could be juxtaposed to a real essence, or that could be transformed into its negative by becoming ugly.

A phenomenon that is no longer phenomenal implies that the thing will no longer appear as a phenomenon that presupposes a noumenon. If it cannot be a phenomenon it will just be, becoming implicitly existential. Thus its being steps in while its phenomenality will become a co-crescent attribute, an aspect, a manner through which existence is expressed. From such a perspective, the phenomenon is no longer the appearance of a thing. Linked to substance, it ends up pointing not to the thing as it appears but rather to its essence showing what the thing really is. Keats's famous sentence "Beauty is truth, truth beauty" implies two equally important facts that have to be understood together: the first is that essential beauty is existential; the second is that both beauty and truth are attributes of existence.

The toughest nut to crack here is the concept of truth. Being noumenal, truth is at once the bare and indeterminate ontological substance and the individual existence that goes under the name of phenomenon. It is both the origin and the expression or the finished product. Imagination can turn a vision into reality only if it manages to involve existence because only existence posses the ability to generate. In such an authentic act of production there is no division between creator and creation because existence and the momentary act of producing cannot be separated. Truth should thus be understood both as the all-encompassing ontological status or condition and as the individual expression 322 that is beautiful. The real existence of Eve can only come into being because the essential beauty created by the imagination has an ontological coverage reaching "beyond the shadow of a dream" {Poems 128). In other words, this essence lets its existential power generate Eve without Adam being able to take any credit as her creator. The creative act is so interlocked with the creation that one cannot actually clearly distinguish between a cause and an effect. In this case, Keats thrives beyond the Miltonic representative inspiration. He does not even have to mention God as an omnipotent authority creating in his image because He is immanently his creations. Such a pantheistical299 God is or exists as Adam and as Eve. Like the unpoetic poet. He cannot be the creator because He produces while being at the same time his diverse expressions.

Deleuze will present the creative act as an "unpersonal" immersion without a fixed or representable persona, an immersion that is not impersonal because it always generates an individual expression. He calls this latter a "larval subject": "larval subjects because they are the supports or the patients of dynamisms. (...) Even the philosopher is a larval subject of his own system" (Difference 118-119). If the creator cannot be clearly distinguished as the doer, it is because he is included in the process of doing as a mediator who mediates without remaining in the middle. He becomes or is what he creates, the chameleonic poet who lives through and as his characters. As the one who has actually generated them, he is their origin, a mysterious source that acts as the "teat" from which the characters "suck their identity" (Keats, Letters 2: 103). Indeed, however hard they may search, such characters would never be able to find their author. Hence one has to imagine the poet as such an utterly un-representable entity that has no identity, this non-identity always remaining perfectly indeterminate while generating diverse

299 Pantheism only in a Spinozian sense. 323

'identities' that cannot be homologated under any systematic framework as it is not able to underwrite anything.

This merely backgrounding non-identity, called by Deleuze a "dark precursor,"300 will always remain as dark and mysterious as the passages that one faces exiting the

"Chamber of Maiden-Thought." In a truly existential way the "burden of mystery" will never be eased or lifted, not by any revelation. Conceiving the mystery as such (i.e., without any possible counterpart in revelation), mystery becomes the revelation because the revelation reveals the pure mystery, the mystery as it is in itself and not how it appears to be. One enters into the "Penetralium of mystery" only when one can no longer explain, reveal, illumine, and rationalize the mystery by means of knowledge. This un- revealable mystery proclaims its absoluteness by not awaiting or striving for a revelation anymore.

Keats manages to 'fix' Spinoza's broken causal link with respect to the imagination in a rather unorthodox way. He disengages imagination from a reason that would require it to be held accountable with respect to a cause. Starting from a created/finished image (or what Spinoza calls natura naturata), Keats lets his imagination perceive what he calls an essence. This essence undoes the formativeness of the image, i.e., that which makes it into a transient modification of an attribute. He tries to undo this modification by reviving the attributive valences inside the modification, thus reversing the damage, starting from "heard melodies" while trying to work his way backwards towards hearing the unheard ones in the former, from sound to silence and then to the expressive sound of pure silence. The latter is the sound of pure, noumenal

300 "It (the dark precursor) has no other place other than that from which it is 'missing', no identity other than that which it lacks: it is precisely the object=x, the one which 'is lacking in its place' as it lacks its own identity" (Deleuze, Difference 120). 324 and mysterious silence in which the sound is silence because it maintains the same existence with silence. It is the sound that is heard surprisingly and spontaneously creating an involuntary sensation, "a fine suddenness," like a Proustian reminiscence of an "old melody."

But as I was saying - the simple imaginative Mind may have its rewards in the repetition of its own silent Working coming continually on the spirit with a fine suddenness - to compare great things with small - have you never by being surprised with an old Melody - in a delicious place - by a delicious voice, fe[l]t over again your very speculations and surmises at the time it first operated on your soul - do you not remember forming to yourself the singer's face more beautiful that it was possible and yet with the elevation of the Moment you did not think so - even then you were mounted on the Wings of Imagination so high - that the Prototype must be here after - that delicious face you will see. What a time! {Letters 185)

In the same way as "Combray reappears, not as it was or as it could be, but in splendor that was never lived, like a pure past" (Deleuze, Difference 85), Keats does not represent the face as it was in the past but perceives an "essential beauty," a "prototype" that, through "a fine excess," "surpasses" any expectation exceeding the possibility of formation thus becoming intensively imaginative and "more beautiful than it was possible." In this moment, there is no remembering, no recognition of a past moment that would still be able to be distinguished from the present producing a so-called 'deja sensed'.

This event cannot localize a moment in the past that could be thus relatable to a distinct moment in the present. Being filled with mere degrees of sensation, it will not be able to establish a condition of a possibility to form such a past moment. The vagueness of sensation is so overwhelmingly positive that it obliterates any strict spatial or temporal division, setting up a dream-like environment that is synaeslhetic rather than synthetic. 325

Overwhelming temporal and spatial demarcations, such a sublime moment appears to be the "silent working" of an immortal spirit.

One might argue that this cannot be applied to all situations: the "old melody" that

Keats is talking about refers to a not so distant past, while the past in the example of the

Grecian urn is unreachable, even mythical. Depicting either a remembered or a mythical past functions in the same way; both examples are transformed into a pure past, a past that was never lived, a "virginal" past301 that is based exclusively on sensation and feeling. Feeling and sensation become equally ungraspable, whether they arise on the occasion of remembering a past from memory, or while contemplating a beautiful urn coming from an immemorial past. Being based on degrees of intensity, neither example is able to frame a past and clearly delimit it from the present. When talking about

Shakespeare's life, Keats knows very well that any such attempt of "cutting a figure" would merely destroy intensity of the imagination.302 Thus remembrances inevitably end up becoming mere "continual allegories," diverse events quite indistinguishable from one another and thus non-representable yet still ontologically one. Memory repeats virginally without ever touching upon a solid ground,303 but touch (or sensation) has a memory that cannot be forgotten because it becomes so "wingedly interknit" (Poems 126) with existence:

301 Deleuze says that it "lies in the never lived reality of the Virgin" (Difference 85). 302 "They are very shallow people who take everything literally. A Man's life of any worth is a continual allegory, and very few eyes can see the Mystery of his life - a life like the scriptures figurative - which such people can no more make out than they can the Hebrew Bible. Lord Byron cuts a figure but he is not figurative, Shakespeare led a life of Allegory; his works are the comments on it" (in Murry 115). The reason why I did not include this important quote in the text is that it deserves rather extensive comments. What is important is that he completely agrees with both Benjamin and Deleuze regarding the concept of allegory as "a power of figuration entirely different from that of the symbol" (Fold 125). "it is still Mnemosyne which grounds the deployment of representation into the infinite. The shortcoming of the ground is to remain relative to what it grounds, to boirow characteristics of what it grounds, and to be proved by these. It is in this sense that it creates a circle: it introduces movement into the soul rather than time into thought" (Deleuze, Difference 88). 326

What can I do to drive away Remembrance from my eyes? For they have seen Aye, an hour ago, my brilliant queen. Touch has a memory. O say, love, say, What can I do to kill it and be free in my old liberty? (Poems 492)

This means that even if it is forgotten, in the moments of "fine suddenness" the memory will be fully recuperated generating thus a sensation that it was never actually lost.304 "A life of sensations" thus emerges and flows as an eternal life without beginning or end, without either a creator or a finished creation.

Beyond a romantic formative form, Keats' s mysterious and mute or "silent form" seems closer to Holderlin's "Unformliche".305 It "teases us of thought," (Poems 372) out of (in Deleuzian terms) "the image of thought," revealing itself as a "hieroglyph of beauty - the mysterious sign of an immortal freemasonry! 'A thing to dream of, not to tell'".306 Keatsian imagination is merely the vehicle that stirs the energy of a sensation that was always already there. This experience cannot be considered a beginning because sensation never ended or ceased to exist. Because it arises and proceeds as a mere intensifying of sensation, it takes place on the same scale ("the pleasure thermometer") appearing merely as a rising or falling without ever reaching a peak or a bottom. This unpoietic and uncreative imagination generates while regenerating sensation. It is the same move with two aspects: production and reproduction.

304 Benjamin would see this scenario in more dramatic terms as an apocatastasis in the vein of the Lurianic Kabbala, a restitutio in integrum. 305 The reference to Holder lin is made by Deleuze in Difference 91. 306 Keats wrote this review on 19 or 20 December, 1817 and it was published in The Champion on 21 December. His expressive style is yet again quite obvious: "A melodious passage in poetry is Ml of pleasures both sensual and spiritual. The spiritual is felt when the very letters and points of charactered language show like the hieroglyphics of beauty: - the mysterious signs of an immortal freemasonry! 'A thing to dream of, not to tell!' The sensual life of verse springs warm from the lips of Kean, and to one learned in Shakespearean hieroglyphics, - learned in the spiritual portion of those lines to which Kean adds a sensual grandeur: his tongue must seem to have robbed 'the hybla bees, and left them honeyless.' There is an indescribable gusto in his voice, by which we feel that the utterer is thinking of the past and future, while speaking of the instant. When he says in Othello, 'put up your bright swords, for the dew will rust them,' we feel that his throat had commanded where swords were as thick as reeds" (Poetical Works 229). 327

A creation that is necessarily also a recreation cannot be considered creative. It cannot form anything new - for example, a new mythology. By the same token it cannot be merely a mimetic reproduction of an old one. The mysterious immortal sign that Keats is talking about is purely imaginative (and not explainable by means of analogy); it envisions neither a revival nor a new creation of the ancient spirit of the past but merely the spirit of Greece seen sub specie aeternitatis. This "thing of beauty is (indeed) a joy forever" because the past it comes from cannot be distinguished from a present. This generative/regenerative stirring of the past is a sensation that feels like a sensual

"incarnation of Delight" and not a mere represented image. It 'feels' real because it is a live presence in this eternal present. In one word, it becomes a pure past, an ever-present presence of a living spirit of Greece. A pure sensation of the past cannot be a momentary check of life or vital forces like the Kantian sublime, a broken-off moment that creates an inter-ruption that triggers a cessation and thus a sequential continuation through another moment; it is an expression that overflows and overwhelms any separation, any division that the mind could conceive between two moments.

Moreover Deleuze says that "every reminiscence, whether of a town or a woman, is erotic. It is always Eros, the noumenon, who allows us to penetrate this pure past in itself, this virginal repetition which is Mnemosyne" (Difference 85).307 Keats discovers in

Rome the spirit of Greece while Eve is the incarnated Delight of Adam's erotic dream, the moon Goddess Cynthia becomes the Indian Maid solving Endymion's oscillation between his earthly and heavenly love. This does not mean that the moon will come

307 The reminiscence or remembrance mentioned here is not the Platonic anamnesis because it is neither relegated to a model-like Platonic Idea nor to Kantian regulative one (both being representative) but rather to what Deleuze calls Idea, which is merely a vehicle of expressing difference; it is, metaphorically speaking, diversity incarnate. Again, the similarity involved here is a "similarity of substances" or what Benjamin calls "mimesis" (see Kairos 68). 328 down on earth disappearing from the sky and be incarnated in the Indian Maid. Keats's

"incarnation of Delight" refers to the fact that sensation, based on its degrees of intensity, unveils an immediate, substantial and ontological unity that cannot recognize divisions.

By not seeing these divisions and actually because of it, the former opposites appear as expressions, as different forms or aspects of one and the same existence. Cynthia as the moon goddess is the Indian Maid in the sense that they are both expressions of a pure mystery that, while being without identity, still manifests itself though singularizing identities, expressive individualities that lack a principium individuationis. As expressions, they show that the spheres of heaven and earth, the divine and human, are not opposites but emerge as two sides of the same coin sharing an ontological unity, having the same existence. Cynthia as the pure mystery, the origin, while being absolute becomes at the same time absolutely identical with the revelation as well, thus becoming one with the Indian Maid. In this way, she is simultaneously both the moon and the incarnation: mysterious and impenetrable yet radiant, without identity while necessarily generating and being singularized. At this point the moon is not treated as poetical, as a

"creature of impulse," an object of inspiration anymore but rather as an "ethereal thing."

Keats's Univocity: Apollo, Endymion and Adam

The immortality of the Greek spirit is not attached to one aspect, to only one "incarnation of Delight" that could become a represented model to be copied. Even though Endymion may not be written in a "naked Grecian manner," it is still an expression of the same immortal Greek spirit, a spirit that is alive because it is and even today finds different expressions. The point is that even though the Endymion-like incarnation of the Greek 329 spirit may be more appropriate for our times, since there are no such assertive gods anymore that would be able to master their fate, the Greek spirit in its full authenticity is expressed fully in it nonetheless.

Although the spirit comes from an immemorial past, it still is not a matter of remembering anything (i.e., any content that would require an outer form). This immemorial past is brought into the present not because the act of remembering cannot create any content, but because it is at the same time both form and content. In short, it creates the form while simultaneously giving it content.

If the past cannot be remembered it cannot be forgotten either. It cannot be forgotten or remembered because there is nothing, no conceptual content, to forget or to remember. Forgetting is at the same time remembering as there is no room for a mismatch between the intuition and the attempt to conceptualize it. Hence the intuition itself becomes conceptual. When one is stricken by the "fine suddenness," one realizes that one will always remember to remember and one will always forget to forget. As in a

Platonic reminiscence,308 what one remembers was never forgotten because, being immortal, it was here all along. One does not remember an event in the past; remembrance becomes an event that nullifies any notion of a lived past that could have been forgotten.

Hence Keats's 'mythologies' are neither classicistic mimetic copies nor new romantic creations. Rather, they express his own idea of immortality. There is no now and then because now is then; there is no temporal division that would relate them because all that exists is just one existence without beginning or end. Formal difference cannot establish a hiatus or even a meditative relationship between a past and a present

308 See Benjamin Origin 37. 330 moment. One thus forgets the "division of life; age, youth, poverty and riches" (Letters

298). Keats's mythology is at the same time new and old, so utterly personal, singular and individual that they cannot enter in any type of comparison.

Obeying "decrees of fate," Cynthia's approach is more appropriate for a hero who

"being mortal is led on, like Buonaparte, by circumstance" (Letters 207). However, her twin brother Apollo will tackle the beauty of Greek mythology in a different way. Being inclined to "try once more," this time "in more naked and Grecian manner," Keats conceives a character that shows that "the march of passion can be undeviating" {Letters

207). Being a "fore-seeing God," Apollo "will (actively) shape his actions" {Letters 207).

Apollo's freedom is identical with his fate, his undeterred determination is his determinism, his power is his beauty. He seems to be superior to the Titans because he is identical with the course of the great chain of being. In this determinism of nature, the tree feeds on the soil, the eagle towers over the trees, the small fish is eaten by the bigger fish thus progressively expressing an unflinching forward march of a rather non-fatal fatality - non-fatal because it integrates the regression. Apollo's forward march is indeed undeviating as it overlaps with his fatum.

Even though as a more modern hero, like Buonaparte, Endymion is led by fatidic circumstance, he is not completely passive or subordinate with respect to it. He does not become a mere (Platonic not Kleistian) marionette or "puppet of destiny." Everything he does still contributes to his reaching his immortal love in the end. Hence his passivity with respect to his destiny cannot enter into a clear-cut opposition with Apollo's voluntary activeness. Moreover, in view of Oceanus' speech, even when the Greek Gods are able to know their destiny (as their actions become simultaneously cognitive and 331 existential), they still cannot alter or escape it, the necessity offatum being absolute as both Gods and humans can neither master it nor be 'enslaved' by it.

In order for Endymion's dream to be able to come true, it must become his destiny, i.e., as necessary as destiny. This necessity cannot be external or imposed from outside but it cannot be internally related either in the sense of setting up a reflexive medium in itself (in sich). It must be internalized or intimated in such a way that it becomes implicitly personalized in the same way as a beloved human being. The decrees of fate do not correspond to "the starry sky above" by means of an overarching moral law, a rule of construction still forming such a relationship, but intimated in a more immediate or purely vitalistic manner. In order to be able to enter in a "fellowship with essence," Endymion (or Adam) must learn to love his fate. (Nietzsche's notion of amor fati becomes quite relevant at this point.) In other words, Endymion must reach the intensity of that "orbed drop of light" (Poems 126) beyond any friendship and thus become capable of transforming and assimilating any event as ontological determinism no matter how impossible, paradoxical or absurd it may seem. When Endymion's determination will overlap and become simultaneous with the determination of his destiny, his dream will come true and become reality. Hence from such an (expressive) point of view, there is no such thing as a preconceived plan of destiny, there is no such deterministic authority that has a certain chain of events in store for him. This does not mean, however, that fatum can be altered because if there is no plan there is also nothing to alter; destiny is only what exists. As in Spinoza, the necessity of fate overlaps and is absolutely synonymous with freedom. There is nothing to divide them anymore. 332

Without syncretic knowledge, Endymion has to find a way to make his dream happen. Apollo, however, knows his actions in advance because his present and his future are already perfectly intertwined, constitutive of a necessary existential chain that is indeed immortal, i.e., without beginning or end. What is important is that even though

Endymion may be slower to make his dream real, he is not inferior to Apollo where ontology is concerned. At this point Adam can be included in the equation. Existential beauty can manifest Eve from the dream into reality just as Cynthia is manifested in the

Indian Maid. In Keats's scenario, Adam gets to realize his dream without 'sacrificing' a rib and thus contributing to her creation. Eve becomes his destiny, turning out to be a manifestation that is as necessary as any other in nature.

The characters of a poet without identity cannot be strung into a contrastive relationship because the poet is all of them. Apollo and Endymion are both expressions of the immortal spirit of Greece, a spirit so chameleonic and diverse that it cannot be exhausted by any number of characters and thus framed into an image (or related to each other). They are to be distinguished merely by degrees of intensity. Keats himself says that Hyperion was written in a "more" Greek fashion than Endymion. They cannot become contraries that would merely represent the immortal Greek spirit, like the active

Apollo and passive Dionysius for the young, still Schopenhauerian or romantic

Nietzsche. As mere expressions, neither will possess exclusive rights in manifesting the beauty of Greek mythology. Each can trigger the pure sudden sensation of contemporariness that makes the Hellenic spirit become truly alive and immortal while letting it exist here and now.

Conclusion 333

The type of 'Cerberus-like' expressiveness that we encountered in Keats is different from the one found in Kleist. While Keats sees everything as the two heads of the same dog, in

Kleist the marionette is separated from the puppeteer while resonating harmoniously with him. Keats's expressiveness is based on univocity, on a single voice being expressed though different individuating factors. In the example of the two-floored Leibnizian expressiveness, ontological identity is enacted as a result of the collapse of the principium comparationis, one realizes indiscernibility by failing to be able to clearly distinguish separate elements.

Keats is inclined to give more preponderance to the chameleonic yet still wwtary nature of the poet without identity, who enjoys the diversity of his characters rather than looking into the world through the eyes of such a character, thus emphasizing the individuality of a point of view. Even though the first stage of development means being

'schooled' into becoming a Soul and thus acquiring an identity, the final aim is still to find the intensity of love in which souls kiss each other while blending into a existential unity. In other words, Keats resonates better with the Spinozian expressiveness. The mysterious silence of "unheared melodies" is sweeter than the produced sound.

Keats was not just a poet; he was also a thinker. Hence he was a true poet.

Although his ideas were never presented in a systematic manner, they consolidate themselves in an expressiveness that is still fundamentally baroque. His poetry comes out enriched, indexing to its catalogue of sensations an implicit intellectuality.

An (In)conclusive Conclusion 334

In his Theses on the Philosophy of History, Benjamin quotes Karl Kraus saying:

"The origin is the goal" {Illuminations 270). This is not the end; this is the end. This conclusion is not the end because it does not mark a completion of an argument. The fact that the argument is not completed does not necessarily mean that it will continue indefinitely, progressing forward like a never-ending story. First of all, it is not the end because there is nothing to complete and nothing to be completed with. From an ontological point of view, everything is always already complete as it is. Second, besides being inconsistent with the expressive premises of the thesis, this conclusion is not the end simply because the argument has not even begun. The preface was never a true beginning but rather an absolute beginning. The conclusion will not be an end but an absolute end.

From an expressive point of view, Jena romanticism and the baroque are not compatible due to the fact in the former is infinitely representative while the latter comes out as expressive. Placed in another environment with the help of the morphological method, as we have seen in the first part of the chapter on the baroque, they can be compared. This route is not wrong per se as it cannot be simply negated and excluded from an argument. I have included it myself, almost letting it deconstruct itself. The problem with this option is that besides not being able to offer any real solution in ontological terms, it can also become quite hegemonic when it is claimed as a sole authority. A comparative relationship cannot offer a solution because besides not being able to ground the idea it creates, it won't be able to find its ontological origin, either. By pointing to the similarities and contradictions, the relationship can merely find the relatable features that appear between the baroque and romanticism. A relationship 335 cannot see beyond what is relatable; it cannot see what each of the components is in itself. The mere act of establishing of a relationship modifies both parts in a way in which they become something they are not. Representation will inevitably set them up relatively and alternatively, one in function of the other, and not absolutely and simultaneously as functions of one another, as the pattern of the other. Being thus interlocked in a pre-established harmony would prevent any mediation in the sense of setting up a neutral medium, a meeting place in which they would share a projection. The reciprocity involved is already there, inscribed in each of the parts as a pattern; the function is not used to associate and mediate two separate but relatable parts but it actually "interknits" them much more "wingedly," in Keats's terms.

This thesis has dealt with two remarkable poets who were not only poets. Without being philosophers in a strict sense of the word, Kleist and Keats had a "complex" or a

"philosophical mind." This does not mean that they became rather didactic poets of a particular philosophy but their work reaches a certain expressive dimension through which their ideas make themselves available to theoretical thought in a way in which no direct influence or relation can be established. Such a perspective not only explains the prevalence of theory and philosophy throughout the discourse of this thesis but it also opens up intriguing paths towards exploring the possibilities of establishing a more substantial vinculum between poetry and philosophy. It should be said, however, that this is not the idea of an aesthetic philosophy that the Oldest System Program puts forward. In a letter to Benjamin Bailey, Keats explains what he means by "complex" or

"philosophical Mind":

What a time! I am continually running away from the subject - sure this cannot be exactly the case with a complex Mind - one that is imaginative 336 and at the same time careful of its fruits - who would exist partly on Sensation partly on thought - to whom it is necessary that years should bring the philosophic Mind - such an one I consider yours and therefore it is necessary to your eternal Happiness that you not only drink this old Wine of Heaven, which I shall call the redigestion of our most ethereal Musings on Earth; but also increase in knowledge and know all things. {Letters 185-86) 337

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Vita

Name: Adrian Mioc

Post-secondary B.A. West University Education and Timisoara, Romania Degrees: 1989-1993 The University of Western Ontario London, Ontario, Canada 2001-2003 M.A. The University of Western Ontario London, Ontario, Canada 2003-2011 Ph.D.

Honours and Awards: Social Science and Humanities Research Council (CGS) Masters Fellowship 2002-2004 Social Science and Humanities Research Council (CGS) Doctoral Fellowship 2004-2007

Related Work Experience: Teaching Assistant: course "Utopia and Visions of the Future" as instructor The University of Western Ontario 2001-2010