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The Influence of Nietzsche on Selected Works of German Prose

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The Influence of Nietzsche on Selected Works of German Prose Interpreting the Testament: The Influence of Nietzsche on Selected Works of German Prose Literature 1900-1914. Thesis submitted for the degree of PhD by James Maurice Hawes University College London ProQuest Number: 10611108 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a com plete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest ProQuest 10611108 Published by ProQuest LLC(2017). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States C ode Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106- 1346 2 Abstract This thesis examines the influence of Nietzsche’s works on works of German prose between 1900 and 1914. The works studied are Die Verwirrungen des Zoglings Torless by Robert Musil; P er Tod in Venedig by Thomas Mann; Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge by Rainer Maria Rilke; Per Untertan by Heinrich Mann; Per Prozess by Franz Kafka and Per Weg ins Freie by Arthur Schnitzler. Other works are referred to as and when this may be required. Having noted the historical background, the thesis first establishes a properly differentiated picture of Nietzsche’s work itself, using substantial textual reference. In the subsequent chapter, the theoretical issues of ’influence’ are examined. Each of the above prose works is then treated individually in its relationship to Nietzsche. In each case the argument is based upon direct comparisons of the author’s text with specific passages from Nietzsche’s works. Comparisons between the works concerned are made in order to show that Nietzsche provides each author with different material, and that each uses his borrowings in a different manner. It is concluded in every case that Nietzsche’s influence on the author’s work has been inadequately acknowledged to varying degrees. It is argued that a recognition of the debts owed by these authors to Nietzsche is an essential part of the process by which they can be placed in their proper historical perspective. 3 Acknowledgments I owe an enormous debt to Professor Martin Swales. Whether at the level of the smallest textual details or of the most general issues, his comments are always constructive and enlightening; just as important, to me, is his ability continually to inspire the conviction that one is engaged in a pursuit as exciting as it is worthwhile. I must also thank Sir Malcolm Pasley for agreeing to read a portion of this thesis, for his helpful comments and for his encouragement. The MHRA Style Book dissuades me from expressing my gratitude to the many others who have helped, but does allow me to thank the editors of New German Studies and of Oxford German Studies for permission here to use some of the material which, in earlier form, they have accepted for publication. 4 CONTENTS Chapter 1: Literature and History 6 Chapter 2: The Testament (Nietzsche) 13 The Dilemma 14 Reaction to the Dilemma 19 Aesthetic Image and Analytic Thought 22 Sounding Brass (i): ’Ewige Wiederkunft’ 26 Sounding Brass (ii): ’Amor Fati’ 28 Sounding Brass (iii): ’Wille zur Macht’ 31 Physiology 32 Supermen and Aristocrats 38 Zeitgeist as Gravity (i): Individualism 42 Zeitgeist as Gravity (ii): The Death of Liberalism 45 The Battle with Gravity 49 Conclusions 54 Chapter 3: Influence, History and Textual (Arti)fact 60 Chapter 4: The Artist in the Becoming (Musil) 85 The Aesthete’s Progress 92 Torless’s Zarathustrian Dilemnma 94 Torless and Musil’s Early View of Nietzsche 99 Torless’s Aesthetic Solution 101 Art, Animals and Dionysos 104 The Aesthetics of Health 107 The Writer of the Unendangered World 111 Conclusions 118 Chapter 5: The Artist Going Under (Thomas Mann) 125 Aschenbach (i): Wagner and Nietzsche 129 Aschenbach (ii): From Balance to Form 133 Aschenbach (iii): Aestheticism as Decadence 139 Mann and Nietzsche’s Dual Voice 146 Conclusions 151 Chapter 6: The Artist in Retreat (Rilke) 160 Naturalistic Metropolis and Aesthetic City 163 Alternative Images (i): Death as Kernel of Life 169 Alternative Images (ii): the Rounded Saint 172 Alternative Modes 173 ’Abgenommene Christusse’ 175 ’Unterlassene Erkundung’ 179 Conclusions: Dionysos in Reverse 187 5 Chapter 7: The Powers That Be Part 1 (Heinrich Mann/Kafka) 195 The Critical Consensus 197 A Model Social Life 206 The Ascetic Dynamo 209 Society as Court 214 Assimilation and Revolt 219 The Unrespectable Alternative 222 Conclusions 226 Part 2 (Kafka) 230 Josef K. as ’Ubergangsmensch’ 232 Contradictory Critiques (i) 234 Contradictory Critiques (ii) 237 ’Wirkliche Freisprechung’ or ’verhinderte Verurteilung’? 239 Kafka’s Cathedral (i): The Burial of God 245 Kafka’s Cathedral: (ii) The Need for Judgement 247 Kafka’s Cathedral (iii): The Legend 251 Kafka’s Cathedral (iv): Reaction to the Legend 255 Kafka’s Cathedral (v): The Ambiguity of Absolutism 259 Josef K.’s Last Insight: ’Logik’ and ’Leben’ 264 Contradictory Negations 267 Conclusions 271 Chapter 8: Nietzsche in Perspective(s) (Schnitzler) 278 Schnitzler, Nietzsche and Reichert’s Analysis 280 Heinrich Bermann: The Intellectual’s Dilemma 286 Jews and Gentiles 291 Sons and Fathers 294 Manners Makyth Man? 298 Aristocratic Antisemitism 300 The Will to Death 305 A Crepuscular Class 308 The Wrong Road 315 Dual Negation 318 . The Ambiguity of Realism 320 Conclusions 324 Chapter 9: Conclusions 328 Bibliography 341 6 CHAPTER ONE: Introduction Literature and History There can be few periods more interesting than that of the years leading up to the First World War. The era is perhaps so interesting to us both from a traditional literary and a traditional historical point of view because of the relationship in which it stands to our own, the present, age. It has often been remarked that some centuries live posthumously or are born late: the First World War has often been called the end of the nineteenth century and the start of our own. The statement is in many ways borne out if we look at the world which was changed utterly by that war - the world of the pre-war years. The image of a society still secure in its traditional values - in for example, the ill-fated dynasties of central Europe - in its assumptions of its own continuation and of its superiority to all other societies, past or present, is witnessed by innumerable historical documents. It has frequently been argued that only such a level of trust in the established social order can explain how the Europeans of 1914-18 endured for so long, and without decisive collapses on either side, a form of warfare which, to us, appears to have consisted largely of blatantly pointless massacre. In this sense of general conviction in itself, then, the period before the war is very far from our own. But there is about this period a pervasive scent of our own times too: while the characters of, say, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky or Fontane still inhabit a world the day-to-day details of which seem an age removed from ours - an age of liveried servants and candlelight - the characters of Kafka, Mann, Rilke and their contemporaries are driven about in, woken up by or knocked down by cars. They take electric trams and make telephone calls. When they walk into rooms they turn on lights with a flick of a switch. They live in (or deliberately out of) cities which we recognize as like our own. There is no leap of imagination needed to make the everyday experiences of the characters ’modern’. It is, I would argue, exactly this ambiguous experience - the clash between the continued potency of established modes of living and the presence of a perhaps uniquely qualitative change in the circumstances of that living - which informs much of the literature of this period. That strange mix of modern and traditional forms (in our own age it can be seen in, say, South America) was probably more extreme in Germany in the period under examination than in any other country. To the discomfort of liberals raised on the ’Manchester’ ideas of free trade and political liberalism as the twin paths to infallible Progress, Germany achieved enormous (and threatening) power without the appearance of a concomitantly ’modern’ political system. State-sponsored heavy industry showed itself to be capable of outstripping Britain in her own backyard of the iron and steel trades, while state-educated scientists opened out brand new fields in the electrical and chemical industries. German academic achievements (for example, in the fields of philology and archaeology) and German music were held up as examples throughout the world. All the surface forms of modernity - free elections with a wide franchise, progressive labour laws, freedom of the press and of artistic expression - accompanied Germany’s advance. And yet, following the defeats to liberal hopes in 1848 and 1862, Bismarck’s labyrinthine constitution ensured the dominance of the Prussian landed aristocracy and permitted (even if it did not intend) the Kaiser, should he wish, to act as the most genuine autocrat in the developed world. The middle classes were thus excluded (to a large extent with their own agreement) from the political power which elsewhere might have reflected their economic status. In consequence of this, the economic drive of the country and its political will were separate and (since the agricultural interests of the Junkers frequently contradicted those of industrialists and merchants) even opposed. The result was a curious sensation that the conscious political direction of the country was not the decisive factor: other, less distinct forces seemed to be at work.
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