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Revelation in the Public Sphere: Religion and Violence in Heinrich von Kleist’s “Die heilige Cäcilie oder die Gewalt der Musik (Eine Legende)”
ELISABETH KRIMMER University of California, Davis
Ever since the attack on the twin towers on 11 September 2001, the status of reli- gion in the public sphere has been subject to heated debate. For many in the Western part of the world, the process of modernization had long been identified with that of secularization. It was assumed, as Ulrich Beck explains, that there was no longer a need for religion: “Im Sichtschatten schonender Gleichgültigkeit und im Lichte wissenschaftlicher Kritik lösen sich religiöse Glaubensinhalte wie Gletscher bei der Klimaerwärmung auf” (197). After 9/11, however, many diag- nosed the return of religion even in the West, captured in the catchphrase “post- secular society.” Others focused their critical attention not on the West but on Islam, which they saw as beholden to premodern values and consequently in dire need of its own version of the Enlightenment. In this view, the terrorists of 9/11 “were obviously people who rejected modernity in favor of authoritative tradition, discussion and compromise in favor of violencePROOF and coercion, reason in favor of revelation, democracy in favor of theocracy” (Owen and Owen 4). Here, the eighteenth century, the Age of Reason, is cited as an antidote to religiously motivated violence (3); religion is cast as the polar opposite of reason and rele- gated to the realm of the private and irrational, while reason is associated with the public sphere and credited with the ability to transform force into rational deliberation. This pat dichotomy has been questioned in recent works by Judith Butler and others.1 But it is little known that even in the eighteenth century, some thin-
1 Butler claims that secularism is not “as liberated from its religious foundations as it purports to be” (71). According to Butler, secularization does not signify the demise of religion but rather PAGEoffers “a fugitive way for religion to survive ” (72). See also Dülmen, who claims that religion provided the foundational impulse for concepts that we have come to perceive as purely secular. For example, the quest for religious self-determination and the growing interiorization of reli- gious practice in Pietism contributed to the eighteenth-century “discovery” of notions of individ- uality and subjectivity (see Dülmen 33). Similarly, Habermas points out that the law itself originates in the sacred (“The Political” 17).
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kers put pressure on the dichotomy of reason and religion. In the following, I show that Heinrich von Kleist’s “Die heilige Cäcilie oder die Gewalt der Musik (Eine Legende)” not only speaks to our current predicament about the role of religion in contemporary Western society but also addresses the interrelation of religion and violence that has been foremost on our minds ever since the terror attack of 9/11. Unlike previous interpreters, I read Kleist’s story as a text about the place of religion in the public sphere of a newly enlightened society whose political pro- cesses are ostensibly defined through the use of reason and discourse.2 As I will show, a crucial question of “Die heilige Cäcilie” concerns an issue that has also preoccupied the thought of the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas in the last decade: namely the status of religious revelation within public, rational dis- course. In other words, the first section of the article asks how a secular society can integrate a discourse that does not speak the language of reason. The second section is concerned with the containment of religiously motivated violence. In discussing questions of religious diversity, it references theories by Ulrich Beck and Charles Taylor. Finally, the third section links religious claims to universal validity, which Beck locates at the heart of religion’s potential for violence, to claims about the authenticity of religious signs. Kleist’s text plays against the background of the Beeldenstorm in the Neth- erlands. Four brothers, inspired by the Dutch example, decide to attack a monas- tery near the city of Aachen. They set the date of the attack for the feast of Corpus Christi and gather a crowd of supporters. As they are about to destroy the church, the leaders of the mob are so movedPROOF by the performance of an orato- rio that they fall to their knees in worship and subsequently convert to Catholi- cism. Because of the extreme nature of their faith, however, they are confined to an insane asylum. In the second part of the story, the brothers’ mother comes to town six years later to inquire about the whereabouts of her sons and is informed
2 There is much in Kleist’s opinions about religion that accords with predominant discourses of the time. In his early letters, Kleist characterized himself as a person who had no truck with con- ventional religion but rather lived in “goldne Abhängigkeit von der Herrschaft der Vernunft” (2: 484): “Etwas muß dem Menschen heilig sein. Uns beide, denen es die Zeremonien der Reli- gion und die Vorschriften des konventionellen Wohlstandes nicht sind, müssen um so mehr die Gesetze der Vernunft heilig sein” (2: 491). Jesus is stripped of his spiritual meaning and rede- fined as a “Held der Tugend” (2: 495), and religious tolerance is upheld as the highest form of charity. For example, when Kleist visits a hospital, he is particularly taken with the fact that pa- PAGEtients of all religious denominations are welcome: “Dabei ist es besonders bemerkenswürdig und lobenswert, daß die religiöse Toleranz, die nirgends in diesem ganzen Hochstift anzutreffen ist, grade hier in diesem Spital, wo sie so nötig war, Platz gefunden hat, und daß jeder Unglück- liche seine Zuflucht findet in dieser katholischen Anstalt, wäre es auch ein Protestant oder ein Jude” (2: 560). Later in life, however, he was more open towards religious experiences. Shortly before he died, he wrote the following: “Morgens und abends knie ich nieder, was ich nie ge- konnt habe, und bete zu Gott; ich kann ihm mein Leben, das allerqualvollste, das je ein Mensch geführt hat, jetzo danken, weil er es mir durch den herrlichsten und wollüstigsten aller Tode ver- gütigt” (2: 887). On religion in Kleist’s works see Lützeler and Schneider. 04_50_3 Krimmer4.3d Pages: [295–313] Date: [July 17, 2014] Time: [17:06]
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by the abbess of the monastery that Saint Cecilia herself conducted the perfor- mance that drove the brothers mad. What sounds like a straightforward plot in this brief summary is anything but clear or linear. To begin with, there are several versions of “Die heilige Cäci- lie.” The first, short version was published in the Berliner Abendblätter on 15–17 November 1810. A longer version was included in the second volume of Kleist’s Moralische Erzählungen in 1811. This second version introduces narra- tive inconsistencies that were not yet present in the first (see Stephens 84) by combining the narration of the events proper with their anamnesis, their “erin- nernde Aufarbeitung” (Neumann 369), by various functionaries of the bourgeois order, including the directors of the insane asylum, the innkeeper, the textile dealer Veit Gotthelf, the abbess, the archbishop, and the Pope.3 In particular, the inconsistencies introduced in the second version extend to the conversion experience, which results in either spiritual enlightenment or insanity, depending on one’s perspective. In a typically ambiguous move, Kle- ist’s text refuses to authenticate the brothers’ vision as divinely inspired (see Laurs 221; Gelus 285; Meier 238) but rather leaves open the possibility that they have simply gone mad. In presenting conflicting explanations of the events, Kle- ist forces the reader to re-enact “the drama of interpretation” (Haase and Freu- denburg 88), or, as Jochen Schmidt puts it, “[d]er Leser muß sich in eine Hermeneutik des Verdachts einüben” (270).4 Repeatedly, the narrator intimates divine intervention, suggesting that God had felled the brothers “wie durch un- sichtbare Blitze” (2:225). Later on, an official version of the legend is formulated by the abbess, who asserts that “Gott selbstPROOF hat das Kloster, an jenem wunderba- ren Tage, gegen den Übermut Eurer schwer verirrten Söhne beschirmt” (227). Even the brothers themselves insist that they owe their conversion to divine agency. Their heightened state of being is evident in a newly found happiness, a “gewisse, obschon sehr ernste und feierliche, Heiterkeit” (220). This serenity is not a momentary aberration but rather a permanent feature of the brothers’ en- lightened state which was to remain with them until their death in old age: “die Söhne aber starben, im späten Alter, eines heitern und vergnügten Todes” (228). Since serenity is commonly associated with spiritual enlightenment, the brothers’ equipoise suggests that they are communing with God. The notion that they are blessed is also in line with their perfect state of health (“körperlich vollkommen gesund,PAGE” 220). Indeed, the brothers themselves are convinced that the citizens of 3 Several critics have drawn attention to the hidden and self-serving agendas that inspired these contrasting versions. Barbara Thums, for example, points to “in der Legendenbildung kaschierte Machtinteressen” of the “Funktionsträger von Politik, Ökonomie, Jurisprudenz, Medizin, Psy- chiatrie und Religion” (518–19). On stylistic differences between the first and second version see Graf 67–68. 4 Wolfgang Wittkowski poignantly summarizes Kleist’s method: “jede festabgegrenzte Sicht, jede Alleinherrschaft irgendeines Standpunktes soll vermieden, ja ausdrücklich bekämpft, ironi- siert werden” (37). 04_50_3 Krimmer4.3d Pages: [295–313] Date: [July 17, 2014] Time: [17:06]
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Aachen would join them in worship if only they had shared their experience: “wenn die gute Stadt Aachen wüßte, was sie, so würde dieselbe ihre Geschäfte bei Seite legen, und sich gleichfalls, zur Absingung des Gloria, um das Kruzifix des Herrn niederlassen” (220). While the brothers embrace their new role as true believers, the city authori- ties classify them as insane and confine them to the asylum, which, unlike the monastery, is located “innerhalb der Mauern unserer Stadt” (224). It is up to the reader to decide whether this insanity diagnosis is correct or whether it is simply the result of an inability to integrate an experience that does not conform to the standards of rational discourse.5 After all, the fact that the musical performance that sets off the brothers’ transformation occurs in a monastery that “damals vor den Toren dieser Stadt lag” (216) already indicates that the brothers’ ecstasy has no place in the civic arena.6 The need to exclude experiences of religious ecstasy from the public sphere is all the more logical since the brothers’ revelation unfolds as a process of de- individuation (see Edel 112). As the brothers are overpowered by the musical performance of the nuns, they turn into insentient automata (“als ob sie zu Stein erstarrt wären,” 222). The unanimity that characterizes their every action under- lines the complete loss of subjectivity that accompanies their transformation. Their bodies appear to melt into a single organism as they take off their hats si- multaneously –“nehmen eure Söhne plötzlich, in gleichzeitiger Bewegung, und auf eine uns auffallende Weise, die Hüte ab” (221) – as they rise as one – “heben sich plötzlich in gleichzeitiger Bewegung” (223) – and even wipe sweat from a seemingly communal chin and breast:PROOF“sie wischen sich mit einem Tuch den Schweiß von der Stirn, der ihnen, in großen Tropfen, auf Kinn und Brust niederläuft” (224). Their actions are no longer those of autonomous, thinking subjects,7 and as such the brothers are in direct contradiction to the fundamental parameters of a society that is built on the rational discourse of individuated citizens.8 The de-individuation of the brothers is further underlined by the fact that they are undone by a musical performance. In contemporary aesthetics, music is
5 See Allan, who claims that in Kleist’s story “the natural bourgeois reaction to genuine religious experience is one of fear and horror” (208). 6 Thums calls the monastery a heterotopos: “eine imaginäre Gegenwelt für Ausgeschlossenes, Ta- buisiertes und Pathologisiertes” (511). Arnd Bohm points to a possible model for Kleist’s mon- PAGEastery: an Augustinian convent in Leiden that was transformed into a madhouse called Caecilia Hospital (“Source” 22). 7 Habermas lists “Subjektivität und Selbstverwirklichung, rationaler Meinungs- und Willensbil- dung sowie persönlicher und politischer Selbstbestimmung” as hallmarks of the autonomous subject in the public sphere (Strukturwandel 34). 8 Or they would be if Kleist had portrayed the bourgeois individual as a rational, autonomous actor. As Christine Lubkoll points out, Kleist shows a society in which “Bürger ist nicht, wer politisch handelt, sondern wer sich opportunistisch den gegebenen Verhältnissen anpaßt (Veit Gotthelf führt es uns vor)” (351). 04_50_3 Krimmer4.3d Pages: [295–313] Date: [July 17, 2014] Time: [17:06]
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frequently cast as a form of art that speaks directly to the heart and, as such, is incompatible with rationality and individual freedom (see Steinhilber). In his Kritik der Urteilskraft, Immanuel Kant characterizes music as an art form that speaks the language of affect (“Sprache der Affekten,” 268), not of concepts. Kant took objection to the intrusiveness of music: “Außerdem hängt der Musik ein gewisser Mangel der Urbanität an, daß sie, vornehmlich nach Beschaffenheit ihrer Instrumente, ihren Einfluß weiter, als man ihn verlangt (auf die Nach- barschaft), ausbreitet und so sich gleichsam aufdringt, mithin der Freiheit andrer, außer der musikalischen Gesellschaft, Abbruch tut” (269–70). Similarly, Johann Georg Sulzer’s Allgemeine Theorie der Schönen Künste claims “daß die Musik an Kraft alle andern Künste weit übertreffe” (353). According to Sulzer, one can- not listen to dance music, for example, “ohne ganz von dem Geiste, der darin liegt, beherrscht zu werden. Man wird wider Willen gezwungen, das, was man dabey fühlt, durch Gebehrden und Bewegung des Körpers auszudrüken” (353). Clearly, music, more than any other form of art, has the power to rob the listener of his or her freedom.9 In recent years, the German philosopher Habermas has repeatedly addressed the role of religion in society. In his acceptance speech on being awarded the Peace Prize of the German Booksellers (Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhan- dels) in 2001, only weeks after the attacks of 9/11, Habermas articulated his belief that the state can be a neutral arbiter in matters of religious import: “Im Streit zwischen Wissens- und Glaubensansprüchen präjudiziert nämlich der wel- tanschaulich neutrale Staat politische Entscheidungen keineswegs zugunsten einer Seite” (15). It would seem that HabermasPROOF is far more optimistic than Kleist that civic society can accommodate revelatory religion in the public sphere. While Habermas investigates the possibility of mediating between religion and reason, Kleist points to the heteronomy of religious revelation and the impossi- bility of integrating experiences that defy rationality and individuated subjectiv- ity into the social fabric. Not only is Habermas convinced that the state can and must be a neutral arbiter in conflicts between religion and reason; he also affirms the state’s ability to listen to and comprehend truth that is articulated in the language of religion:
Die Suche nach Gründen, die auf allgemeine Akzeptabilität abzielen, würde aber nur dann nicht zu einem unfairen Ausschluss der Religion aus der Öffen- tlichkeit führen und die säkulare Gesellschaft nur dann nicht von wichtigen Re- PAGEssourcen der Sinnstiftung abschneiden, wenn sich auch die säkulare Seite einen Sinn für die Artikulationskraft religiöser Sprachen bewahrt. (Glauben und Wissen 22)
9 Hammermeister expands on the church’s hostility towards instrumental music, which was be- lieved to destroy freedom and lure the soul to vice (147). 04_50_3 Krimmer4.3d Pages: [295–313] Date: [July 17, 2014] Time: [17:06]
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Thus, Habermas opts for the “kritische Anverwandlung des religiösen Gehalts” (24).10 He explains that while all citizens are free to use religious language in the public sphere, “the potential contents of religious utterances must be translated into a generally accessible language” (“The Political” 25). In contrast, in Kleist’s story, it is precisely the possibility of such a critical appropriation of religious speech that is radically put in question. Kleist points to a dilemma in Habermas’s argument, which even as it seeks to integrate religion into the public sphere, re- erects the boundary between reason and religion by insisting on a process of translation before the “potential truth contents of religious utterances [. . .] can find their way onto the agendas of parliaments, courts, or administrative bodies” (“The Political” 25). Thus, we are left with an aporia. There is a danger that, on its own terms, religion cannot be integrated into the political process. However, if religious utterances must be stripped of their revelatory nature and properly processed to fit the parameters of public discourse, they may no longer possess the truth content that makes them meaningful to believers in the first place. It would seem that while Habermas is heir to the Kantian concept of “Ver- nunftreligion,” Kleist wonders what to do with “Offenbarungsglaube.” In Kleist’s text, the speech acts of revelation are likened to the howling of leopards and wolves (223). Their provenance is unclear: they derive from either a state of tran- scendence or animalism. Either way, they defy comprehensibility and cannot be translated back into rational discourse. While Habermas insists that “believing fel- low citizens” be granted “the right to make contributions in a religious language to public debate” (“Pre-Political” 51), Kleist portrays religious speech as a hermetic discourse. As such, religious speech not onlyPROOF resists all attempts at translation and appropriation, but is itself destructive of community. Tellingly, all who are forced to witness the horrendous display of the brothers’ prayer flee the scene in panic: “Bei diesem grausenhaften Auftritt stürzen wir besinnungslos, mit sträubenden Haaren auseinander; wir zerstreuen uns” (223). Before their conversion, the broth- ers were gregarious and met with their friends in the local inn, which, as a place of “sozialer, kommunikativer und ökonomischer Tauschhandlungen” (Thums 530), functions precisely as what Habermas would call a site of “öffentlichen Argumen- tationspraxis” (Strukturwandel 40). After their conversion, the brothers repel their former allies and have to be forcibly removed from the “Gasthof” and thus from the public sphere. It should be clear by now why Kleist leaves the choice between revelation and insanity to the reader. The purpose of the text is not to convince us of any one particularPAGE solution but rather to point to the predicaments inherent in both. Our choice in this matter depends centrally on how we evaluate the Habermasian proj- ect of translation: as a process that tames and civilizes the irrational and potentially
10 This is a departure from his early work. In Strukturwandel, Habermas writes, “[D]er Bürgerkrieg findet unter dem Diktat einer konfessionell neutralisierten Obrigkeit sein Ende. Die Konfession ist Privatsache, private Gesinnung; für den Staat folgenlos” (163). 04_50_3 Krimmer4.3d Pages: [295–313] Date: [July 17, 2014] Time: [17:06]
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destructive forces of religion and makes them subservient to the rational state, or as a process that, much like secularization itself, is destructive of the spiritual founda- tion of human nature and leaves us stranded in an “obdachlose[] Moderne” (Glau- ben und Wissen 13). Either way, however, as Kleist shows us, the state response to the brothers’ violence can itself be characterized as a form of violence that relies on what Beatrice Hanssen calls “the disciplinary regimes of exclusion” (55). If Kleist’s story neither endorses nor rejects the violence associated with insti- tutionalization, it is because Kleist’s valuation of revelatory religion is ambiguous. Kleist’s letters testify to his fear that religion can be inimical to civil society. This fear is particularly evident in his statements about the Catholic Church, whose ri- tuals and art he encountered first-hand during a visit to Würzburg (see Hall 220). In a letter to Wilhelmine von Zenge, Kleist likens Catholicism to slavery: “Auch hier erinnert das Läuten der Glocken unaufhörlich an die katholische Religion, wie das Geklirr der Ketten den Gefangnen an seine Sklaverei” (2: 563).11 But Kleist also realized that religion responds to deeply felt needs. Its absence leaves a void that reason cannot fill. In a much-cited passage, Kleist ex- presses his profound appreciation for the Catholic Mass and its ability to move listeners to the very core:
Nirgends fand ich mich aber tiefer in meinem Innersten gerührt, als in der katholischen Kirche, wo die größte, erhebenste Musik noch zu den andern Kün- sten tritt, das Herz gewaltsam zu bewegen. Ach, Wilhelmine, unser Gottesdienst ist keiner. Er spricht nur zu dem kalten Verstande, aber zu allen Sinnen ein katholisches Fest [. . .] ach, nur einen Tropfen Vergessenheit, und mit Wollust würde ich katholisch werden. (2: 651) PROOF Kleist’s ambivalence is evident when he cites oblivion (“Vergessenheit”)asthe price for such elation. And yet, while Kleist is concerned about the abrogation of rationality and even of selfhood implied in such oblivion, he is also wary of a world that hypertrophizes reason at the expense of religion. Much as he faults Catholicism and in particular church music because it circumvents reason and speaks only to the heart –“Die Kirchenmusik in der katholischen Kirche, das alles waren Gegenstände bei deren Genuß man den Verstand nicht braucht, die nur allein auf Sinn und Herz wirken” (2: 650) – he is also concerned about expanding the domain of reason at the cost of the imagination: “Kunstwerke sind Produkte der Phantasie, und der ganzePAGE Gang unsrer heutigen Kultur geht dahin, das Gebiet des Verstandes immer 11 Much like Schiller, the young Kleist favours the rationality of Protestantism. Numerous pas- sages in his letters express his aversion to superstitious rituals, including belief in miracles, in the power of prayer, or in the practice of the “Ablaßhandel,” that is, forgiveness for sale: “Ich, mein liebes Kind, habe Ablaß auf 200 Tage. In einem Kloster auf dem Berge 2 bei b, hinter dem Zitadell, lag vor einem wundertätigen Marienbilde ein gedrucktes Gebet, mit der Ankündi- gung, daß wer es mit Andacht läse, diesen Ablaß haben sollte. Gelesen habe ich es; doch da es nicht mit der gehörigen Andacht geschah, so werde ich doch wohl vor Sünden hüten, und nach wie vor tun müssen, was recht ist” (2: 555). 04_50_3 Krimmer4.3d Pages: [295–313] Date: [July 17, 2014] Time: [17:06]
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mehr und mehr zu erweitern, das heißt, das Gebiet der Einbildungskraft immer mehr und mehr zu verengen” (2: 703). Note that in this figuration, the imagination appears as a natural ally of the arts, just as religion is intimately associated with music. Both religion and art are defined through their opposition to instrumental reason and are associated with fantasy, imagination, and the heart. If we fail to nur- ture the spiritual forces that find expression in religion and art, we are left with noth- ing but cold reason. But if we surrender to religion and its sensual manifestation in the arts, we endanger our very identity as autonomous, individuated subjects. In light of Kleist’s ambiguous feelings about religion and reason, it is hardly surprising that in “Die heilige Cäcilie,” the showdown between religion and the state remains undecided. The story emphasizes the triumph of the church and its increase in power six years after the miraculous performance, symbolized by the new copper roof that gleams in the sun and by the construction of higher towers by a multitude of workers (see Brown 270). But in a typically ironic twist, Kleist subverts this image of ecclesiastical splendour: the bolts of lightning that had felled the brothers are now targeting the church, thus undermining the assump- tion that the elements themselves are allied with any one party in this fight. The storm hurls “einige kraftlose Blitze, gegen die Richtung, wo der Dom stand” (225), and although it retreats without doing any damage, the narrator informs us that this ecclesiastical triumph was of short duration. At the end of the Thirty Years’ War, the monastery was secularized. Finally, the act of secularization is not the only fact that throws doubt on the triumph of the church. One might argue that even the conversion of the brothers itself is problematic. Entry into the Christian religion revolves around free choice.PROOF Because they have lost the ability to choose along with their personal identity, the brothers lost the very foundation on which true faith can be founded. Seen in this light, the brothers have never truly converted to begin with. In his book A New Science: The Discovery of Religion in the Age of Reason, Guy G. Stroumsa argues that eighteenth-century renegotiations of the status of religion are to be understood as responses to discoveries and paradigm changes that had occurred in earlier ages. In particular, Stroumsa references the “violent and painful divisions of Christendom” that “had cast doubt on the validity of Christianity” (6) and the “new knowledge of the diverse religions practiced around the world [which] entailed the urgent need to redefine religion as a universal phe- nomenon, with a strong emphasis on ritual, rather than on beliefs” (3). Stroumsa’s analysis points to crucially important and often misunderstood implications of the processPAGE of secularization. As Charles Taylor explains, secularization does not nec- essarily imply a turn away from religion but rather describes a society with a plu- rality of religious denominations and beliefs.12 Seen in this light, secularism is not
12 See also Beck: “Säkularisierung bezeichnet nicht den Untergang von Religion und Glauben, sondern die Herausbildung und massive Verbreitung einer Religiosität, die zunehmend auf Indi- vidualisierung verweist” (46). 04_50_3 Krimmer4.3d Pages: [295–313] Date: [July 17, 2014] Time: [17:06]
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about the relation between state and religion but rather about the “(correct) response of the democratic state to diversity” (Taylor 36). Since a secular society is necessarily “a society with a plurality of world views” and since such plurality carries a potential for conflict, the question of how to achieve “normative stabiliza- tion” becomes paramount (Habermas, “Pre-Political” 22). It bears mention in this context that Kleist wrote the first, brief version of “Die heilige Cäcilie” in November 1810 as a “Taufangebinde” when Isidora Maria Cäcilie Kunigunde Müller, the daughter of his friend Adam Müller, was baptized. Axel Laurs has drawn attention to the irony inherent in this particular baptismal arrangement: “Adam Müller had converted to Roman Catholicism in 1805; had married a Protestant divorcee and then had his daughter baptized in the name of a Catholic saint, to be sure but in a Protestant ceremony in a Protes- tant church by a Protestant minister” (231). Clearly, religious diversity is topical not only in Kleist’s text but also in contemporary eighteenth-century society. But diversity in and of itself does not necessitate violence. Rather, as Beck explains, religion’s potential for conflict is linked to the combination of two fac- tors: the plurality of religious denominations and each religion’s claim to univer- sal validity. “Der Samenkern religiös motivierter Gewalt liegt im Universalismus der Gleichheit der Glaubenden” (77). Interestingly, in his letters, Kleist makes fun of this clash between the claim for universal validity of religious values and their parochial, even xenophobic reality. In a letter to Wilhelmine von Zenge, for example, Kleist lambastes the practice of praying for the death of one’s enemies: “Wenn die wundertätigen Marienbilder einigermaßen ihre Schuldigkeit tun, so muß in kurzem kein Franzose mehr leben.[.PROOF . .] In kurzem wird hier eine Prozes- sion sein, zur Niederschlagung der Feinde, und, wie es heißt, ‘zur Ausrottung aller Ketzer’. Also auch zu Deiner und meiner Ausrottung” (2: 556).13 In this let- ter, the fact that religious universalism unfolds in multinational encounters un- covers a potential for violence. As I will show, the same dynamic is on display in Kleist’s story. Like many of Kleist’s texts, “Die heilige Cäcilie” is preoccupied with the theme of violence. To begin with, the story is set towards the end of the sixteenth century, the time of the Beeldenstorm in the Netherlands, when Calvinists de- stroyed religious images in churches. The destruction that takes place abroad is then imported into the German homeland by four Protestant brothers who plan to destroy a monastery near the city of Aachen. It is their intent to shatter the church windows, which are painted with biblical motifs, and to raze the monas- teryPAGE to the ground so that they would “keinen Stein auf dem andern lassen” (216). Clearly, the historical context of iconoclastic violence and the choice of target indicate a religious motivation. And yet the text never elaborates on the
13 See also “Das Läuten dauert unaufhörlich fort. Es ist als ob die Glocken sich selbst zu Grabe läuteten, denn wer weiß, ob die Franzosen sie nicht bald einschmelzen. [. . .] Denn es gilt die Rettung der Stadt, und da die Franzosen für ihren Untergang beten, so kommt es darauf an, wer am meisten betet” (2: 555) 04_50_3 Krimmer4.3d Pages: [295–313] Date: [July 17, 2014] Time: [17:06]
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brothers’ beliefs prior to their conversion. Rather, their violence is characterized as performative and imitative. The brothers want to give “das Schauspiel einer Bilderstürmerei” (217), and in this, they are inspired by “Schwärmerei, Jugend und dem Beispiel der Niederländer” (216). Kleist’s story is curiously reticent when it comes to the brothers’ pre-conversion beliefs. Even the “Schwärmerei,” that is, the excessive imagination that inspires the brothers, is not specified by the attribute “religious.” Similarly, their display of violence is not characterized as religious fanaticism but as mindless brutality. It is sexually aggressive –“sich die frechsten und unverschämtesten Äußerungen gegen die Nonnen erlaubt” (218) – fuelled by alcohol and also rather ineffectual. Defeated by a superior power, the brothers do not actually bring their plans to fruition. While the brothers direct their violence outward, the violence effected by divine intervention or by the power of music – we can never be sure which – aims inward: it attacks the core of a person’s identity (“ihr innerstes Gemüt der- gestalt umzukehren,” 222). The violence of the brothers and their followers is visible and concrete – they carry axes, hatches, and crowbars – while the vio- lence effected by the power of music or religion is mysterious, selective, and immaterial but all the more lethal. The story intimates but never confirms that Sister Antonia fell victim to the power of the music that she (may or may not have) conducted. Although Antonia is the only casualty (whose death may or may not have been caused by church music), the deadening effect of the performance is felt by all. The salve regina and gloria in excelsis appear to extinguish the lives of the entire congregation if only for a moment:PROOF“als ob die ganze Bevölkerung der Kirche tot sei” (219). More important, the nuns’ music effects the permanent transformation of the brothers, whose personal identities are wiped out by the celestial sound. In a surprising and ironic twist, the now converted or insane brothers finally possess the power to shatter windows. What they could not accomplish with axes and crowbars, they now effect with their voices: they sing “mit einer Stimme, welche die Fenster des Hauses bersten machte” (220). If we compare the power of the nuns’ performance, which is inspired by deeply rooted faith, and the window-shattering force of the post-conversion siblings with their earlier, rather unspecific “Schwärmerei,” we might conclude that the brothers’ first display of violence remains ineffectual because they lack conviction. In “Die heilige Cäcilie,” only true believers pack a punch. Even so, this direct cor- relation between the profundity of one ’s faith and its deadliness would not lead to conPAGEflict if there were no religious diversity. Thus, the question arises how to contain violence in a force field of competing religions, all with their own claim to universal validity. Does religion possess the moral authority to prevent vio- lence, or is it itself a motor of violence? If the latter, it would fall to the authority of reason, instituted in the democratic state, to prevent and contain a violence that is engendered by competing religious universalisms. Surprisingly, “Die heilige Cäcilie” appears to reject both options. The power of religion (or of church music) does indeed prevent the violence of the brothers 04_50_3 Krimmer4.3d Pages: [295–313] Date: [July 17, 2014] Time: [17:06]
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but only at the cost of inflicting a far more insidious form of violence itself. The same might be said about the state, whose law-maintaining counter-violence manifests itself in the institutionalization of the perpetrators. Aside from this sin- gular action, however, Kleist’s state is peculiarly absent. Where we expect to find the authority of the state and its power to curb violence, there is a gaping hole. This void is first evident when the brothers cannot avail themselves of their expected inheritance “weil niemand an dem Orte war, an den sie sich hätten wen- den können” (217). Six years later, the authorities are again singularly inept when the mother of the four brothers comes to Aachen to inquire about her sons’ whereabouts. Finally, not only are the city authorities missing in action, but they are also not the unbiased arbiters of the “religionsneutraler Verfassungssstaat” (Beck 176) that Habermas wishes for. Where Habermas calls for unbiased obser- vers of religious turmoil, Kleist portrays authority figures whose behaviour is determined by their own religious beliefs. Thus, the commanding officer refuses to extend his protection to the monastery because he himself is an enemy of the Catholic religion: “der Offizier, der selbst ein Feind des Papsttums, und als sol- cher, wenigstens unter der Hand, der neuen Lehre zugetan war, wußte ihr unter dem staatsklugen Vorgeben, daß sie Geister sähe [. . .] die Wache zu verwei- gern” (217). In the textile trader Gotthelf’s version of the event, the authorities do intervene, but even in this telling it is too little, too late. The intervention oc- curs only after the threat has already been averted and consists mainly in random arrests of minor players. Curiously, when the mother comes to Aachen six years later, the system of alliances has changed, and the mayor of Aachen now appears to be in collusion with the abbess. At thePROOF very least, we know that the mayor himself informed the abbess of the mother’s visit. Regardless of which version we choose to believe, it is clear that, in Kleist’s story, the neutrality of the state is a fiction and its power to curb violence is questionable at best. The only state action that is carried out competently is the normalizing confinement of religious “otherness” to the asylum. Twice, readers are informed that the city owes the asylum to the mercy and foresight of the emperor. In Religion and the Rise of Modern Culture, Louis Dupré claims that the “Enlightenment marked a turning point in this process of secularization” (2). He points to the role of deism as a new faith that “could dispense with revelation altogether” (43).14 In deism, “reason alone, independently of any revelation, es- tablishes the necessary and sufficient principle of transcendence needed for the support of morality and the foundation of cosmology” (42–43). In Kleist’s story, however,PAGE there is no sphere of pure reason that is unmarked by religious belief. More important, there is also no “one” religion that could serve as the corner- stone of morality. Rather, we are dealing with religions in the plural, all of which exhibit a propensity towards violence.
14 On the “rejection of revealed religion” see also Byrne ix. 04_50_3 Krimmer4.3d Pages: [295–313] Date: [July 17, 2014] Time: [17:06]
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Just as Kleist’s story refuses to portray the state as a neutral actor capable of mediating religious conflict, it also refuses to align violence with irrationality. Peculiarly, the intended violence of the brothers and the violence effected by music or religion are associated with both reason and a heightened state of emo- tion. In the initial report, the brothers are characterized as inebriated and “er- hitzt,” and their attack is described as an “ausgelassenes Geschäft” (216). According to Veit Gotthelf,15 however, they planned their attack meticulously and with “gottlosem Scharfsinn” (221). Similarly, the nuns perform music with precision, reason, and emotion (“mit einer Präzision, einem Verstand und einer Empfindung,” 217). Clearly, the story refuses to align violence with either reason or emotion but consistently links it with both. Moreover, in associating the nuns with reason, precision, and emotion and the brothers with both “Scharfsinn” and “Ausgelassenheit,”“Die heilige Cäcilie” also undermines traditional gender codes. The text suggests that music is a feminine art (“die weibliche Geschlecht- sart dieser geheimnisvollen Kunst,” 217), only to then attribute the nuns’ music to an “unbekannten Meister” (217). Kleist does not pitch a stereotypically male order against a stereotypically female one, as has been argued (Haase and Freu- denberg 96; Gustafson), but consistently confounds expectations. In so doing, Kleist rejects pat dichotomies that cast religion as the polar opposite of reason. In Kleist’s text, reason, religion, and violence are not mutually exclusive. Indeed, violence can emanate from the heart of religion and from the centre of the sup- posedly rational and unbiased state, where otherness is forcibly institutionalized. The claim to universal validity, which Beck locates at the heart of religion’s potential for violence, relies on a claim aboutPROOF the truth of religious signs and re- velations: if these signs and revelations cannot be traced to divine agency, the claim to universal validity cannot be maintained. Thus, it is hardly surprising that Kleist’s text is centrally concerned with the authenticity of signs (see Neu- mann 376). The very first sentence of “Die heilige Cäcilie,” which refers to the 1566 Beeldenstorm in the Netherlands, points to the proper relation between sig- nifier and signified. At stake in this iconoclastic storm is the role of signs or, more precisely, the question whether the divine signified is present in the mate- rial sign. While Catholics worship in churches that are filled with images and perceive these images as imbued with the divine spirit, Protestants advocate the principle of sola fide and reject material crutches such as relics or rosaries. Pro- testants consider the Catholic display of material splendour a form of idolatry: it anchors the believer in the world of the flesh and thus impedes the progress of the soulPAGE to the transcendental plane. In this context, the “Bildersturm” essentially constitutes an attack on the identity of signifier and signified, on the idea that the spiritual world inheres in the sensual, material world.
15 Walter Hinderer points out that Veit Gotthelf’s name implies a certain ambiguity since Veit de- notes the anti-Christ (138). Thomas Groß makes the same point but adds that Saint Vitus (Veit) is called on to prevent epilepsy and madness (54). 04_50_3 Krimmer4.3d Pages: [295–313] Date: [July 17, 2014] Time: [17:06]
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Kleist further highlights the relation of signifier and signified when he names the feast of Corpus Christi as the day of the planned attack. Instituted by Pope Urban IV in 1264, the feast of Corpus Christi, or Fronleichnam, celebrates the presence of Christ in the Eucharist and thus points to another crucial differ- ence between the Protestant and the Catholic faith. While Catholics believe in transubstantiation, that is, in the literal transformation of bread and wine into the blood and body of Christ in the sacrament of the Eucharist, Protestants reject this doctrine and maintain that both substance and accidents of the sacramental object remain the same (see Prager 168). In Kleist’s story, the troubled relation of signifier and signified that is at stake in the religious realm is duplicated in the secular arena by that of body and mind. “Die heilige Cäcilie” repeatedly enacts a separation of body and mind. First of all, there are the nuns, who take an oath of celibacy and thus renounce their bodies in favour of a life devoted to the Holy Spirit (see Gustafson 118). Second, there is the patron saint of the convent, Saint Cecilia herself. Cecilia, who earned her reputation as patroness of music because of an error in transla- tion (see Maier), maintained her virginity even when married to a pagan. As a fierce defender of her chastity, she is at a distance to her body; as a Christian martyr, however, she is, as Marjorie Gelus points out, “awash in bloody corpore- ality” (289). Her executioners attempted to burn her in her bathroom. When this did not work, they beheaded her not once but three times. Even then, it took her three days to die. Clearly, the harmonious union of spiritual signified and mate- rial sign that is at the heart of the Catholic faith does not characterize the lives of its practitioners in Kleist’s story. PROOF In “Die heilige Cäcilie,” the most peculiar dissociation of body and spirit oc- curs when Sister Antonia reportedly lies unconscious in her room: “daß die Schwester in gänzlich bewußtlosem Zustande daniederliege” (217); “krank, be- wußtlos, schlechthin ihrer Glieder unmächtig” (227). And yet Antonia appears in the church to conduct the oratorio. The text never reconciles these conflicting ac- counts (see Pranger 125; Lühr 27). It remains a mystery whether Antonia recov- ered in time; whether she appears as a disembodied spirit, a ghost; or whether Saint Cecilia inhabited the body of Antonia to conduct the oratorio, an explanation forwarded by the abbess but, as Werner Hoffmeister explains, “ironisch untermi- niert” by the narrator (50).16 What we do know is that the nuns’ performance caused a conversion that manifests itself as a diminution of the body. In their enlightened/insane state, the brothers castigate their bodies. They sleep and eat lit- tle andPAGE generally lead a “geisterartige[s] Leben” (22), “dasselbe öde, gespensterar- tige Klosterleben” (224). In light of all these figures of dissociation of body and mind, it would appear that there is no easy, harmonious relation to one’sbodyin
16 Groß points out that Antonia’s name contains the word Ton (sound), which makes her a charac- ter whose name vouches for her art and thus a character in whom signifier and signified merge (43). 04_50_3 Krimmer4.3d Pages: [295–313] Date: [July 17, 2014] Time: [17:06]
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Kleist’s text: there is either complete denial and transcendence of the body or total surrender to the body and its animality. And it is not always clear which of these two options we are dealing with.17 Throughout, Kleist’s text ponders the nature and power of signs. It depicts an attack that never materializes because the sign that was meant to launch it – a visual, not an auditory sign (see Simons 283) – is not given. Unlike this revolu- tionary sign, which fails before it is conceived, the signs of music are supremely powerful. While the brothers succumb to an actual performance, the conversion of their mother is caused by the mere sight of the score, and even though she cannot read the notes (see Bohm, “Androgynous Realism” 212), “sie [. . .] meinte, in die Erde zu sinken, da sie gerade das gloria in excelsis aufgeschlagen fand [. . .] sie glaubte, bei dem bloßen Anblick ihre Sinne zu verlieren” (226–27). In Kleist’s story, as Thomas Heine contends, “the power lies in the sheet music” (80). We may not know where the power of religion begins and that of art ends, but we do know that the art form that has such a profound trans- formative effect relies on more than words. After all, the text that one would most expect to have a transformative effect in a church is the Bible, which remains peculiarly absent in Kleist’s story. In its stead, we find the “zauberische[n] Zei- chen” of the score. Just as the magical score underlines the materiality of music, the text’s emphasis on its “Rauschen” and “Zittern” highlights the physical, sensual char- acter of this most ethereal art. As Gordon Birrell explains, Kleist depicts sound as “a physical force” (77), and in so doing he toys with the idea of a form of art in which signifier and signified are truly one.PROOF While body and mind are irretriev- ably alienated from each other in “Die heilige Cäcilie,” the art of music unfolds in a perfect unison of signifier and signified. In German Romanticism, words were frequently seen as deficient. For example Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder and Ludwig Tieck’s Herzensergießungen eines kunstliebenden Klosterbruders, published by Tieck in 1796, laments the limitations of language:18 “Durch Worte herrschen wir über den ganzen Erdkreis; durch Worte erhandeln wir uns mit leichter Mühe alle Schätze der Erde. Nur das Unsichtbare, das über uns schwebt, ziehen Worte nicht in unser Gemüt herab” (60). In contrast, music was
17 Oliver Simons draws attention to the parallels between the mind-body dichotomy in “Die heilige Cäcilie” and that between the absence of consciousness in the marionette and infinite conscious- ness in God (see 280). 18 PAGEHerzensergießungen, which likens the contemplation of a work of art to the act of prayer (72) and the “Offenbarungen der Kunstgenies” to the “Mysterien unsrer heiligen Religion” (7), also relates a story in which the contemplation of a portrait of Saint Cecilia has a profound impact on the observer. When the painter Francesco Francia receives a picture of Saint Cecilia by Raphael, he is shaken: “es war ihm, als sänke er in voller Zerknirschung des Herzens vor einem höheren Wesen in die Knie” (18). For Francia, too, the experience marks the onset of madness: “Von der Zeit an war sein Gemüt in beständiger Verwirrung” (19). Interestingly, however, the shock that Francia suffers is as much the result of the transformative power of religious art as of the realiza- tion that Raphael’s art is superior to his own. 04_50_3 Krimmer4.3d Pages: [295–313] Date: [July 17, 2014] Time: [17:06]
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believed to expand the realm of expressibility. Indeed, music was conceived as a form of art that is absolute, authentic, and unbound by the confines of language (Lubkoll 341). Kleist himself famously characterized the art of music as “die Wurzel, oder vielmehr, um mich schulgerecht auszudrücken, als die algebraische Formel aller übrigen [Künste]” and claimed that he had “von meiner frühesten Jugend an, alles Allgemeine, was ich über die Dichtkunst gedacht habe, auf Töne bezogen” (2: 874–75). And yet, if signifier and signified are one in music, it is only because, in the kind of music Kleist has in mind, the signified is empty. Instead of discernible harmonies, there is nothing but an indiscriminate “Rauschen” (see Menke 243). In Wackenroder and Tieck’s text, both true art and religion are the result of divine inspiration (“himmlischen Ursprungs,” 28), and both defy language. As products of divine inspiration, art and religion are characterized by the unity of signifier and signified. As such, they are linked to transcendence but also to meaningless gibberish and madness. In Kleist’s supreme performance, a true co- incidentia oppositorum is possible. As Diethelm Brüggemann explains, the supreme performance in Kleist’s text includes both the gloria in excelsis in praise of the Lord and the salve regina in adoration of Mary, mother of Christ (600). This oneness, however, heralds ruin as much as it signals harmony. Its subjects/objects are removed from the human community in a state of either blissful enlightenment or pitiable abjection. And thus the story comes full circle: in the beginning, the idea that the divine spirit inheres in the image inspires a violent attack by those who insist on the separation of mind and matter. In the end, the nuns’ performance, which effectsPROOF a merger of signifier and signified in the art form of music, manifests as an even more insidious form of violence. It does not matter whether the merger of signifier and signified embodied in the nuns’ performance motivated a state of divine enlightenment or profound insan- ity in the brothers. In either state, there is no harmony of body and mind since transcendence is shown to require the castigation of the body while insanity im- plies the triumph of the animal body at the expense of the mind (see Schneider 146). The erasure of the distance between signifier and signified not only de- stroys a subject’s humanity but also carries the potential for violence. Conse- quently, Kleist’s story that appears to celebrate the power of music may ultimately contain a paean to the written word, which alone seems capable of curbing violence.19 Curiously, Kleist’s text includes an alternative to the planned attack on the church. What the brothers fail to accomplish with axes, the law achievesPAGE with one paragraph without taking recourse to violence. The monastery was secularized “vermöge eines Artikels im westfälischen Frieden” (219). Simi- larly, one might wonder if the mother’s conversion is spared the madness that ac- companies the transformation of her sons because it is effected by the Partitur
19 See Lubkoll, who claims that “Schrift wird geradezu als die geschichtsmächtige Kraft [. . .] bes- chrieben” (361). 04_50_3 Krimmer4.3d Pages: [295–313] Date: [July 17, 2014] Time: [17:06]
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alone without the benefit of a performance. It would appear that a more pedes- trian form of art that does not erase the difference between signifier and signified is preferable after all. In “Die heilige Cäcilie,” neither religion nor reason is free of the taint of vio- lence. The story struggles with a form of secularism that is defined not by the absence of religion but by religious diversity. This diversity, however, with its competing religious universalisms and its potential for violence implies that there is no longer “one” religion that can serve as the bedrock and pillar of community. To fill this void, the eighteenth century needed to identify and enforce new sources of political and moral authority. Thus, it is no accident that concepts of Kunstreligion, i.e. a concept of art that has appropriated the language and func- tion of religion (see Horn 238), became popular around 1800 (see Auerochs 207). In this fundamental recoding of the relation between literature, art, and religion, art was positioned to assume some of the roles that had previously been attributed to religion so that, as Percy Bysshe Shelley would have it in A Defence of Poetry, poets became the “legislators of the world.” In Kleist’s story, this conflation of religion and art is plainly evident, but it does not represent an ideal state. Rather, Kleist uncovers the ambiguity at the heart of Kunstreligion. The performance of the oratorio stands for an ideal art capable of moving the whole soul but also for a fateful art that corrodes the ratio- nal core of a person’s identity. A true believer may reap the supreme reward of achieving a state of transcendence, but he or she also runs the risk of falling vic- tim to animality. By making it impossible for readers to decide which of these two states they are dealing with, Kleist’s storyPROOF conveys a warning that, as long as we remain human, we will never be able to verify the authenticity of signs, nor will we achieve a true union of signifier and signified. And yet it may be precisely this impossibility to decide, Kleist’s “Hermeneutik des Verdachts,” that can coun- teract the violence inherent in universalist claims. In the world of “Die heilige Cä- cilie,” violence is inevitable, but for its readers there may yet be a way out.
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