THE POETICS OF AFFIRMATIVE FATALISM: LIFE, DEATH, AND MEANING-MAKING IN GOETHE, NIETZSCHE, AND HESSE by JACOB MATTHEW BARTO A DISSERTATION Presented to the Department of German and Scandinavian and the Graduate School of the University of Oregon in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy September 2017 DISSERTATION APPROVAL PAGE Student: Jacob Matthew Barto Title: The Poetics of Affirmative Fatalism: Life, Death, and Meaning-Making in Goethe, Nietzsche, and Hesse This dissertation has been accepted and approved in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in the Department of German and Scandinavian by: Michael Stern Chair Kenneth Calhoon Core Member Alexander Mathäs Core Member Mark Unno Institutional Representative and Sara D. Hodges Interim Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School Original approval signatures are on file with the University of Oregon Graduate School. Degree awarded September 2017. ii © 2017 Jacob Matthew Barto iii DISSERTATION ABSTRACT Jacob Matthew Barto Doctor of Philosophy Department of German and Scandinavian September 2017 Title: The Poetics of Affirmative Fatalism: Life, Death, and Meaning-Making in Goethe, Nietzsche, and Hesse The fundamental role that tragedy has played in the development of European philosophy and, by extension, psychology, has in part been due to its inextricability from an understanding of human life, facilitating its many transformations alongside major shifts in the political and social landscapes where it plays out. This dissertation draws a thread from the traditions of tragedy and German Trauerspiel through the nineteenth century and into the twentieth, focusing on the legacy of the tragic as it lived on in Nietzsche's psychological philosophy and was taken up by Hermann Hesse in his literary explorations of spiritual development and the fate of the German soul. Affirmative fatalism is the conceptual name for a tendency that I observe specifically in German literature from the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries, finding its clearest articulations in Goethe’s Faust and Nietzsche’s amor fati, and then becoming thematized itself in Hesse’s Glasperlenspiel. This study illustrates how ultimately in Hesse’s texts the sharp distinction is drawn between affirmative fatalism in its authentic sense – a love of and dynamic engagement with fate – and the passive fatalism of authoritarianism – a prostration before a prescribed fate, the obsequiousness of which is veiled in the language and pageantry of patriotic heroism. iv CURRICULUM VITAE NAME OF AUTHOR: Jacob Matthew Barto GRADUATE AND UNDERGRADUATE SCHOOLS ATTENDED: University of Oregon, Eugene University of Arizona, Tucson DEGREES AWARDED: Doctor of Philosophy, German, 2017, University of Oregon Master of Arts, German, 2010, University of Oregon Bachelor of Arts, German Studies, 2008, University of Arizona AREAS OF SPECIAL INTEREST: German Romanticism German Realism German Cinema Critical Theory PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE: Graduate Teaching Fellow, Department of German and Scandinavian, University of Oregon, Eugene, 2008-2017 Language Instructor, Deutsche Sommerschule am Pazifik, Portland State University, 2017 GRANTS, AWARD, AND HONORS: Phillip Hansen Graduate Fellowship in German, University of Oregon, 2015 Astrid M. Williams Graduate Fellowship in German, University of Oregon, 2013 Graduate School Research Award in German, University of Oregon, 2013 Phillip Hansen Graduate Fellowship in German, University of Oregon, 2012 v PUBLICATIONS: “Die Politik der Mehrdeutigkeit,” translation, in Journal Phänomenologie 39, Vienna: 2013 vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I must first thank Professors Kenneth Calhoon, Alexander Mathäs, and Mark Unno for their support of this project and patience with me throughout the process. I must also thank my advisor, Professor Michael Stern, for his guidance and mentorship over the last seven years as well as his unflagging faith in me and my project. I would like to thank my family, especially my parents, who, despite not really understanding what it is that literary scholars do, have never stopped encouraging me to chase my dreams. It would be a crime against decency not to thank my many colleagues and friends: Chet Lisiecki, the best Kumpel a Kerl could have, for his enduring friendship and intellectual support, his bright laugh, his heart of gold, and his uncanny ability to calm my fried nerves; Dana Rognlie, for her tireless enthusiasm, her love of knowledge, her unconditional companionship; the so-called Faust Club – Josiah Simon, Nicholas Reynolds, and Robert Mottram – for their abiding friendship, their humor, and their insight; Judith Lechner, for her wisdom and musical inspiration; Miriam Sessions, for goading me on like only a lifelong friend can; Adele Larson, for never giving up the enlightenment and levity that comes from the play with words; and innumerable others without whom this life could not justify itself to all eternity. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page I. INTRODUCTION …………………………………………………..... 9 II. THE CONCEPT OF AFFIRMATIVE FATALISM …………………… 15 What is Affirmative Fatalism? ………………………………………… 15 A Brief Historical Survey ……………………………………………… 20 What Lies Ahead ……………………………………………………… 38 III. NIETZSCHE’S TRAGIC RELIGIOSITY ……………………………. 42 Introduction …………………………………………………………… 42 Nihilism and Necessary Fictions ……………………………………… 48 Der Augenblick: On Time and the Modern Concept of Fate ………….. 58 Amor fati and Grace as “History’s Antidote” …………………………. 71 Conclusion …………………………………………………………….. 80 IV. HERMANN HESSE’S MYSTICAL CHRISTIANITY ………………. 83 Introduction ……………………………………………………………. 83 Zarathustras Wiederkehr: Risky Reincarnations ……………………… 87 “Vom Steine stäuben Stücke”: God, Fate, and the Self ……………….. 94 Unity and Devotion ……………………………………………………. 107 Conclusion …………………………………………………………….. 121 V. DAS GLASPERLENSPIEL AND THE POETICS OF AFFIRMATIVE FATALISM …………………………………………………………….. 123 Introduction ……………………………………………………………. 123 Der Regenmacher ……………………………………………………… 127 Der Beichtvater ………………………………………………………… 142 Indischer Lebenslauf …………………………………………………… 157 Castalian Knecht ……………………………………………………….. 167 VI. CONCLUSION ....................................................................................... 187 REFERENCES CITED………............................................................................ 193 viii CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION With rare exception, tragedy as a genre is lost to modernity, and its reception has become increasingly difficult as the colloquial use of the word (especially in an English- speaking context) has emptied it of its former significance. Everything sad and lamentable is conflated in the term, but this is, as any literary pedant would have one know, hardly a requisite of tragedy. Yet the tragic has not left us. And not only has it undergone transformations across compositional forms, but the understanding of the tragic imprinted itself so thoroughly on the thinkers of the nineteenth century – most importantly, in the context of this study, on Nietzsche – that it remains a key aspect of western philosophies and theories of psychology. As far as European thought and literature are concerned, tragedy plays a fundamental role in the conception of the individual human subject. And as far as European thinkers preoccupied with the structures and problems of subjectivity are concerned, the German philosophical and literary tradition is indispensable. The emergence and prominence of the individual in Enlightenment thought is inextricable from the development of capitalism in Europe. Hence does Goethe's Faust serve as a launching point for the exploration of affirmative fatalism in modern German literature. This most legendary figure, whose apostasy is not only religious but thoroughly political, prefigures the coming crisis of meaning and faith embodied in Nietzsche’s Zarathustra. The spiritual rebellion against God and all gods is mirrored in the individualist and capitalist rebellion against absolutism, but even these are haunted by 1 a faith – in the self and in capital to produce a sense of meaning. No longer handed down from a higher power, meaning for the modern subject issues from within itself. But the essence, nature, and function of the self become a grand series of questions for Faust and Zarathustra, both of whom are also consumed by a tragic pathos, thus placing the question of the individual self squarely within the tradition of tragic literature, preoccupied as it is with sacrifice. And it was Nietzsche above all who opened a proverbial vat of worms with his writing, inviting the next generation to languish over these problems while confronted with an unbelievably fast-changing and disorienting social and political reality. Hermann Hesse was one such author of that immediate post-Nietzsche generation. He indisputably ranks among the most celebrated, translated, and widely read German authors in the world, but for decades has been more or less neglected by literary scholarship – and perhaps precisely because of his popularity. While universities, in their tireless search for revenue streams, seem incapable of resisting the Faustian temptation to indulge every fresh and fleeting interest in new media with minimal historical distance and hindsight, literary scholars, expressing a need for a contrived intellectual austerity, have embraced a reactionary attitude toward Hesse's nearly century-old corpus. It is a tragedy of its own kind, to be sure: once beloved in the United States by hippies