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Home , Christoph Martin Wieland, Sturm und Drang

Line of Desire: the Body and the Spirit in the Pre-Erotic Texts of

Roderick R Milne

A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Department of Germanie Languages and Literatures University of Toronto

O Copyright by Roderick R Milne, 1998 National Library Bibliothèque nationale du Canada Acquisitions and Acquisitions et Bibliographie Services services bibiiographiques 395 Wellington Street 395. nie Wellington Ottawa ON KIA ON4 OttawaON K1AOW Canada Canada

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The author retains ownership of the L'auteur conserve la propriété du copyright in this thesis. Neither the droit d'auteur qui protège cette thèse. thesis nor substantial extracts fkom it Ni la thèse ni des extraits substantiels may be printed or otherwise de celle-ci ne doivent être imprimés . reproduced without the author's ou autrement reproduits sans son permission. autorisation. Abstract Roderick R. Milne, Doaor of Philosophy Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, University of Toronto, 1998.

Line of Desire: the Body and the Spirit in the Pre-Erotic Texts of Christoph Martin Wieland

The dissertation analyses Wieland's treatment of the body-spirit dichotomy in a series of

texts that spans the author's pre-erotic penod and concludes on the threshold to the most

significant intellectual reposit ioning of his literary career. My readings are geared towards

dserentiation of the individual texts around a cornmon constellation of problems. I interpret

Wieland's "great transformation" from seraphisrn to eroticism as a series of shifis and

readjustments oganized thematically around changing approaches to the body-spint dichotomy.

Each text employs a different strategy and arrives at a different result, thus maintaining its unique

configuration. Throughout, however, central issues such as "man's" position in the Chain of

Beïng and the imperative of moral education are conceptualized in terms of this dichotomy.

The concept of desire cuts a path through Wieland's pre-erotic thematizations of sexud

need. The "line of desire" - the formative "Iine of conflict" in Wieland's oeuvre - is a cut-Iine

running through the moral universe. In these texts, the attempts to extricate the "good self' from

the labyrinths of worldly love, to move beyond a Fundamental body-spirit division and to restore

confidence in universal harmony on a higher, more spiritual leve1 ultimately prove insufficient.

Changing strategies are indicative of a losing battle against the incursion of doubt. The speaking subject findly abandons totalking systems of belief As a series, the texts document the emergence of subjective consciousness in the awareness of the unresolvable division of body and spirit.

Of the seven texts presented, one, Arques, occupies the central position in the dissertation. A dramatic experiment that represents the split of a mode1 character into "two entirely different souls," Ar-s documents the emergence of "subjectivity in division" and throws previous notions ofwriting and belief into question. 1 organize the analysis around it. The first three texts, pietistic and Platonic literary-moral tracts, are interpreted as precursors. The last three, a heroic epic and two martyr , are read as attempts to restore images of moral order. While the attempts fail in this purpose, they prepare the way for the representation of divided, post-belief existence. Table of Contents

1 . Introduction ...... 1 1.1 Eroticism in the Context of Post-War Wieland Research ...... 5 1.2 Contemporary Views on Wieland's Eroticism ...... 15 1.3 The Scope of the Concept of Desire ...... 26 1.4 Application ...... 28

2 . Preconditions of Subjectivity ...... 37 2.1 Empfinhngen eines Christen, Sympathien: The Production of Spiritual Sensation ...... 37 2.1.1 Pietisrn, Sympathies and Sentiments ...... 39 2.1.2 Moral Sensations: the Repression and Sublimation of Desire .....45 2.1.3 Malleability and Persuasion ...... 51 2.1.4 Devotionai Literature ...... 54 2.1.5 Natures Sacred and Profane ...... 61 2.1.6 Sympathetic Circles ...... 64 2.1.7 Harnessing the body ...... 72 2.2 Theaga oder Unterredungen von SchOnheit und Liebe: Sensud Morality ...... 78 2.2.2 A Select Company of Life Artists ...... 85 2.2.3 The Art of Natural Representation ...... 89 2.2.4 BodyArt ...... 93 2.2.5 The Beginnings of Discourse ...... 99

.2 - The Destabilized Continuum and the Disharmonious Cosmos ...... 104 3.1 Araspes in and Shaftesbury ...... 107 3.1.1 Xenophon's episode ...... 107 3.1.2 Shaftesbury's Application ...... 108 3.2 Wieland's Araspes und Panthea, eine morolische Geschichte, in einer Reihe von Unterredungen and its Preface ...... 110 3 2.1 The Arguments of Cyrus and Araspes ...... L21 3.2.1.l Cyrus and Duty ...... 121 3.2.1.3 Araspes and Risk ...... 125 3.2.2 Double-talk, Disctosure and Incomprehension ...... 131 3.2.2.1 Double-talk ...... 134 3 .2.2.3 Disclosure ...... 140 3 .2.2.3 Incomprehension ...... 142 3-22 NaturesofLove ...... 147 3 .2.3.1 The Unspeakable Sublime ...... 147 3.2.3-2 Erotic Release ...... 153 3.2.4 Conctusions ...... 157 3.2.4. 1 Limitations of Cyrus ...... 157 3.2.4.2 Limitations of Panthea ...... 160

4 . Restorations of Order. Public and Private ...... 167 4.1 Cyrus: Active. Public Virtue and the War on Lust ...... 171 4.1. L Gender Discipline ...... 178 4.1.2 The Viability of Cyrus ...... 187 4.2 Lady Johanna Gray: Queenship versus Passive Virtue ...... 192 4.2. 1 Public and Private as a Point of Division ...... 195 4-32 iMartyrdom as Restoration of Order ...... 204 4.2.2.1 End of Uncertainty ...... 204 4.3.2.2 Golden Ages Paa and Hypothetical ...... 206 4-2-23 Dividends of Disembodirnent ...... 209 4.3 Ciementina von Ponetta: Virîue and the Schism in Private ...... 212 4.3.1 Clementina: Sacrifice and the Representation of Innocence ..... 216 4.3.1.1 Sacrifice Demanded by God ...... 216 4.3.1.2 Innocence and its Prolongation ...... 223 4-32 Grandison: Tolerance versus ...... 226 4.3.2.1 Living with Schisrn ...... 226 4.3 .2.3 The Moment of Disbelief ...... 7-7-3-

5 . Conclusion ...... 236 Introduction

Es ist eine traurige Liebe, wo man zum ersten Mal im Grab miteinander zu Bette geht. (Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, Aphorismet~73 ) This dissertation describes the rnanner in which the problern of desire manifests itself in a series of texts written by Christoph Martin Wieland between 1755 and 1760. My understanding of the term "desire" has human sexuality as its startïng point, although it goes beyond the unfulfilled urges of the body, as I will explain below. Despite an ever-expanding body of Wieland research,' the problem of desire in Wieland's texts has yet to be thoroughly and systematically ùivestigated. 1do not simply mean that the term "desire" has not been used, but that the whole question of sexuaw and its sublimation has been under- researched. 1 believe there are good arguments for tuming our interest to this question. To begin Mth one, Walter Erhart situates in the 1750s the elucidation of a "line of conflict'" that will run through Wieland's entire oeuvre. This line is clearly evident in the relation between body and spirit. The line of conflict is

1 See the 700-page Wiekznd-Bibiiogrczphie (Gottfried Günther and Heidi Zeilinger, 1983) as well as the ongoing updates in Wieiund-Stzidien (Zeilinger, Viia Ottenbacher) and the Le~sit~gYearbook (Hansjorg Schelle). For an overview and orientation in Wieland research, sec : Klaus Schaefer Chrisioph Muriin Wielmd,a Metzler edition; Wieland: Epoche - Werke - Wirkzing, a ccllaborative effort of Sven-Aage Jsrgensen, Herbert Jaumann. John McCarthy and Horst Thomé that continues in the tradition set out by Wilfkied Barner's and Gunther Grimm's Lrssing: Epoche - Werke - Wirktrng. Etlt,weizing iind Sefbstazi~iurz~ng25. In order to make the dissertation more readable. 1 have translated many short German quotations into English. Since 1also want to remain close to the texts, 1 have also left many words and passages untranslated. This last group includes matter that I find particularly cogent, or particularly difficult to render in English without Loss. 2

also the line of desire. It is a "fault line," a Line that divides, but also a line dong which the texts are composed. It is obvious that something central happens in the last half of the 1750s that affects Wieland's writing for years to corne. Yet while the period has often been described in terms such as metamorphosis or great transformation (see: John A. McCarthy "Wielands Metamorphose"), the pre-erotic texts are generally viewed as precursors and therefore generate Little interpretative interest. Sometimes they are considered in the context of Wieland's personal bi~graphy,~ sometimes they warrant bief mention in research on later penods, and sometimes specific aspects of specific texts are considered? but it is rare that the texts are interpreted thematically in a series.' And yet these texts document the most significant intellectual shift in Wieland's long and varied literary career. Their analysis will increase our awareness of the underlying tensions of many of Wieland's subsequent texts. As well, as a "case study" it will help us reconstmct some of the aesthetic and normative horizons that governed the representation of the body in eighteenth-century Gerrnan literature.

3 See, for one example: Margaret F. Davidson, C.M. Wieland's Profession of love: Lecture anci Lmgiage. ' This direction is favored currently, as exemplified by Uwe Blasig's midy of Wieland' s religious develo pment (Die religiase Entwicklrrng desfnihen Christoph Mmin Wields)and Reinhart Tschapke's study of his use of rhetoric (Anmutige Vemrnft Christoph Martii? Wieland zind die Rhetorik). This is a very hitful avenue of study, however, with the wide scope of the theme investigated in this dissertation, 1 hope to establish some connections between these often disparate aspects of Wieland's early production without reducing the texts through generalization. 5 The prime examples are the earlier ideational-biographical studies that cover many years of Wieland's literary activity, in particular, the contributions of Friedrich Sengle ( Wieland) and Viktor Michel (C-M. Wieland: Laformation et I'évohition de son esprit jzqu'en 1 VI), which are discussed below. The selected texts reflect some of the major moments in eighteenth-century thought. They are rnarked by the clash of two world views: the fist sees the world as a consistent, metaphysically harmonious and morally normative system of universal scope; and the second is more skeptical, empirical and doubting. In light of the important accomplishments of Wieland's next period, the growing significance of the second view and the eventual destruction of the illusion of a thoroughly harmonious universe are generally seen as positive and creatively liberating events. This transition fiom "apparently knowing to questioning" (Klaus Bappler, Der philosophtsche Wieland 15) corresponds to a shift fiom ascetic to erotic writing. In terms of the body, one can speak of two end-points, repression-disembodiment and experience-embodiment - the former, a reflection of the rnordly binding demands of a universal system, the latter, a reflection of the empiricist emphasis on sensory perception. A description of the path taken between the No points in these early texts will help sensitize us to problems in later texts such as Agathon and Musarion, whose significance in the hstory of is more readily accepted. Even without reference to fiitue developments, the problematization of desire in these texts is subtle and complex and warrants our attention. 1hope that the description of some of these complexities will help spark interest in these offen overlooked texts. Research into this period (Switzerland 1775-60) scarcely touches our topic6 This is to be expected, since so many of these texts argue for the abnegation of physical pleasure and censure the representation of sexuality.

6 Since it is most often not directly concemed with my subject, 1will not at this point provide an oveMew of the research on the selected texts. Rather, 1 will refer to the individual studies that are pertinent in the main body of the text. By situating my analysis of this problem in a "pre-erotic" period, 1am, in a sense, looking for something where it is not. By contrast, the erotic texts of the next period (Biberach, 1760s) more directly represent human sexual need and thus lend themselves to analyses of the problematization of sexuality. In order to orient the dissertation within Wieland research, it is necessary to consider the research that de& with the next period. My use of the term '"pre-erotic" stresses the connections as well as the differences between the two periods. The early texts anticipate later developments; their problematizations of desire lay the ideational groundwork for future developments. However, they are not just of interest as "transitional" works, but also complex and worthy of study in their own right. The C,'omische ~rzühizingen,'written at the beginning of the 1%Os, signals the start of the erotic penod, which, in order to be dealt with appropriately, must be spared for a separate study. On the surface, the ascetic-pietistic texts that we will soon encounter may appear to have little in commoa with these skeptical- erotic tales. Yet in its reversai of the hierarchy of spirit over body, the Comische Erzahltingm presents a sustained response to the earlier writing~.~Thus, the fotms and the ideas f?om which it polemically breaks provide a rich context for

7 1 use the singular when refening to the Comische Erzahlzmgen, because I am treating it as a single collection, rather than as a series of individual texts. For the sarne , 1 also use the singular when refemng t o Wieland' s Sympathien and Empfidungen eines Christen. 8 This view is not uncommon; see, for example: Wolfgang Tenzler, "Na~h~on,"Die Kmst ai Lie ben: Erotische Dichtiozg zmd Prosa von Christoph Mmtin Wieland: "Aber die ganze Wahrheit der Komischett Erzahhrngen und der Werke in ihrern Umkreis ist eben ihre bewuf3te Antithese zur Züricher Seraphik mm Sentimentalismus des Spatrokokos, ist ihr aktivistischer Impetus und ihre ironisch-distanierte Kritik an Prüderie, Eitelkeit, Untreue, Launenhaftigkeit, platonischem Schwiirmen und bloDer Perfektion in Dingen des Lebens und der Liebe." (390) The challenge, however, is to progress beyond the not entirely unfounded clichés. reading the new period it announces. The texts 1 wiU be examining in the main body of the dissertation wdI help identiS. this context. In the following, I will consider post-war and contemporary Wieland research, paticularly as it applies to erotic texts such as the Comzsche Erzdhlungen, for it is here that the Merent stands on Wieland's representations of the body are pronounced. A consideration of the research on the erotic texts will help provide a context for a reading of the pre-erotic texts. In turn, this reading may help determine sorne of the key issues in the erotic texts and in much of Wieland's later writing. Beginnuig with this ove~ewof some of the major moments of Wieland research, 1 hope to gradually move towards a working definition of desire, one that will facilitate an examination of the relation between body and spirit fhm the perspective of human sexuality, but also move beyond this basic theme and locate in the problematization of the relation of body and spirit the emergence of an awareness of subjective consciousness.

1.1 Eroticism in the Context of Post-War Wieland Research In a 1933 article that rnarked the bicentennial of Wieland's birth, Walter Benjamin offered a rather discouraging view of Wieland reception. Not only, Benjamin attests, is Wieland no longer read, he is dso no longer readable. His texts are "embedded in a historical period, narrowly lirnited by conditions that no longer a~ply.~Althou& there are some indications that Wieland continues to

9 "Wesentlich ist das geschichtliche Eingebettetsein Wielands in die Epoche zwischen Barock und der Romantik, und wesentlicher noch, daB dort sein Werk so eng in der Umklammerung der Zeitumstade liegt, daf3 es Mcht ohne seine wertvollsten Partien ni verletzen sich herauslosen lieBe." (Gesommelte Schnflen W 1: 3 95) be ignored late in the twentieth century,1° this statement speaks volumes about the state of Wieland reception before the Second World War. Whde there are now BeiBner reading and rediscovering Wieland, for Benjamin no such arguments existed. In the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century, three requirements comrnonly expected of serious German authors impacted negatively on Wieland reception: 1) that the author be a genius and original thinker; 2) that the author be a contributor to a literature and culture defined in tems of national characteristics; and 3) that the author serve as a moral agent." Wieland's historically "embedded writing did not correspond to the expectations of this era. An adept "intertextualist," Wieland was branded as an unoriginal non-genius (an imitator, even a plagiarist, a "charneleon," one who composes self and texts fkom a patchwork of other texts). Moreover, his cosmopoiitan and "French

10 Cacilia Friedrich observed that the general public (in East Germany!) continued to be show a Iack of interest in Wieland in the 1970s: "Da0 seitdem keine entscheidende Ànderung zu beobachten ist, geht aus den von halleschen Literatursoziologen 1970 und 1978 durchgefihrten und tur die Bezirke Halle und Leipzig reprasentativen Befiagungen nach Lektüre und bevorzugten Schriftstellem hervor, in der Wielands Name oder eines seiner Werke nicht auftaucht." ("Zur Idee von Liebe und Ehe in Wielands " 86). It is possible that this situation has changed, particularly with the arriva1 of an af5ordable reprint edition in 1989. One notes, however, a certain hstration on the part of Wieland aficionados that spans the century. Consider, for instance, the scholars who have derïded general readers for their unwillingness or inability to fathom the intricacies of Wieland's texts. In 1953, Friedrich BeiBner castigated conternporaries for having "forgotten how to read." He did so by quoting 's 1894 lament that "since the Romantics and particularly at present" the " of content" has inured average readers to the subtleties of Wieland's "poetry of style" (BeiBner, "Poesie des Stils" 14 and Seuffert, "Wielands hofische Dichningen" 708). Likewise, as recently as 1989, Jan Philipp Reemtsma bemoaned with his characteristic irony the "way of the world" (Lauf der Welt) for leaving modem readers without the tools to appreciate Wieland's poems ("C.M.Wieland's Combabus" 26). " Here and below, see: Herbert Jaurnann in Jsrgensen et al., Epoche 189-207; also, Jaumann, "Die verweigerte Alteritat oder über den Horizont der Frage, wie Wieland zur 'Weimarer Nassik' steht." attitudes and writings (which became prominent immediately derthe period we shall examine) were not reconcilable with the seriousness of bourgeoist2andor "German spirit;" hence his "charactery7could not be integrated into the character of the cultural nation. The erotic texts, which always tiamed the sexual event with distancing narrative techniques rather than representing passion with lifelike immediacy, were viewed as artificial. Furthemore, on the basis of Wieland's "metamorphosis" fiom "Seraph" to "Epicurean" (Le. on the shift in thinking announced by the period we shall examine), the author7smoral stability was attacked. The skeptical, atheistic and sensualist-erotic elements did not confom to the ideological preconceptions of German nationalism: le nationalistischer der Geist der Kultur sich gebiüdete, je züchtiger die "teutsche Tugend" gegen welsche Wollust zu Felde zog, um so mehr wurde Wieland aus der lebendigen literarischen Überliefenq verdriingt. '" While greatly simplified, this oveMew already suggests an obstacle to the analysis of the body in Wieland's texts: Wieland's shakers would describe his erotic representations as immoral, unnatural, unsenous, and, given the French or otherwise foreign influence, unoriginal and un-German; at the same time, his boosters would cede this temtory and argue his merit on other grounds. This is in

" See Heinz SchlaEer's cornrnents about the bourgeois reception of the erotic genre: "Die Differenz von Form und Inhalt, Spiel und Entwurf, welche unsere Gattung kennzeichnet, ist fir das bürgerliche Literaturverstandnis nicht mehr einsichtig, da es weder Spiel noch Entwurfals Instrumente und Bilder der Ernanzipation mlat, sondern nur ein Kanon verordneter Erlebnisse, die durch den Austrag im Individuellen Gesellschaft nicht gefahrden." (Mzisa iocosa 224) 13 Reinhard Tschapke, Anmutige Veminfl 1-2. This tendency began early, consider, for instance the symbolic c'execution~yof Wieland by the Gottinger Hain (Hans- Jürgen Schrader, "Mit Feuer, Schwert und schlechtem Gewissen. Zum Kreuuug der Hainbündler gegen Wieland. "). part what happened with Friedrich Sengle's seminal interpretive biography of 1948. Sengle's Wieland, written in the "bleak circumstances" of the Second World War, formulates the main argument for post-war reception, presenting a comprehensive representation of Wieiand as a subject with an important "message" for the post-war period. Sengle likens the state of Wieland scholarship, in contrast to research on Lessing, Klopstock, and Herder, to a "Trümmerfeld" (9). He holds the "Germanie tum" in scholarship responsible and thus rehabilitates a "Geman " that counters certain ideological tendencies of nationalism. Since then, the rehabilitation of Wieland has become "one of the rituals of Wieland research."'" Sengle presents Wieland as a "many-sided (vielgestaltig) "human" contrast to an overly homogeneous understandhg of Gexman culture. l5 The dispassionate composure of Wieland's main texts offered a welcome respite from the discourses of excess that had recently become so familiar: Die frohen und wirklich weisen Schrifisteller sind in unserm Volk so selten geworden, ddwir jeden doppelt achten sollten, wenn wir von dem verfàlschten Ideenkult, von der Mdlosigkeit und Phantastik welche unser Iahrhundert nicht nur in Deutschland kennzeichnen, genesen wollen. Dies Buch stellt einem anspruchsvollen, von seinen

14 "Seither gehort es zu den Ritualen der Wieland-Forschung, die Wirkungsgeschichte des "undeutschen", "wollüstigen" und "oberflachlichen" Wieland anzuprangern und im Gegenzug die liingst fallige "Rehabilitation" eines "verkannten" Autors anzukündigen." (Erhart, Eni-meiung 1) Sengle made without a doubt the most important scholarly contribution to the postwar reappraisal of Wieland. In terms of popular reception, however, Arno Schmidt's radio essay "Wieland oder die Prosaformen" may deserve equal billing. 15 "Dieser Wieiand soll, eben weil er bei aller Einheit so vielgestaltig ist, nicht definiert, sondern in einer sorgfdtigen Darstellung seiner Geschichte sichtbar gemacht werden." (10) Leidenschaften oder Meinungen besessenen Zeitaiter das Bild eines bescheidenen, versohdichen und immer heiteren Geistes entgegen. (1 2) In this context, Sengle describes his preference during the war period for art that hds a rniddle ground (Mozart, Wieland) over art that culminates in violent passions (Wagner, Beethoven, the expressionists). Wieland's "unconquerable good humor" ("unbesiegbare Heiterkeit" 1 l) is thus a tonic to overwrought emotions. The rise in Wieland research &ter the war and the rehabilïtation of the "cosmopolitan-European" and "h~manitarian"~~mode1 that Wieland came to represent are in part attributable to growing distrust in the nationdistic tendencies of earlier re~earch,'~but they are specificaily linked, at least for Sengle, to a new positioning on the question of passion. Put sirnply, Wieland the "humanist" is read as an alternative to the literature of passionate excess, especially the Stürmer und Driinger and the Romantics with their kational tendencies. The influentid 1953 Biberach lectures on Wieland, Vier Biberacher Vortrage, largely follow the direction indicated by Sengle. Hans Werner Seiffert, for example, projects an image of a good hurnored and humanistic author who can help us recover an urgently needed "cheerful truth" ("heitere Wahrheit"). Yet while Seiffert' s conclusion negates the dominant tems of the earlier reception

16 In Wielmzds Begrzff der Hzimatzitüt (published 1949, written 1946-47), Hans WolfTheim mesa history-of-ideas ("Geistesgeschichte") reappraisal of Wieland as a central figure of eighteenth-century humanistic spirit in a similar postwar context: "Die Frage nach Hurnanitat, nach dem Recht des Menschen als Individuum, nach dem Menschen ais Menschen, mua - in der Mitte des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts - wieder m einem Gegenstand der Besi~ungund m einem Gegenstand der Entscheidung werden, weshalb der Geist des achtzehnten Jahrhunderts uns in dengeistigen Entscheidungen unserer Epoche wieder mm AnlaB der stiindigen Prüfbng und Selbstprüfung in einer neuen, michtbaren Begegnung werden muB." (1 0) l7 Alfred Anger, Deufsches Rokoko 3 8; see aiso, Karl S. Guthke, "Alptraum der Vemunft" 14 1. ("Wieland erscheint uns heute nicht mehr undeutsch, unchristlich, unsittlich," "Wielandbild und Wielandforschung" 10 I), the values these ternis irnply still remain. It is still deemed necessary to defend Wieland against the "anti-German" cliché, despite the critic's historical proxùnity to the era of National Socialism, hence the bankmptcy of so-called Germanic values. Wieland is also neither unchristian nor indecent. The danger of such a defense of Wieland as a person is that it may discourage the study of the apparently most immoral, unchristian and indecent of his passages and texts. This would disadvantage the analysis of the erotic moments in his oeuvre and thereby retard research into his representations of the body. One indication in this direction is the lecture on Musarion by Emil Staiger.lR He uses the term to circumvent discussion of one of the text's more problematic aspects: ob es sich da um eine gobe Verkennung des Radikden-Bosen handelt, ist eine Frage meiter Ordnung. Wieland ist Hurnanist genug, um eine optimistische Schatzung des

Menschen fur ersprieBlich ni hdten. (4 1)

18 Since it will be discussed again below, I wi11 mention that M2rswion. oder die Philosophie der Grarien is an erotic, mock-philosophical verse whose beautifid and charrning heroine cures the recluse hero, Phanias, of two distinct mental afflictions, first of idealism, then of over-anxious passion. She cures him of idealism by a tactical deployment of sensual pleasure: the hero 's philosopher fnends, one representing Stoicisrn and the other, Pythagorianism, are brought to their downfdl - one by the bottle, one by the sight of the breasts of Musarion's alluring servant. Phanias then abandons the ascetic and world- abnegating aspects of his own recently found philosophical idealism. In the subsequent bedroom scene, he not surprisingly manifests overanxious and excessive sexual passion. This too is cured, by Musarion's bedside denial. Hence, sexual gratification is delayed until the idyllic marriage which, in turn, represents the harmony of world and spirit. John A. McCarthy sumrn&zes the standard reading: "The key is moderation in al1 things, for excess only distorts and distresses. In fact, Musarion is perhaps the best poetic expression of Wieland's celebrated of the golden mean." ("Christoph Martin Wieland" 598) The direction implied by this passage, to understand the humanistic motivations and to overlook the weak points (Le., lack of a concept of evil), risks avoiding the issues that make such texts difficult to read in the first place (for instance, Benjamin's daim that Wieland's oeuvre has "wenig Ansprüche ad' Tiefe" 395). These approaches, designed to excite post-war interest in Wieland, rnay have in fact fostered a lack of interest, to the extent that the "message" of humanity and moderation remained as quaint as the fineries of stylistic omamentation that most readers, following BeiBner, no longer appreciated. To take another example, BeiBnerYsassertion that the defining feature of Wieland's verse is its "poetry of style," in other words, a poetics of the "most beautiful 'expression' possible" ( 14), implies that our understanding of Wieland should begin with an appreciation of that which is rnost beautiful, instead of, Say, that which is rnost problernatic. A recurring image in Wieland's depiction of the body is the veil or cloth, the intervening fabric that shrouds and suggests, restrains and excites. To speak figuratively, one senses in this lecture series which, with Musarion, arrives at a central text for Wieland's deployment of the veil, a certain hesitation at removing the veil and looking below the surface. At the same tirne, however, the veil in style and in content, i.e., the deployment in Wieland's verse of shrouds and other interposed materials to cover certain features and enhance others, is always the product of a dialectic, which ideally should be renewed, translated or transposed with each reading. The veiled text is incomplete and suggestive, it provokes the reader to imagine the missing elernent~.'~

19 My reading of Wieland's Biberach eroticism owes a great deal to Karl Hein Kausch's analysis of the veil motif ("Die Kunst der Grazie'' esp. 29-36). Kausch distinguishes three separate origins for the motif: the irrernovabie veil of nature; the moving veil of the Graces; and the temporariiy impeding bride's veil. For Kausch, the veil motif elicits our The Comische Errohlungen represents Wieland's kstand perhaps most radical experïment in eroticism. Its fist edition is cornprised of four separate but stylistically and thematically linked texts. These are mock heroic accounts of the arnorous adventures of characters fkotn Greek mythology. Based on what Wieland's contemporaries easily recognized as French rn~dels,~~these tales present different variations on a cornmon theme: the primacy of physical desire over the restraining elements of vktue and convention in their various fonns. The epochal significance of these £iivolous tales is apparent on many levels. For example, on a structural level, they reverse the hierarchical order of the earlier ascetic-pietistic texts. Whereas in the earlier texts God was the authority who intervened against the pleasures of the body, here Zeus, the mock God and the highest figure of authority in this fictional world, is the not unding plaything of Cupid and the bodily desires he represents. With the universe thus stood on its head, these representations of passion necessitate of an ironic fiamework that allows the reader to observe without necessarily empathizing. The Ckmische Erzahlungen is a central text of Wieland's representation of the body in the erotic period, and its reception is a good indicator of the status of this question in Wieland research. At the beginning of the post-war period, Sengle dismissed these tales as "fashionable 'riens"' on the "periphery" of Wieland's oeuvre (173). For Sengle, tliese "occasional poems" serve as a negative contrast to the "attempt at greatness" that marks the central texts in which the poet "strives to surpass

fascination ("Reiz"), and the moment of unveiling provokes both expectation and fear. " E.g. Crébillon, Lafontaine, Marmontel in the review in the Allgemeine Deulsche Sibliothek 1-2 ( 1765): 2 1 5-27. hirnself7and thus becomes a "foreninnef' for the great "contents" of a coming age (169). Moreover, with limited bourgeois experience of the world, this 'pietist converted to sensudity" could have no personal knowledge of the erotic subject matter of the text, which, under the guise of mythology, was the love-life of "grandes darne^."^' Thus, as Agathon is elevated, the frivolous tales and, with them, the rococo-anacreontic "Granen des ~leùien,"~~are diminished in value. Sengle recognizes the centrality of 'Lplayfulnessand sociability" in the Comische Erzahlungen, but implies that this "anti-heroic pr~grarn"~does not warrant serious consideration (1 7 1). In this respect 1follow Seiffert (1 966), arguing, on the contrary, that the Comische Erzahlungen is important, not in spite of its playfùl character, but precisely because of it;2Jfor it is in sex play that the process

" Sengle would seem to suggest that texts which retlect in a concrete manner the sociological situation of the individual who wrote them are sornehow more legitimate than those that do not. This cnticisrn could apply to nurnerous Wieland texts, including many which Sengle holds in considerable esteem. Indeed, Wolfgang Paulsen characterizes Wieland psychologically by the separation of two distinct levels of existence: the personal and the literary (Der Mensch und sein Werk in psychologischen Perqektiven 96). -73 The term is fiom Wieland's Swiss patron, , whose "Von den Grazien des Kleinen: Im Namen und zum Besten der Anakreontchen" uses concepts with which Wieland agreed during his pre-erotic period to cnticize the fnvolous school with which Wieland was subsequently identified: "Das sittlich Kleine mit dem korperlichen Heinen zu paaren, ist eine leichte Arbeit: da es schon an sich selbst so Hein ist, und zu der Natur der kleinen Seelen passet; aber das sittlich Grosse so zu bearbeiten, daB es neben dern korperlich und dem sittlich Kleinen stehet, ohne sie zu verderben, und sie vielmehr erhebt: dam ist Geschicklichkeit vonnothen. Man muB die Kunst wissen, den Weisen und den Tugendhafien, ihre Denkungsart und ihr Betragen, klein ni machen; man mu0 die Runzeln des Emstes verbergen ko~en,den Triibsinn der Weisheit in Lustigkeit, und die Schwemuth der Tugend in Leichtsim verwandeln." ( 159) 23 The term is from Anselm Maler, Der Held im Salon: Zmmtiheroischen Progrmm deziischcr Rokoko-Epik. " "Bei al1 ihrem Spielcharakter haben die Erzahlungen fir Wieland doch gnindsatdiche Bedeutung. Die Goner werden entthront. Ihre Vermenschlichung, ihre Zügellosigkeiten, sind nicht nur Symbol für die Entmythologisierung von Wielands Denken, sie geben ihm mgleich auch Gelegenheit, die Gesellschaft seiner Zeit zu satinsieren." of demystification and enlightenment is initiated. Indeed, the same holds true in Agathon, where the moment of disillusion and demystification on which the entire text turns is inextricable from the sex play that results in the hero's seduction. While the climax and the subsequent satiety and ernptiness are elaborately couched in "serious" philosophical reflection, they are also undeniably sexuai moments." The tuniing point ofthis "kst Bildungsroman" is the sexual encounter of a Wgin hero and a "grande dame." Sengle7sdismissal of the Comische Erzahlungen cm be contrasted to Viktor Michel's 1938 afnrmation. A "French foremer in the interpretive- biography of Wieland, Michel identifies the "duplicity of [Wieland's] nature" as a "continual oscillation between seriousness and badinage" (C. -M. Wieland 170) and praises his wtuosity .in depicting the "unperceived progress of desire" and the "effacement of consciousness in amorous ecstasy" (347). Michel ernphasizes Wieland's "rehabilitation of voluphiousness":

Contestable peut-être pour la morale, cette réhabilitation de la volupté aux dépens de la convention, cette irrévérence de l'esprit, qui ôte sa pudeur au beau pour émoustiller l'imagination par le charme piquant du joli, contribuaient à émanciper le goût (353) Michel recognizes the importance of the al1 too easily dismissed badinage and erotic play in Wieland's intellechial history and in the "duplicitous" character of his self (more irnportantly: texts). By linking eroticism to the "effacement of consciousness7"and thus suggesting that a desire which progresses "unperceived is in a sense a counter force to consciousness, Michel's biography - in which,

(Seiffert, "Nachwort," MS 4:935) " On sex and the philosophical apparatus in Agathon, see Abraham Gotthelf Kastner's charming 1768 dialogue, "Agathon und Tom Jones. Ein Rornanheldengesprach" (Einige Forlesmgen in der Koniglichen Gesellschqft &w Gottingen). incidentally, the spint of badinage seems to have survived - suggests a potentially htfi~.Iavenue of investigation.

1.2 Conternporary Views on Wieland's Eroticism While the rehabilitation of Wieland fkom the nineteenth century rnay no longer be necessary, one must still take a position with respect to the post-war Biberach conference and particularly to Sengle, who presents the most sustained and comprehensive response to Benjamin's ghettoization of Wieland. Hans Werner Seiffert's 1984 article, "Zu einigen Fragen der Wieland-Rezeption und Wieland-Forschung," onginally a contribution to a second Biberach conference, reconsiders the direction taken by Wieland research thrty years derthe fïrst conference. Seiffert begins by asking whether the strategy of emphasinng Wieland's "ideal of the middle" and his human ni^?' has been a success. His silence in the rest of the article about the "ided of the middle" may suggest a tacit recognition of the fnùtlessness of this line of inqujl. Yet for Sesert, humanity remains the central value. He now develops the concept of Wieland's hurnanity in the context of Wieland's role in advancing the Enlightenment in the German speaking world and intemationally, particularly, in furthering political and social discourse. For example, Seiffert details Wieland's political courage in his interview with Napoleon. This praiseworthy example introduces a staternent that reflects Seiffert's continued perception of a need to defend Wieland agahst the charges of a past century, especially the image of a lascivious rococo poet: Man sollte von einer solchen Haltung aus endlich ehneues Wielandbild zeichnen und das Gerede vom Rokoko-Wieland und dem iasziven Eranzosisierenden Dichter sein lassen und statt dessen den wirkiichen Wieland erkemen, der in den seinen Schnfien Gr wahre Humanitat, für die Rechte des Menschen gegen Unterdriicker eintrat, der sich an der Seite derer steilte, die fiir diese Rechte k-pfien. (43 1) Given the fact that Seflert recognized the importance of the sexual moment for Wieland's representation of the process of demystification in the above quoted "Nachwort" to an edition of Wieland's verse (MS 4:935), the perceived need to address the charges of lasciviousness surprises me. In fact, 1think the time has corne to celebrate this aspect of his ~riting.~~ Since 1970, scholars have taken issue with Sengle and the post-war approaches to Wieland. Rather than a new consensus, however, they have been furnished with heterogeneous representations of Wieland. These are indicative of contradictions both within our reading cornmunities2' and within Wieland's texts. indeed, the motto of contemporary Wieland research, fomulated by Karl S. Guthke and reiterated by Erhart, may very well be "soviele Wieland Bücher, soviele Wieland-Bilder" (Guthke, "Alptraum der Vernunft" 14 1; Erhart, Ent,weizing 1 ). The "new plurdisrn" helps underscore the seemingly opposing tendencies within Wieland's oeuvre, so that the author is either a humanist or a forerunner of , either an eroticist or a moralist, either a defender of reason or one who opens avenues to the representation of the irrational. Current readings of the Comische Erzahlungen will help guide us through contemporary views on Wieland's representations of the body. To begin with,

'6 For a perhaps somewhat unfair problematkation of the "Begriff von Mitte und unparteiischer Haltung" in Wieland's political thought on the French Revolution, see: Bemd Weyergraf, Der skeptzsche BNrger (here XIII). " Stanley Fish argues that the rneanings of texts are not set or stable, rather, they are functions of the authority of the "interpretive comrnunities" in which they are read. These communities (one imagines the university departrnents, disciplines and sub-disciplines that set agendas and establish canons) "are responsible both for the shape of a reader's activities and for the texts those activities produce" (1s nere a Text in Bis C~ms?322). there are the two opposing tendencies that Jürgen Jacobs observes in its ïnterpretation ("Zur literargeschichtlichen Einordnung" 30). On the one hanci, it can be discounted in the tradition of Sengle as occasional poetry for an aristocratie patron (hence the difficulty in integrating it within the canon of bourgeois literature). On the other, a moral function can be assigned to the text. This second line, which is taken by John A. McCarthy and W. Daniel Wilson, may be new for the specific text, but it does not really mark a departure fiom earlier Wieland reception. McCarthy stresses that the text has a "lesson which must be taken seriously" and thus shares a degree of continuity with the moral didacticism of earlier texts? Wilson argues that even the "most fnvolous" of the tales are "clearly conceived to have an effect." This effect is decidedly moral: the intended reader is dissuaded fhm both prudery and sensual indulgence and guided to a more "humane middle gro~nd."~~While Wilson opposes Sengle's devaluation of the specific text, he not only continues to propagate the notion of Wieland as the humanistic champion of the Golden Mean, he also extends it to a

'"n "Wielands Metamorphose," McCarthy argues against the notion of significant discontinuity between Wieland's Swiss and Biberach period. He supplies examples of Swiss sensuality (Atzti-Ovid) and of Biberach morality in eroticism (ComischeErzahIzmgen). Nat only does the Comische Erzühlmgen, like earlier texts, illustrate the body/soul dichotomy ("zweifache Art zu lieben'') that is the basis of Wieland's thought (154), it also presents an "emst ni nehmende Lehre trotz des ironischen Tons" (160). McCarthy reduces the importance of the ironic tone. and with itl the eroticism of the text, in order to render an impression of greater continuity within Wieland's oeuvre. 73 According to Wilson. the text's fictive readers, that is, the readers the narrator refers to or addresses, are led, by the end of ail four poems, to "self-recognition and self- improvement" and to the "development" of greater "humanityl' ("Die Facher vors Gesicht" 2 18- 19). The intended reader moves toward a "humane middle ground" when the fictive reader who enjoys the erotic for its own sake is unmasked in the fourth poem as a fYivolous "Hem Geck" (2 18-2 1). text which formerly rnay have been seen an irritant because of the diniculties it presented to such a reading. While Wilson's reading is plausible, in other cases the cliché of Wieland as hurnanist and upholder of values is appiied to erotic texts as a selcevident tnith. For instance, Charlotte Koppe's essay on Musarion completely minimizes the text's erotic and subversive potential and implies that Wieland was still working within an essentially Gottschedian conception of poetic function: "Wieland ging es hauptsachlich um moralische Maximen, die er dem Adressaten einsichtiger machen wollte" ("Christoph Martin Wielands Beziehmgen zur Antike in der Verserzahlung Musarion" 152). Yet this message of "true humanity" ("wahre Menschlichkeit" 150)- masks, as Erhart recognizes, an entire range of "discontinuities and transformations." Koppe's interpretation unwitthgly validates Benjamin's assertion that Wieland's oeuvre has little clah to depth. The ease and the lucidity of the text's narration and the happy, idyllic ending which effortlessly resolves the complications of plot exert a calmness dong the surface, but behind this a number of tensions remain unresolved, as Erhart so

convincing demonstrates .jO It is udikely that this tendency to reduce the text to a single message can succeed in generating much interest for the study of Wieland. In the case of the erotic texts, moral-humanistic preconceptions may even impede the analysis of the erotic moment and, with it, the problernatization of body and spirit.

30 1 camot repeat in detail Erhart's complex argument. The following is an example of his refieshing approach to the happy ending: "Fast mag es scheinen, der Text gelangt in einer derartigen Geschwindigkeit zu dem unveranderbaren Status einer zeitlosen Idylle, um sich vor jenen Diskontinuitaten und Umkehningen ai schützen, die er mvor in ebenso schneller Reihenfolge praktiziert hatte." (Erhart, "Beziehungsexperimente" 355) Moreover, the single message cannot account for the polyvalence of Wieland's eroticism. Like the sex game ofcoquetry-precocity where no means simultaneously yes and no and, as a consequence, evokes an elastic indetenninacy that bridges the gap between these absolute terms, the message of Wieland's coquette scripts may resist determination. Studies which recognize this potential, such as Elizabeth Boa's "Sex and Sen~ibility''~'improve our sensitivity to the inherently labile character of the texts. Thus, the erotic writings cm operate simuitaneously on multiple levels - as sensual stimulants and decadent amusements, as moral warnings and hurnan satires, as representations of irrational drives, exercises in Enlightenment, and as documents of the "dialectic of the Enlightenment ."32 Yet texts that Say yes and no to the representation of sex expose themselves to criticism on two f?onts. They are seen as too decadent and too erotic fiom one perspective and as too moral and not pomographic enough £iom another. In this context, the clichés of readings that predate even Sengle are still repeated. As recently as 1995, Uwe Hentschel writes: Die Comischen Er=ihkrngen handeln nur noch bedingt von der Lebenswelt des

Ve~assers.Mit gewissem Recht stellte schon 19 L 3 Leo Coke fest ' [.. .] seine Gestalten, es sind Puppen ohne Leben und seine Erotik, seine 'Schreibtischerotik'. eine

3 1 Eliabeth Boa, "Sex and Sensibility,"refers to the treatment of sexual relations in Rousseau's Emile : because women are (economicaily and physically) dependent on men, they must simultaneously arouse and control male desire. By saying "no" to mean "yes," "women at once inflarne desire and awaken the respect and protectiveness which are the foundations of sexual morality" (193), that is, providing the strategy works. '' See: Peter J. Brenner, "Kritische Form: Zur Dialektik der Aufkianing in Wieland's Don Sylvio von R~salva.~' ausgetüfielte. ausgekiügelte Sinnlichkeit, die nichts Warmes, nichts Lebendiges und

nichts Befieiendes hat .'" With this view of the histoncal person of the author as a cold and lifieless pedant whose erotic compositions owe theu conception to a "study desk," Hentschel contrasts Wieland with the image of a Storm-and-stress Heinse who breaks taboo and discovers in the sex drive a "nature-given, elemental phenornenon. "34 In a sense, Hentschel is right. Even the most daring of Wieland's erotic texts exhibit a degree of social constraint that is totally lacking in Heinse's unpublished poems. Mer Araspes und Panthea, one of the key texts of our study, Wieland consistently places the rhetoric of uncontrolled passion within distancing narrative fiames. Thus, the Comzsche Erzühlungen, elsewhere seen as too compromising for the image of a hurnanist, here becomes too compromised for inclusion in the "Sexual Undenvorlds of the Enlighter~ment."~' If post-modern literary theory is to open new avenues to the study of Wieland's representation of the body, then we must move beyond the conception of the author as the hurnanist of the Golden Mean. From a tactical standpoint,

33 "Erotik im Selbstverstiindnis Wielands" 142, quoting Colze, "War Chrktoph Martin Wielands Sinnlichkeit eine epikurische Schweinheit?" 9. " Hentschel 149. The biographical accuracy of the daim that Wieland's early eroticism was exclusively a "head birth" is questionable, given the fact while writing these tales Wieland was also attending to love groves in the "shepherd's hour" with his Biberach maid and there conceived a child out of wedlock (Thomas C. Stames, CW1 :23 1). Be that as it may, Heinse, according to Hentschel, was unattractive to women and therefore had to content hirnself with "enjoying in poetic play what was denied hirn in reality" (149). His texts were also conceived at the study desk. in a literal sense, the same holds tme for writers in general. For more on Wieland's self-distancing fiom the sexually explicit verse of the young protégé as well as Heinse's response, see: Manfred Dick, Derjungr Heinse in seiner Zeit 148-64; also. Max L. Baumer, "Mehr als Wieland sep! Wilhelm Heinses Rezeption und Kritik des Wielandschen Werkes." '' This is the title of a book edited by G. S. Rousseau and Roy Porter. this image is not sufficiently marginal, ex-centric and off-center to insure these texts admittance into altemate literary canons (see, for instance: Linda Hutcheon, A Poetics of Poslrnodemisrn esp. 60). Yet there are strong arguments for feminist and gay readings of Wieland's texts. The fact that Paul Derks credits the tale of "Juno und Ganymed" from the Comzsche Erzâhizmgen with the fist thematization of homosexuality in German literature (Die Schmde der heilzgen Paderastie 232-46) should in itself be sufficient to incite new readuigs of sexuality in Also, beginnuig with Die Natur der Dinge, which was in part written for Sophie Gutemann (later: La Roche), women were ofien specificdly included in Wieland's intended audience (for instance, in the Sympathien, Cyna, and the martyr plays discussed below) and his texts not only won widespread appeal among the genteel women of his age, they also found favor arnong nineteenth-century femini~ts.~'The undeniable fact of his male

36 For an example see Simon Richter's recent study, "Wieland and the Homoerotics of Reading." Richter's starting point is the contrast of Heinse to Wieland. Richter ventures that if -citing a letter Wieland wrote to Gleim - Heinse's "entire sou1 is a Priap." then "Wieland's entire sou1 is a breast" (5 1). While Wieland avoids the phallic violence of Heinse's verse, he "proffers the breast" to his (male?) readers. Anxious to implicate Wieland in the production of a "homosocial network" (see "Winckelmann's Progeny"). Richter speculates that these breasts were read by eighteenth-century males as substitute penises ("the mediating breast itself turns out to be phallic" 46). Accordingly, texts such as the Comische Er=ihZzmgen lock their author "in a triple bind that is thoroughly gay" (46). Unfortunately, Richter's analysis is as unconvincing as it is daring. The problem is not that these texts are unopen to gay readings, but that Richter, having declared the breast a penis and supplied examples of breasts depiaed as erect, hence phallic sexual organs from other sowces, fails to engage in a senous reading of the texts themselves. He does not even verify whether the breasts in Wieland's texts are equdy as hard, pointy, and penis-like as the ones in other sources. 37 Two examples of men tackling the question of Wieland and the other sex are Stames, "Wieland und die Frauenfrage," and Paulsen, "Die emdpierte Frau in Wielands Weltbild." The question is multifaceted and leads in many interesting directions, for instance to feminist readings of the fnendship letters that Wieland exchanged with Sophie Guterrnann- La Roche (Barbara Becker-Cantarino, "Zur Theoiie der literarischen Freundschafl im 18. gender and his apparently heterosexual sexual orientation rnay make Wieland an unlikely candidate for gay and femïnist readings; however, the non-exclusive category of gender studies moves beyond such limitations. Under this banner, feminist thinking about the notion of masquerade can, for example, serve as a basis for rereading masquerade texts, such as Der Nezre ~rnadis.'~This would, in tum, encourage us to revisit the motive of the veil and al1 its seerningly unperturbed surfaces. For modem readers, the Limitations in which these representations of the body were written no longer apply and the titillations such playhl transgressions of social convention rnay once have produced are no longer imrnediately accessible. For Ehrich-Haefeli, Musarion's conformity to the constraùits of polite language and its avoidance of physical detail and direct subjective involvement are indicative of "that depressive emptiness that always threatens when human control of nature has been too successfùl" ("Korper und Sprache" 255). The elucidation of desire never arrives at the depiction of terminal sexual acts with real-life consequences, such as conception; rather, Wieland's eroticism exiles the

Jahrhundert am Beispiel der Sophie La Roche"; Verena Ehrich-Haefeli. "Gestehungskosten tugendempfindsamer Freundschafi: Probleme der weiblichen Rolle im Briefwechsel Wieland - Sophie La Roche bis mm Erscheinen der Siemheim."). 3 8 "'Maskerade' ist ein zentraier Begrifffeministischer Diskussionen der letaen Jahre. In den aktuellen Gender Studies namlich werden die kulturelle Konstruiertheit der Geschlechterrollen und der Geschlechtsidentitat, das InfiagesteIlen der biologischen Zweiheit der Geschlechter und die daraus resultierende Freiheit mr SeIbst-Konstruktion des Individuums analysiert. Daraus ergibt sich die Idee der Maskerade, die einerseits historisch verstanden wird: als Zwang mr Konforrnitat (sich weiblich kleiden, schminken, sich weiblich verhalten); andererseits aber als zeitgenossische (postmoderne) Chance des fieien Spiels mit Identitaten und Selbstschopfungen." (Gertrud Lehnert, "Weiblichkeit als Maskerade" 12) On eighteenth-century masquerade practices (in which Our author need not have necessady participated in order to have reflected them in his writing), see: Terry Castle, "The Culture of Travesty. Sexuality and masquerade in eighteenth-century England." representation of sexuality to a world of strictly controiled make-believe; it is both a product and an instrument of repres~ion.'~The sociological context of the pietistic repression of sens~ality~~being foreign to our relatively liberated age, it is hardly surprising when we remain unafTected by the ernanicipatory contents of such texts, The reconstruction of this normative horizon will be facilitated by the detailed study of Wieland's pre-erotic texts. The non-binding nature of these tentative probings of fantasy, imagination and subjective passion is a release fkom the pressures of a morally-binding, all-inclusive system of belief that conceived of the vaitten text in terms of its prescriptive moral function. Without escaping the "fundamental limitation of the erotic world (Schlaffer, Musa Iocosa 2 L7), the mock-serious and £iivolous-philosophical erotic moment is woven into discourses that extend beyond sexual vignettes. It subverts the very barriers it erects to contain desire and inscribes itself into a polymorphous discourse. Musarion's art or science of tactically veiling and unveiling produces barriers that are incitements to discourse as much as they are enticements to a voyeuristic and fetishistic form of enjoyment. The didectic of the veil stimulates a consciousness of taboo and its potential Uifringement. As neither a harlot nor a prude, Musarion

'' "Um abschiieBend ni Wieland zurückzukehren, so scheint doch in unsem Zusammenhang bezeichnend. daB bei den vielen Verfühningsgeschichten und Schaferstiindchen Ncht davon die Rede ist, daB ein Kind gezeugt und geboren wird, auch Ncht im abschlieBenden Ausblick au€ das Dauerglück von Musarion und Phanias; es stirbt auch Nejemand. Diese Ebene. wo Leben gegeben wird oder auch Tod, mit der jeder ais Person durch seine SexuaLitat in einem tiefen Sinn zusamrnenhhgt, bleibt hier verdrwgt." (256) 40 See Theodor Verweyen's description of the "normative horizons7' against which the rococo reacted "provozierend und in emanzipatorischer Absicht" ("Emanzipation der Sinnlichkeit im Rokoko" 3 05). represents a volatility, a kinetic potential, between two points. Between these

opposing poles - the poles which OUI- investigation of the pre-erotic texts will help establish - there are displacement, masquerade, and, ultimately, self- recognition in an dienated or otherwise veiled f~rm.~'"Fnvolous" eroticism, as Jakob Mauvillon realized in 177 1, represents, like dl literary innovation, an expansion of our "system of th~ught.'"~As a putting into discourse of sex, it contributes to the expansion of what Foucault describes as the modem European

" The key text for this reading is Wolfgang Preisendanz's 1962 "Wieland und die VerserziiNung des 18. Jahrhunderts." Preisendanz recognizes a "principal of poetically alienated imitation" in cornic verse that operates for eighteenth-century readers "in dem scharfsichtigen Wiedererkennen eines Eigentlichen im Inkognîto eines Uneigentlichen, Fremden, Sonderbaren und AuDergewohnlichen" (20). The text mirrors eighteenth-century reality by means of a mask, a displacement (see also: Kausch, "Die Kunst der Grazie;" Schlaffer, Milm locosa). In its masking function, the fmtasy world of Wieland's eroticism is, From this perspective, "reduced to sipifjing the "vertraute Erfahningswirklichkeit" shared by the author and his contemporary readers (24). One senses in this perceptive argument the old accusation of trivialkation: fantasy is not given fiil reign, its full scope remains untested. However, reality is also reduced, triviaiized, implicated in masquerade, hence, subverted. The question is, inasmuch as texts suggest subjective standpoints, does the "transtextuaIity" that Preisendanz twenty years later identified as the cornpositional principle of Wieland's Der Neire Amadis ("Die Muse Belesenheit" 540) also suggest the possibility of trans-subjectivity as a movement of the subject between standpoints and a hiding of the subject beneath masks? And inasmuch as the texts represent interchangeable sexual proclivities, is the transtextual also potentially transsexual, experiment in the representation of sexuality with different masks, different forms? It is unfortunate that Burkhard Moenninghoff s Intertexlz~akïlim scherzhafreen Epos does not question Amadis for its "subversive potential." " "Alle unsre mordisch guten und bosen Eigenschaften sind gewisse Fertigkeiten, auf dieser oder jener Art N handein, welche nicht aus dieser oder jener besondern Idee in unserm Gehirne, sondern aus dem ganzen System von Ideen, das wir haben, entspringt. Ais0 wirkt auch die Dichtkunst nicht dadurch, daB sie unserm Geiste diese oder jene Vorstellung einpragt, sondem dadurch, da0 sie das ganze System unsrer Ideen enveitert, und durch ofters wiederholte Eindrücke auf eine gewisse Art modelt. Ueberhaupt thut das Lesen die Wirkung, daB es die Sphiire unsrer ideen vermehrt, und uns ais0 bessert." (Jakob Mauvilion and Ludwig August Unzer, (Iber den Werih einzger deziischer Dichter 2:176, letter identified as Mauvillon's by Thomas Bleicher, "Literaturvermittiung, Literaturkritik, Literaturentwicklung" 66.) "science of se~uality.'~~Indeed, the non-reproductive aspect of these sexual representations makes them particularly interesting for gay interpretation. Until now, 1 have concentrated on discussing scholarshp specific to Wieland's erotic texts. This tack may have seemed a bit unusual, since my dissertation is limited to the analysis of pre-erotic texts. Yet 1hoped to signal some of the issues involved in the curent discussion of Wieland's representation of sexuality. I have tried very briefly to sketch some of the this central aspect of Wieland's oeuvre has been under-researched and to indicate some of the arguments that favor our renewed interest. I return to the image of the veil, that thin and undulating layer of fabric that covers Musarion's body and negotiates between the repression and the satisfaction of physicd desire. As it rernains suspended as the final bamier to the resolution of desire in these texts, the layer of impediment incites the imagination of the avid observer, but it also situates the observed behmd a range of ultimately impenetrable masks and disguises, which Musarion animates. The masks employed in the non-binding play of the erotic texts teach us the constnictedness of the human subject as it is written along the impenetrable divide between observer and observed. If these texts, as some have suggested, lack depth, it is because they animate the suface. A study of pre-erotic texts, in which the veil is not yet fully in place, will disclose some of the tensions that the erotic texts so suggestively hide.

43 "Rather than the uniform concem to hide sex, rather than a general prudishness of language, what distinguishes these last three centuries is the variety, the wide dispersion of devices that were invented for speaking about it, for having it be spoken about, for inducing it to speak of itself, for listening, recording, transcribing, and redistributing what is said about it: around sex, a whole network of varying, specific, and coercive transpositions into discourse. Rather than a massive censorship, beginning with the verbal proprieties imposed by the Age of Reason, what was involved was a regulated and polymorphous incitement to discourse." (Histoty of SexzîaIity 1 :1 3 ; 1 :3 4) 1.3 The Scope of the Concept of Desire

In the foliowing, 1 will tum to the application in literary studies of some aspects of psycho-analytical theory. This should help expand the concept of desire enough to warrant the analysis of texts that are not specificdy erotic in nature. I hope to widen the scope of study to a point where the relation of body and spirit leads into the analysis of the constitutive line of contlict in Wieland's texts, in other words, to the point where the %ne of desire" converges with Erhart's "line of conflict." Fuially, I will turn to the application of the term desire to the analysis of the selected texts and briefly map out the course of the dissertation. Since we can ody desire what we do not have, desire is a condition of lack, not one of satiety. Desire in this sense is not equivdent to biological need. The needs of the body cm be met and sated; the term desire, however, indicates a remainder of want beyond temporary satiety. In psychoanalyticai tems, the assumption behind this notion is the irretrievable loss of the (imagined) state of infantile repletion. According to Lacanian psychoanalytical theory, the desiring subject is of necessity a divided subject, a subject of lack, a subject that cannot be hypostatized. Division as a fundamental fact of human consciousness is written into the gramrnar of our languages as the essential difference between the subject and the world: The production of the subject, the speaking '1,' requires a repudiation of the matemal or of an original pleasure that precedes language itself The '1' emerges only in relation to a 'you,' a 'he, ' or a 'she' who one is not; hence the speaking subject emerges as part of the linguistic chain of intelligibility by virtue of this founding differentiation. Al1 further efforts to si@@ within language thus presuppose that this speaking being is originally and permanently separated from its origin in pleasure. (Judith Butler, "Desire" 3 80) According to this notion, the human condition is one of alienation from an original state. The subject is impelled to find in others, using a language that is anchored in society's "Symbolic Order," the recognition of his or her own desire. Hence, the ego is "not autonomous, but subordinated and alienated to the people and images with which it has identified during its development" (Madan Sarup, Jacques Lacan 72). The main elements of this psychic history are Oedipal (Freudian): estrangement from the Other (as mother); castration; government by the law (as father). Sexual release does not bring desire to an end; rather, after the original separation, no single object of any need can entirely satisfy the drive (Jacques Lacan, "Deconstruction of the Drive" 66). The appeal of this Lacanian concept is its insistence upon the impossibility of closure. Unstilled desire and, with it, the dividedness of the human subject are

John Falvey provides a succinct definition of Lacan's three orders of psychic perception: "Easiest to grasp is the Symbolic Order, the mind's attempt to find support for its behavior, especially decision-making, by reference to external systems or codes of conduct. It embraces any prescriptive reference to code, hierarchy or norm, cultural or social, which the individual might call into play. Another of Lacan's Orders is the Imaginary, the personal fantasies. expectations, partly idiosyncratic, and partly explicable as the maturing of the psychic organism. They involve a measure of paranoia, in distorting the relationship between self and the world. Particularly in love-relationships, the behavior of the self and that of the Other can cause psychological injury through the exposure and contact of two Imaginary Orders. The most obscure of Lacan's Orders is the Real: it is the domain outside the subject, the constraints which the subject "keeps bumping up against," and it is not accessible to the adaptive processes of Symbolization." ("Marivaux and Diderot" 12 10- 1 1) See also Patrick Colm Hogan's excellent article, "Structure and Ambiguity in the Symbolic Order": "Again, the difference between the Real, on the one hand, and the Imaginary and the Symbolic, on the other, is crucial precisely because it splits, irreconcilably, constituting subject [Real] from constituted subject baginary], speaking subject meal] from spoken subject [Symbolic], and thus allows the possibility of the unconscious. The difference between the Imaginary and the Symbolic, in contrast, is crucial because only with the latter is one's self-image integrated into a social and ethical system. It is only with the Symbolic that law may enter" (18-19). not terminal tragedies; rather, desire provokes a resistance to stasis. It is the point of entry for the creative energies of our imagination. Even in the discourse of the fked identity that is ego, the unconscious is spoken as an instability in language. Similarly, even texts which carefirlly censure the imaginative flow may document on closer inspection the presence of a divided and desiring subject. The premise of Lacanian narratology is that the repressed cm be rediscovered by reading agaïnst the grain, by reading in the gaps, lapses and ruphires of discourse, and in the sliding meanings of signifiers. With the application of this paradigm to narration, the uni@ and the wholeness of content and form, so essential to traditional criticism, are viewed as "sutures" that cover over the elaboration of a split subject (Robert Con Davis 857). My readings of the selected texts do not consistently apply the principles of Lacanian narratology; and 1 devote much time to the "manifest meanings" of the texts, as these are fundamental components of their underlying tensions. The point is not to pathologize the text and its author, but to see within the divisions a questioning of desire that occurs on multiple levels. The supposition of an unsubsumed order as a sort of irritant and impetus beyond the ego does not mean, for instance, that we can dispense with the terms of repression and sublimation, but it allows us to view these exercises in control as sustained efforts at "suturing" over a fundamental gap - efforts that can yield in narrative the fabric of both text and veil.

1.4 Application Wieland's pre-erotic texts which on one level argue for the repression of the body are every bit as implicated in the dialectic of desire as the erotic texts which more directly represent the body's pleasures. The distinction between sexual need and desire is superticially less essential for the pre-erotic texts: they never represent the satisfaction of sexual need and they withhold the promise of temporary satiety, so that the inability to anive at a solution to the problem of need converges with the inability to solve the problem of desire. Yet the pre- erotic texts, which withhold the representation of sexual satisfaction, and the erotic texts, which represent this moment within certain delimiting frames, lend themselves to the analysis of the relation of the needs of the body and the fantasies of the individual (Lacan's Imaginary Order) to the law which establishes extemal codes of conduct and sets conditions upon the Mfihent of needs (Lacan's Symbolic Order). Moreover, each pre-erotic text that we will examine represents human subjectivity as a divided state. The "subject" of these texts is not a whole ego who exercises mastery over the entire psychic apparatus, but, even in the atternpted representation of rnastery, a written expression of dividedness. The texts present, for the most part, a series of strategies for the sublimation of instinct at the level of the individual and at the level of society. They participate in the process of civilization, commandeering the poetic word into the seMce of instinct renunciation, and providing images for the "cultural 'frustration "' of individual and societyJ5 At the same the, they suggest the presence of an unsubsurned and perhaps unsubsumable elernent that may reside at a more fundamental level than the cIash beîween the needs and the rules of addt

45 "Sublimation of instinct is an especially conspicuous feature of cultural development; it is what makes it possible for higher psychicai activities, scientific, artistic or ideological, to play such an important pan in civilized life. [. ..] it is impossible to overlook the extent to which civilization is built up upon a renunciation of instinct, how much it presupposes precisely the non-satisfaction (by suppression, repression or some other rneans?) of powefil instincts. This cultural "fiustration" dominates the large field of social relationships between human beings." (Sigmund Freud, "Civilization and its Discontents" 286-87) See also: Herbert Marcuse, Eros and CiviIization. sexuality. 1believe that the interplay of the various sublimation strategies with the impossibility of aniving at a satisfactory stasis makes in particular these pre- erotic texts worthy of analysis. These readings of Wieland are open to criticism as "Lackanian." The term is tiom Eugene W. Holland ("The Ideology of Lack in Lackanianism"), who, following Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, argues that the relevance of Lacan's notion of Oedipal lack, which is used "again and again" by North Amencan academic literary "Lackanians," is historically contingent, for it is speczc to capitalism, in particular to the patriarchal nuclear family, now on the decline. The debate on the universality versus relativity of the mentality of lack exceeds the parameters of this dissertation; and 1 make no clairn about the applicability of Lacanian theory to other texts and other periods. However, if we accept Holland7sargument, the "Oedipal period" must then be socio-historically bracketed, on one side by the eighteenth-century transition fiom the extended to the nuclear family, on the other by the contemporary loss in paternal authority. While Niklas Luhmann did not integrate Wieland into the "codification of intimacy" that occurred in (Love as Passion 116)' it is clear that the manner in which desire is represented in these texts reflects dominant cultural and intellectual tendencies of the pre-Romantic period. For instance, the links between the vimies of sensibility and the sublimation of sexuality (see: Gerhard Sauder, "Ernpfindsamkeit - Sublimierte Sexualitat?") are apparent throughout these texts, which, as we shall see, sirnultaneously problematize and promote this cultural movernent. The Enlightenment as a process of intellectud emancipation and demystification is also written into the texts. Erhart relates this histoncdy contingent, pan-European movement to the psychic process of maturation as understood by Lacan: Das 18. Jahrhundert namlich wiederholt in seinen Projektionen einen ProzeD, den die moderne Psychoanalyse in den Folgen fnihkuidlicher Sozialisation rekonstmiert hat: Der Entzweiungs- und EmamipationsprozeB der Selbstwerdung provoziert eine Imaginationstatigkeit, die sich in den Phantasmen der AU-Einheit und der Verschmelzung mit dem "Anderen" manifestien, mgleich jedoch regressive Energien freizusetzen begimt. (Ei~tweiung349) From this perspective, Kant's famous dictum - "Aufklaning ist der Ausgang des Menschen aus seiner selbstverschuldeten ~nrnündigkeit'~~- invites the application of psychoanalytic theory to an age that conceptualized its goals as an end of adolescence. As revealed by these texts, the penod in which the nuclear family, modem capitalism and individualism first emerge corresponds to a period of disbelief, questionhg and re-orientation. Situated at the beginning of the turn of philosophy to s~bjectivity,~'the subjects represented in Wieland's texts emerge f?om their loss of an all-encompassing system of belief as products of self-division. In this sense, Wieland's texts are not merely embedded in the specificity of their age; rather, as sensitive registers of the loss of a coherent

46 The Reclam volume Wics ist Azij7darzing? (ed. Ehrhard Bahr) provides a selection of eighteenth-century responses to the question, including Kant's celebrated amer (8- 17) and Wieland's six qzrestions as to the meaning of the term (22-28). 47 Andrew Bowie: "Modem philosophy begins when the basis upon which the world is interpreted ceases to be a deity whose pattern has already been imprinted into existence and becomes instead Our reflection upon Our own thinking about the world." Bowie continues: "The tum of philosop hy to subjectivity accompanies the complex and contradictory changes wrought by "modernity": the rise of capitalist individualism, the growing success of scientific method in controlling nature, the decline of traditional, theologically Iegitimated authorities. and the gradua1 emergence, together with as a branch of philosophy, of aesthetic 'autonomy,' the idea that works of art have a status which cannot be attributed to any other natural object or human product." (Aestherzcsmd Subjeclivzty 1-2) world view and the loss of a binding central perspective, they appeal to our equally historically contingent "post-modem" sensibilities. The post-modern returns us to the skeptical, anti-idealistic tendencies of the late Enlightenment that Wieland, beginning with the central text of our penod, will corne to represent.'* The point of departwe for Erhart's "functional history" ("Funktions- geschichte") of Wieland's Agathon-project is the convergence of the notions of division and self-enlightenment (i.e., "Entzweiung und Selbstau&l-g7'). From this perspective, the analysis of the demythologizing products of self- enlightenrnent,Jgsuch as the erotic texts, begins by locating the moment of subjective division. What was earlier taken for granted as a passing phase of limited importance cm now be placed in the center of Wieland's creative endeavor, which, in turn, is understood as a signature for the age: Man geht nicht fehl, den Ursprung und die Entstehung des Wielandschen Werkes diesem biographischen und werkgeschichtlichen Bruch zuuschreiben. Statt der Selbsterfahrung einer "schwiirmenschen" Dichternatur jedoch wird in Wielands Auseinandersetning mit dem eigenen Frühwerk eine Konfliktlinie sichtbar, die weit

" "Entzweiung, Kontingenz und Dissens bleiben die Gnindlagen für eine skeptische Selbstbeschreibung, die sich auf die Koharenz unbezweifelter Allgemeinheiten nicht mehr verlaBt . Wdxend das 19. Jahrhundert eine Moderne initiierte, die dem widersprüchlichen Selbstbild des 'dix-huitième' eine ganze Reihe neuer Ordnungssyterne und Integrationskonzepte gegenüberstellte, so scheint das 20. Jahrhundert die dabei formulierten Ansprüche - step by step - wieder aufgelost m haben." (Erhard, Entnvezuung 4 1 1 - 12) 49 Erhart's term "Selbstaufklaning" prioritizes the self as opposed to society at large in interpreting enlightenment in Wieland's oeuvre. The notion that projects of cultural and political enlightenment are always also "work on the self' facilitates the analysis of texts that Vary fiom the openiy political to the private. In this manner, a line can be traced from the anti-politicai position of the Sympathzen, through Wieland's efforts at and his analysis of the French Revolution, to the collapse of political hope and the "Arbeit an sich selbst" that characterizes the final (see En~nueiirng395-408). über Wielands pnvate Konstellation hinaus zur Signatur der Epoche gehort. (Ekweiung 25) Although îhere are many "conflicts" in the texts, Erhart unites the tem "K~nfl~linie"in the singular. in other words, he attempts to put a hger on a point whence the diversity and polyvalence of Wieland's oeuvre emanate. This "line of conflict" is the line dong which, according to my description, the question of desire is written. It is the thread, the suture, and the fault line ninning through these texts. Through the individual texts and fkom one text to another, the progress of the line of desire as exhibited in the representations of the relation between body and spirit does not always follow a straight course, yet the variety of strategies between the ascetic and the erotic texts can be arranged into an intellectually and psychologically plausible sequence. Hence, the study of these texts takes on the aspect of an ideahonal history. The object is not to reconstmct a psycho- biography based on the application of ego-psychology to an author. Rather, by looking at each text in detail, 1 hope to move beyond the undifferentiated notion of a single, global transformation in the "author's psyche" and find instead nuances and differentiation . Each text operates wiîhin its own genre or sub- genre, according to an inner logic and a set of conventions that apply to it specifically. Each yields its own reconfiguration of the problem of desire. The rich variety of textual strategies employed in the late 1750s may point to the inability of these texts to render satisfactorily an image of universal harmony or to reassure convincingly in the face of doubt and disbelief. This does not mean that there are no constants. On the contrary, the texts are not only Uitricately linked on many levels, they also consistently locate the human condition of dividedness in the split between spirit and body. The dissertation is constructed in such a marner as to emphasize the convergence and divergence between the texts. It covers a period of continuities and discontinuities in Wieland's writing. The text which is the most profoundiy marked by discontinuity both intemally and in relation to the other texts is also the central text of the series. In their contrastive relation to it, the other texts can be arranged in a series and attributed significance within an ideational history. Thus, the daring experimentd Araspes und Panthea occupies the central position in the dissertation with the other analyses arranged around it in ascending and descending order. This highly complex text contains a sustained and powerfid representation of the emergence of a subjective awareness of dienation and disbelief. It is perhaps here in this almost forgotten drarna that the constitutive rupture in Wieland's oeuvre is represented with the greatest irnmediacy. Araspes is a soldier and Platonic idealist who develops a passionate, forbidden love for Panthea, a queen as well as his dl-too alluring captive. Mer unsuccessfuliy attempting to rape her, thereby clearly demgthe orders of his master, he arrives at the realization "daB ich zwei ganz verschiedene Seelen in mir habe" (J 68 1). With these words, the subjective split is formulated as a permanent gap between spirit and body. The second self that emerges with the liberation of the sex drive is ad-authoritarïan and subversive, as well as completely different and other, completely incompatible and irreconcilable with the virtuous, conventional self. Withm the larger fiamework of the dissertation, the texts wrîtten in proximity to Araspes will be read as either anticipating this formative break or reacting conservatively against it. The first three texts, to be examined in the section called "Reconditions of Subjectivity" (chapter two) present strategies for the repression and sublimation of desire which vary in the degree of latitude they allow for the moral use of sensuality. In the pietistic texts, the split between spirit and body, Mmie and decadence, does not cornespond to a split between reason and emotion, or control and passion. Rather, that which is virtuous and spiritual is also passionately emotional and opposed to the cold distance of reason. Religion is conceived of in terms that pardel and cornpete with human love, and, most importantly, an awareness of human subjectivity is generated in the self- abnegating act of unconditional sumender to God. At the same tïme, the concept of moral sensations makes possible a certain recuperation of the sensual moment even in the abnegation of physical pleasure. Theages, which signals a shifl fiom religious asceticism to the aesthetics of moral sense, hence to a greater valuation of the beautifid as a physical manifestation of the spirit, defines man as the middle link in the Great Chain of Being. Thus, we are either the bridge uniting worldly and other-worldly existence and thus actualizing universal harrnony, or we are the tear in the universe that arises fiom the clash of these two orders. The analysis of these texts will help remind us of the normative horizons of pietisrn and sensibility and thereby heighten our awareness of the issues at play in Wieland's representations of sexuality, which are symptornatic for the eighteenth century. Without leaving the context of the pre-erotic texts, we also find here the groundwork for a nuanced reading of Araspes as the emergence of the counter- subjectivity of the second-self fkom the collapse of the very systems of belief these texts had so energetically promoted (chapter three, "The Destabilized Continuum and the Disharmonious Cosmos7'). In turn, the analysis of Araspes 36 prepares the groundwork for the reading of the subsequent set of texts. Not only does this drama cast doubt on the reliability of our mord systems, it also destabilizes the manifest meanings of language, for instance, through the insinuation of the double-talk of seduction into the terms of sentimental fiiendship. From this perspective, the projection of an image of moral order and the renewed exertion of discipline in language (seen in the application of classical genre) are defensive efforts in the face of an increasing awareness of instability and volatility at the levels of subject and text (chapter four, "Restorations of Order, Public and Pnvate"). Although the last three texts ail present models of moral perfection, their sequential reading reveals a pattern of retreat fiom mord involvement with the world. With Clementina von Porretta a mode1 of moral perfection is represented in a manner that simultaneously encourages identification and ironic distancing. This last representation, before the turn to eroticism, of a morality that situates repletion in disembodiment, is subject, in the moment of her apotheosis, to an ironic fiarning that anticipates the production of the Biberach years. 1 stop short of the analysis of Wieland's Biberach production in the certainty that the pre-erotic texts, although they anticipate future developments, also deserve to stand on their own. 2. Preconditions of Subjectivity

Und doch sind diese Annehmlichkeiten, Welche uns zu Bildem der Engel machen ko~ten, In der Adage der weibtichen Natur (Aspasia in Theages AA 1/2:433)

2.1 Empfindungen eines Christen, Sympathien: The Production of Spiritual Sensation

The focus of this section is on Wieland's pietistic organization of the self in its relation to God, fellow believers and the world, particularly, on the position of desire in this equation. The two texts, which highlight different aspects of Wieland's ascetic-pietistic thought, offer, when combined, a comprehensive view of a systern of belief that hinges on the dBerence between sense and sensation, Le., body and spirit. To varying degrees, each exalts the spirit at the expense of the body. The subjective rendering of enthusiasm is contingent on the division of the two, a condition which, in turn, sets the stage for the representation of subjectivity as inner division in Araspes. Later, the thematization of enthusiasm, ofien as a "negative foil," will become one of the constants of Wieland's oeuvre (Erhart, Ent&weiung24). Indeed, the "demystification" of enthusiasm will be used to legitimate the body for erotic representation (as in "Endymion," in the Corn ische Erzahhrngen ) The Syrnpathien, written before the Empfindmgen eines Christen, stresses social ties among believers, spiritual sympathies that wodd seem to be the opposite of physical desires. The Empfndungen eines Chrzsten, on the other hand, turns more emphatically to the individual subject's relation to God, a relation that transcends the physical realrn. The Merent accents are reflected by the different forms: the Sympathien is a series of letters, hence correspondences with others, while the Ernpfndungen is a collection of "Psalms," hence prayers directed by the individual to God. The "sympathetic" souk to whom the letters of the S'hzenare addressed are largely female. Sengle refers wryly to mordy instructive "billet doux" for an "emp£indsam[es] Serail,"50 since at the tirne of writuig Wieland headed a pietistic cucle comprised principdy of (older) women. This Unmediate public, Sengle contends, was more easily susceptible to the author's enthusiastic- sentimental fervor than the ;'strong men of Zurich;" and the less educated and more easily impressed Company would have been greatly entertained by the blend of sensual forbearance and emotional excess with which this "haif angel" or "genius of a higher order" regaled them (71-73). In this persona1 context, the appeal to "disembodied sensations" is at the same the an appeal to a ""body" of women. By contrast, the Empfndzingen, conceived shortly thereafter in a penod of isolation and disaffection fiom this group,jl addresses, in Sengle7swords, the "ungleich bedeutender[eIv community of male intellectuals. In this context, Wieland is a "champion of ecclesiastic poetry" battling against the secular tendencies in the letters of the northern Geman rivals (87). The programmatic foreword zealously argues against the secularization of literature, pdcularly against the "new paganism" of contemporary Anacreontics. The "Psalms" that follow celebrate God, Christ, and the disembodied Spint in ecstatic terms. There

50 See the comments of Wieland's contemporaries, Bodmer in particular, in Sengie 70-72. 51 Dates overlap: the Sympathien first published in 1756, was still incomplete when Wieland began the Empfindzmgen in 1755. For chronological information of Wieland's literary activities, see: Stames, CMW (here 1 : 100-0 1); also Bernard Seuffert, Prolegomena ,?r riner Wieland-Azrsgabe. For first publication dates, see: Günther and Zeilinger, Wieland- Bibliographze . are twenty-five hymns: the first twelve are directed to God the Creator; the next twelve are directed to Christ; and the final one praises divine love (see: Blasig, Die religiore EniwÏckhirzg 2 633. Underlying the exaggeration of enthusiasm in the Empfindmgen is the question of the viability of the pietistic project. The attempt to treat religion in absolute terms "als transzendente und kirchliche Wirklichkeit" (Sengle 85) may be a reaction to the fact that the binary divide between body and spint was not sufficiently enforced in the Sympathien. Wieland's emphatic reaffirmation of Christian belief and dogrna in this phase is seen by Frank Baudach as a reaction against the instability of a concept of universal harmony in nature that, being sensualist, must also recognize the physical drives: "nicht um die Religion geht es Wieland hier prima, sondem um ihre positiven, moralisch stabilisierenden Wirkungen" (Pianeten der llnschuld 399). Wieland ventures into asceticism in order to stabilize a shaky moral system.

2. i. i Pietism, Sympathies and Sentiments Since this chapter introduces many of the constants in Wieland's treatment of desire, 1 will borrow fieely fiom both texts in order to fully describe the pietistic project. The first sections will take advantage of the absolute terms of the Empjindungen in order to map the project; the last sections are concemed with the potential for its undoing and will turn more often to the Sympathien. 1 will begin by briefly considering the concepts that are emphasized by Wieland's titles: "Chnsten," "Empfindungen," and "Sympathien." These terms clearly situate the texts in the cidtural movement of religious ~ensibility.'~

" For a detailed description of this rnovement, including its religious variant, see: Gerhard Sauder, Empflncisamkeit, vol. 1, Voraussetmngen tind Eletnerite. 40 The "Christian" referred to in the Empjnhngen eznes Christen is a single being, yet the feelings he exalts concem all fellow believers. "'Feeling" Chnstianity demands emotionai aanity to the drarna of Christ and to the Christian state of being. "Pietism," a seventeenth and eighteenth-century reform movement in Gexman Lutheranism that opposes both scholastic orthodoxy and secular , emphasizes personal faith as the inner experience of an emotiond relationship to the Savior. It is not surprising that Wieland, a pastor's son exposed to various strains of pietism in his youth, would minor in these devotional texts typical features of a pietistic mentality. One finds here characteristic signs of pietism, such as the representation of a labile psyche that fluctuates between "consciousness of sin and confidence in redemption" and that, because of its labile state, seeks communication and spiritual support (the exchange of cornrnon feelings arnong like-minded, hence "sympathetic," believers), as well as a fondness for mysticism, or at least, for an enthusiasm that exceeds the rational (Gerhard Kaiser, Pie tismus unJ Patrzotisrn us 7- 10). A key moment of pietism is what Kaiser calls religious subjectivism: "A God that is primarily evidenced in the inwardness of the subject, becomes subjective." (Kaiser 7) In an attempt to discover within the self "a piety of rebirth," the religious enthusiast undertakes "extraordinary analyses of the SOU^": "The inner experience of God, the intention to perpetuate this process, and the registration of moods alternahg between the struggle for penance and breakthrough, al1 these lead to reflectivity and increased consciousness of the self."53 Thus understood, pietism is a key moment in the development of subjectivity in the eighteenth century: Zugleich eintwickelte sich aus dieser Betonung der individuellen Gefuhlbewegungen der Sinn Gr die Psychologie der Einzelseele und die Fahgkeit zu ihrer genauen Beobachtung und Analyse. Das Ich lernte, sich selbst bis in die innersten Erregungen ni studieren. (Martini, Dr irtsche Litrratzirgeschichre 173) The pietistic moment focuses on the self-observing subject and thus prepares an inquïry into the self within the terms of repentance and salvation. Uwe Blasig argues that the pietistic label fails to describe completely the state of Wieland's religious thuiking at the time. He refers instead to a complex "pietistisch- empfindsarn-auMiirerischen theologischen Ansatz."" For Wieland, then, pietism stands in relation to tendencies that cmbe both contradictory and complementary . After this fonn of religious enthusiasm is dropped, the inquiry of the self- obseMng subject will continue, at tunes under the banner of the Enlightenment- At this point, however, pietism suggests a critical attitude to the pursuits of reason and pleasure. Many pietists rejected the notion of adiaphorkm,j5 and with it the possibility of "indifferent" entertainment such as play and dance. In this spirit, Wieland's pietistic poetics, particularly in the Empfindungen, oppose the notion

53 Sauder, Ernpfindsmkeit 1:6 1. Sauder continues: "DaB Selbstzeugnisse dieser An. Briefe, Tagebücher und Autobiographien, vor dIem die etnotionale Frommigkeit in der breiten Erbauungsliteratur literarische und allgemein bewuBtseinspragende Folgen haben, dürfte feststehen." 54 Relrgiose Entwicklzmg 265. Wieland was acquainted at an early age with the intellectuai-culturd movements of Enlightenment and sensibility. His first lively contact with a radical version of the Enlightenment came during his 1749 sojourn in . The sentimental terms of his 1750 romance with Sophie Gutermann (later La Roche) also document the eariy importance of this cultural movement, which in the Sympathien is closely related to pietism- SS "[Iln Christian theology, the opinion that certain doctrines or practices in morals or religion are matters of indifference because they are neither comrnanded nor forbidden in the Bible." ("Adiaphonsm," EtzqvcfopaediaBrztannica, Micropaedia 1 :90) of non-sacred poetry, in particular, the "neo-paganisrn" of the German Anacreontic. Nothing is "indifferent;" only morally e-g moments warrant representation; and everythmg is laid open to the incursions of the intemal censor. hstead of the non-edifyuig, Anacreontic employment of wit and reason, Wieland portends to let his heart "speak its own language" (AA V2:344), whereby the heart is understood as the sensitive receptor of edi£jmg spintual sensations. The pietist Wieland is a religious enthusiast, a "Schw&mery" but not a mystic in the strict sense of the term. The spiritual transports in these texts are ephemeral; and their passage results in a desire for permanent union in death (union with God and with fellow believers tumed angels). According to Blasig, Wieland's depiction of the "uni0 mystica" is decidedly pietistic: Zwar sind beide Strornungen [mysticism and pietism] getragen von der Sehnsucht nach einer unmittelbaren Gottesschau, doch wird [...] diese 'unio mystica' vom Pietismus Ietztlich erst als postmortd erfahrbar gesehen, wàhrend die Mystik diese schon irn Diesseits anzustreben versucht hat. (268) The elevation of the afterlife links these texts to the "martyr" , Lady Johanna Gray and Clementina von Porretta, which we wilI later examine. Death as a threshold becomes the location of the binary opposition between body and spirit. By divesting imagination and desire of the physical body, one cmventure across the fine in advance, hence the appropriateness of the image of "schwiirmen," which developed in the eighteenth century into a polemical metaphor for anti-edightenment tendencies (Heinz 33). Here, however, and later in Theages, the mental activity of "swarming" is çeen as positive.s6

56 Since Viktor Lange's 1967 "Zur Gestalt des Schwiinners im deutschen Roman des 18. Jahrhunderts," the question of varying treatrnents of extreme cases of enthusiasm has been a common theme of Wieland research. The research has tended to emphasize the later "post- enthusiastic" penods. Recent examples are Jutta Heinz, "Von der Schwtirmerkur zur Gesprachstherapie" (1994) and Walter Erhart, "'In guten Zeiten gibt es selten Schwarrner"' (1992-93). Heinz cites Christian Garve's late eighteenth-century definition in "Uber die In conjunction with the narrowing and focusuig of psychic energies on spinhial inwardness, pietistic enthusiasm cm aiso include a movement outside of the physical body into the realm of purely spintual connections, with God and His seraphic entourage, but also with the "sympathetic" souls of other human creatures. Sympathy is the meeting point between reiigious enthusiasm and sensibility. In Wieland's usage, it would seem to combine the theory of moral sentiments as understood by English moral philosophy with the notion of a pre- established cosmic harmony by which like souk are "sympathetically" predetermined to harmonize with one another; and only life, Le., the physical body, the world, impedes their perfect union. The other-world is irnplicated in the sympaîhetic knotting of emotional bonds in this world; it is the cosrnic oxigin of our spiritual affection. In Wieland's application of syrnpathy, the most fimdamental level of human comectivity is beyond observation, out of reach for the five senses and transcending life. This mystifjmg element is combined with a pietistic reading of English sensibility. Following Shaftesbury, sensibility posits the existence of a sixth, moral sense. In an analogous manner to the stimulation of physical passions,

Schwwerey" : "Schwiinnerey kt [. ..] eine überspannung und Verimng der Einbildungskraft, vermoge welcher ein Mensch Visionen tur Thatsachen hdt, und sich ni Wünschen, Begierden und Handlungen verleiten IaBt. welche auf diese Voraussetzung der Wahrheit jener Thatsachen gegnindet sind." (Heinz 3 5, from Garve, Gesmnmellt. Werke, Hildesheim 1985 V3 339). For Garve, the decline of "positive religion'' is the principal cause of this fanatic enthusiasm; its cure. anticipated by Wieland's Don Syhzo is the conversion of that which eludes verbal expression in the enthusiastic state into "deutliche Mittheilung durch Worte" (37-38). The Empfinduungen and Theages (see below) suggest that the "Schw~er"cm also be positively vaiued. Here. Wieland follows Edward Young who claimed for himself and like- minded Christians the term of "rank enthusiasts" (nePuerical Works of Edward Ymit~g, Nighr Thoirghls 137). Thus "Schw~erey"signifies at different times 'true' and 'false' enthusiasm. Later, Wieland distinguished between "Schwiinnerey" as a "Krankheit der Seele" and 'cEnthusiasmus'l as "ihr wahres Leben" ( Teutscher Merhrr 1775/4 1 5 1-5, cited by Daniel Wilson, Nimatlive Strategy, see also : Richard Rogan, neReader in the Novels of C.M. Wielmrd, 660). moral behavior cm also be stimulated, for instance through the observation of moral beauty. In the course of the eighteenth century, the word sense, like "Empfindung," moved beyond the designation of crudely physical impressions into areas of emotional sensiti~ity.~~Nonetheless, the term rnakes conviction dependent on stimulus, if not on sensual stimulus, at least on abstract, disembodied sensation. The Shaftesburian notion of a sixth mord sense, itself a stop-gap measure against the demystification of morality entailed by the sensualist psychology, is thus implicated in Wieland's texts in a project that leads outside the body into the airy world of invisible spirits. The pietistic project is both public and private; it involves not only self- revelation, but also the establishment of intimate bonds between sympathetic souls. For Shaftesbury, morality can be rooted in the perception of moral beauty and the development of moral sense and need not be the explicit product of religious feeling. By contrast, Wieland's syrnpathy remains rooted in a relation with God. In the relation of spirit to body, Wieland's sympathetic-pietistic project consists of stimulating spiritual sensations and severely resûicting the enjoyment of physical ones. Given the analogous nature of body and spirit, the former is not only repressed in the latter, it is also sublimated. The spirit is the outiet for the desires of the body, and desire is written into the terms of the body's censorship.

57 Jean Hagstrum traces the etymological development of "sense" in eighteenth- century England. That which originally signified "'the faculties of corporeal sensation considered as channels for gratifjbg the desire for pleasure and the lusts of the flesh"' later came to stand for the "'capacity for refined emotion; delicate sensitiveness of taste; also readiness to feel compassion for suffenng and to be moved by the pathetic in literature or art"' (Hagstrum 5-9, citing the Oxford English Dictionary ). The first chapter of Gerhard Sauder's Emp$~~aSnmkrztsketches the similar etymologies of the word families "sensibilité," "sensibility," and "Empfindsamkeit" in the eighteenth century (1 :1-1 1). 2.1.2 Moral Sensations: the Repression and Sublimation of Desire For an attempt to deal seriously with religion, the Empfindungen eznes Christen is not an exceptionally sober read. Rather, it seeks to stimulate sensations, to excite and to provoke, to convey direct emotion from writer to reader. According to G.E. Lessing's pattern-forming and anything but neutral reading, the Empjiindungen is a text of "excesses" ("AusschweifÛngen") that are the products of an overactive imagination: Schon! - Aber sind das Empfindungen? Sind Ausschweifungen der Einbildungskraft Empfindungen? Wo diese so geschaftig kt, da in ganz gewiB das Herz leer, kalt.'' According to this reading, Wieland's religious sentiment is not sincere and immediate, but somehow second-hand, derivative; its source is not the heart, which is cold and empty, but a secondary faculty or projection. Lessing counters the speaker's daim that he lets "his heart speak its own language" with a suspicion of artificiality that links the reception of Wieland's early religious enthusiasm with the criticism of his later anti-enthusiastic texts. This critique must be understood in the global context of eighteenth-century debate on the role of literature. On one side, Wieland denies that poetq should have a secdar role; on the other, Lessing objects to this literary fom of religious expression by an unsenous poetic irnitator. Lessing seems to imply that Wieland exploits religion to create literary "sensation," rather than the stated purpose of stimulahg religious feeling through Iiterature. Read as a projection of imagined belief rather

58 Note for clarification that Lessing refers to Wieland's second edition (1758), in which the text was entitled Empfindzmgeea & Christen (Werke 3:65-67). Lessing's first criticism pertains to the inappropriate use of the article "des," because such "Empfindungen" are not experienced by each and every Christian and therefore cannot be applied to the onginal title. When first published in 1757, the title read Empfindzmgen eines Chrisren: 'Lobe den Herrn dl( rneine Seele. " (emphasis added) than the honest expression of tme religious sentiment, Wieland's text becomes a sort of camouflage that covers over the absence of a center.

The Empfindungen operates on a paradox: it presents itself as an exercise in heightened self-awareness, but the goal of this exercise is the loss of self, the nirvana of extinguishing the self in God. This "süsse Vernichtung" of the subject is the highest good. Thus, in the text's first hymns, the speaker exalts the annihilation of his sou1 under the sheer magnitude of the Lord's omnipotence ("deine Grosse vemichtet meine Seele" AA I/2:353). This leaves the "1" as a question: Und ich - was bin ich! O Gon! wie verliehre ich mich vor dir! ich empfinde nur dich, die grosse Empfindung Iost meine Seele auf - Sie verschwingt, sie fühit nur noch dunkel dein Alles und ihr nichts - - (AA Y2346) Such passages reconstnict the surrender of the self. One is delivered of one's worldly being, of the %h" that can only be stuttered with the dash and the exclamation. Coincidentally, this "ich becomes aware of itself, bom in the desire for union with its master. It feels only in the expenence of the other; by sensing God, it exists ("ich emphde nur dich"). The question of the "1" is posed and the "1" becomes a conscious subject in the expression of its disappearance. One can ask, following Lessing's skeptical reading, whether this "1" is a mere "rhetorical" question, i.e. a trick, a literary device, a game with the clichés of piety, the smoke-and-mimors of Wieland's overblown imagination. Yet this marks the emergence of a paradoxical constellation which necessitates the writing of a subject. In order to relinquish control to a higher order of being, the subject must exist in the first place. Surrender is sweet, and the parallels to physical surrender are too evident to be unintentional. nirilled, transported, overwhelmed by the "sublime,"59 the "quiverhg soul" is tom away "in ecstasy" by an "all- powerful drive" (AA V2:393). While the heart "shakes," the "'immature sod" ("unmündige Seele"), "only dares to stutter," blinded by divine splendor (AA Y2:374). The Empjimhngen reclaims the vocabulary of love fiom secular Literature. God, for instance, is addressed as the beloved. More irnportantly, the speaker reproduces the rapid palpitations of the heart and renders gasps and sighs with exclamations7dashes, intejections and ellipses. Question marks represent the wonderment of a feeling that transcends human understanding and fashions the religious impulse into unfulfilled need: Wie lange SOU dieser bunte Vorhang der Nahir mir den Anblik des Gottlichen Lichtes verbergen? Wie lange sol1 die unbefnedigte Seele nach ihrem Gegenstande schmachten? (AA Y2:361) The questions "wenn ich dich denke, O Ewiger, was bin ich alsdann? Ja was ist die ganze Welt vor dir?"(AA Y2:375) are not answered with words; rather, they contain their answer in the movement they convey out of the lirnited self and into a lirnitless other. Beyond the grasp of speech, the divine inhabits the question mark. Such passages are often characterized by a rapid succession of paragraphs, that, too short to accommodate the development of ideas, render a succession of urgent emotions in the of succeeding waves (AA I/2:36 1). Despite holding out an etemal promise, this little death, like other ecstasies, is short-Iived. The dream paradise, a foretaste of the imagined aflerlife, fades with the advent of the confused, sublunary world. With and without God, the answer to the cry "Und ich - was bin ich!" is that the "I" is nothing. Either it

59 Le. an inspiration beyond the scope of reasoned argument, its source is the confrontation with something that overwhelms the mere human in the immensity and grandeur of its scale. dissolves into God's absolute fullness or it inhabits the empty world of life. Erhart's sociologically-uifluenced study places secondary importance on the moment of pietistic self-annihilation and focuses on the development of a community of like-minded "sentimental hearts" (Entzweiung 38). Yet, faced with nothingness, the isolated individual expresses a fundamental sense of loss around which the desire for religious completion and, with it, the pietistic circle, is fonned. Subjective consciousness is the revelatory center of the universe. It alone marks God's presence by defining God as a desired object. However, subjective consciousness must be exercised, it must be learned; therefore, sympathetic souk are encouraged in their efforts to establish a discourse within the self. ber dialogue is praised as a pleasurable and instructive pastirne: In Stunden, da du nichts ausser dir hast, das dich erfreuen oder lieblich beschafligen konnte, kanst du, in dich selbst geschmieget, dich mit deinen eignen Gedanken besprechen, und eine Unterhaltung in dir seibst finden, die dich den angenehmsten Umgang und die ausgesuchtesten Ergonmgen nicht vermissen Iast. (AR Y2470) This passage fkom the Sympathien almost implies the discovery of the subject in a sort of inner conversational salon replete with agreeable intercourse and refined amusements. Yet the entertainment of inner conversation replaces the entertainment of the outside world. These are not missed, for the conversations of self with self are more pleasurable and more refined. In adherence to the pietistic anti-rhetorïc of an "'unart~fïcial' language of the heart,"60the

60 Quoting Zinzendorf. Stephan Beming refers to the "cungekünstelteSprache des Herzens," a direct language which pietism attempts to convey as unrnediated, individual expenence as opposed to classicd rhetoric: "Der Wunsch nach einer einfachen, naiven Sprache des Herzens entspringt offensichtlich dem Wunsch, die eigentliche spirituelle Erfahmng des Henens und damit auch jenen sensus genuinus ohne jede formale Vermittlung durch Allgemeinbegriffe zurn Ausdmck ru bringed' ("Zur pietistischen Kritik der autonomen ~sthetik"105). Referring to the Sympathieen, Fritz Martini speaks of Wieland's "Verstàndnis Ernpfindungen is presented as a naturd product of introspection. The speaker anhates in his imagination the objects of his holy meditations; this process stimulates sensations to which he then yields; hally, the mental outcorne of these operations is de~cribed.~'The result is a language of the heart: [ch habe mein Hen seine eigne Sprache reden lassen, und weiter nichts gethan, ais nicht widerstanden, wenn die Wahrheiten, die ich anschaute, auch meine Imagination und dle Seelenkrafte erhiuten. (AA V2:344) Tnith is located in the subject's imagination and in the powers of his soul. "Non- resistance" ("nicht widerstanden") irnplies that reason may otherwise bar religious enthusiasm fkom entering like a passion. The subject is dtimately a passive receptor penetrated by divine inspiration. The subject opens itself to God in a moment of surrender. Subjectivity elevates only in the extinction of the subject; and the subjective voice is fotmd in that which it fails to convey (hence, the recourse to ellipses). The subject becomes conscious and rnorally relevant, and its expression is not only sanctioned but demanded, it only gains contour, in and through its dissolution. What on the surface may appear paradoxicd is a regimen of strict repression. The subject cannot indulge in feeling until purged of al1 feelings that einer kommunativen Unmittelbarkeit der Sprache des Herzens" ("Nachwort," MS 3 :956). The relation of this new intention to rhetoncal practice is not simple, however. While the heart is now designated as the "Ort der Erkemtnk" (Berrîing t 06), in order to convince, pietism must persuade, which it does with new formulas for immediacy and simplicity. Even in its attacks on rhetoric, it is a "rhetoric against rhetoric" (Reinhart Tschapke, Anmulige Vemtrrft 16). Wieland, it must be added, was thoroughly schooled in classical rhetoric as a youth. For Wieland's period of religious enthusiasm, a 1756 Ietter to deacon Daniel Stapfer quoted by Tschapke attests to his interest in the convergence of "Christian missionary zeal and talent at public speaking" (WB W 1 :2S 1-53; Tschapke 20). For Wieland, classical rhetoric is not abandoned, it is enlisted in the rnissionary project. 61 "Ich hatte hierbei Nchts weiters ni thun, als mir allemal den Gegenstand meiner Betrachtungen lebhaft vomstellen, mich den Empfindungen, die in mir dadurch rege gemacht wurden, zu überlassen, und alsdann das was in meinem Gernüth vorgieng in Worten abmschildem." (AA V2:344) fdl outside an absolute religious experience. Yet within these limits, the divine order is actualized; and subjective consciousness is expressed as an "ich" that is constituted in the division between two worlds. The subject validates a strigent hierarchy of passions based on the decrees of a Christian God. The anirmation of traditional order counters the inherent instability of subjectivism. In the happy coincidence of subjectivity and order, disorder is expelled fiom the spirit into the physical world. However, unmediated communion with God can never be permanent, because the subject relies on the disorder of the world in order to excite the need for the ordering God. The speaker rehims to the world in order to re-enact the moment of deliverance- The world is condemned for its temporal nature, for the simple truth, "daB wir in keinem irdischen und sidichen Gegenstand Ruhe fuiden" (AA I/2:342). The heavens, by contrast, would seem to promise solid footing. Yet the speaker is not at mystic rest in his vision: his upward movement is an effect of a self-stimulating, self-reflecting activity that is reproduced in the literary-religious text. The powers of imagination are applied to reproduce a vision of heaven which then continually recedes into the imagined reaches of the afterlife. The religious context guarantees that subjective experience occurs within a hierarchical order that promotes the repression or sublimation of unsavory physical needs and opposes the emergence of spiritual independence. At the same the, however, this order is dependent on the constant production of emotional stimulus. Rather than being solidly grounded in a system of reason , it is subject to the vagaries of the volatile human psyche and must compete against the basest wishes of the body. 2. i.3 Mallea bility and Persuasion 1 tum next to the notion that the individual is the product of its environment, of that which surrounds it on the outside, in body, earth, and Me. That the human psyche is malleable and changeable is a basic tenet of any endeavor at persuasion. Wieland's pietism is no exception, indeed the Empfindzingen presents an image of the human sou1 that anticipates the author's later self-diagnosis as a charneleon: Unsre Seele ist so gemacht, dasie gleichsam eine Tinctur von den Ideen und Objecten annimmt, mit denen sie am rneisten umgeht. (AA V2:342) While literary biographers have made much out of the 1759 letter in which Wieland stated "Je me ressemble pour mon maiheur au Cameleon,'" the passage is simply an extreme formulation of the Lockean "empincist principle" applied to a historical individuaL6' Even in Wieland's pietism the p~ciplepartialiy applies: our ideas are not (completely) innate, but (at Ieast in part) the product of experience of self-reflection. The "empûicist principle" runs counter to other ideas current in hstext, such as divine inspiration and pre-determinkm of sympathetic souls. Yet since "tincture" may just be one hue in a color mosaic, the text s~iggestsa compromise that allows for other, non-experiential determining

6' GVB W 1:4 15. Wieland alludes to Antoine Houdar de La Motte's fable "Le Caméléon." According to Liselotte Kurth-Voigt, its concluding statement, "Tout est Caméléon pour vous," "is doubtlessly meant as a universally vaiid pronouncement on the subjectivity of human perception" (cited by Kurth-Voigt, Perspectives ond Poinls of View 85- 86). " (1632- 1704), Engiish philosopher and tutor to the third Earl of Shaftesbury, countered the notion of imate ideas with the "empincist pnnciple" that "ail our ideas are grounded in expenence and depend on it." According to Locke's Essay Concerning Hiiman ~~zderstandit~g.ideas are derived through sensation and reflection. The role of the senses thus becornes central. (Fredench Copleston, A History of Philosophy 577-78)- For an ovemiew of Wieland's reception of Leibniz and Locke, including the early didactic poem Die Natzcr der Dirge, see: Horst Thomé, Romm zct~dNaiicnuissenschafr. factors. The Merence between "'tîncture" and "chameleon" is one of degree. However, what the letter to Zimmermann labeled from a personal standpoint as "my misfortune" is here from an evangelical standpoint an exciting promise. The entire evangelicd project is guided by the hope that the communion with pious ideas and images cm confer "something heavenly and divine" to the individual sou1 and to others (AA Y2342). The social imperative is to create the conditions in which individuals, their intimate community of soul-mates, and indeed dl Christians (or readers) can "walk with God" (AA I/2:342). Given the supposed decadence of modem civilization and its distance from the spiritual simpiicity of the biblical past (AA V2:39 1), this objective may only be realizable within the (fictive, utopian) confines of the text. It is therefore imperative that the author and the literary world provide the required textual surroundings. Malleability is a promise and a risk. The human capacity for being influenced by sensations, spintual and othenvise, is a source for equally profound hope and distrust. Faced with the direct appeal of immoral passions, the Empfrndzcngen (more strongly than the earlier Sympathien) insists on the division between spintual and physical, ofien demonizing the latter. This points to an under-confidence in the persuasive ability of spiritual sensation. At every turn, we must choose between the "Zaubergefilden der Suuilichkeit, wo uns jeder Tritt Versuchmgen nahert" and the "Garten Gottes, wo keine betrügliche Frucht winket" (AA Y237 1j. We suffer fiom an "obvious dearth of harmless and genuine pleasures'~and are in need of "ref?eshment." Instead of the "repulsive conditions" of the world and its "embellished misery" of easy happiness, one must create "projections" ("Vorstellunged') of a higher order (AA I/2:342).

64 (AA V2342) This "offenbare Dürftigkeit an unschadlichen und wahren Freuden" is al1 the more remarkable given the "UeberfluB an erbaulichen Schrïften" noted a few paragraphs later (AA V2:344). Divinity is handicapped, because worldly pleasures are tangible while the divine is primarily intangible and necessitates the operations of imagination. Wieland uses the composites Tor[-]Stellung" and "Ein[-]Bildung," which suggest an on- going process of projection and constmction, a vigorous mental exercise that upholds a counter image to the seductive deceptions of the sensual world. The incursions of doubt and criticism (Enlightenment) into the domain of religious belief and the subsequent destabilization of established order necessitate a recouse to immaterial sensations that are inaccessible to the critical faculty. The preface to the Empfindungen begins with a criticism of the dispassionate, rational rnanner in which religious knowledge is conferred, which seems to leave the "majority of Christians in ail social ranks cold to the tmths of OLK religion" (AA Y2:336). Reason, order and moderation cmot by themselves combat the enemy. Rather, a constant effort must be maintained to awaken and entertain "Vorstellungen" and to convey with the "lebendigsten Empfindungen" the Christian creed. The sensations must be "fired up" ("erhitzen") by the "charms" ("Reizmgen") that are Wtue and duty; purely intellectual reason must be suppianted by "reasons to be moved" ("Beweggninden"). Henceforth, Christian love cornpetes with al1 other human proclivities-65 By marketing religion as pleasure, the speaker implicitly legitirnates pleasure as a system of values. It follows that the highest value is placed on the most ùiflated pleasure; and the speaker reclaims the terms of passion fkom the neo-heathenism of the physical world:

'' "In der Liebe ist also eine Kraft gefunden, die ais Tneb den niederen, animalischen Trieben pnnzipiell wesensgleich, aber auf genau entgegengesetzte Objekte genchtet kt. Deshalb ist sie offenbar vie1 eher als die Vemunft in der Lage, die egoististischen Triebe zu maigen und ihre Ansprüche mit den Fordemngen der Tugend und mit der gotîlichen Weltordnung in Überein~tirnmun~zu bringen." (Baudach, Plmeren der Unschuld 3 05) Sind denfia@ unser Young, die Leidenschaflen die Heiden der Seele? Oder sou es erlaubt senmm Lobe des Bacchus ni rasen, und nur der sou eh Schwiirmer seyn, der den Unendlichen lobet? Soll man von Bliken eines wollüstigen Madchens, aber ja nicht von gottlichen Wohlthaten entzükt werden dürfen? (AA W2:341) This anti-erotic, anti-enlightenment polernic condemns both enlightened critique of spiritual passion and enlightened tolerance for physical passion. It opposes girl to God, but in the phonetic resemblance of "Wollust7' and "Wohltat" their respective voluptuousness and philanthropy have similar resonance. The voluptuousness of the girl justifies the indulgence of a diarnetrically opposed divine passion. The notion of putting limits on religious enthusiasm is countered: Keine Phantomen, keine süssen Schwikmereyen der glühenden Leidenschaft

vergrossert uns deine Schonheit. Es ist unmoglich dich m hoch ni erheben, oder ni vie1 ni lieben. (AA V2:400) Rather than manage and equilibrate competing demands, the Empfindungen sacrifices the physical to indulge the spintual. The present state of the hurnan psyche is one of division. To the extent that the subject remains safely on the spiritual side of the line throughout, division does not yet tear him apart. Rather, as implied by the phrase, "Denn eine jede Seele [...] ist von zween Geniis umgeben" (AA Y2:455), division remains somehow extemal. Worldliness and spirituality surround the subject, and their competing messages are echoed and amplified in the words and images that one continudy encounters. The louder the voice of physical passion, the greater its transcendence in the spintual world. The fully divided subject we encounter in Araspes is not yet realized.

2. i.4 Devotional Literature Sensation is derived fiom sense; the two are linked by definition and by nature. Hence, the line between spiritual sensations and physical sense is not always evident. Given the irnpossibiiity of hding a resting point for merence, a black-and-white opposition must at times be superimposed on the grey areas in which sense and sensation would otheMise intemiingle. The pietistic texts attempt to enforce such an opposition; and in the Empfndungen, the veil between spirit and body is at its most impenetrable. Yet there are gray areas; in particular, there is a tendency to try to enlist physical beauty in the exaltation of that which is immaterial. In the following, 1 will begin with the poetics of the Empfndungen as presented in its polemical preface. The preface rejects secdar literature and reclaims the language of desire for devotiond puiposes. A problem arises in this context with the consideration of nature: is it sacred, as God7screation, or profane, the murky soi1 of a fallen world of physical desire? When we tum fiom the individual of the Ernpfindungen to the fkiendship circle of the Sympathien, this question is posed again. While characterized by an oppositional stance with respect to the material world, the sympathetic circle promotes the generation of affection in cross-gender relations. At the same time, value is placed upon cross- gender, physical attraction, Le. human beauty, in the production of spirituality. A consideration of this problematic aspect of "moral beauty" will conclude the c hapter . As producers of "Vorstellungen," poets have extraordinary talents and special duties. Despite this, these "favorites of nature" are not always favorites of vimie. The gift is a risk, and increased sensibility can translate into increased susceptibility. An "angebohrene[r] Hang mr Ausschweifung" entices the poet to waste "die zu einem hohen Zweck empfangne Zartlichkeit seiner Empfhdungen an unwürdige Gegenstiinde, ja an Schimsiren" (AA I/2:339). hplied but not pursued is the notion that the poet represents an exaggeration of the human condition of malleability and therefore dramatizes in his subject the inherent risks of sensual human existence. Predisposed to exaggerate, the poet pursues mirages instead of adhering to the strict limitations of high purpose. By extension, the project of increasing reader sensitivities also involves an element of risk; and the speaker's invective vigor against sensual poets may amount to displaced aggression against the speaker' s own volatile "poetic" psyche. Since poets are first and forernost moral agents, their products must be judged in tems of moral effect. In a defense of the Empfndungen, Wieland assigns a specific ethicd function to 'poetic genius": daB der poëtische Genie vomehmlich dam gebraucht werden müBe, Religion, Tugend und Sitten unter den Menschen zu befordem; daB der erste Zwek der Poesie nicht die Belustigung, sondem die Besserung der Leser sey, und mit einem Wort, ddNchts schon sey. was nicht gtrt ist? With entertainment subordinated to betterment and beauty dependent on goodness, a neutral category of value is not admitted. There is no partial liberation of art fkom its se~tudeto morality. The clear objective is to spiritualize life and to sensationalize religion. In the Empfindungen, Wieland answers Gottsched's dismissal of religion as Literature by imitating the psalms, the most poetic biblical texts (Sengle 86-87). In its preface, he questions the value of al1 non-Christian and secular literature- Zn keeping with an evangelicd program, the speaker bemoans the "ignoble services" to which Pindar, and Virgil put their talents. The sublime Pindar, for instance, embellished a religion that was "far below his genius" (AA V2:340). Moreover, while the "most chaste and spiritual love" in poetry is Petrarch's love for Laura, it sets the lover in "Entzükungen [...], in welche uns keine sterbliche, keine menschliche Vortrefflichkeit sezen sollte" (AA I/2:340). The emotions are disproportionate to the subject, because neither Laura's nor any mortal's sighs

66 "Nachrichten des Verfassers der Empfindungen eines Chnsten an die Leser der Bibliothek der Schonen Wissenschaften und freyen Künste" AA V4:154. can move mountains and bring rivers to a standstill. This privïiege is restricted to the sighmg Jesus on the Cross (AA Y2:340). The evocation of Chnst's Passion is central to the generation of emotion in the text, for Jesus is himself"crucifïed love" (A4 I/2:368). lf there is embodiment, it can only be in and through Christ; the body must be cmcified-disembodied before it cm be resurrected as the ghost of a physical foxm. By dismissing the prospect of sublime spiritual love between humans, the speaker blurs the distinction between hi& and base love and relegates al1 orders of hurnan desire to the lowest realm. The rejection of Petrarchism is followed by an invective against the "Schaamlosigkeit," "SchIiip£iigkeit7" and "Schiindlichkeit" of the latest "Schwann" of Epicureans (AA Y2:340). The change of focus to modem German Anacreontics facilitates the extemakation of the discipline of inner censorship. The worst church hymns, the speaker pontificates, are infinitely preferable to Johann Peter Uz' rnost charrning verse (AA I/2:34 1). The talented Uz is reviled as an "Ungeziefer" in an open declaration to northern German authorities and thereby made the scapegoat for Anacreontic and Epicurean tendencies in German letîers. niese poets of wine, women and Song are "Prediger[] der WoUust und Ruchlosigkeit;" their debauched verse is not pardonable merely because it is ~itty.~'The point cmbe made that

67 AA V234 1. Theodor Verweyen argues that Anacreontic poetry is a form of emancipation fiom this pietistic dogma: "In der pietistischen Lehre von der Adiaphora haben wir sornit den einer, Nomenhorizont ni sehen, auf den sich die Rokokoliteratur kritisch und in emanzipatorischer Absicht bezog. Rokokoliteratur will ja gerade in die Freiheit des Menschen gestellt wissen, was der Pietismus dogrnatisch verwarf, indem sie das provozierende Bild einer KuB-, Trink-, Scherz-, Sing-, Tanz-, Geselligkeitskultur, kurz, das heitere Bild einer Kultur der Sindichkeit entwirft." ("Emanzipation der Suuilichkeit irn Rokoko?" 301) The divide that opposes Wieland's religious texts to the literary rococo is the line that separates sensation f?om these physical sense experiences. For Venveyen, the second normative horizon of the German literary rococo is the totalizing nature of pietistic morality ("Arbeitsethik und Benifsaskese7'). Against this backdrop, the rococo's "tadeinde" verse is an emancipatory "Freisetzung und Verteidigung der sog. 'schonen Wissenschaften' ." (305) Anacreontic poetry is pretty tame stuff- certainly by the standards of the late twentieth century, but also in cornparison to the "indiscreet jewels" of eighteenth- century French eroticism -, but its elevation to lasciviousness not only has a function in the literary politics of the time, it aiso serves to compensate for the operations of repression that the speaker performs in these texts. Wit, the associative faculty essential to poetry, is a capacity whose ethicai value depends entirely on its use? Wit is a dangerous talent. Wit is expansive, seeking new and surprising associations; it therefore requires set limitations: "Je weiter die Grenzen des Wizes werden, desto enger wird das Gebiet der Vernd7 (AA 1/2:460). Without these restrictions, a poet's wit is a "tightrope dancer arnusing fools" (AA Y2:481), or a 'cheap girl" who exhibits her '"wares" ("Sch6nheiten"). There is no rniddle ground. If not expressly a "guardian of tmth," wit is a "devil disguised as an angel," with literature, its Circean "magic potion," changing its intoxicated victims into lowly beasts. Thus, the neutrai tem has a dark underside. Wit as devil in disguise almost seems to have a will of its own; it should be distrusted, its scope narrowly restncted. It is a potentially subversive force that seeks opportunities to prostitute itself, thereby sabotaging the entire project of passionate vimie. Wieland foliows Edward Young by

68 AA V2:461. Mani Schüsseler distinguishes between eighteenth-century use of "Witz" and "Scherz": "Der Witz, von der Gottsched-Schule als das poetische Prinzip schlechthin angesehen, erscheint aus der Pespektive des Scherzes als bloDe Fertigkeit des Verstandes. die Herz und Gemüt noch nicht einbezieht. Der Schen hat das Ziel, gesellige Heiterkeit ni erzeugen und setzt eine Atmosphiire heiteren, gefihlsbetonten Einvernehmens voraus. Auf einen kurzen Nemer gebracht: Witz erzeugt Erkenntnisvergnügen. Scherz msatzlich Mektvergnügen" (Uhbeschwert atrfgekIürt 44-45, see also: Otto Best, Der Witz als Erkenntniskraff und Formprinzip.). Clearly, t his distinction does not apply in the ab ove use of the term wit. However, wit as the associative capacity becomes more dangerous as it begins to move fiom reason into emotion. Like pietistic spintuality, rococo play also away fiom the limitations of the rational. exposing this "feile Dime." Young's case against wit is stated in even less uncertain terms: WI~,a true Pagan, deifies the brute, And lifts Our swïne-enjoyments fiom the mire. (Ni@ Thotrghts 83) In collusion with animal passion, ths "lewd prostitute to the multitudes" has a revolutionary potential: Wit hates authority, commotion loves, And thinks herself the Iightening of the storm. In States, 'tis dangerous, in religion, death. (233) With a will of its own, wit seeks an autonomy which it can never be granted with the deof God. In this sense, God's rule is the backdrop for the emergence of the German Anacreontic. Wieland's authoritarian and censorhg God also needs the Anacreontic in order to juse His drastic rnea~ures.~~ The Empjhdungen maintains a straight, vertical discipline in face of the ever-present danger of vicissitude, contingency, and fiee association. The "straight and simple path" along whch "elevating thoughts" lead to the "archetype" ("Urbild) is not opposed to an equdly straight path downward, but to "intoxicating sensuality" and "labyrinthine digressions" (AA Y2397). Sumounded by sensual stimulation, the speaker is "noch unmündig[ 1" (AA V3:398), God must be his mouth ("Mund") and leading hand: du siehest. daB ich in einer WildniB von Irrgiingen und zweifelhaften Pfaden wandle, von reizenden und drohenden Gefahren umringt, unvermogend ohne deinen Beystand

69 Theodor Venveyen illustrates the concept of "unernancipated" wit in pietism with a passage from the Sympathietz. There, wit is described as a "buntschekig[er] Thor" that threatens to tnumph over "Vemunft," making "ridicu1ous" the defenders of "truth and virtue" (AA U2:492). For Venveyen, this passage shows a dichotomy between reason and wit at a point where the goal of reasoned self-autonomy is not yet formulated and where wit cannot yet declare its own autonorny from reason (277-79). nur Einen sichern Schna ZLI thun; verlasse mich nicht, mein Gott, und leite mich mit deiner Hand 2uf ebner Bah (AA YZ:3 83-84) Dependence on God is a function of the volatility of the subject. Outside of the prayer, it is a plaything of nature, inside, it is the passive filament of divine light. Prayer-speech secures the vertical, monolithic relation. When the capricious, labyrinthe paths and the wayward distractions of life are straightened and concentrated into a single path that becornes the vertical hierarchy of God's order, the modish aesthetics of rococo eroticism - Le. of pleasures that are transitory and accidental, arrived at most often by indirect means, and of beauties that are curvaceous and serpentine - are implicitly answered with an aesthetics of unilinear verticality . Hence, one cm trace a monolithic architecture from the "einf%rbige[n] Blume des Feldes" that is representative of the simplicity which "the Christian" sees in nature (AA V2:379)to the monumentality of God's celestid splendors. One can scarcely speak of beauty in heaven, for there are no definable shapes and no interlacing lines. Instead, the vision ends in an upward thrust to irnrneasurable, impenetrable, and blinding absolutes: Mein Blik dringt noch hoher, aber ein unermeDlicher Lichtkreis blendet ihn mrük! Mit diesem Licht verglichen, ist eine Sonne ein gleissendes Staubchen. - Hier wohnt der UnendIiche70 Here as for Oedipus, the brightest tmth is blinding. God cannot be represented; he is not a shape for purposes of enticement or seduction. Without shape, infinite male power is evoked by the recurring self-sacrifice of the subject and its biblical corollary, the sacrifice of Christ's body. True, nature is God's creation, and the

70 AA Y2:372. In its emphasis on the "extensive, spatial infinity" of the cosmos, Baudach observes the proximity of Wieland's 175 1 didactic poem, Die Natzrr der Dinge, to eighteenth-century astronomy (Plmeten der Unschzdd 292). Here, too, the essence of God is the infinite. birds and bees, etc., are, in this sense, things of beauty. They receive obligatory praise, but the absolute enpties each sensual experience of its individual texture: Aber was sind Farbeh was ist die Morgenrothe oder der liebliche Mondschein gegen das Licht deines Antlitzes? Was sind süsse Gerüche gegen die Ausflüsse deiner Liebe? Wie verschwindet dieses vor dem schwachsten Strale deines Urbildes? (AA U2:352) The prima1 image, which cannot be described, makes al1 other sensual experience vaish. The vertical relation cm never be Mly sustained. This world is empty and the portals of the next are impenetrable. Neither place aEords rest, and the subject is obliged to repeat ths vertical journey time and again. Given the lack of scenery between them, the distance fiom earth to heaven may seem quite short. Indeed, each hymn, and, within the hymn, each respi~gparagaph, is a new launch, a new volley of ernotion. At times, there seems to be no mediation between the individual "Empfindungen," and they seem to lack the cohesion of a narrative that would organize the individuai volleys. The hyrnns thus become a collection of interchangeable, alrnost indistinguishable episodes. Repetition, however, is in keeping with the practice of prayer (and eroticism). r.1.5 Natures Sacred and Profane A point made earlier deserves re-emphasis: the Empfndungen does not abnegate "sensation;" rather it reclaims the language of desire and love fiom secular literature. As a celebration of desire, the text presents religion as a "Leidenschaft" or an "allmachtiger Trieb," that is yeamed for with "lüstemen Begierden," and that envelops one in "Entzückungen" and satiates dl personal wishes. The parallels between physical and spiritual passion are intentional and prograrnmatically stated. The speaker answers the pleasure of those who would wallow in the "betaubende[r] Sidichkeit" of "'thierischgestalteten Freuden" with a higher order of pleasure: "Mochtet ihr nur Eine dieser Empfindungen schmeken" (AA V2:397-98). These benefits are reaped hmthe repression of the physical, but there is also an obvious risk of contamination by the physical, since nature, i-e. the physical environment which surrounds us and in part shapes our experience of the divine, cmbe both sacred and profane. For the most part, the Empfindungen tends towards an absolute opposition between etemal moral beauties (innocence, Whie and wisdom, etc.) and the "earthly floof7where these are but "foreign plants7' (AA Y2463). This îhought leads to a glorification of disease: die Krankheiten des Leibes, die dem unsterblichen Theile so heilsam sind. Sie enhvohnen uns von den sinnlichen Dingen., und machen uns sturnpf ihre Reizungen zu empfinden (AA V2:355) Predictably, death is wished for as an end to dlneed (AA V2:356) and as the vanishing point of the "phantoms of sensuality" (AA Y2473). Similarly, the foretaste of heavenly bliss attaùied in ecstatic worship is accompanied by a feeling of disembodirnent (AA Y2 :372). At f3st glance, the promised compensation appears to be diametrically opposed to the faithful's sacnficed joys, particularly those of the flesh as celebrated in contemporary Anacreontic poetry. While some analogies between Wieland's pietism and rococo are possible - for instance between rococo cupids and the celestid Seraphim, in both cases they hurriediy wing desire between the e~apturedindividual and its object -, pietism surpasses the emotiond confines of rococo with a "vertical" surge towards the religious sublime, and it severely restricts the rococo's characteristic "horizontal" play and wit. On the other hand, given the proliferation of rapturous, agitated, unpeaceable transports, the dismissal of 'al1 worldly objects" because of theù inability to provide "lasting peace" should be viewed with skepticism (AA 1/2:342). Like worldly pleasures, other-worldly joys are excessive and often transitory While the pietist rejects the "glhzendsten Schauspiele der künstlichen Ueppigkeit" in favor of the humble beauty of a single-colored flower (AA Y2:379), the images of celestial resplendence, instead of evoking peace and tranquillity, represent the soul's ascension as an unstoppable, disembodied transport. The disembodied self ''fies like a Seraphim" through "the ranks of countless spirits" and ''rnyriad's of ethereal sms" to the blinding center of light (AA Y2372). Thus, the compensation for abstaining fiom worldly excess is an absolute experience in the temple of the afterlife. The notion that the world and its objects, as products of God's creation, are innately good occasions some ambivalence concerning the sensual world and facilitates its partial recuperation. If nature is a "reflection of God's splendor," it follows that the earthly soi1 - for which elsewhere virtue was described as a "foreign plant" - is the "Pflanzschule des Himrnels" (A.Y2469). Partahg of the "allgemeinen Blüthe und Wonne der Dinge" (AA I/2:468), the believer who has rigorously disciplined his own desires now celebrates God's immanence as a sensual joy: "So willt du auch meine Shenni dir ziehen, ni dir der Quelle jeder süssen Empfindung" (AA V2359). When nature is idealized as an undefiled "second paradise" (AA Y2:468), the fault lines that separate the divine from the mundane shift kom the externd to the human sphere. Human society, history, and the corruptible human psyche are blamed for decadence and decline. Nature was "simple and unadorned" in the biblical past, now, "in the rniddle of these degenerate tunes," it heaves a sigh fkom beneath its godless destroyers (AA Il239 1-97). Worldly amusements such as Ovid's eroticism are a "Verkehrung der Natur und der wahren Gestalt der Dinge" (AA V2:46 1). Nature's charms are the "chaste beauties" of graces and muses, not the Ovidian "art of kissing and drinking," nor, by extension, all that is "bestial" in man (hlY246 1). Thus, the initial division between worldly and other-worldly, mundane and divine, is reproduced in the mundane by notions of nature as either chaste or bestial, of society as either decadent or hmonious and

of the individual as either immoral or devout. Since "the world - is a temple of God, the earth - the land ofhis revelations" (AA Y2:468), its material beauties are potentially manifestations of the divine. This extension presents a powerful aesthetic potential: the concretization of spirituality in a representative materid form. The Empfndungen steps back fiom the representations of worldly relations by emphasizing the individual's relation to God; however, the Sympathien, which promotes the generation of affection in cross-gender relations, cautiously probes this dangerous potential.

2.1.6 Sympathetic Circles

The speaker claims to allow his heart to "speak its own language" (AA Y2:344), but in hyrnns, whose feelings are meant to be shared and whose texts are ideally sung in unison, the heart (the subject) is not important for its individual characteristics, but as a representative voice of Christian emotional experience. Ideally, the joumeys inward and upward are complemented by a horizontal rnovement, whereby spiritual "Empfindungen" are shared arnong like-minded individuals, eliciting mutual "S ympathien ." Rather than isolate, subjective identification with God establishes the individual's conformity to this select group; and one can speak of a triangular relationship beîween the speaker, God, and sympathetic human others. Subjectivity triggers the need for a community of belief, which corresponds, in the Sympathien, to the notion of a 'keunited hummity.'"' The specter of outside threat also favors group formation. Without the efforts of a few wise and Wtuous individuals, the speaker maintains, the moral order would soon degenerate into chaos." This bleak prediction is naturally very flattering to the few whose "heilsam[e] Stralen" alone separate civilization hmchaos. It also indicates the extension of moral volaîility fiom the individual to civilization with the restricted group serwlg as a protective buffer. Given the apocalyptic tenor of the discourse, it is perhaps surprishg that the speaker gladly preaches the futility of all endeavor at political change: Mache keine Entwürfe, wie du in der grossen Welt und im Rathe des Fürsten die Beispiele eines Epaminondas und Aristides wieder emeuern wollest. Unsere Zeiten leiden keinen Epaminondas, keinen Cato mehr, als in solchen Urnstiinden, wo sie nicht

handeln konnen; die Grossen erlauben uns nur zu denken und ni wünschen. Wende dich auf eine andere Seite. (AA U2:48 1) The lapidary dismissal of political discourse - almost a caricature of "German inwardness" - puts al1 the weight of societal change un personal bettennent, ethical and spiritual instruction, and the stimulation and dissemination of mord feeling. Despite this, pietistic sensibility is directed outwards towards group formation and emotional exchange. In fact, the Sympathien has been described as a "sublime society garne" (Bappler, Der philosophische Wieland 14). Furthemore, pietism is (implicitly) critical of rationalistic court culture. The "naiveté," which Wieland presents in texts such as the Sympathien and Theages, and in particular in the earlier composed "Abhandlung vom Naiven" (AA 114: 15-

?' Erhart E&zweizrng 3 1 . The Sympaihien, which belongs in none of the traditional genres, is one of the attempts on the formal level to create a "'privat[e] Literatur, die den SelbstverstiindigungsprozeB sich austauschender, empfindsamer 'Seelen' mit Hilfe der Lektüre vorantreiben wili" (Enrzweizing 34). " "plie Erhaltung der rnoralischen Ordnung, welche sich bald in ein Chaos verwandeln würde, wenn die Heine Zahl der Weisen und Tugendhaften ihre heilsamen Stralen zurückziehen wollten." (AA 1/2:480) 66

2 1), suggests the levelling of traditional cultural hierar~hies.'~The "pathos of the chosen few" is a response to the "bourgeois" phenornenon of "social di~orientation;""~and the pietistic texts are documents of the emergence of bourgeois class-consciousness, to the extent that this begins as a consciousness of alienation from traditionai classes. Sympathetic souls, sharply contrasted with the cornrnon lot, constitute a sort of spiritual arîst~cracy.~'Liselotte E. Kurth-Voigt argues that Wieland's concept of sympathy has its origins in "Plato's notion of souk related in an earlier life who, having been separated in death, search for each other in another existence until they are united again" ("Existence after Death" 160). Thus, the Sympathren begins with praise for souls who "perhaps had loved each other under another heaven" (AV2:446). The "vielleicht" is important. The speaker does not commit himself to an anti-rational predeteminisrn, but evokes it as a possibility, a hypothesis, redizable in the text. Predeterminism, however

73 "In der Umkehning dieser hofischen Rationalitat entsteht um die Mitte des 18. Jahrhunderts eine empfindsame Gefühlskultur, die sich unter dem Leitmotive der 'Z&tlichkeit' formiert. Gegenüber den AfSektkontrollen und Sprachreguliemngen einer bestirnmten gesellschafilichen Ordnung zielt Wielands Ideal der 'Naivetat7 sowohl auf die Einheit von 'Rede' und 'Gedanken' im einzelnen Menschen als auch auf eine Gemeinsch* der Empfindsamen, die den unverstellten Ausdmck ihres 'Inwendigen' mm Pri~peiner zwanglosen 'Gesellschaft' werden lassen7'(Erhart Entnuezzing 30). " Erhart, En&weizi~rg36. Erhart comments upon the texts of young Wieland and other Klopstock followers: "Statt eines sich bürgerlich artikulierenden Selbstverstiindnisses formiert sie [die ernpfindsame Jugendbewegung] sich gerade im Zeichen der Nicht- Zugehorigkeit ru einem bestimmten Stand oder einer Klasse." 75 The term anaocracy is scarcely avoidable in the dissertation, because it refers to the economic, social (and hereditary) elite, and most of the texts that we wiU examine are peopled by this elite. However, the culture of emotional control that is associated with court aristocracy is opposed by a culture of feeling that in these texts is largely represented by aristocratic figures (Theages, Clementina). Thus, one cm speak of a critique of aristocratic attitudes (decornm. emotional control) undertaken by a member of the emergent bourgeoisie that often employs aristocratic figures as its mouthpiece. resonant, may ultimately be Literary flowish. The myth of the two reunited haives compensates for the dissonance of subjectivity. Wie lieblich ist es ihnen, ihr innerstes einander auhschliessen? Wie leicht verstehen sie sich? Wie schnell geht jede Ernpfindung aus der einen Seele in die andere über? Sie

scheinen nur zwo Helfien ni seyn, welche die Freundschaf? wieder in Eine Seele zusarnmenfüge. Kein grosser Gedanke, keine heilige Empfindung, keine frohe Hofiung noch edle Unternehmung, die sie nicht unter sich gernein haben! Keine Dissonanz in der einen, die nicht durch die andere in Harmonie aufgelost werde. (AA V2: 447) Alone, the subject is volatile; through "fhendship," two halves reconstitute the unified soul. The authenticity of the inner voice is affirmed by the harmony of the responding voice. Thus, the epistolary Sympathzen is modeled on intimate correspondence. Each correspondent is individually addressed, and the ethical "dissonance" each correspondent faces is resolved by the words of the speaker. Moreover, these words cannot be dissonant, because they correspond with a sympathetic addressee. Both speaker and reader are sheltered f?om the volatility of their subjective tat te.'^ The concept of pre-established sympathy points to the exclusionary function of the "fnendship circle." In the eighteenth century, the notion of sympathy effectively replaces the love of humanity with a more limited and concentrated Love of specific fiiends," which in turn is an impetus to group

76 This brings to mind Martini's comments on the compensatory function of the epistolary form: "Wieland hat die Bneffom wohl auch gewalilt, weil ihr Wechsel, ihr Fragmentarisches dam halfen, den Widersprüchen gerecht zu werden, in die ihn seine lebhaften Stirnmungswechsel, die Schwankungen und Unsicherheiten des eigenen BewuDtseins hineintrieben." ("Nachwort," MS 3 :958) 77 Eckhardt Meyer-Kentler comments on the role of sympathy in group formation in Frarrenfreun&chafl- Munnerjirezrr~dschaf~,a collection of relevant t O the examination of friendship and gender identity: "Seit der Mitte des 18. Iahrhunderts hat sich das Freundschaftsdenken über die Vorstellung der ailgemeinen Menschenliebe erhoben, und das heiBt, das nun gerade nicht mehr jeder Mensch freundschaftlich ZLI iieben ist, sondem nur formation and identification, i.e. the "cult of fnendship" (Wolfdietrich Rasch). The Sympathzen does not belong to the tradition of scholarly male fiiendship based on shared knowledge.'* Instead, it presents cross-gender sympathies based on the shared experience of exalted feelings. For Niklas Luhmann (Liebe als Passion) and Lawrence Stone (The Famzly, Sex and Marriage), fi-iendship figured largely in the new valuation of sexuality in the eighteenth centwy. However, the new cross-gender fiendships bring the social reality of gender difference into a type of relationship that was traditionally based on (male) equality, with the result that, here too, women assume their traditionally subordinate role in patriarchy; they are the passive, unspoken receptacles for the speaker's guidance and ad~ice.'~If it addresses women, the Sympathen cannot present hard philosophy, because women are historically absent from the (official) discourses of reason; thus, it speaks the naive (unschooled) language of the soul. In correspondence with women, the speaker of the Sympathzen is the gentle fatherly counsel and, in moments of exalted admiration, the chaste and Christian

Lover .'O diejenigen msammenschIieBen, die tatsachlich in Gleichklang der Seele leben." (9) '' bbLltr]~mani~ti~~heGelehTtenfieundschaft," see: Barner, Frmrenfrerrn&ch$t - Miimterfrtizc1tciSchaj4t23 -45. 79 See : Becker-Cant arino, Fraienfrezmdsch~t- Mdnnerfez~n&ch# 47-74. 80 As mentioned above, Wieland shifts between the Sympathien and the EmpJindzingeil fiom addressing a iess educated ferninine coterie to a more exacting and more "sigrilficant" literary male audience. The tum to the male stage, which is prefigured by addresses to men in the final Ietters of the Spputhiei~,cm be attributed to Wieland's increased "eamestne~s~"but a more practicai consideration also deserves attention. By the end of the text, each mernber of the sympathetic coterie has in al1 likelihood been instnicted; and to renew these addresses would ody prove the insufficiency of the original instruction. The number of addresses to sympathetic souls is therefore limited to the actuai number of addressees in the circle. As literary materiai, the individual addressees are expended upon completion of their exemplification-instruction; and the sympathetic project ends when no more human materiai can be found. Whether the close fiiends are real or fictive, their numbers cannot expand indefinitely without jeopardizing the intimacy of the circle (on the identity of the addressees, see the footnote to page 109 in MS 3 :8 1 1). The pietistic fiendship circle "mirrors" the exalted experiences of each individual participant; aLl people with "'Empfindungen für Gott" are thus encouraged, dieselbe so lebhaft als ihnen mogiich ist, andern mit[zu]theiIen, und wenigstens [ml versuchen, ob sie syrnpathetische Herzen antreEen, welche durch sie zu den gleichen Gesinnungen envekt, oder darim unterhalten werden mochten. (AA U2:339) Wieland's texts are themselves a mode1 for the reproduction of individdgroup sensation; they act as points of convergence and conveyance, disseminating the concepts and the images most conducive to the production of religious senhent, while enlisting the entire literary community in this (~topian?~')project. Thus, with personal appeals to factual addressees, the Sympathien attempts to create an environment of social intimacy that helps animate the inwardness of devotional meditation. In keepïng with Gerhard Sauder's theory that the sublimation of sexuality is a central moment of the cultural rnovement of sensibility, the fi-iendship circle is formed around strictly spiritual love. This is elevated as "diese erhabne Begierde," while the physical love of cornmoners is debased as "niedertrachtige Bediirfnisse" and sinfulness is imputed to human, physical relations that fdl outside this exalted sphere (AA Y2:447). According to the Sympathien, physical love is a "conspiracy" to usurp the language of love of its higher rneaning:

" The text is the utopia, the fictive gound on which the chosen society exists ideally, to the extent that its realization in the world is fully impossible: "Die sympathetische Teilnahme der sich einander spiegelnden 'Seelen' fungiert einerseits als Modell einer Societat, ist andererseits jedoch nur in der Lekture und im imaginaen Reich der Poesie verfugbar" (Erhart, Enrnueiung 37). In the S'bien itself, the direct address to close acquaintances and the practical aim of bettering their moral life in the here and now cannot be considered utopian; the goals of this project are concrete, if ultimately unrealizable. In the sarne period, however, Wieland worked intensively on planetary utopia, for example, in the 1755 Gesicht von e Mer Well rïnschïldiger Menschen, see : B audach, Planeten der Unschuld 2 5 1 -4 14. nennet nicht Sympathie was eine schiindliche Conspiration genen.net werden sollte, die ihr umsonst mit dem Nahmen der Liebe und Freundschaft bedeket, wie Leda eh haliches Gemüth unter den Rosen ihrer Wangen versteken will. (AV2:447) The polemic for the control of the language of love pits the speaker and his faction against the "small souls" whose talk of sympathy, fiiendship and love is a mask for "animalistic urges and pleasures" (AA V2447-48). Just as moral ugliness hides beneath the roses of Leda's cheeks, "flowery" language has the potentid to deceive, covering up a "shamefûi conspiracy" with "sympathy" and other such lofty ternis. Words are masks, language itself is as changeable and unreliable as the human sod. Its usage must be govemed by a strict moral regimen. With sacred devotion occupying the vocabulary of sensation and desire, key terms such as "Begierde" and "Leidenschaft" must be purged of physical meaning. The strategy at this point is not to integrate the drives, not to refine them in a process of civilization, but to cut a line that brings clarity into the separation of body and spirit. "Begnüget euch an euren thierischen Trieben und Vergnügen [...]; aber haltet euch in euem Grenzen" (AA V2448): the cost of disembodied sympathy is the non-refinement of physical relations; the body remains animal; within its boundaries ("Grenze"), the animal drive is concentrated and enacted. If, as one expects, the inhabitants of this nether world are unsatisfied with their animal pleasures, the satirïst Liscow, for instance, may be called up - to employ his satiric "whip" on the "Anacreontic sparrows" (AA V2:493-95). According to the Christian love triangle, the only path fiom one point of human love to another is through divine love. Human love must be a consequence of the lovers' primary yearning for God. Religious "desire" is the "secret, magnetic attraction" that makes spiritual "lovers" of sympathetic souls (AA Y2447). As they mutually approach the Holy Land of the Etemal One, "Sou1 approaches S0u1,"~~and the lovers are united in worship. Death or revelations3 is the precondition to Merunion. In the promised land of "universal love," where nature shall be transfigured into an ethereai beauty for the "purer senses of immortals," "blessedness" will flow unhindered, for no physical border will divide the chosen souk (AA Y2:392). A dying woman is consoled by the uiought that each day of separation fiom her lover will be compensated in heaven with eons of togethemess (AA V2:463- 64). Their love, noble despite all the world's corruption, is a "hallowed triumph of innocence," for its "most elevated subject" is the glory of aflerlife (AA Y2:463-

64). "S - -"'IU prays for the lover she can no longer address, "und eilende Seraphim tragen dein Gebet vor den ewigen Thron" (AA Y2:464). The messenger angels are the sole medium of communication, the channel through which their human affection must pass. God as the medium is the message. The sublime in love is de-secularized, becoming a longing "die sich durch keine Geschopfe befnedigen ld3t,"85 but secular love also intensifies religious sensation. Indeed, religion as sensation is in danger of becoming dependent on the (secular?) energy of cross-gender attraction.

The epigraph of the Syrnpathien, M I/2:446. Le., the end of history and the retum to paradise, see: AA Y2391-93. " Perhaps the now unattainable Sophie Guterm~aRoche. 85 AA V2397. For Kart S. Guthke, the secularization of religious sentiment presents "im deutschsprachigen Raum das entscheidende geistesgeschichtliche Ereignis der zweiten Hdfte des 18. Jahrhunderts," an event occumng largeiy through the literary depiction of sublime hurnan love ("Kabale und Liebe" 58). Here the inverse occurs. 2.1.7 Harnessing the body The Syrnpathien iargely forgoes the description of ou."earthly delights in the divine." Its praise for the creator's bounty of flora and fauna remains abstract, cursory and general, suggesting a lack of interest in this highly touted aspect of nature (AA W2:465-67). There is only one physical manifestation that warrants serious consideration - the female body. Thus, the speaker's main interest in beauty is in its most problematic fom. The prirnary object of sexual desire is made the instrument ofother-worldliness, and ethical instruction is thereby made sensual. The difference between the body as the "tme form of thi~gs"and the body as a "penrersion of nature" is the moral quality of its inhabitant. If the heart of a beautiful woman is in the right place, then her exterior, however potentially deceptive it may be, can serve tmth and morality. The comely and youW Celia, however, has not yet committed herself to whie. Her human face becomes a moral battleground. God, "the sweetest lover," is pointedly ignored while the spirit is besieged by a court of Penelope's suitors. A "Schwann von kriechenden Seelen" takes possession of Celia's exterior: Diese lagert auf deinen Augbrauen, eine andre nimmt das Grübchen im Kinn in Besiz, eine ganze Grouppe, (sol1 ich sie Lilien-Kafer nennen?) hat sich unter dem sanftbelebten Halstuch gesezt, da innvischen andre von Salamander-Art im Feuer deiner Blike unversengt herumschwiirmen. (AA V3,:449) Borrowed £iom the erotic tradition, the image of the love-siege is tumed into a critique of erotic and worldly affections. The agents of sexual interest exhaust the energy of beauty. As beetles and salamanders, the suitors invade the wornan as a fertile soi1 and consume her energes, even the £ire of her eyes, in an organic, vegetative process. A low order of creature in the chain of being, the suitors operate from the swamp of a repressed nature. The speaker's position is antithetical to sexual release, but the image is also an afEmation of the "magnetic" force of the sexual body, with sensual creatures swimming in her £ire ador possessing her in their orbit. The passage anticipates the prison scenario of Araspes und Pmthea, in particula. the moth imagery where the lover is dram inexorably in narrowing circles into the fies of beauty and lust. The organic quality of this image stands apart fiom anythmg else in the Sympathien. The petitioner of God, however, is also attracted by the energy potential of the woman's face, although he would exploit it solely in the service of the Lord. He claims to see Celia "only through spiritual eyes," and to discover "something more beautiful than beauty beneath your earthly form" (AA Y2:450). At issue is Celia's Wtuous potential. nie many suitors and the lone preacher are attracted by a common source of beauty, but the preacher claims to see a pretematural, spiritual quality that elevates Celia's visual manifestation beyond the material. Given Celia's partiality to her insect-like suitors, it is hard to imagine whence this spiritual quality emanates; and since Celia is already beautiful whle orJy potentially good, the mle "that nothing is beautiful which is not good" cannot apply yet (AA U4: 154). Appearances can be deceiving, and the speaker might hirnself be deceived in his ability to separate the ephemeral, "red- cheeked" appeal of a young woman fiom the "form as a likeness of the soul" which in tum is a "likeness of the divine" (AA Y2:450). Virtue enhances beauty; indeed, beauty without vimie is a forbidden bit for the vimious. But beauty ~SO enhances Whie, and Wnie without beauty is unpalatable for the sensualist. Beauty crosses the dudistic worldly-other-worldly threshold runnuig through these texts. As an instrument of persuasion, the fernale body accentuates the insficiency of al1 other persuasive tools. It lays bare the human psyche as malleable and volatile - erg0 the severity of the waniing: "Mache deine Gratien nicht zu Syrenen die uns zum Tod einladen!" (AA Y2:45 1), an ïmperative that twists and turns snakelike, weaving together the Graces, the Sûens and Death. Beauty "sofiens" the human soul; as a "glarizende Seifenblase, ein buntes Nichts," as the "feile Schonheit" of erotic nymphs, it weakens the moral fabric and leads to "Weichlichkeit und Entschlurnrnern am Busen der Venus" (AA I/2:459-61 ). As an embodiment of virtue, it "softens" the heart, making it "plastic" ("bildsam") to the reception of a "higher bea~ty."~~An attractive appearance is a "Versprechen, welches die Seele tut, groB, edel, nachahmens- würdig ni seyn" (AA Y2450). The battle, then, is for possession of Celia's "sofily animated scarf7("sanfibelebten Halstuch"). The movement of the breasts it covers must be invested with the stimngs of tlie moral heart. Elsewhere, the battle has been won, and the conflation of beauty and wtue is realized in the figure of a chaste and dying lover whose "stille Sedzer heben den Flor der die zartlichste Bmst verhüllt" (AA Y2:468). In this case, the le* cleavage over the breast is attuned to God's creation; and beauty is fully recovered, but only in the death of youth. In the best of worlds, philosophers, as ûuth-lovers, would be ideal vehicles for moral instruction. In this world, they lack the ability to excite the fervent sensations that best convince the heart. Poets, on the other hand, speak the language of the heart, yet their poetic talent is pre-moral and therefore dangerous.

86 "Wem Weisheit, wenn Unschuld, wenn Demuth, wenn die grossen Gesinnungen, welche der GIaube der Christen einflosset, auf Herzen, die durch die sichtbare Schonheit schon erweicht und bildsam gemacht worden, in aller ihrer Stake würken, wie konnen sie anders ais diese hohere Schonheit bewundern?" (AA Y2:450-51) The flesh-and-blood beauties pose the same sort of moral dangers as poets, but they do so with greater intensity, for their tangible presence speaks more directly to the heart, to the senses and to the hidden desires than the best images of poetic fancy : Die Tugend, die in Schonheit gekleidet rnitten unter die Menschen tria, mit ihnen Umgang pflegt und vor ihren Augen handelt, gefdlt mehr, rührt zanlicher und drükt ihre Spuren tiefer in die Herzen als in den Regeln der Weitweisen, ja in den reizendsten Dichtungen eines Bodmers oder Richardsons selbst. (AA Y2:450) The body, then, is the most effective instment of persuasion. Accordingly, Celia is entreated to exploit the charms of her eyes, cheeks, and lips to sway the

"Unachtsamen, welche ni sinnlich sind, die Tugend in ihrer eigentlichen Gestalt

ni lieben" (hl Y2:450-51). Yet if these admirers are too sensual to love Whie in its actual (invisible, spiritual) fom, one may ask what guarantee there is that it is "Whie" they admire when they gaze at a woman's appearance? The destiny of the "beautihl soul" is to discard the cloak of the body and realize pure

spirituality: "O du, welche nur der Enthüllung vom Leibe bedarf, um ein Engel ni seyn, schone harmonische Seele;"87 and yet by definition material admiration must cease with the loss of body. Wherever it is deployed as an instrument of morality, the body persists on the surface. It is a threshold over which morality must pass before arrivuig at the transcendence, or disernbodiment, of the human form. Add to this pichire the layers of clothing and the masks of mascara and affectation that shroud the denuded physicd and moral being, and the hide-and-seek game of 'eigentlichen" and "uneigentlichen Gestalten" can be extended through a multiplicity of "scarves" or thresholds. This possibility is hinted at in the speaker's praise for

" AA Y2:467. In Der Bt.grff der "sch6nenSeele," Ham Schrneer has compiled references to the term that span Wieland's entire iiterary career. the "sittsam[e] Kleidung einer jungfkaulichen Schone, welche den KIugen desto mehr gefallt, je mehr sie ihre keuschen Reize ni verbergen sucht" (AA V2:476). Modesty does not so much hide the female chams, as it demonstrates an incomplete attempt at hiding. Modesty is a tease; without sexual "charms" below the layers of clothing, hidden, repressed, mattainable but ever-present, its "chaste charms" ("keuschen Reize") would lose the seductive promise of that which is withheld and become charmless and insignificmt.

Wherever sense embellishes spiritual sensation, the tendency to isolate the earthly fiom the divine is countered by a desire to link the opposites in a continuum that would facilitate the flow of psychic energies tiom one order to the next. Indeed, in the Sympathien, "contemptus mundi" in its extreme fom is roundly criticized. "Heated by seraphic flames," the hemiit Theages tums his back on "earthly objects" to dedicate himself solely to God: Du siehest in emster Entzükung einen feierlichen Kreis von Engeln um dich her, die deine Gelübde horen, du fiihlest den Unendlichen selbst gegenwartig, und schmachtest

nur darnach, ihn immer zu empfinden, und mit ihm vereiniget ni seyn. (AA V2:482) The hennit's devotion has the potential of becoming too sensual, like the devotion of certain nus, or, equally, like the "Liebe eines ausschweifenden Jünglings ni seinem Madchen" (AA I/2:484-85). Although its directness is displaced by allusion to Catholic nuns, a critique of enthusiasm is nonetheless found in one of Wieland's most enthusiastic texts: despite repeated statements to the contrary, it is possible to love God too much, and too sensually. Contact with human society, if not physical contact with a human partner, is the tonic to the hennit's excess. God cannot become a body in the mystical sense, this world is necessary to de- eroticize the highest spuitual moment. This critique is retracted with the explicit rejection of the notion of religious excess, the reinvestment of religion with the language of desire, and the abandonment of the body as a moral agent in the Empfindungen. However, the strains that complicate the predominant religious dualism of the pietistic texts gain significance in subsequent secular texts, where subjectivity loses its sûictly religious function. By its title, the fiagrnent Theages, oder Unterredung von Schonheit und Liebe refers to the problem of the hermit and the hebetween worldly abnegation and the exaltation of the spirit. Here, however, the excesses of the Empfindungcn are rejected, and the maileable self, earlier shaped by God, becomes to a large extent a function of the secular environment. 2.2 Theages oder Unterredungen von Schonheit und Liebe: Sensual Morality

1 want to begin this next section with a review of some of the points made in the last. Recall kom the introduction that these fist three texts were chosen to elaborate what I have called the "preconditions of subjectivity." In other words, these texts lay the ideational groundwork for Araspes und Panthea, which I see as a major breakthrough, a pre-Romantic enunciation of subjectivity as division unequaled in any of Wieland's subsequent texts. In anticipation of subjectivity as division, the pietistic texts undertake the project of religious subjectivism, according to which subjective feeling is exalted within a strict set of limitations. Within this general tendency, the Empfindungen is an extreme case of nmowing and focusing the subject. It imposes a binary division between body and spirit, according to which the needs and wishes of the self, inasmuch as they do not conform to pure spirituality, are sacrificed on the altar of worship. With the "I" defined as nothhg and God defined as everythmg, the subjective voice occupies the moment of self-annihilation. The senses and the pleasures of the body are sacrificed to the divine spirit. Written in the terrns of abnegation and repression, the subject now renders the divine as an expression of pure verticality escaping the physical self. The subject is subjugated to a vertical relation of absolute dependence. In an effort at persuasion in the empirical world, spiritual passions are presented as analogous to those of the body. Sensation is not abnegated; rather, the language of desire and love is reclaimed from sensual literature. The promise of devotion is pleasure, and as pleasure devotion competes in the sensual world with physical proclivities. In contrast to the Empfindzingen, the Sympathien enlists the physical senses in the seMce of moral sense. The Sympathien not ody corresponds with women and therefore initiates a gender dynamic; it also identifies the fernale body as the locus of sensory persuasion. In this context, sensibility is a sublimation strategy which exploits physicd beauty in order to inspire the spirit to conquer the body. With its title reference to the critical note on enthusiastic excess in the Sympathien, Theages, oder Unterredung von Schonhezt und Liebr rejects the other-worldliness of the Empfindungen and Merextends the sublimation strategy of the Sympathzen. The religious triangle which placed God as the overseer of sympathetic relationships is now pushed to the background in an attempt to exalt moraliîy without leavhg the worldly environment. Since the new Theages lives within this physically detemiined world with only secondary recourse to supematural moral agencies, the binary divide of body and spirit cm no longer be maintained. Rather, it becornes a continuum, a Great Chain of Being with man as the middle link accessing the higher regions only through the refinement of self and world. On the surface, it appears to be more difficult to talk of a line of conflict or a constitutive division, because the horizontal bar that in the Empjindungen separates spint fiom world seems now to be a bridge uniting the two. However, this shift depends on operations of selection and refinement that in turn divide the world almg the lines of that which benefits or hinders spirituakation. The key difference between the pietistic texts that anticipate the divided subject and Araspes as the text of divided subjectivity is that in the former the world is divided but the individual, as represented by the speaker, is whole outside of this division, while in the latter the cosmic tear runs directly through the individual's voice, as represented by the figure of Araspes. Theages is a step closer than the previous texts to the expression of division in and through the individual to the extent that the discipluie previously imposed by religious dopa is now self-generated within the individual. Moral sense, dependent on sensual stimulation, is balanced between abstemiousness and sensuality. The fabric of the text is a veil of harmony and repletion. Given the narrative stnicture, it is impossible to isolate a speaking subject; given the ideational content and its stylistic form, the "evidence" of dividedness is largely covered over. The text ends in an abrupt fragment at the moment it attempts to resolve the question of desire.

2.2. I Philosophical Authorities Theages oder Uliterredungen von Schonheit und Liebe. ein Fragment was written in the short period separating the completion of the Empfrndungen from the beginning of Araspes. It was originally published in a run of only twelve or sixteen copies, so that, like the Sympathzen. it is an example of private literat~re.'~ In general, the text has received scant attention; yet Bappler sees it as a significant step forward fiom the Sympathien. According to Bappler, the Sympalhien "reflects tlie young poet's lack of intellectual opemess," whereas Theages is seen as a first step in Wieland's "move towards a less prejudiced understanding of humanity and the world" (Derphilosophische Wieland 14- 15). This "progress" is clearly related to the atternpt to establish a secular basis for morality . In a fashion typical of Wieland, Theages is upfiont about its sources. According to the preface, it owes its existence to the study of Plato and Shaftesbury and the "idea of elaborating the Platonic principles of beauty and love in a system" (AA Y2:423). Moreover, the principal characters are readily

See: MS 3820-21. Wieland's 1758 Sammlz~ngeinigerprosaischenSchrrf[n is the fira remaining edition. identified with these two secular authorities. Friend Nicias and the unnamed narrator are introduced as "Platonic enthusiasts" ("Schwiirmer") and Theages is a "Platonic hennit;" Nicias is a "virtuose according to Shaftesbury's idea7' and Theages's sister, Aspasia, models her art gallery in accordance with "Shaftesbury's idea7' of allegorical painting. The philosophers fill in for the absent authority of Christian dogrna and God; Plato and Shaftesbury provide the youthful dreamers with philosophical parentage. There is no suggestion that the author or his principal spokespersons have becorne atheists. They remain good Christians. Indeed, Nicias again promotes the program of edifjmg religion through Merature; the unwittingly pre-Christian Greeks are still condemned to present, at best, an "unschuldige und adrichtige Mine in dern Gesicht einer ~uhlerin.'"~Yet in tems of Wieland's Shaftesbury reception the text marks a significant shift. In March 1755, Wieland is reported to have said that Shaftesbury "wasted no opportunity to mock religion" and that his principle of ridicule was not advantageous to religion. Wieland argued that there is "no better way to refute him than by using the concepts he gives us of Mmie and by showing that the Christian religion teaches us no ~ther.'~~Theages,

19 "Die Tugend in allen ihren unwiderstehlichen Schonheiten, in ihrer rechten Ternperatur, nach dern Leben, das ist, in nachahmlichen Handlungen, schildem, die Thaten Gottes erzahlen, Gottseligkeit und Menschediebe in den Herzen entzünden, jeden Anect der in unsrer Brust athmet mm Vortheil der Wahrheit erhizen, den Menschen einen edlen und erhabenen Geschmak einflossen, und (welches die Seele des Christenthums ist) den Geist von den sinnlichen Dingen abloken und an den Hmmel, tur den er geschaEen ist, angewohnen - Dieses sind, seiner Meinung nach, die Geschafte der Dichtkunst." (hlU2:424) "Es geht mir, sagte er mir einst, mit diesem erhabenen Griechen, wie es mir geht wenn ich eine unschuldige und aufichtige Mine in dern Gesicht einer bu hie^ entdeke. Wie sehr würdest du mir gefdlen, denke ich, wenn aus diesen sanften Zügen dein Herz redete, und wenn deine Wangen moralisch und nicht aus List errotheten!" (AA V2:425) 90 The statement, From a 1755 conversation, illustrates the ambivalence of the then religious "Schw&-mer" to Shaftesbury's critique of enthusiasm with its principle of ridicule: "Vom Schaftesbury u. S. Charactenstick sagte W., daB er darim k. Geleg[enheit] versaume der Relig. N spotten und das so mit dem Emstl. verknüpfe, daB man ihn fast nicht widerlegen however, does not attempt this refutation; rather, there is no evidence of ambivalence to Shaftesbury (apart £iom the fact that the text remains a fiagmeat); and the main characters are identified with his thought. The details of Wieland's Shaftesbury reception will become clearer in the analysis of the text. For now, 1 want to stress the tum to philosophers as "names." In a text that is presented as a systematic elaboration of philosophy, one cm nghtly question the need for characters in the est place. As in the case of religious writing, however, pure reason is not sufficiently palatable or stimulating. Rather, the reader is invited to idenîi@ with the mode1 characters and to be moved by hem as illustrations of moral beauty. Philosophy as literature succeeds religion as literature. It identifies characters with the names of philosophers and invests these characters with meaning inasmuch as they illustrate philosophical systern~.~'To the extent that the figures are a funchon of philosophicd elaboration, it is difficult to analyze the text in tems of a "subject." However, it may be possible to speak of a neo-Platonic "philosophical subjectivism7'that supersedes the "religious subjectivism" of pietism. Behind this philosophy is the familia. question of the repression or htegration of the body into the concerns of the soul. Indeed, Plato as the central reference of the text is little more than shorthand for the concept of Platonic love, that is, the concept of love presented by Socrates and Diotima in the Symposium, kan. S. Principiurn vom Lacherlichen hat er gewis nicht der Relig. mm Vortheil erfunden. und ihn zu widerlegen, ist k. beaer Mittel, als die Begriffe, die er uns v. der figerrd gibt, anninehmen u. zu zeigen, daD die christl. Rel. uns k. andern beibringe." (reported by Ring, Stames CMW 1:93) " Philosophy for Wieland is dready more than reasoned thinking; it is "life philosophy," Le., reasoned thinking that specifically applies to the question of how to best conduct one's life. In this respect, this early text anticipates 's definition of a philosophy in Wieland's last major , Arisîipp tind einige seiner Zeztgenossen, "eine mit sich selbst übereinstimmende Lebensweislieit nach festen Grundsatzen" (Werke in -wNolf Bar~det~,DKV 4: 864). which Theages calls the Yang gewünschte Auflosung meines Roblerns" (AA V2:443). Given the centrality of this concept to Theages and subsequent texts, it should be briefly presented. In the Symposium,Diotima argues that love, like all spirits, is an "intemediate between the divine and the mortal." It is through love that "dl the intercourse and converse of God with man, whether awake or asleep, is carried on." Love can take many forms, but the higher foms relate back to man's desire for "everlasting possession of the good." The love of generation, while rooted in the desire for immortality, is of a lower order, for as some are "pregnant in the body only, betake themselves to women and beget children," others have "souls which are pregnant" and create works of poetry and art, and still others carry in them the seed of "temperance and justice." These are the different gradients of the "lesser mysteries of love," fiom which Diotima proceeds to the "greater and more hidden ones which are the crown of these." This constitutes a transition £kom the "beauty of the outward fom" to the more honorable "beauty of the mind." At this point, "personal beauty" becomes a "ü-ifle," and the vvious beauties of laws, institutions and sciences lead beyond themselves to the "science of beauty everywhere." The study of a "ha1 cause" beauty moves through the worldly and temporal apparitions and ultimately amives at a notion of beauty as an absolute: And the true order of going, or being led by another, to the things of love, is to begin from the beauties of earth and mount upwards for the sake of that other beauty, using these as steps only, and from one going on to two, and from two to al1 fair forms, and from fair foms to fair practices, and fiom fair practices to fair notions, until from fair notions he arrives at the notion of absolute beauty, and at last knows what the essence of beauty is. (The Works of Plaro 369-79) This process of increasing abstraction combines with the powerfid Christian bias against the body for Wieland, so that when the author later tums to the demystification of "Plat~nism'~in narratives set in pre-Christian antiquity (beginning with Araspes) Christian repression remains the unspoken context. Wieland's reception of the neo-Platonist Shaftesbury is central to this dynarnic. Of the texts that follow, Araspes is essentially an analysis of Shaftesburïan soliloquy, and Cyms - which refers to Shaftesbury in its preface ('1824) - as well as Johanna and Clemenrzna continue to iliustrate the Shaftesburian concept of "moral grace" dong the lines developed in Theages. Since Shaftesbury's own position on key issues is ofien ambiguous and Wieland's reception is selective and characterized by "shifting emphases" ("Akzentenverschiebungen," Jmgensen in Jmgensen et al., Epoche 15), Wieland's recephon of Shaftesbury cannot be easily summarized. While Herbert Grudnnski credits Shaftesbury with fiirthe~gWieland's emancipation from what he calls the "Fremdjoche naturwidriger Anschau~ngen~"he also observes that Shaftesbu~y'sdevaluation of extemal beauty as "'a kind of shadow of something inward"' led to MerPlatonizing (Shafisburys Einfluss 2 1,48). According to Grudzinski, Shaftesbury unites two c%ndamentalprinciples" of Wieland's character, the "inclination to enthusiasm" ("Schwiirmerei") and the "longing for a moderate, reasoned organization of life" (50). Gmdmski notes, wie Shaflesburys Philosophie auf der einen Seite die iibertriebene Ienseitsphantastik

forderte, wahrend sie den Dichter andrerseits schon langsam, aber imrner merklicher ni einer nüchtemen Auffassung der Dinge und einer ausgeglichenen Lebensgestalhing hindriingte (59) Grundzinski recognizes both tendencies in Theages, on the one hand, anti- sensualism as a basic characteristic of the text, on the other, Theages's rejection of Stoicism, because it represses the sensual side of

'' 67. The advantage of Grudzinski's early study is that it details the changing emphases of Wieland's Shaftesbury reception through numerous texts of the early penod. 2-22 A Select Company of Life Artists The recluse Theages is a model character who embodies the principles of Platonic love in an aristocratie European context. This model is not presented directly, but as a moral painting that is fkarned by the "mise en abnime"of conversations. At the est level, the unnamed narrator corresponds by letter with, presumably Herm P., an "enthusiastic collector of moral ra~ities;'"~on the second level, the narrator converses with his &end Nicias; and on the third, Nicias describes his sojourn with Aspasia and Theages. Thus, before we arrive at the actual speech of Theages, the narrative passes through multiple levels. For example, sister Aspasia relates to Nicias a conversation with Theages that Nicias then confers to the narrator who hally relays it to his unnamed correspondent. Peter Michelsen attributes a protective function to this elaborate kame: Indem die Erzahler ihre jeweiligen Ansichten mit einflieBen lassen, kommt eine Diskussion mstande, deren unterschiedliche Standpunkte Wieland eines eigenen Standpunktes entheben. Der Sinn der Emihler-Leser-Verschachtelungen in diesem Fragment liegt also in der Verschleiemng der Unsicherheit des Autors, der den Geist

des Relativismus. der sich in ihm ni rühren beginnt, durch Objektivierung entgehen mochte und eben dadurch sein Tribut zahlt. (Lazrrericr S&me trnd der deicische Romm 196) The degree of rnediation is astounding when contrasted to the poetic of unmediated expression in the Empfindungen. The moral uncertainty accompanying the departure £i-omreligious dogrna is buffered not only by

More recent literature on Wieland's reception of Shaftesbury includes: Kiaus Bappler, Der philosophische Wieland, whose analy sis of Theages is used bel0 w; Manfred Dick, "Wandlungen des Menschenbildes," discussed in the next chapter; John A. McCarthy, 'Weland and Shaftesbury, the question of enthusiasm," which deals with a later period; and Lothar Jordan, "Shaftesbury und die deutsche Literatur und kthetik des 18. Jarhhunderts: Ein Prolegomenon mr Linie Gottsched-Wieland." 93 The inscription is "an Herm P" (AA V2:423). subordination to philosophical authorities, but also by the obscuring and fragmenthg of the single subject. When mords become more questionable and uncertain in the Biberach period, the narration is even more layered and kagmented and it is increasingly impossible to discem a single subject or a dominant perspective. One enters instead into a non-binding pluralism making it nearly impossible to isolate a single voice as the speaking subject of the text? an easy task in the case of the Empfind~rngenand the Sympathien. We are not there yet, however, and Michelsen's reading of this early text may be overly schooled in the relativism of Laurence Sterne that influences Wieland later texts. Multiperspectivism only obtains when different perspectives are presented; yet in Theages the figures occupying each level of narrative largely agree with each other and share a philosophical standpoint (with the exception of Aspasia, to whom we turn later). Moreover, the different nanators are linked by bonds of persona1 fiiendship. Thus, while the narrative is fiequently intempted by the comments and queries of intermediaries (Aspasia, Nicias and the narrator), the interruptions generally do not signal divergence. As a function of the exclusiveness and mutual aanity of the Company, discussion is unforced, open and warm at al1 levels of narrative; and this ovemding harmony engenders tolerance for slightly divergent perspectives. There is no need to present each view as absolute. When at one point Theages claims to converse with "ethereal spirits," Nicias relates it as a curiosity, neither partaking in the mystical experience, nor enjoining his Listener to do likewise, nor calling into question the viability of Theages as a mode1 character (AA Y2435). It is not necessary to validate or to refùte Theages's ethereal converse, rather it is a possibility, a

94 For a stmcturalist description of the various levels of address in Wieland's cornic verse, see: Wolfgang Dittrich, Erzuhler und Leser in C.M. Wielands Versepik. textual opening, a function of his nature as a moral curiosity who is fiamed as a work of art. The text resonates on a number of levels with the hamonic sympathies of its principal figures. For example, the unseen yet ever-present Herr P., as a collecter of moral rarities with an admirable cabinet, is of kindred spirit to the aficionado Aspasia, whose gallery is a "Sittenlehre in allegorischen Gemâhlden" (AA V2:432). Moreover, the finest of these was painted by Theages, and Theages himselfis rendered to Hem P. as a moral painting. What is more, this "painting" is the fruit of a conversation between Nicias and the narrator that is situated, like a painting, in idyUic surroundings where the expressions of its two participants are painted like "Meisterzüge" in physiognornic portrait~re.~'Finally, their elevating discourse concerns the model life of a virtuoso who shapes his natural environment into a work of art.96 The select Company that is composed in the passage of the word through these levels of narrative extends the sympathetic network into the secular Life. This narrative begins where the Theages passage in the Sympathien leaves off, with the rejection of the strain in religious enthusiasm that led the recluse to divorce himself from society. Although the second Theages also lives in seclusion, his hermitage is a self-imposed limitation that facilitates the mastery

'' "Bilden sie sich also ein anmuthiges Wddchen ein, in welchem ein paar Platonische Schwarmer in einer wilden Laube von dufienden Gestrauchen sizen; der eine mit einer begeisterten Mine und mit Gebehrden, welche gleich den kleinen Meister-Zügen in einem Gemahlde, seiner Erzahlung das anmuthigste Leben geben; und der andre in einer tiefsinnigen Lage, mit aufgesperrten Augen und halbgeofneten Lippen, wie man die bewundemde Auherksamkeit zu schildem pflegt: so haben sie ein Bild von Nicias, dem Erzahler, und ihrem ergebensten Freund, den Zuhorer." (AR Y2 :424) '>I For Bappler, this limited amount of activity does not do justice to the notion of the virtuoso. Rather than an "überzeugende Darstellung des Menschen in der zeitlichen Bewahning seines Handelns in der Welt," Wieland's model wears his hennit's coat as a "schützenden Mantel." His concept of the virtuoso is still "'vorgesellig;'" likewise, the goal of eudernonia is unachievable through 'gesellige Abkapselung" (28). and refinement of an otherwise untamed nature. With these limits, Theages realizes that which Nicias seeks through literature, the depiction of "virtue in ail its irresistible beauty" as a work of nature and art. However, the hermitage also serves as a basis for the formation of an alternative order to traditional aristocracy; for while this second Theages leaves the day-to-day rnatters of political society to others and limits his worldly involvement to the decent treatment of servants, the efficient management of lands, the mode1 education of a mode1 daughter, and the generous patronage of deservuig artists, the latter represents an extra-political endeavor at civilizuig, beau-g and edifjmg society. This project is coordinated around the patron's secret alliances with the best and brightest cosmopolitan minds, so that the hermitage is at the same tirne a center of composure, a hub for an underground network of sympathetic production, and a solid philosophical and aesthetic base whence munificent harmony radiates .''

97 His generous and discrete patronage cornes without meddling in the artist's work - wishful thinking, one may specuiate, on the part of a young author who had served under Bodmer's dictatorial tutelage. In essence an apoliticai figure, Theages suggests contentment with the existing political order. A "Shaflesburian," hence "aristocratic" ideal (i-e. an ideal that is only attainable with the rneans accorded to a small elite), the figure demonstrates how "aristocratic" tendencies were at work in Wieland's thought long before the "bourgeois" poet schmoozed with the upper-cmst at Warthausen. The leamed, of course, are aiso an elite (as are the chosen few with sympathetic souis). Nicias refers en passant to uneducated peasants as "Thiere mit menschlichen Fahigkeiten" (AA V2:438) and insists that the artist has a duty to impart "Geseze" on the masses (AA V2:43 1). The discourse itself is an exarnple of how the advantages of refinement can pass nom the aristocrat who possesses them (Theages) to the ahtwho creates an image of them (the narrator, possibly under commission by Hem P.). As a document of the cultural movement of sensibility, meages illustrates the difficulties of associating this movement with the so-called bourgeoisie. Sauder refers instead to a "Symbiose aus niederem Adel und Bürgerlichen" for whom sensibility could have an emancipatory aspect; "[dlie negative Bezugsgruppe, den Hofadel hatten Kleinadel und Bürger gemeinsam ("Bürgerliche Empfindsamkeit" 157-6 1). The opposition is between a culture of emotionai control and a culture of feeling. As it is depicted in these texts, the culture of feeling is also ultimately elitist (the pathos of the chosen few). Membership in the new elite is determined by emotional (artistic?) performance. 2.2.3 The Art of Natural Representation Given what Gmdnnski cds the fragment's "sinnenflüchtige Gmdgeprage," one of its oddest and most striking features is Theages's rejection of Stoicisrn. Theages claims to have once seen Stoicism as the path to human happiness, but now rejects this philosophy of self-sficiency, first, because it conflicts with the Christian dependence on God, and secondly and most irnportantly, because complete abstinence is contrary to human nature, which is sensual: Eben so wenig konnte ich die Unterdrükung des sindichen Theils unsers Wesens mit der Natur reimen. Ein Mensch der ganz Vemunfl, ganz Geist, ganz Gedanke ist, ist zwar ein stoischer Mensch in einer stoischen Welt; in der wahren Welt aber giebt es keine andere Menschen als Mitteldinge von Engeln und von ~hieren.~' The rejection of Christian sensual repression is the unspoken context of the rejection of this "unchristian" philosophy. The "stoic world is not "real;" and it is against human nature to be above the division of body and Rather, we

98 RA U2:443. See: Alexander Pope's Essay on Man which not only characterizes man as a middle nature "With too much knowledge for the Sceptic side, 1 With too much weakness for the Stoic's pndè' (epistle 2, lines 5-6, m/ 1: 53) but also criticizes the Stoic principle of apathy: "In lazy Apathy let Stoics boast / Their Virtue fix'd; 'tis fix'e as in a fiost, / Contracted ail, retiring to the breast; 1 But strength of mind is Exercise, not Rest" (epistle 2, lines 1 O 1- 104; III/ 1:67). 99 Klaus Manger refers in passing to the passage in which Theages gives an account of his tum fr6m Stoicism to Platonism as a "confession" that inadvertently becomes a "conversion" Pekemtnis - Bekehrung; "Kommentar," Wieland Aristipp 1028). These terms do not apply exactly, because the passage lacks the element of guilt and the dynamic of sin and redemption that is conveyed by the religious terms. Yet, as Manger correctly suggests, the tum to Platonism is a conversion to the extent that it brings to an end the period of philosophical wandering for Theages; and there are monkish overtones to his hermitage as a liberation From worldly "embarras": "Ich beschloB meine ausserlichen Umstiinde weil sie in meiner Gewalt waren, so einzurichten, daB sie mich in dem wahren Leben nicht hinderten; ich brachte meine Geschafte in eine Ordnung, die mich von aiiem Embarrus befieiet, und wurde gewisser massen ein Einsiedler, ungeachtet ich viele Verbindungen mit den Menschen, die ich mehr ais alles sichtbare liebe, behielt." (AA V2:443) are the "middle thuigs" between animal and angel. The threefold repetition of "ganz" points away fiom absolute spirit, reason and thought to a compromise which includes the body. Yet while black-and-white cedes to a gradation of shades, the victory is largely theoretical. None of the sympathetic bonds running through this text are the least bit sexual or appetitive; and, tellingiy, Theages, as a widower, must have at one point enjoyed marital bliss, but this genre of pleasure has retreated to the past and no longer needs to be expressed. Thus physicd pleasures are deemed worthless to the extent that "they only set the animal in a convulsive movement of joy without pleasing the spint"(AA Y2:441). Sensual experience must once again undo itself, for it is only to be favored when it can be assimilated into a spiritualizing process that removes the "sediment of sensuality7' f?om sensation (AA Y2:444). The operations of exclusion that shape this elevating environment are best illustrated by the example of Theages's house staff. The staff are two in number, an extreme limitation considering the anstocrat's wealth. More irnportantly, they were chosen because they are mutes; precisely their incapacity for speech renders them unhazardous to the upbringing of Theages's daughter. Exclusion is the cornerstone of this educational plan "leamed fiom nature itself," whose first objective is the avoidance of unplanned and untoward influences.100Yet whde it is common to ignore the underclass in narrative, this explicit removd of voice points to the rigor, even the violence, behind the façade of an effortless reconciliation with nature. The tongues of the underclass rnust be rernoved; the same applies to al1 potentially subversive, "natwally" occwring elements.

lW AA U2:436;439. Unfortunately the fiagrnent does not detail Pasithea's upbringing. If the notion of paradise embodies our collective longing for a benevolent nature and a generous God, then a landscape art that reproduces this illusion, 'bithout betraying any trace of art" (AA V2:434), presents the possibility of a return to paradise via culture. Landscape art cm manufacture the perfect environment for ideal communication. Jens VoB argues the gardens that Aspasia and Theages create - "'wohlbestellt, wohlbegriindet und von allen Figuren wohlgeachtet" - represent "Raume der Begegnung, der gemeinschaftlichen Orientierung, des Konsenses" ("dm bwenGartnerey7' 85). Given the lack of interest of their planners in sex, the serpentine paths and labyrinths of Aspasia's rococo gardens and love groveslO'and the wooded entrance to Theages7s hermitage, rather than luring quarry to episodic eroticism, would seem to represent the potential for a balanced existence where the sensual side nourishes the spiritual and civilization begets nature. Art imitates nature, hiding its artificiality in calculated simplicity and disorder, hence Nicias's praise for Aspasia' s garden: Sie liebet in allen Werken der Kunst die Verhehlung der Kunst, und eine gewisse Einfalt und angenehme Unordnung, welche sie den Werken der Natur Wchmacht. (AA If2: 427) Nature, in turn, imitates art; thus Nicias completes the description by quoting

5 77102 Tasso, "'WO die Natur selbst im Scherz ihre Nachahmerin nachahmte. The narrator enjoys Nicias's evocation of this garden and imagines himself reading Ovid or Heliodor there and even becorning himself a Theocritus or a GeBner.

'O1 "Aspasias Garten ist als Mischung aus Elementen des Rokokogartens (symmetrische Stmkturelemente, aufgelockert durch Labyrinthe und mythologischen Rerniniszenzen wie Grotten und Skulpturen von Nymphen) mit Elementen des locus amoenus (Wiese. Baume, Hügel, Bach, Blumen) konzipiert." (VoB, "dm bwenGürtnerey 77) '" '"Der Bemg auf die Natur ist nur im Medium der Kultur moglich; der Landschaflsgartner Theages beschwort ein Bild der Natur unter den Bedingungen der Kultur." (VoB. Vasbgchen Gartnerey" 8 81) Aspasia has created the perfect setting for the acts of receiving and producing illusions - be they Ovid's Metamorphoses or our owdo3 If art is imitation and nature is also imitation, one may right.yask what in fact is being ùnitated. 1s there a third element that nature and art represent, or are both in fact empty, so that imitation oniy occurs "im Scherz" - as a sort of joke, a ûick with mirrors? Perhaps the inclusion of "Scherz7' in this passage implies a reconciliation with the terms of Anacreontic and erotic poetry. In this case, art and nature may conspire to represent human bodies as ~andscapes.'~ Thus the vast expanse that comprises Aspasia's curving English gardens can merge with the pyramidal shape that defines the domain of her male counterpart. According to this reading, the verticality of Theages's pyramid is embedded within Aspasia's shiftuig "femlliine" horizontality. 1 refer here to Theages's residence, a three-level cottage hem into a pyramidal cliff. Above the mundane living chambers, the purely ornamental top level is the perfect melding of art and nature: Die Spize der Pyramide ist ein Grotte, aus allerlei Arten von Minem, Crystallen und Muschelwerken zusammengesezt. AIlenthalben sprudelt Wasser aus den Rizen des Crystalls und den Muscheh hervor, welches sich zulen an einern verdekten Ort sammelt, und aus der Urne einer marmomen Nymphe sich von der linken Seite des Felsen in einen gepflasterten Teich stürze, der von Schwanen bewohnt wird. (AA 1/2:435)

'O3 "Ich bin ganz entzückt über ihre Beschreibung, nef ich aus, und sie werden mir eh wenig Zeit lassen müssen, wenn sie gesonnen sind, mich wieder aus diesen Zaubergefilden, die ich ganz lebhaft vor mir sehe, herauszuführen. Mich dünkt, es schikte sich nirgends besser ais in dieser schonen Einode, in der Geselischaft der Nymphen, die Venvandlungen des Ovid oder den Roman des Bichofs Heliodor ni lesen; ja ich wollte fast wetten, daB mich Schlafngen selbst der poetische Geist übenvaltigen, und ni einem Theocrit oder GeBner machen würde, wenn ich eine Weile einsam in dieser dichterischen Gegend herurnirren würde." (AA V2:428) la See: Alfred Anger's "Landschafistil des Rokoko" for copious examples of animated nature in rococo literature. Recalling Pope's Grotto,'OS the plain rock is ennobled by the importation of exquisite minerais, crystals and shells; and water fkom some unnarned spring is channeled through a profusion of fountains into the artistry of a rnarble um held by a perfect marble nymph; fkom there it empties into a paved pond, the artificial habitat for natural swans. nie gentle images drain into each other with such a minimum of resistance that one almost overlooks the oddness of constmcting an elaborate series of fountains on the roof of one's sleeping quarters. Usually, however, the fountain is in the park, not over our beds. Indeed, one is tempted to locate the overflowing pyramidal apex withùi the bed itself, as a sort of wet dream that lubricates an otheMise dry "philosophy."

2.î~ Body Art These rnarble nymphs and jeweled grottos are "simple," we are ùifonned, for Theages - despite his wealth or because of it - despises "pompous and artificial pleasures" (AA V2435). Money is requisite, however, for the self- perfectioning efforts of Shaftesburian virtuosi, for their secret patronage and for their paradisiacal remodeling of natural landscapes. With money, the world is made into an edi-g artwork in order to incite the wealthy individual to form huriself into an edihgwork of art (Bappler 17). This individual represents the ideal of "kalokagathie" as the indivisible union of beauty and goodness (19). In turn, the mord beauty of the model self inspires Mrtue in the souk of its beholders. As we have seen, in order to initiate this process of "grace" one must first rise above the din of the servant class and remove heated passion and appetite from human relations, allowing instead the unconscious intercourse of landscapes. This allowance is not entirely negligible, for, compared with the

'O5 See: "Verses on a Grotto by the River Thames at Twickenham, composed of Marbles, Spars. and Minerais" VI:382-85. sparse verticality of the Empfndmgen, the descriptions of natural environment gain in specificity, in arhstry, in contour, in interaction on the horizontal and vertical axes, and (hmthe top to the base of the pyramid) in liquidity. Theages retums to the central temptation of the Sympathien, the recuperation of physical beauty under the guise of its partial sublimation in virtue. There, Whie and vice fought for the possession of the still morally unfonned face of youW Celia so that a singular outer shape becarne the vesse1 for both the union and the division of beauty and goodness. They also fought over the talents of artistic youths who could produce attractive images in the service of either morality or degeneracy. Here, these IWO concems conjoin in Nicias's lament: Mir ist es eine recht traurige Ernpfindung, wenn ich sehe, daB die schonen Künste. weiche Gespielen und Aufw~erinnender Wahrheit und Tugend seyn sollen, sich gleich gemeinen Mezen mm Dienst lasterhafier Begierden minbrauchen lassen müssen. (AA Y2:43 1) In this passage, the art object is a woman, and as a woman it is by definition either priestess or prostitute. "Sinful cravings" are diametrically opposed not ody to Wnie but to tmth (a view that will be modified in Araspes); and there is still no rniddle ground for the feminine element between promoting one or the other. These views are thoroughly familiar, but where the speaker in the Sympathien proceeded down a hallway of historically existent correspondents, here Aspasia leads Nicias, and, circuitously, the narrative, through a gallery of inspiring paintings. This recourse to artistic creation has several advantages. For one, the number of paintings cm always be extended, whereas the text of the Sympathien either ends after addressing each person in the circle or it invents people and is thus transformed into a literary fabrication. For another, direct instruction is replaced by edifjmg exemplification, a rnethod which speaks to the emotions without the intermediary of reason. Finally, in painting it is easier to lend beautifid faces to beautiful souk than in a world before the advent of plastic surgery. As a mirror of the beautiful soul, the faces of our fabricated images need never be senselessly distorted; rather, the picture isolates and concentrates moral beauty into a fiozen moment. For example, as she fends off Abradates7s advances with an expression of sympathy and disgust, we admire with Nicias the "unversteiIt[e] Mine der Unschuld" in the painting of ~anthea.'~~Thus Aspasia's gallery is a "majestic assembly of the most vimious," which presents "beauty and goodness as inseparable" and "in a pleasing manner beneficial." E-g painting is praised: weil sie die Natur copiert, welche das Angesicht mm getreuen Spiegel der Seele gernacht hat, worim sich bei allen ungekiinstelten Menschen jede Veriindening, die im Gemüthe vorgeht, und mit einer angenehmen oder widrigen Empfindung begieitet ist, ganz kemtlich abzeichnet. (AA UT43 0-3 1) This passage supplies us with the official title for the third element reflected by art and nature. It is not, as 1 had previously ventured, the body (as landscape), but the soul. Art renders the soul in society, and in the world beyond art and artifice (both are present in the term "ungekünstelt") physiognomy assures its unrnediated reproduction. Theages7sportrait of the "moral graces" is the crowning reconstruction of this ideal world; and Aspasia sees in it the "likeness of the inner goodness of the human soul" (AA I/2:433). The girls ofthe painting embody the ideal of "kalokagathie": "Die aufichtigste Unschuld und eine naive Güte, der man sein Herz nicht versagen kann, athmet in ihren Minen" (AA Y2432). Their moral stature entails a different packaging of the female body fiom that of harlots. Like the "sittsamen" beauty in the Sympathien, the secret of

'O6 A4 Y2:430. Abradates, the husband of Xenophon's Panthea is here mistaken for Araspes, who, as we soon ieam is her would-be rapist. This Freudian slip may mark the beginning of Wieland's preoccupation with this sema1 drarna. their fairness is shame. As Theages7sGraces veil their nakedness, shame, Le. inbred guilt, becomes the proof of their innocence:

Ein sanftwallendes Gewand (man giaubt es waiien ni sehn) umschattet, gieich eher leichten Silberwolke, ihre keusche Schonheit, und erhohet den Eindruk derselben unendlich weit über die unreservierten Venusbilder, welche deihre Reiningen so wolfeil auskrarnen, daB sie nichts ni errathen übrig lassen. (AA V2432) Rather than parading "bargain-priced" wares like the "unreserved images of Venus" - an allusion that points (intentionally?) to their mythical parentage - the Graces veil their sexuality and indefinitely suspend the onlooker's satisfaction. Yet desire continues below the surface as a moving force, so that their "draping" undulates softly ("sanftwalIend') against the underlying bodies. Shadow and cloud ("urn~chattet~""Silbewolke") suggest the imminent dissipation of the obstructing material. By leaWig something to the imagination

("ni errathen übrig lassen"), the Graces may heighten in the onlooker an awareness of movement and shifting surfaces. The animalistic, pornographic gaze is hstrated, displaced by a search for "beauty" dong serpentine lines. Their beauty is not "wolfeil;" it exacts a price, the suspension of gratification, the transformation of the pomographic gaze. The Graces' physical appeal is the "likeness of their inner goodness." Each Grace exemplifies an ideal - youthful innocence, then modesty, finally an "aufkichtiges und anziehendes" "jene sais quoi"'" that once again stresses the moral imperative that precedes each reverence for beauty:

107 In An Essay on Criticism, Pope praises "a Grnce beyond the Reach of Art, / Which, without passing thro' the Jirdgement, gains / The Heart" (lines 15 5-58? page 1:258; see also footnote to Iines 141-80, page 255, for discussion of the notion of "Je ne sais quoi"). In the 1753 treatise "Abhandlung vom Naiven," Wieland refers to a gracefulness "die man nicht definieren aber vermittekt eines feinen Geschmaks ganz klar empfinden kann" (AA V4:17). For Wolfgang Monecke, this "je ne sais quoi" is a quality that distinguishes grace from static beauty, for instance in the case of the seemingly unplanned eighteenth-century English park that is more graceful than the ordered regularity of the French park (Wield undHoraz 136). The Graces, by extension, are attractive precisely because they leave something to the imagination. something fds out of the order that cannot be grasped. "Je ne sais quoi" is used in a similar sense by Ernil Staiger to describe a stylistic quality that distinguishes Wieland's Mzisarion fiom the work of his predecessors (Hagedorn, Geliert, Uz): "Wir vermissen gerade das, was uns die lose Ordnung erst empfiehlt, die innere Nachgiebigkeit des Dichters, die Iachelnde Bereitschafi, sich auf Ungewisses einzufassen, dem Vagen, dem 'Je ne sais quoi', dem Atmosphiirischen Raum zu geben" ("Wielands Mirsarion'" 46). Grace does not negate order, but it removes its surface evidence. It translates an absence of evidence into movement. a movement that is reproduced in the eyes of the onlooker who follows the wavily pleasant disorder (see also VoB's remarks on the "das Pnnzip der angenehrnen Unordnung" in the gardens in neages, "dmbgchen Gartmrey" 80). Monecke analyzes the concept of grace in Wieland's 1770 tnked-genre excursus, Die Grazien, a text that is largely anticipated by *meages. In this text, the Graces are positioned in a pastoral age that coincides with the beginning of civility (and civilization). Their principal fünction is to tame Eros, and, in doing so, to sublimate the "animalistic drive" and start the process of societal refinement. However, the Graces can never leave the Golden Age (which had become strictly fictional for Wieland); they cm never abandon the mythical naiveté and the historical Wginity (sexual innocence) from which they are derived. According to Monecke, the gracefulness of Wieland's innocent nymp hs is "individtieller Azmhck, azNgehoben N1 praszubilierter Harmonie" ( 140). Thus. pre-established harmony retums as a necessary fiction in a text written long after the "empiricist tum." Monecke distinguishes between static beauty and the motion that is grace. The latter involves displacement, transposition, it is transferred to the observer of the Graces' dance. Delirnited by the pre-established order, this movement calls forth a sympathetic resonance. With the harmonization of oppositional forces, Die Grazien represents, according to Klaus Schaefer, "die entschiedenste Alternative zur literarischen Auffassung des jungen " ("Zwischen Hohepunkt und JSrise" 38). It cannot be forgotten that the naiveté on which the concept of grace is founded contains an implicit cnticism of contemporary society. In "Abhandlung vom Naiven," this "true expression of our feelings" is contrasted to the empty speech of courtly society, thus providing the 'decisive, civilization- critical basis" for an eighteenth-century retum to the naive (Matti Schüsseler, Unbeschwert mggeklart 46). That the naive, both as criticism and as ideai, is represented by a female form and points to the origins of the 'Te ne sais quoi" in the ferninine mystique. So glaube ich, hat Clarissa den denen gelachelt, in denen sie Züge des gonlichen Bildes erblikte, den Tugendhaflen, den die Trost oder Aufinuntermg nothig hatten, aber keinem Lovelace (AA Y2:433) The picture's "srnile" ("gelacheit") discriminates; it reveals itself to viewers who ascribe to its sexual morality, but not to the "Lovelaces." Like Richardson's Claissa7the Grace is not entirely objectifiable. She herself determines her viewer's perspective; she transforms the Lovelaces. The image perfectly illustrates the strategy of instinctual hstration that Freud sees as essential to the process of civilization.'O8 This Grace is not conf?onted by Lovelaces, of course, but merely admired by Platonic-Shaftesburian enthusiasts. As represented by Nicias and Theages, these self-narned lovers are "co~oisseursof all things beautifid" who have learned to proportion their love "according to degrees of beauty" (AA Y2443). Rather than falling for the "cupid of poets" and fluttering from one appealing shape to another, their "Amor" only soars upwards fiom grade to grade. With physical beauty as window dressing, "love" is uistmcted, sich nicht bei irrdischen Farben und Gestalten zu venveilen, sondern durch die glanzenden Reihen irnmer hoherer Schonheiten, gleich den Engeln in Jacobs Traume, zu dem Urbild dieses aus der ganzen Schopfung hervorstralenden Abglanzes hinauh- steigen. (AA I/2:444) Love is reduced to a pure verticality that is familiar fiom the Emppndungen; indeed, Theages's explication of Platonism refers directly to Jacob's dream and the Judeo-Christian condition. Yet with the archetype securely seated in an ethereal throne once occupied by the Savior and each élan of desire channeled

'Og "Civilization and its Discontents" 286-87. See also Herbert Marcuse: "The adjustment of pleasure to the reality principle implies the subjugation and diversion of the destructive force of instinctual gratification, of its incompatibility with the established societal noms and relations, and, by that token, implies the transubstantiation of pleasure itself" (Ems and CiviIization 13 ) towards it, the feeling subject cm now discard some of the baggage of dogma without losing orientation. This relaxation of dogrna entails a lirnited gain in autonomy, which translates into an effort to minimize the appearance of repression. The landscape artist now exerts his own mastery over nature and tarnes into pastoral meanders the former "cvddernessof errant ways" (AA Y2:383- 84). While also rerninding one of the former wildness of nature, the natural- looking stands of trees and the acquiescent bends in the road illustrate the ease and liberality of aristocratie participation in this neutered environment.

2-23 The Beginnings of Discourse This project of sublimating desire remains incomplete, however. In the person of "sister" Aspasia, a question is raised and a note of skepticism sounded; and the text ends in a fiagrnent that leads straight to the analyses of Araspes. This autonomous, "enlightened thinker" disagrees with her brother's Platonic strategy. She raises the issue of human malleabillty in the terms of Platonic love. Whereas the Platonists differentiate between "blind Cupid who leads lovers into 'bbezauberte Gefilde und Labyrinthe erhizter Begierden," and a "good genius," who guides them to happiness "auf den eùifdtigen und anmuthsvoilen Pfaden der Natur," Aspasia argues that under any of his guises "blind Cupid is a fxue protean. She cautions Nicias "not to be so credulous," the Amors are "closely related" and ofien "change costumes": Denn der bemeldete Knabe der lachelnden Venus ist ein wahrer Proteus, der sich so gut in einen Platonicus als in eine Franciscaner-Kutte masquieren kann; und wenn er die Darne Phantasie auf seiner Seite hat, welches sehr leicht ist, so ist Mchts, was diese beiden Schelmen nicht ausrichten komen. (AA W2:445) Aspasia recognizes the volatility of man's position as the middle link in the Great Chain of Being.lo9 Platonic love emphasizes this intermediate position and is therefore riskier than the strategies of abnegation are. Moving fiom grade to grade on the ladder of beauty, no single point marks the absolute end of the sensual and the beginning of the spiritual; rather, the two are interconnected, and each step up could achially lead down. The protean amor is seen as a threat to self-determination, so that Aspasia opts for "stoic" cool and forgoes the "soul- melting delicacy" of love, and the heightened sensibility to pleasure and to the thousandfold sorrows that it entails (AA ï/2:445). AS an early example of the many strong female characters Wieland created, Aspasia has a specifically female motivation for her reserve in rnatters of love. Aspasia is unmarried and uninteresteci in amorous relations. In this limited sense, she is a "stoic," but for a woman, even an independently wealthy aristocrat, remaining single is the unavoidable price of autonomy. Romantic involvement only leads to ownership, possession; by remaining unattached, she stays her own person in a world domiriated by men. Her "heitre und aufgeweckte Temperatur" radiates health and energy, and her weakness for "splendor" in art indicates an attitude to refined living that is stoic in name alone (AA V2435-36). Yet perhaps there is a certain "edge" to this radiant, composed figure, an edge that is hinted at in her mockery of Platonism and also in Nicias's reference

109 One is rerninded of Arthur Lovejoy's obsenrations on the "strange hybrid monster" man: "The definition of him as the "middle Iink," in the sense usually given to it, especiaily emphasized the peculiar duality of his constitution and the tragi-comic imer discord in him which results fiom this. [...] Sornewhere in that scaie there mus1 exist a creature in which the merely animal series terminates and the "intellectual" series has its dirn and rudirnentary beginning; and man is that creature. He is therefore - not in consequence of any accidental fa11 fiom innocence nor of any perverse machinations of evil spirits, but because of the requirements of the universal scheme of things - tom by contlicting desires and propensities; as a member of two orders of being at once, he wavers between both, and is not quite at home in either." (Great Chain of Bezng 198-99) to Chnstianity. The jibe at Catholic monks ("Franciscaner-Kutte") is by no means threatening to Protestant belief, yet it is evident that Aspasia is at odds with the mystical element of the author's most recent pietism. When Nicias introduces this figure, he validates her unwed stature by mocking the most common group of single women, i.e. Catholic nuns. By contrashg their lonely devotion to Aspasia's autonornous Stoicism, the forrner becomes subject to ridicule: Ohne Zweifel werden Sie sich in einbilden, daO sie [Aspasia] aus Begierde den Engeln ahnlicher zu sep, sich dem heiligen Stand der ewigen Jungferschaft gewiedrnet habe. von dessen schwanenweisser Reinigkeit und unverwelkter Unschuld Sanct Augustin so

vie1 schone Sachen ni sagen weiB. Sie sehen sie vielleicht schon in einem schwarzbekleideten Cabinet, an einem Tisch von Ebenholz sizend, mit einem Cnicifi~ einem Todtenkopf und einer Sanduhr vor ihr, sich im Leben der heiligen Catharine von Siena vertiefen, und, wenn sie zuweilen aus ihrer Entzükung envacht, mit andachtigem Blik ihre himrnlische Mine im Spiegel beobachten. (AA Y7:425) This mockery of false fervor - here again attributed to the Catholics - cornes on the heels of the author's own indulgence in zealotry, a period in which he is reported to have hungrily devoured mystical tracts and hagiographies (Jmgensen, "Der fiomrne Wieland" 266). It would seem to signal an end to the practices of extreme devotion put forward in the Empfindungen. At the same tirne, however, Aspasia is not a "sympathy girl," Le., an object for "instniction" through which the speaker validates his authority. Rather, she marks the single point of disagreement and thereby enunciates the tentative beginnings of discourse. The woman of the text is the locus of resistance to a philosophical idealism that wodd otherwise completely sublirnate the body. The fiagrnent leaves only space for a quick rebuttal. Delicately mocking the gender whence resistance emanates, Theages downplays the "Einfalle dieser lebhaften Dame" and her "kleinen Groll gegen das Wort Liebe" (AA Y2:445). He assures Nicias that his love contains no ambivalence, but is wisdom in the strictest sense. Using a universalizing definition of the word "love" ("denn sind nicht alle Neigungen Liebe?"), Nicias, echoing Theages' s sentiments, sees love as unavoidable, "so ist es besser, man lehre uns recht, was und wie wir lieben sollen" (AA Y2:446). For Theages, stoic indifference ("Ruhe") is a type of death, for life is defined by movements, and these must be harmonious: "Wir müssen immer in Bewegungen, aber diese Bewegungen mussen Harmonie sep. Das ist alles." (AA I/2:445) This single-sentence philosophy ends Theages's discourse and marks a tentative departure kom an earlier vertical conception of the universe. We are compelled to move and to create harmonies. These harmonies are necessarily temporal, and - to heed the sister's warning - movement entails volatility and change. This movement occurs withm the context of the enthusiast's highly sophisticated return to nature, naiveté, and to the art of unartificiality. The "gracefully tempered narrative style" evident in this sentence and throughout Theages, represents, according to Reinhard Tschapke, not only a departure from pathetic asceticism and sentimental seraphism, but dso "den Vollzug und das Ideal einer erwünschten Lebenshaltung" (Anmutige Vemunft 6 1- 62). In the exquisiteness of this poetic fabric, even prudish rnorality is stylish, sophisticated, "natural," and seemingly effortless. According to my reading, the application of this "genus medium is an attempt to harmonize on the level of style the evident dissonance of the text, a strategy to which Wieland wilI often have recourse. Another forward-looking (and regressive) strategy is announced 103 by the conclusion to Theages's single sentence philosophy: "'Da ist des" puts an end to discourse with a sweeping gesture of cornmon sense. It has the appearance of summing things up so neatly that there can be no reason to look any Mer. Sirnilar appeals to good sense or common sense, to the plaimess of an obvious answer, are found throughout Wieland's later work (one oeed only consider Aristipp 's cornmonsensical response to Plato' s Republic). They are invitations to the levelling of al1 discourse to the surface of what is apparent and easily understood. The beginning of a dialogue on desire prepares the way for a deeper analysis of the question; yet, even before the enunciation of division in and through the subject in Araspes, three of the major strategies for the containment of division are already in place: common sense; genus medium; and the narrative fragmentation of the spoken subject. Looking back on the text, it is evident that the line which earlier divided worldly existence from celestial afterlife still cuts through the tongues of servants and excludes erohc illustrations from the galleries of depicted vhe. At the same time, however, the labyrinthine worldly course has been tamed into an English park, whose serpentine lines are pleasing to the eye and the spirit. Also, the water from Theages's highest fountain flows to a pond for swans, suggesting the possibility that man's marriage with heaven may be mirrored in the waters of a harmonious earth. But Aspasia seems to warn that, as heaven and nature begin to mix, the upward gaze of Platonic love may vanish before the arrows of a blinding Cupid. But here the fragment ends. The next text, Araspes und Panthea. eine rn oralische Geschichte in einer Rezhe von Llnterredungen, examines a nature beyond the limitations of these artificid ponds and forests and in doing so initiates a "secularized process of self-discovery" (Jaumann, "Anhang," J 883). 3. The Destabilized Continuum and the Disharmonious Cosmos

Nein, Cyrus, diese Liebe keme ich nicht; und doch Liebte ich von dem ersten Augenblick an, da ich den Unterschied des Guten und Basen fihlte. (Araspes in Arqes J 596) In the introduction, we identified, following Erhart, a '%ne of codict" or a constitutive division ninning through Wieland's oeuvre. In the pietistic and Platonic texts, this dividing line was located in the relation of the spirit to the body, which involved a number of strategies for repressing or sublimating the latter. Pietism, sensibility, (neo-) Platonism and moral sense were understood with respect to this constitutive division. The three texts argued to different degrees for the subordination of the body; and only the "rnorally lax" poetry of the Anacreontics would seem to have been capable of giving vent to physical yeaming. This, however, was removed fhm the limits of acceptability, although it may still have had a compensatory function. The human condition was defined in two different ways, either in tems of a separation of body and spirit or in terms of a continuum miting the two. The former is a binary divide, a "horizontal bar" separathg one fiom the other. It occasions a strategy of abnegating the physical and reclaiming the discourse of passionate excess within an entirely spiritual realm. The latter, by contrast, runs vertically along the Great Chain of Being with man as the rniddle link. In this case, the strategy is refinement. The discourse is moderate and passion is shunned, while the mordly beautifid body is elevated and hamonized with the spirit. With Theages, the dividing line between body and spirit seems to have transforrned into a line uniting the two, but this only happens after all unsublimated needs have been excommunicated frorn the harrnonious idyll. The two strategies are not mutually exclusive in the examined texts; rather, they mark different points in a range of possibilities fiom abnegation to sublimation and fkom excess to moderation. These texts involve a degree of experimentation with subjectivity, but the subjective voice is not as yet clearly located in the moment of division. In the Empfindzcngen, the world is defined by division, but the division occurs largely outside of the praying subject, in the world. The subject is saved from the divided state of worldly existence by uniting in spirit with God. In Theages, man cmno longer escape the body, but the body is presented as the center of harmony, not division. On the level of narrative the single speaking subject is replaced by a series of harmonized narrators. Moreover, the notion of universai dividedness is offset by the illusion of hmony within the confines of the hennit's manicured retreat. Whether pietistic believers or aristocratie vimiosos, only the chosen few are allowed to feel. In al1 cases, only those who are sovereign over self-division and have confidently mastered their animal elements are endowed with speech. In an opening scene in which two disputants (Araspes and Cyrus) take divergent positions on the question of love, Araspes und Panthea, eine rn oraiïsche Geschichte in ein er Reihe von Unterredzingen, suggests continuation of the incomplete arguments of Theages and ~s~asia.~'OYet 1 have already made some claims about ~raspes'llwhich, if me, would set it apart kom the foregohg

110 Sengle: "Wie im Theages geht es um die Frage der beiden Arten des Amor: ob namlich himmlische und irdische Liebe miteinander vereinigt werden konnen. Wahrend aber Wieland don die Antwort schuldig bleiben muate, beabsichtigt er hier von vornherein eine Losung, welche die beiden Arten der Liebe voneinander trrnnt: die Scheinsynthese der Empfindsamkeit wird mit Entschiedenheit abgelehnt." (90) 11 1 I use Araspes as the short form for the title. This is not fair to Panthea, but she hardly dominates to the same extent as her male counterpart in Wieland's text. texts as the next step in this elaboration of subjectivity and desire. In particular, 1 have emphasized the representation of subjectivity in and through the act of division itself. 1 have also referred to the line of division, which in previous strategies either divided body and spirit as a horizontal bar or connected the two as a vertical continuum (Chain of Being), &g in this text directly through the speaking subject (represented by the ). In the character of Araspes, the tmth concepts that run through the universe, creating on some level unified wholes, are tom asunder, and the subject hirnself splits into two irreconcilable selves. This new fom of divided subjectivity is spoken dong the cut line and spoken in the act of splitting. One cm Say that the fabric of the new text is written into the cut, the gap. Later, in what 1 cal1 îhe regressive texts (Cyrus, Lady Johanna Gray, Clementzna von Porretta), one can speak of a suturing over the tex I will begin the chapter by bnefly describing the Araspes-episode as it appears in the source text (Xenophon's Cyropaedia) and the use that Shaftesbury made of it to illustrate the principle of soliloquy. Before t&g to the daring literary experiment that Wieland conducted based on Xenophon's story and Shaftesbury's ideas, 1 will consider some of the labels that can be used to describe it in terms of genre (tragic drama, dialogue novel). In particular, I will draw attention to Wieland's own characterization of the text in its original preface, a truly extraordinary document that departs f?om the narrow poetics of moral improvement and in doing so reflects the difficulties presented in defining Wieland7s "moralische Geschichte." 3.1 Araspes in Xenophon and Shaftesbury

3.1.1 Xenophon's episode Wieland's Araspes is based on an episode in Xenophon's Cyropaedia. In the Cyropaedia, Araspes, boyhood cornpanion of King Cyrus, is given charge of Panthea, captured wife of an important opponent, King Abradates. Panthea is the most beautifûl woman in the world. This prompts a conversation between Araspes and Cyrus on the dangers of beauty. Cyrus decides that he will never lay eyes on the famous queen, because her beauty might persuade him to "sit there, in neglect of my duties, idly gazing upon her."'12 Araspes, startled by his master's decision, scoffs that "love is a matter of fiee will; at any rate, every one loves what suits his tastes, as he does his clothes or his shoes" (2:9). Araspes scoms those who fa11 in love against their wiU, blaming it on the weakness of their "miserable" characters. By contrast, Cyrus kens beauty to fie, and urges Araspes not to gaze at length on beautifül persons, "for fire, to be sure, burns only those who touch it, but beauty insidiously kindles a fie even in those who gaze upon it from ah,so that they are inflarned with passion" (2: 13). Araspes, however, is confident that he will never lose self control, "even if 1never cease to look upon her" (2: 13). Thmgs take a tum for the worse. Predictably, Araspes is driven mad by the "beauty" of his charge. He takes liberties, makes advances, and, when these are repulsed, threatens Panthea with violence (rape). Araspes is then summoned before his master, who had been away on business. A "youth" in tems of expenence if not age, Araspes is duly repentant. He offers Cyrus an assurance

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"'I use Walter Miller's 1914 translation of the C'opaediia, here 2:7. that is the moral of the episode. Some good has corne of the threat of rape, since, thanks to "that crooked sophist Eros," Araspes discovers that he has "two souls": For ifthe sou1 is one, it is not both good and bad at the same time, neither can it at the sarne time desire the nght and the wrong, nor at the sarne time both will and not will to do the same things; but it is obvious that there are two souls, and when the good one prevails, what is right is done; but when the bad one gains the ascendancy, what is wrong is attempted. And now, since she has taken you to be her ally, it is the good sou1 that has gained the mastery, and that completely. (2: 14243) These words - repeated almost word for word in Shaftesbury's Soliloquy and at the conclusion of Wieland's text - are enough to secure Cyrus's forgiveness. Indeed, the king blames himselffor confining his fiend "with this irresistible creature" (2: 139). The episode closes as Cyms confers upon Araspes a far-off reconnaissance mission that removes him fiom the source of temptation and enables the ernbattled soldier to regain his warring stature with "manly" exploits.

3.1.2 Shaftesbury's Application In Soiiloquy or Advice to an Author, Shaftesbury recounts this tale to illustrate the principle of soliloquy. For Shaftesbury, soliloquy is a method of disinterested self-reflection and judgment, predicated on the notion of self- division. It is a practice of listening to, reflecting upon and judging one's inner voices, that is, the voices of one's competing needs and competing selves- Linking the passion for human love and religious passion, Shaftesbury argues that neither the "imaginary saint, or rnystic," who has the "specters of his zeal before his eyes," nor the "passionate loveryyis "tmly by himself': Whatever he meditates alone, is intermpted still by the imagined presence of the mistress he pursues. Not a thought, not an expression, not a sigh, which is purely for himself. Aü is appropriated, and aii devoutly tendered to the object of his passion. (1: 116) Shaftesbury's remedy is the agency of what the ancients meant by genius and guardian-spirit: "that we had each of us a patient in ourself; that we were properly Our own subjeas of practice; and that we then becarne due practitioners, when by virtue of an intimate recess we could discover a certain duplicity of soul, and divide ourselves into NO parties." (1 : 1 12) The result of such %mer division" - returning to the terms used by Erhart - is "self-enlightenment": One of these, as they supposed, would immediately approve hirnself a venerable sage; and with an air of authority erect himself Our counsellor and govemor, whilst the other party, who had nothing in hirn besides what was base and servile, would be contented to follow and obey. ( 1: 1 12) To illustrate tliis process, Shaftesbury recounts the progress of the desperate love that 3nsensibly, and by natural degrees" befell Araspes (1 :1 19), the ensuhg self- division (two souls), and, aided by the good prince, the establishment of the better self within the lover as "inspecter or auditor" (1 :1 22). Shaftesbury's reading of Xenophon is optirnistic and forward-loohg. Self-division is not a tragc fait accompli, but a necessary step towards perfectioning the good self. Division means recognition; following the method of soiiloquy, it means that otherwise nebulous and il1 passions are clearly voiced in interior monologue. These are discemed, however, in order to be effectively isolated and rejected in a process of liberating the (good) self £kom a passive dependency on passion. Selfidivision is only a 'Yransitional step" towards the goal of unity at a higher mord level with a greater degree of self control: "Es geht um den Übergang aus dem Beherrschtwerden von den von sich her im Ich aufiretenden Meinungen und Neigungen ni einem einheitlichen Willen" (Manfred Dick, "Wandlungen des Menschenbildes" 15 1). Yet in the Araspes tale there is a catch: the critical look inward is necessarily preceded by a lascivious gaze outward at an object that innames passion. As King Cyrus abandons his underhg to the uninterrupted vision of an inflammatory beauty, a space is created where passions of which Araspes was unaware are given fiee reign to develop. The process culminates in an attempted rape. Self-division is effected with the passing of the crisis, with the realization of guilt and sharne at having failed Cyms. Only then, and ody through the intervention of the good prince, does the better self and its "powerfùl figure of inward rhetoric" assert its dominance over the il1 soul. As a triad, the prince, the good soul, and the ill soul bring to mind Freud's superego, ego and id. Yet by the end of the Araspes episode, the king and the good soul are essentially identical within the subject; just as the many voices of competing needs are all concentrated into a single bodily passion.

3.2 Wieland's Araspes und Panthea, eine moralische Geschichte, in einer Reihe von Unterredungen and its Preface Xenophon and Shaftesbury do not follow Araspes into the temptations of Panthea's prison. They show the result of a process which they neglect to depict- Their texts offer no intemal verbalkation of the previously hidden passions which must be spoken in order to be recognized and suppressed. SeKdivision is the precondition of soliloquy, yet Shaftesbury's depiction of Araspes is as muted as are nieages7sservants about the genesis of this second self. By contrast, Wieland's Araspes began, according to its 1760 preface, as an attempt to analyze the course of this passion "von ihrem geistigen Ursprung bis ni den sehr animalischen Würkungen ihrer Reife, durch die gehorigen Grade7'(J 832-35). This attempt at a meticulous psychological representation of the origins and the expansion of a forbidden sexual passion can be seen as an example of Foucault's notion of the emergence of a modem European "sexual science" and its "incitement to discourse" about sex (History of Sexuaiity 1: 13; 1:34) Before maiyang the text itself, 1 want to discuss some of the problems the Araspes-project posed for Wieland because it fell outside traditional categones. By the time he composed the third act, it must have been evident to the author that the "kleine Ungeheuer" that is the il1 soul had become a more immediate and compelling figure than the good soul. The rewriting of ths "simple episode" soon became a drawn-out process characterized by starts and stops. According to its 1760 preface, Araspes was begun in the late summer of 1756, worked on until the

sumrner of 1757, left until 1759 and completed early in 1760.' l3 The composition period is bordered on one side by the Theages fragment; and it overlaps with the composition of the three "regressive" texts to be discussed in the next section. Shortly after its completion, Wieland left Switzerland for Biberach where he adopted an entirely different approach to the representation of sexuality (eroticism). In terms of Wieland's ideational history, the composition of the text spans almost the entire "transitional peri~d."~'"According to Dick, the difficulties of the composition point, together with Wieland's conspicuous

Wieland's foreword to the Goschen 1796 edition contradicts the 1760 foreword by stating that Araspes was onginally conceived of as an episode for the C'is epic, then begun in 1758 afier Wieland had abandoned the Cym project. He also locates the initial idea of writing Agalhor~in this period (J 589). The effect of this foreword is to place Araspes within the overall context of the Biberach period; perhaps in order to spare it the fate of less far- reaching Swiss texts, or to make the author7sideational "transitions" seem less abrupt. Cyrus was started in the middle of 1757, when Wieland had stopped working on Ara~es,then worked on sporadically until the begi~ingof 1759, when it was left as a fragment (published 1759). La& Johanna Gray was begun in the sumrner of 1757, set aside until the arrival of the Ackermann theater troupe in 1758, then promptly completed. Clrmmtina von Porretta was begun in the second half of 1759 and completed after Araspes. but before the publication of the Araspes-preface. reticence about the text in his cornespondence, to the author's awareness of "the novelty and daring of the work.""' Idenmgit as "the first document of the poet's transformation as well as the most daring surviving work of the second half of the Swiss period ("Wandlungen" 148), Dick echoes Sengle's praise for ''the most daring work that [Wieland] published in Switzerland ( 90). However, the suMvhg version of Araspes, completed in under the ethical supewision of Julie Bondeli, is milder than the original draft, with at least one of its most

audacious passages struck out.' l6 Sengle suggests that Wieland led a "literary double life" in this period, writing "secret manuscripts," now lost (Ur-Araspes, Lukian des jüngeren), that contrasted greatly with the safe "officiai works" such as Cyms, and Johanna (98). in one respect, Araspes is unlike any other text dealt with in this study and liighly unusual for Wieland. The previous texts delivered what was promised in their foreword or title : the Empfndzmgen, Christian sensations; the Sympathien, Christian sympathies; and Theages, an "Unterredung über Schonheit und Liebe." With the exception of Araspes, the pattern continues. Texts as dissimilar as the Empjindungen and Don Syivio conform, at least superficially, to the stated authorial design. Whether fiagmentary or cornplete, the texts are presented in their hst editions as the products of clear projects.

115 "Wandlungen" 148. The point is aiso made by Michel: "Si l'ouvrage a éte interrompu, à son moment critique, et s'il est resté plusieurs années dans le tiroir avant d'en sortir à Berne, n'est-ce pas que l'auteur s'est effrayé de la vérité de sa peinture, qu'il n'a pas osé laissé voir a d'autres le changement qui s'était effectué?" (C.-M. Wieland 159) Il6 Bondeli writes that she did not intend the destruction of Wieland's Lz~kimdes jiingeren wahrhafre Geschichte or the suppression of a moving passage in Ar0.spe.s; rather, these appear to be the author's zeaious responses to either her pointed criticism or her highly emotional reaction (Stames, CW1 : 160). This points to the author's uncertainty and under- confidence during his time in Bern, to his awareness of risk, and perhaps to a disheartening willingness to appease. The Araspes preface tells a different story. The speaker works against a view of the text as a consistent whole by directing the reader's attention to the difficulties that its composition posed and by ironically disclahhg its moral utility. The subtitle, "eine moralische Geschichte, in einer Reihe von Unterredungen," points away fkom the classical genre studies that dehed the literary texts immediately preceding its publication (Cyrus, a heroic-epic, and Lad'hhanna Gray, a metered "tragedy" in the "spirit of E~ipides'~).The term "rn~ralisch"'~'places Araspes in the moralist tradition. Erhart, who stresses the proximity of the motifs in Don Sylvio to moralism, defines the latter as a "science morale7" an "Enthüilungs- und Entlarvungspsychologie" in the form of reflections or maxims (for example, Montaigne's Essais, see : Entzwe iung 73). "Moralism" is not a tradition of moral edification, but one of reflection on hurnan mores. Forrnally, however, Araspes is not a reflection, but a series of dialogues arranged into scenes and acts. Hans-Gerhard Winter calls Araspes the first German "Dialogroman" of the eighteenth century. He argues that, in contrast to drama, the dialogue in Araspes centers more on the "static" elucidation of psychological conditions than on the advancement of exterior action (Dialog und Dialogroman 92). Yet Winter also recognizes that dramatic speech, Le. speech that is linked to the advancement of the plot, dominates everywhere except in the scenes with Cyms. The dialogues and soliloquies are dramatic in the sense that they are constitutive elements of the action: they Uutiate and illustrate a process that in many respects may be considered tragic. Moreover, the text, like a classical drama, concentrates almost entirely on the development of a single

Ili The designation "moralische Geschichte" should not be confused with "conte morale" inasmuch as the latter is narrowly defined as a ''court récit à la gloire de la vertu, telle que la conçoit le sentimentalisme bourgeois dans le seconde moitié du MeS. et au début du siècle suivant" ("Conte morale," Diclionnaire des hi!rahrres, 367). action. The thernes of the dialogues are not tangentid, the product of accident and humor, as later in Wieland's didogue novel Diogenes, rather, they center almost entirely on the elucidation of a process of subject division. Unlike Wieland's later dialogues, Araspes is not entirely "emancipated" fiom the drama, rather, it forms a bridge between novelistic dialogue and drama. Winter also relates Wieland's choice of unnarrated dialogue to the sensitive nature of the theme: "Der durch die personale Darbiehingsform gegebene Verzicht auf jeglichen Autorenkommentar entspricht diesem deiikaten Thema.

Jegliche, in den Augen ziichtiger Leser vielleicht als Entgleisung ni bewertende, Ausmalung des Themas durch den Autor unterbleibt." (93) Yet, if anythïng, narrative commentary in later Wieland texts generally has the function of disassociating at least one layer of narrative (and with it, the author) fkom the moral implications of the actions of a given character. Indeed, Wieland's later development of complex narrative strategies and his innovative approaches to genre can be traced back to the crises posed by Araspes in form, in content, and, above dl, to the problem of reader and author identification with the protagonist. The text is not generally treated as dramati~,"~however, I will refer to it as such. Unlike Winter, who correctly sees in Araspes a precursor to the dialogue innovations in Don Sylvio and Agathon, I want to fist associate it with the more conventional tragedies Wieland attempted while struggling with a new type. Indeed, like the classical French tragedy, the "classicist" Johanna, and the "bourgeois" Clmentina, Araspes und Panthea has five acts. The unity of place is respected throughout, as is that of action, with two smdl exceptions (comedic scenes), and the lapse of time is lefi indefinite. Furthemore, the figure of

For instance, it is not even mentioned in Walter Hinderer's "Christoph Martin WieIand und das deutsche Drama des 18. Jahrhunderts." Araspes resembles the passive hero in tragedy, according to 's classical definition; and the text could easily be defïned as a clramatic tragedy, were it not for the nfth act, which is a rejection of the tragic.' lg The rejection of tragedy is the clearest sign of Wieland's uncertainty about the Araspes project. The author's uncertaïnty about the text, coupled with his later opposition to Sturm und Drang and the entirely different strategies and poetics of subsequent texts, help explain the scant attention paid by Wieland's contemporaries and later literary historians to this seemingly anomalous "Wertherism before Rousseau's Nouvelle Héloise." In the preface, the speaker has yet to make a Whie of the vice of a mixed form; experimentation and innovation are not the selling points they will soon become. Rather the speaker recounts how the "meideutige Gestalt7'of a text that was "weder eine Erzddung noch ein Drama" put the entire project into doubt (J 833). This "irregularity," he predicts, will offend the many critics who are easily prejudiced agaùist "things that do not have a name." The point here is not the strategic admission of an obvious fault, but that the speaker, fully aware of this fault, fails to argue for the new name, be it either by extrapolating on the subtitle, or by arguing the advantages of dialogue dong

119 "Die andere Anordnung des Dramas dagegen stellt den Helden beim Beginn in verhdtniBrngBiger Ruhe unter Lebensbedingungen du, welche fremde Gewalten einen EinfluB auf sein Inneres nahe legen. Diese Gewalten, die Gegenspieler, arbeiten mit gesteigerter Thatigkeit so lange in die Seele des Helden, bis sie denselben aufdem Hohenpunkt in eine verhiingniBvolle Befangenheit verseta haben, von weicher ab der Held in leidenschaftlichen Drange, begehrend. handelnd abwarts bis nu Katastrophe stürzt." (Freytag, Technik des Dmrnas 95) Sengie notes the influence of Shakespeare and, following Michel. Racine (9 1). Erhart locates the ongins of the characterys"sublime fi@ in "the high style of the classicist tradition of tragedy" (Entnveiting 49). Shaftesbury's fines.'" Yet the namelessness itself encourages creative experirnentation with genre. According to the preface's account, the difficulties of the text's composition stem fiom the character of its "hero." Araspes is the epitome of a mixed character, but in Switzerland the author lacked a poetic strategy for dealing with such an ambivalent sign. Rather than a figure of"a~ativeidentification" (Erhart, Entmeiung 49), the character became increasingly a "monster." At the sarne time, the analysis of passion made this monstrosity understandable, rather than simply repugnant, with the result that Wieland temporarily abandoned the proj ect: Die Fehler, womit er darnals behaftet war, entgingen zwar ihrem Urteil nicht; in meinen Augen aber waren sie so grof3, daf3 ich beschlol3, nach der Weise der Spartaner dieses kleirte Ungeheuer in der Geburt zu ersticken. (J 834) For two years, Araspes "had to cede to a more worthy hero," Cynis, and the ambivalent text was left for an epic poem that was more befitting of Shaftesbury's moral Venus. While the reasons for reWgto this "abortable monstrosity" are

"O Shaftesbury praises dialogue, for in this ancient practice "the author is annihilated" and the reader, who "stands for nobody" can evduate the dialogue positions as an impartial judge (1 : 132). This contrasts to the "coquetry7' of the modem author who courts the reader and draws attention to himself In a passage too delicious to forego quoting, Shaftesbury vents his distaste for the "fashion" of intervening narrators by describing the namator-reader relationship in sexual terms: "An author who &tes in his own person has the advantage of being who or what he pleases. He is no certain man, nor has any certain or genuine character; but suits himself on every occasion to the fancy of his reader, whom, as the fashion is nowadays, he constantly caresses and cajoles. Ail tum upon their two persons. And as in an amour or commerce of love-letters, so here the author has the privilege of talking etemaiiy of hirnself, dressing and sprucing himself up, whilst he is making diligent court, and working upon the humour of the party to whom he addresses. This is the coquetry of a modem author, whose epistles dedicatoq, prefaces, and addresses to the reader are so many afEected graces, designed to draw the attention from the subject towards himself, and make it be generally observeci not so much what he says, as what he appears, or is, and what figure he already makes, or hopes to make, in the fashionable world." (1: 132-33) With Don Sylvio and Agathon. Wieland, who must have read this passage, entered the ranks of these caressers, cajolers, and amorous narrators. not directly detailed, the speaker alludes to the Cyrus epic and the foohardiness of its design to portray "einen groBem und bessem Helden [...], als Achilles, Aeneas, der rasende Roland und der gute Konig Artus gewesen sein soilen" (J 833). Thus the drama of an imperfect hero that had ceded to the epic of the most perfect hero imaginable is completed only after the epic is lefi as a fiagrnent and the notion of heroic perfection thrown in doubt.I2' By far the most sûiking feature of this preface is the departwe fiom the poetics of moral utility with which it closes. Araspes ends, as we recall fkom Xenophon, with a tête-à-tête between king and servant in which the latter claims to have gained self-knowledge fi-om the experience of love. Araspes's experience is therefore frarned by a royal discourse on experience. But the first and final word on experience is in the preface, which &ames the fiame. In the preface, the speaker takes stock of the question of experience without directly relating it to the thematization of experience in the text. The speaker states that experience breeds caution. However, this caution, unlike that of king Cyrus, borders on skepticism. The speaker dismisses the design of improving others through texts as misplaced zeal, the product of either youthful innocence or quixotic idealism. By implication, the moralizing efforts of Wieland's previous texts are dismissed, and the author's former self is fashioned into a crusading knight-errant fiom La Mancha. The sole purpose assigned to the text is "to be read," now and in posterity. This amounts to a declaration of independence fiorn the constraints of a morality. The liberating element is irony:

"' At the same tirne as Wieland creates a monster in Araspes, the very essence of a mixed figure, attacks our author's CIementzna for presenting a morauy perfect character, according to Mendelssohn "das grofite Ungeheuer" in drama (Briefe. die wueste Literalur betreflend, in Werke 5 :M6,see: Jergensen in Isrgensen, et al., Epoche 47)- Erfahning mach behutsam. Seit dem ich die Welt und mich besser kenne, habe ich gefunden. dal) es leichter sei. uns selbst zu verbessern als andere. Die Entwiirfe, die Sitten der Volker zu verschonem, die Unschuld des goldnen Alters hemisteilen, die Oran-Outangs zu Menschen und die Menschen ni Engeln zu erhohen, sind gut, schon und erhaben. Sie zeugen, wenn sie von einem Jünglinge gefaBt werden, von der Gùte seines Herzens; von einem Alten, daB er die Welt niemals anders als aus seiner Zeile betrachtet habe. Seit dem Hermes Trismegistus, dem Zoroaster und Konfunus arbeiten Legionen kleiner und groBer Geister an diesem loblichen Werke, und die Würkungen ihrer Taten fiilen die Geschicht-Bücher. Der Ritter von Mancha zog durch Berge und

Taler. die bedrhgte Unschuld ni schützen, allem Cjbel zu aeuern Prinzessimen ni entzaubern, und die Riesen auszurotten. Seine Absicht war gut, und sein Eifer loblich. Aber die irrende Ritterschafl hat ihre Unbequemlichkeiten, und man rnuB ein Held von einer besondem Kornposition sein, urn durch die Preller und die bezauberten Mohren nicht zur Ruhe gebracht zu werden. Nach dieser Ausschweifung endige ich mit der Versicherung, dai3 ich bei Bekanntmachung dieses Gedichtes keine andere Absicht habe, als gelesen zu werden; und dieses ist genug. (./ 834) With its hermits and ormgutans, its legions of philosophers, its enchanted castles and princesses and, above all, its central figure of the nobly misguided , the passage anticipates Don Syivio and the mock heroics of the Biberach years. It suggests the colorful mixture of red and unreal that irony will make accessible to the skeptic in the aftermath of disbelief."'

'" From the biographicai and the socio-historical perspective, one of the most important documents of Wieland's transition-reonentation is the foreword to Wieland's 1762 Poelische Schrpenn On the threshold to a period of intense creative production, the text culminates with the author's declared intention to end his career as a writer. Wolfgang von Ungem-Sternberg reads the text as a statement of the near impossibility of existing as an independent author at this time: "Der Vemcht auf eine weitere schriftstellerische Laufbahn war Wielands offentlich verkündetes Nein zur Misere der deutschen Schrifisteller irn 18. Jahrhundert. wenn auch der Protest so sehr in Schleier der Resignation verkleidet wurde, daB er in ihnen ni ersticken drohte." ("Chr. M. Wieland und das Verlagswesen seiner Zeit" 1297) On another level, the text may be seen as a byproduct of the consciousness of apona, in other words, as the completion of the thought developed in this preface. Resignation (as opposed to desperation) to the apparent irresolvabiiity of the Araspes-problem may be indicative of the Despite the fact that Araspes is a work of daring and an essential document of the author's "transition," the text has received scant attention even in the nmow field of Wieland research. 1 see only one significant point of contention in the research, narnely, the degree to which the text can be considered a precursor to Wenher and the Sturm and Drang. Michel and Sengle both note a "Werther tendency" in the text. Dick goes merby identifjmg in Araspes an extension of subjectivity that contains the nucleus of the Sturm und Drang concept of subjectivity: Die Fordenmg, nur dem subjektiven Fühlen und Begehren zu folgen und sich über die geltenden moralischen Ordnungen hinwe~setzen,war das mnachst Ûberraschende in Araspes irnd Panthea. In diesem Streben deutet sich der Begritfeiner Subjektivitat an, der im Sturm und Drang erst seine ganze Auspragung gefunden hat. Schon wird versucht, in der Tiefe der entschiedenen Subjektivitat, im 'Ausbrausen' des Ich - ohne Vermittlung durch Vemunft oder Reflexion - eine überpersonliche, religiose Wirklichkeit ni erfahren. ("Wandlungen" 164) In Araspes, this untamed subjectivity develops to a point where it is opposed to both reason and Wtue; yet it aamis the potential for a deeper and more immediate comection between the self and world:

ironic direction Wieland's writing was about to take. Not only did Wieland surround the Araspes-project with conservative (regressive) texts, such as the three major texts examined in the next section, he also wrote an apologia for "morally correct" iiterature in immediate p roxirnity to the p reface t o the Poelische Schrifteen (Eine U12temedz112g.Lysias und Etrbzhs, see Seuffert, Prolqomwa to compare publication dates 157-58). Lysias udEz(buhs sofiens the hard-line attitude to Anacreontic poetry that was adopted in the Empfindwger~. More importantly, in the figure of Lysias it gives a voice to their defense within the dialogue form (Hentschel 138). However, the position held by Eubulus, the defender of mord writing, is dominant. The latter places strict limits on the moral autonomy of art: "Mes was die Sitten angreift, was diejenigen Leidenschaften reia, die rn gesezwidngen Handlungen dahimissen; ja was blofi den Geschrnak an der Tugend schwacht, und die Seele allzuweichlich und sinnlich macht, ist schadlich" (AA V4: 171). Moreover, Eubulus defends Araspes in terms of its moral utility, which is found in its true and energetic representation of the seductiveness of Platonic love (AA V4: 174) - a reading which runs counter to the preface of Ararpes. Im Taumel und in der Raserei der Leidenschaft scheint eine tiefere, unmittelbarere Einnverdung des Ich mit sich selbst und mgleich mit einer religiosen Wirklichkeit

mo&h ai sein als in der tugendhaften Selbstbestimmung, die bei dem Anteil des Gefühls doch immer auf das AUgemeine gerichtet sein mua. (164) The moment that separates this nascent "counter-subjectivity'' fiom its Mer expression in Sturm und Drang is the retum of Cyrus in the final act after the attempted rape (once again, we hdthe rejection of tragedy). Cyrus dispellls the hagic and imposes the order of (ernpincal) reason. His presence condemns the text to remainuig a "transitional work. 77123 In contrast to Dick, Erhart contends that the "psychologically motivated representation of Araspes's affective language does not simufv a.afiirmation of irrational 'life forces"' (Entmeiung 48). He opposes Dick's "Sturm und Drang bias" and stresses instead the parallels with a more contemporary text, Lessing's one-act tragedy Philotas. Although Wieland had not read Lessing's drama in its original form, both texts signal an end to idealism, be it heroic or sentimental. Erhart's approach constitutes a change in emphasis. Erhart stresses the literary traditions that Araspes departs £ko-om, not the new movement it potentially anticipates; and he emphasizes the ideals it negates, not the new ideal it potentially affinm. Most importantly, Erhart places the moment of "subjective expansion" in the context of a deparhue hmstable identity. According to Erhart, Wieland's Araspes presents the "dramatischen Zusammenbnich einer Vorstellungswelt, die metaphysische, asthetische und moralische Onentiermg in

173 165. As we shall see, the two dialogues with Cyrus are the text's frame. This fhme itself is sufncient to distinguish the "unmasking of arrogance" in Ararpes fion Say, Wilhelm Heinse's "glorification of sensuality": "So ist denn das ganze Thema Wielands nicht wie bei Heinse nur unmittelbare Verherrlichung der Sinnlichkeit, sondern die Demaskiemg der menschlichen Überheblichkeit. Bei Heinse ist nichts von einer solchen Ein- und Unterordnung der DarstelIung der ekstatischen Leidenschafi gegeben." (Dick, Der jzfnge Heime 15 2) sich vereint" (Entmeiung 46). Araspes7stragic cccatastrophe"throws the concepts of sympathy, Platonisrn and moral beauty into question; it implies a fundamental intellectual and spiritual disorientation that is one of the constitutive moments of Wieland's entire oeuvre. The dearly held and stabilizing concepts that serve as a point of deparhue for the subsequent loss of identity and subjective expansion are laid out clearly in the opening scene between Araspes and Cyrus. My analysis of the text begins with the clear positions presented by king and servant. Much of the ground covered is familiar fiom previous texts, so that even at the point of rupture one observes a continuity of ideas. 1then proceed to the undermining of Araspes's secure position through the degeneration of his passion and the expression of subjectivity in and through an increasing consciousness of seKdivision. I also investigate the language of division and the images of nature this language produces. 1 then tum to the restoration of the moral order and finally to the loose ends left dangling in the forced closure of the text. The centrality of the human body and of human sexual need is evident throughout the text; but inasmuch as more is at stake here than a "roll in the hay," desire in a wider sense is at the root of subjectivity and loss.

3.2.1 The Arguments of Cyrus and Araspes

3.2.1.1 C)TUS2Uld DUS The relationship between servant and master in Wieland's text is complex and changing. Legend has it that Cyms and Araspes were boyhood fiends; and the fiankness with whch they dispute indicates continued fiiendship. This suggests that the discursive milieu remains essentially unchanged fiom Theages, in which divergent views were allowed within a group of near equals. Indeed, all 122 the main actors attest to fkiendship with Araspes; and the aura of fiendship masks the power structures which define these relationships. Yet the servant is not the king's equd; and Araspes's changing attitude towards Cyms is a weathervane for the character's own volatile and rebellious state. Araspes goes f?om assuming equal footing to Cyrus, to idealizing him as an enlightened der, and, beyond this, as a derthat exceeds the "mere human," to "forgetting" and rivaling his authority, to fearing his punishrnent. Ultirnately, he repents his estrangernent from the authority and the "stronger genius" of his king. Araspes has the same age as Cyrus but is depicted by Xenophon as an inexperienced youth. The king, on the other hand, is wise and experienced; he represents authority and is the symbolic father of his subjects. Araspes questions this authority in their amicable dispute, and reveals, at least in Xenophon's text, the flaw of arrogance. The underlhg7s attempt at sexual union with a queen cdls for the punishrnent of humiliation; the crisis is then resolved by a gesture of subordination to the king's authority. Within the heroic tradition, the drama cannot end in tragedy, indeed, the protagonist is not even appropriate dramatic material, because he is a mere servant. For Xenophon, his story remains an episode, a mere blip, that is essentially narrated as an example of the king's wise handling of staff. By contrast, Wieland's version is a "bourgeois &ana" that places the psychological analysis of a non-master and non-hero within the dynamic of the power- relationship between servant and king. Set in pre-Christian tirnes, the text escapes the limitations that dogmatic Christianity would have set on the examination of sexuality. The Christian Gad of the Empfindungen and the Sympathzen would never have absented Himself sufficiently for the protagonist to discover and explore sexual longing. Cyrus, on the other band, is absent for the course of the drama, and this alone makes sexual discovery possible. When Araspes forgets Cyrus, he primady forgets the principle of renunciation that the king elaborates in his refusal to see Panthea. Cyrus fears the effect she would have on him and offers a series of arguments against Mewing her. First, the contemplation of a beautifid woman would draw his attention away fkom duty. Female beauty is a seductive force that entices, enthralls ("lockt," "fesseln") and gets in the way of work: Und würde mich nicht ihre Schonheit und die Annehmlichkeit ihres Umgangs in kurzer Zeit so sehr fesseln, dal3 ich sie auch alsdann besuchen würde, wenn ich noch we~ger MuDe hatte; bis mir mletzt das Anschauen der schonen Panthea gar keine MuBe übng lieBe, mich demjenigen zu widmen, was der wohitatige Geist, der die Welten beherrschet, mir zur Ptlicht gemacht hat? (J 593) Cyms is an enlightened leader, impelled by a "beneficent spirit" (reason as a moral hperative?) to higher duties, and, ultimately, to a transcendence of mortality that huiges on historical achievement (see chapter four below). But the "wohltatige Geist" makes absolute demands on time and attention; and the der's mind is a space where competing interests seek to monopolize a limited attention, and where the division of attentions is weakness. Physical desire is not demonized, but it is a nuisance, since bodily satisfaction remains exiraneous to the military project. Were Cyrus merely a citizen with "leisure tirne" ("MuBe") and no extraordinary duties, he could conceivably enjoy contemplating Panthea. Yet, in that case, he would no longer hold authority over Araspes, nor serve as a moral exarnple, nor chance upon such an alluring captive, nor require the services of a guiding Without social statu and political purpose, lus lot in life

'" Le. in Xenophon. Without the notion of a private relationship to God, the apolitical, non-typified and private individual loses a powerftl argument for representation. would no longer warrant literary representation in the pre-Christian, pre- individual-salvation world he inhabits. But a "Protestant" work-ethic cornes with the job of king, so that "'wise" Cyrus remains all work and no play, and never undergoes this process of self-discovery. Secondy, even if he had the time, the astute politician wodd want to maintain the full value of his captive for fuhue negotiations with the enemy king, and therefore not waste a valuable bargaining chip on momentary sexual reiease. Moreover, as illustrated in Cyrus, the motivation behind the entire military campaign is the project of civilization, a project of repressing and sublimating instinctual needs. Traditionaily, female captives were to be enjoyed like any other spoils of ~ar.'~~The highest in command, Cyms is entitled to the ktpick; and the army clearly expects that he will "take" Panthea.126His refusal demonstrates the imposition of a higher levei of civilization by this ideal representative of enlightened absolutism. Cyms may be the prototype for the "spirit" of enlightened absolutisrn, but he also remains a traditional hero whose authority is engendered by detedation and strength. Hence the gender argument: love is not simply an unwanted diversion, a nuisance to the muid, it is also a femuiine pastirne that threatens masculine strength. An enemy of the will, it weakens soldierly discipline and self-control. These themes are developed further in Cyrus, but it is already obvious that the hero defeated in love will not win the military cause. Amorous passion emasculates; under its influence it is probable,

See Ench Auerbach's Mimeszs on the question of Christian and pre-Christian representation. '" Note that Xenophon's Cyrus is perfectly willing to dispense with less politicdy important female prisoners as war spoils (23). Araspes: "Warum wolltest du dir das Vergnügen versagen, eine Sklavin ni sehen, welche m besitzen das einmütige Urteil des Heers niernand würdig fand als dich?' (J 592) daD sie die ganze Seele in weiche Empfindungen und schmachtende Sehnsucht auflosen, jede Begierde nach Ruhm, jede groBmütige EntschlieBung ausloschen, alle Nerven der Seele abspannen, und die vergebiich entgegen kihnpfende Vernunit durch ein siifles Vergessen verhaBter Pflichten berauschen komte? (J 595) While not abnegating the body and spiritualizing sensation in the seMce of religion, the king in the service of a political will still rejects passion as a threat to his disciplined snd reasoned being. At this point, the extent to which his wariness of "weichern] Empfindungen" also extends to the morally edifiing feelings of sensibility remains open ("Emp£ïndungen" and "Empfindsamkeit"). Such questions must be explored by the servant as a substitute for the absent king. Yet it is already evident that the fear of the ferninine is a hidden motive behind a rnilitary campaign which absents the king fiorn the dangers of his own camp, a camp that holds Panthea as an irresistible beauty and Araspes as a swooning rival.

3.2. i -2 Araspes and Risk Following Xenophon, Araspes believes that the control of amorous ernotions is purely a question of will. The youth thinks that he can view Panthea at leisure without persona1 risk, which would imply greater self-possession than that of the king. Yet the principal fault in Wieland's Araspes is not an overweening "aristocratie pnde in masculine self-control." Rather, at stake are the metaphysical-religious convictions which bolster his false assurance. In countering the king's arguments, the servant confesses "hymnically" to a subjectively registered comection with a divine order that extends beyond the master's prosaic benevolent genius (Erhart, Entmezung 45). Araspes's sense of the divine is a higher principle than militaiy heroism; and, as in the Empfindungen, subjective consciousness is the revelatory center of the universe. This subjective feeling is the anchor of Araspes's identity; it is the metaphysical foundation of his world; and without it, his sense of moral order will coilapse. Yet the harmony of the cosmos does not remain pemanently abstract, or safely beyond the reach of man; it is also present in rare female shapes that men sensually apprehend. The face of woman is not just a persuasive tool (Sympathien), for the divine itself is manifest in its human form. Wieland's Araspes never daims immunity to human love; on the contrary, he celebrates the body as the "sichtbare Ausstrahlung" of innate goodness: Aber die Liebe, die sich am bloBen Anschauen der Vollkomrnenheit begnügt, kmnie von der Weisheit verdamrnt werden. Sie ergetzt sich an Tugend und innrer Güte, an Schonheit, dem Leibe der Tugend, und an Anmut, ihrer sichtbaren Ausstrahlung, ohne daf3 dieses Wohlgefallen eine andere Wirkung haben sollte, als den angebomen Trieb der Seele nach Vollkommenheit auf sich selbst ni richten, damit sie sich bestrebe, die Schonheit, die sie auBer sich bewundert, auch in sich hervorzubringen. (J 593) Beautifid shapes inspire beautiful thoughts and actions. The body of Whie and its visible radiance in grace inspire in the onlooker the drive for self-perfectioning. Araspes's supreme deity is a "God of Plenitude," animate in physical forms (Lovejoy, Great Chain of'Bezng 52); and a Great Chain of Beauty smoothes over psychic rifts in human nature and links this world vemcally with the next. Like Theages, Araspes is a Platonic lover whose philosophy would overcome spirit- body dualism. Indeed, in the persons of Araspes and Cyrus one may see a confrontation of the world views of Plato and Xenophon - at least as they were understood by the author - and of two conflicting tendencies within Shaftesbury's philosophy. Emotion, reason and morality are harmonized by the perception of "the great one of the world,"12' which in turn stimulates an outpouring of love that

'" Shaftesbury cited by Dick, 'Wandlungen" 1 54. does not run counter to reason. Reason is furthered by a revelatory perception into the tme nature of things. It would be sacrilegious only to feel; and Araspes imagines that the perception of harmony also inspires the intellect to scientific penetration into the laws of universal order, "wodurch diese endlose Reihe von Wesen und Geschlechtem der Wesen in einen harmonischen Plan verwebt ist" (J 596). The moral faculty is enhanced, because we are inspired to mirror beauty and natural perfection in the realm of individual rnoral~."~The perceived physical harmony is intemalized by the individual spirit; in tu.,ber moral beauty irnpels the individual to work towards harmonizing and perfecting human society. Whereas Cpsfails at this time to attnbute a positive function to the pieasurable physical form and offers in its stead a foggy notion of "benevolent genius," Araspes discovers in beauty the metaphysical basis for commitment to individual and societd bettement. Divine subjectivity is an animate condition. Forces of attraction engage the self in an endless and dl-encompassing motion towards the perfect archetypes that hover about the soul: "Alles Sehone, alles Erhabne, alles was in seiner Art vollkornmen ist, oder dem Urbild der Volkomrnenkeit, das in meiner Seele schwebt, sich nahert, zieht meine Liebe an." At the same tirne, the self departs fiom its earthly moorings in a vertical transcendence that is radically subjective when cornpared to the Empfindungen, because of the absence of Christian father figure at a higher level than Cyms to assure its objective truth. Like the Christian experience of the Enzpjndzingen, however, Araspes's pantheistic experience attains the absolute:

"' "[hm kommt es ni, [...] alle seine Krafte zu dern erhabnen Ziel anzustrengen, dai3 in der moralischen Welt eine eben so schone Eintracht und Zusarnmenstimmung erhalten werde, wie diese kt, die in den harmonischen Bewegungen des Himmels, in der unveriinderlichen Folge der lahrzeiten, in der Anordnung und Ausschmückung der ganzen Korperwelt, den anschauenden Geist in Bewundrung setzt." (J 596) Die ganze Schopfiing nahrt die heiIige Flamme. Von Schonheit ni Schonheit in ewig steigenden Graden fortgezogen, verliere ich mich oft in sprachloser Entzückung, die alle Gedanken verschiingt, und die Seele in suDes Erstaunen und wundewoiie Ahnungen versenkt, die ich nicht m enthüilen vermag. (J 596) The moment of transport is an instant of speechless pure emotion, in which reason surrenders to a transient ecstasy, to "sprachloser Entzückung" and "sUB[em] Erstaunen." Yet the passage implies a counter-movement. The sequence of verbs foregrounds the verbal prefix "ver-" and its connotation of removal or deprivation: "fortziehen, sich verlieren, verschlingen, versenken, nicht vermogen," lending a sense of involuntary downward undertow to an othehse vertical a~cent.'~~The image of the flame irnplies danger. The power of Araspes's language is its breadth and scope as it extends from the universe in the self to the universal self, 'Dut the cost of this marvelous breadth is the risk Araspes takes by staking everythmg on the subject. As an expression of this risk, Cyrus's dire wamùigs also extend Araspes's trajectory, and they anticipate an imitation of Icms that is tragic and sublime. Cyms warns his Icarus against the flame: aber je n&er du ihr komrnen wirst, desto mehr wird sie erhitzen, bis du, von der angenehmen Whme belebt, die Rügel begierig entfaltest, und in irnmer nzihemden

121 The term "foregrounding" originates with the literary stnicturalists of the Prague school who used it to refer to "stimulus not culturally expected in a social situation" and, with respect to language, to what Jan Mukarovsky has cailed "the aesthetically intentionai distortion of the linguistic components" (Gamin vii-viii). The opposite of foregrounding is automation. In the poetic context, the standard language and the traditional aesthetic canon comprise the autornated background against which foregrounding occurs. Mukarovsky elaborates: "The function of poetic language consists in the maximum foregrounding of the utterance. Foregrounding is the opposite of automization, that is7the deautomization of an act; the more the act is automited the less it is consciously executed; the more it is foregrounded, the more completely conscious does it become. Objectively speaking, automkation schematizes an event; foregrounding means the violation of the scheme." ("Standard Language" 19) Hence foregrounded language is language which deautomates the utterance, making one aware of speech itself In this case, the inseparable prefix in "vermogen" is guilty by association, a phonetic echo of the meaning of the preceding verbs. Kreisen um die schone Flamme flattemd, nileta mit versengten Schwingen pl Boden taumelst. (J 597) Inasmuch as the SMof this fire is - from the pantheistic perspective - the beauty of creation itself, the entire universe is implicated in the subject's movernent. This then, and not simple aristocratie arrogance, is the context for Araspes's confidence in the strength not only of his own will, but of that of all hurnanity. Human dlis not a playthïng of whim and fmcy, Araspes contends, we are morally autonomous beings effecbag f?ee choices. Were the opposite me, the nile of law would lose its moral underpinning: Die Gesetze würden keine Strafen auf die Verbrechen setzen, wenn es nicht in unsrer

Macht stiinde ni sündigen oder recht ni handeln. Sie fordem unsem Gehorsam, weil sie voraussetzen, da0 der Mensch ein higebornes Wesen sei. sein eigner Beherrscher,

der durch keine auBere Macht gezwungen werden kann, etwas zu begehren oder ai

verabscheuen, zu lieben oder ai hassen. (J 595) This passage illustrates how Wieland utilized a conflict potential that Xenophon and Shaftesbury ignored. Shaftesbury, following Xenophon, also has Araspes invoke the law. Refening to adulterers, he says: But the law, 1 perceive. makes bold with them in its tum as with other invaders of property. Neither is it your custom, sir, to pardon such offences. So that beauty itself, you must allow. is innocent and hanniess, and can compel no one to do anything miss. (1: 118-19) Shaftesbury's Araspes makes the justness of law contingent on the hamdessness of beauty and the supremacy of hurnan will, but he fails to state expliciùy the obvious but radical conclusion that the legitimacy of law would be thrown into question if this were not the case. By contrast, Wieland's Araspes leaves no doubt that if the choice between right and wrong is not within our power, then the rule of law that is based on the assumption of fiee will is without foundation. The question of human autonomy is at issue throughout the text. Human nature is good, Araspes contends, because the universe, even in its worldly aspect, is beautifid and harmonie. Love is good, because love is an emotional apprehension of divine magnanimity. But what if, he ventures, love showed another face; what if it suddenly became "eine Tyrannin der Herzen, eine Zauberin, ein feindseliger Damon, eine unwiderstehliche Gottheit" (J 595)? How then could the self reconcile the division of its desire into opposing forces; how could one re-achieve equilibrium after expenencing the full force of such a split? These implicit questions are tentatively (and unsatisfactorily) answered in the drama's second fiame, Araspes's final meeting with the king. Through Cyms, the drama of Araspes's self-experience is stnicturally bracketed and the tragic contents of his story are removed to a higher and less imrnediate discursive level. While Araspes has lost his philosophical footing and moral status by their second encounter, Cyrus, absented for the course of the drama, never strays fiom the solid ground of his Iess far-reaching ideas. Cyms is proved right by events; he takes control of things, and reduces the apparently tragic flaw to a reparable mistake (recall that tragedy is not the servant's domain). The problem boils ~OW to lack of knowledge about human nature;130 and the only means of convincuig Araspes that "this most pleasurable and powerful of our drives does not always remain in our control" was through "experknce" ("Erfahrung7')).Cyrus accepts responsibility for having conducted a dangermis experiment ("Probe," "der allm teure Versuch," J 678), and thereby suggests that the near-catastrophe misadventure was his own design. This establishes the central link for Wieland's poetics between experience and experiment ("Erf;ihning7') and points the way

130 "O mein Freund, du scheinst weder die Schwache des menschlichen Herzens, noch die Gewalt dieser allzureizenden Leidenschaft m kennen" (my emphasis, J 595-96). £iom the element of "thesis play" in the dramatic kame to the experimental, hypothetical narratives of Biberach and Erfurt. The conclusion suggests the retum of Araspes to the optimism of its source texts. hasrnuch as Araspes's flaw is one of ignorance, it is not tragic and it can be surmounted by experience within a controlled setting. The happy end circumvents a deeper problem, but it also makes the problem representable in a non-tragic setting.

3.2.2 Double-talk, Disclosure and Incomprehension

The main body of the text presents the disclosure of forbidden wants in terms which glorifi passion even as it is denounced. Araspes7s"estrangement from vhe" does not occur as an "abrupt break," but on the 'wound of virtue itself," on the ground of the moral convictions it tests.13' His failure is therefore the failure of a "pseudo synthesis" of sensibility (Sengle 90). As readers and soul-mates of Theages, we are suddenly witness to the inexorable progress of a forbidden desire in one of us, i-e. in the sou1 of a member of the select Company, one who is disthguished as courageous and idealistic, the typified representative of the sensibility and Platonism to which we attest. Afier Cyrus departs, taking with him the guarantee of reasoned philosophical discourse, the drarna suddenly stands apart lkom other Wieland texts. Self-division is no longer a pre-established and familiar fact; it is no longer expected, rationalized and prosaic. We are witness to "dividing" as an act in process rather than to "self-division" as a fait accompli. In the moment of division, the subject is suspended at some indeterminable point between his good

"' "Es zeugt von der psychologischen Meisterschdl Wielands, dder die Entfernung des seiner selbst so sicheren Araspes von der Tugend nicht mit einem jiihen Bmch, sondern ganz auf dem Boden der Tugend selbst mit der schwiirmerischen Übersteigemng der tugendhaflen Eigenschaften der Panthea beginnen IaBt" (Dick, "Wandlungen" 157). and ill selves. The continuum that defines man's position in the cosmos is an ever-changing slippery dope that defies orientation. The failure of the dopaof a preconceived authority is also the beginning of subjective experience. The separation of a second sexual self will tum on its head the continuum of Platonic love with its ascension of the spirit over the body and invert the hierarchy of good and ill. Yet, before this process is completed, the speech of Araspes renders the oscillations of an unstable subject in the volatility of an in-between, detached fiom the predefined positions of good and ill. No single event marks the beginning of Araspes's "illness," and the disease takes hold, to Wieland's great credit, as Shaftesbury had imagined it, "insensibly, and by natural degrees." In the gap between good and ill, the exact position of the protagonist ca~otbe determined; his figure cannot be "grasped," that is, understood and reduced. He is neither the good nor the il1 self, but both. A single utterance often contains two mutually exclusive meanings. The dialogic "structure" of the opening frame led to the crystallization of opposing positions on an clear question, but this is now "destmcted," for the dialogues cease to conform to the expository function, and the spoken word cannot be matched to an intended message. Araspes initiates a discourse of secrecy and subterfuge, but he is not simply dishonest. Rather, a gap between word and intended meaning - between signifier and signified - opens and is filled with expectation, hope, delusion and pain. The gap invites the inexpressible as potential and nsk. The impression that Araspes's passion devolved by "insensible degrees" is an effect of the number of variables that comprise the dynamic of each of his "speech acts." The drama is largely comprised of a succession of dialogues between Araspes and his love object (Panthea) or his confidant (Arasambes), interspersed with monologues or "soliloquies." This triad (Panthea, Arasambes 133 and the "other self" addressed in soiiloquy) turns like a revolving door, presenting the addressant with constantly varying conditions of performance. At any given point, the relative position of Araspes on the slope between good and ill is a function of whom he addresses and what has already been said. From a tactical standpoint, Araspes cannot always admit to Arasambes what he has already confessed to himself, nor can he reveal to Panthea everythmg that Arasambes knows; while fiom an emotional standpoint, in the heat of conversation (which is most intense with Panthea) he may very well Say more than he had planned. In dl cases, however, each partial revelation raises the bar on the sayable and heightens the degree of risk and potential. Censorship and repression contribute to the excitement of instinctual need. In each dialogue, Araspes wants sirnultaneously to hide and to reveal his secret wishes. The expectation of hidden knowledge is an "incitement to discourse;" the anticipation of confession and Unminent release is an intensification of the excitement of knowledge. These conditions never remain stable and neither does Araspes: the subject as such is largely determined by the conditions of speech. These points require illustration. 1 will begin with the first and simplest point, that Araspes lies, and renne it immediately as follows: Araspes undertakes a double discourse. The illustration of this discourse will bring to light the variable conditions of speech, in accordance with which the indeterminate subject flips fkom one position to the next. Sexual need is a need for disclosure of the repressed. The full disclosure of the repressed and the separation of the repressed from the discourse of repression - of the sexual f?om the virtuous - demands recourse to an unambiguous non-verbal act, the physical violence of an attempted rape. Rape assigns meaning, it stabilizes Araspes's discourse by reducing it to the ravhgs of an ill self. Once this happens, Cyms can return to restore stability with an interpretation. However, this dependence on the non-verbal act for meaning points to a non-resolvability of language. In the subjective volatility between sexuality and its repression, Wieland's language becomes a vehicle for subjectivity as dividing. This process is written with fear, anticipation, and honesty, and with a poetic exuberance that is perhaps unique in Wieland's oeuvre.

Turning to the text, the first scene with Araspes and Panthea seems fully innocent. The servant informs the foreign queen of the king's decision to forgo his victor's privileges, and to treat her instead as a "sister7' until she is reunited with her husband. Freed f?om the fate of a sex-slave, the faimwife rejoices at the news. Her only wish is that king Abradates, the estranged husband, is still dive, for he is the "better half' of her "soul" (J 600). This unyielding faith ennobles Panthea in Araspes's eyes. The shared characteristic of devotion to their now absent kmgs unites captor and captive. Their nascent fiiendship is based upon praise for absented masters. Panthea says: Wie angenehm werden uns die schnellen Stunden entschlüpfen, wenn wir uns wechselsweise mit Horen und Erzahlen beschaftigen, du von deinem Pnnzen, ich von

einem Manne, der würdiger kt ein Freund als ein Gegner des Cynis ai sein! (5602) "Wie verlangt mich nach den goldnen Stunden!" responds an ovejoyed Araspes, pledging to fil1 the hours of their hture meetings with tales of Cps's wisdorn. The vow that his "tongue will never tire in praise of Cps" sets the stage for fùture encounters. Praising Cyrus is the "ground of virtue" and the ground of his future discourse. This groundwork is laid out in their next encounter, on the surface, the least dramatic scene in the text. Araspes comects Panthea's biased view of Cyrus, the enemy king, as a wild conqueror who wreaks havoc on civil society, tears wives fkom their husbands and drags daughters away fiom their mothers and acquaints her with the human side of a tnily enlightened absolutist. Teary-eyed after a golden hour filled with the portrait of a bringer of peace and cooperation among wdgnations, "sister'? Panthea longs to unite the "sistered souls" of her husband and this noble patriarch (J 6 15). As a secondary eEect, the 'painter," who first rendered a glowing image of Panthea for Cyms and now portrays an inspiring Cyrus for Panthea, also gains in affection: WI~gefdit mir diese freundschaftliche Hitle, die deine Ausdrücke belebt und auf deinen Wangen glüht, wenn du von Cyms redest! Die Liebe, die du für seine Tugend fihlst, ia mir ehBeweis von deiner eignen. (J 609- 10) For Panthea, the second meeting fùlfills the expectations of the first. Araspes's exposition establishes and, through its length, normalizes the language of virtue. But to her ignorance the legitirnacy of this language has already been undercut. In the soliloquy that separates this meeting fiom the first, Araspes tums from praise for his king to full absorption in the adulation of the foreign queen. Speaking with himself, Araspesyssole interest is a beauty that surpasses "an Gestalt und Seele alle sterblichen Sch~nen"(J 602). Desire and loyalty are opposed. The memory of the king is not obliterated, indeed, the new experience of "sweet unrest" calls forth an intemalized authority: - Mir ist, als ob mir eine leise Stimme den Namen des Cyms zulisple. - Wie, weM er die Liebe besser kemte als ich? (J602) This "inner genius" is not directly silenced by an emergent il1 self. On the contrary, it is the philosophy of synthesis and spiritualization - the very basis of Araspes7smoral understanding of the world - that counteracts this "small- rninded mistrust in myseif" and vilifies as a "base thought" the notion that strong spiritual emotions are unworthy of indulgence (J 603). Within this philosophy, emotions progress unchecked; indeed, their intensification is encouraged. Following the logic that by worshipping a woman one is contemplating God in body, unreason ("Unsinn" in the text, unreason and non-sense) is identined with the notion of emotional control. The function of Platonism becomes the opposite of its manifest meaning: it disguises instinctual need in pseudo-sublimation and thus effectively circumvents intemal repression and censorship. This does not mean that libido is given fiee reign. On the contrary, while no limit is set on intensity of language, emotional expression attempts to vent itself in Wtuous discourse. Indeed, the pattern is not unlike the wet drearn (as described by Freud in the Traumdeutung) that moves in the course of a night through cycles, each time overcoming more disguise and censorship and gaining in explicitness, boldness and color until it ends with an emission. Given this fiame, the second meeting between Araspes and Panthea is nothing less than an inversion of the global structure of the text. Recall that the "content" of the drama is the escalation of irrational, sexual passion; however, this is bracketed by rational, repressive discourse and modeled by Cyrus into an empirical experiment. Here, the content is the narration of the progress of enlightenment (i.e. of reason and instinctual repression) by the agency of Cynis, but this narration is instrumentalized to elicit the queen's secondary affections for the message bearer, and it is fiamed by an earlier soliloquy that uses the counter- philosophy of Platonism to effectively decommission the intemalized authority represented by the whispering voice of Cyrus. Araspes's praise for Cyrus's government may very well be sincere, but the delight this portrait artist espouses in "reading the impressions that I hoped for fiom my tale in your beautifid face" leaves the character of these impressions in doubt. Araspes's own narrations create the "effects" that he reads with such delight as they are projected on and emanate from the face of their recipient. Yet the favor she sheson Araspes cannot be extricated fiom worlungs of Cyms's regal glow. In a configuration rerniniscent of the S'hien,Araspes gains the favor of a woman with a quasi-divine message about the subiimation of lower passions. In his portrayal, Cyrus is the embodiment of "'lust for doing good"' ("'Wollust ùn Wohltun"'), the philanthropie practice of alleviating selfish needs by dedication to the bettement of others (56 15). The resultant pleasure, unlaiown to the enemy tyrant, "'surrounded by his pretty mistresses"' ("'mitten unter seinen schonen Beischlz$erinnen"' J 6 13, is central to Cyrus's ~~O~OUS design: to usher an age of enlightenrnent into a human mass that is "weakened by lust" ("von Wollust entnervt" J 642). For Panthea, such leadership is indispensable: Der grofle Haufe der Sterblichen gleicht einem unbeseelten Leibe, wofem er nicht von einem Geist aus einer hohem Ordnung regiert wird, der seine Bewegungen lenket, seine Aufwallungen maBigt, und seinen Bedürfnissen abhilft. (J 6 14) Cyrus is this spirit out of a higher order that govems the soulless body and channels the mass of moving chaos into beneficial plans. Araspes creates an image of the king that is clear and detailed, but in dohg so fails to argue the case for his own independent representation. In the very act of delineating the moral contour of the absent king the court artist seemlligly dissolves behind this image. The counter hero's discourse with Panthea is inseparable fiom the voice of the father figure whose Mage he creates. The relationships will become clearer later, for instance, when Araspes informs his confidant Arasarnbes that the vanquished king Abradates has forfeited al1 rights over Panthea and claims that he deserves to be rewarded by Cyms with the queen (J 66 1). With a fantasy of himself as master and Panthea as slave, Araspes unwittingly becornes the proponent of a retum to slave-master proprietorship and thereby fashions hirnselfinto an enemy tyrant, the counter force to Cynis's sublimating enlightenment. However, he does not arrive at this endpoint in a straight line, but in an extended series of twists and tums as the two souk fuse and separate and jockey for control of the subject' s voice. Until he settles on either one of these definable, hence reducible selves, the "1" he represents is not graspable as a single voice. The indefinite quality of the subject in the process of dividing is exemplified in the third tête-à-tête with Panthea. In their previous encounter, Araspes and Panthea met in a shared enthusiasm for enlightened absolutism; and Araspes attempted to vent his intense emotions in an emotional description of an ideal ruler. This pathway is no longer sufficient; its very limited "erotic potential" is exhausted. Thus Araspes begins to redefine implicitly their relationship in terms of chivalrous love. This redefinition is coupled with the weakening of the authority figure that Araspes portrays. In the previous meeting, Araspes depicted Cyms as a derwho extended "Mmie" to unenlightened nations. This image of a historical process is now supplanted by an image of an anguished individual, Le. of Abradates, a husband in a situation of powerlessness fearing for the vheof his wife. A Platonic and thoroughly laiightly lover, Araspes wants to demonstrate his devotion to the unattainable queen and proposes a dangerous adventure. He offers to journey into enemy territory as a messenger in order to find Abradates and assure hirn that Panthea is safe and sound. This plan, on the surface ill- conceived and fookardy, responds to the need of the good soul to escape the spell of Panthea's beauty; but it also runs against the express wishes of Cyrus, hence marking a Merstep in the protagonist's emancipation fiom the king. In order to convince Panthea to accept this service, he places himself in the estranged husband's position and expounds on the nightmare he sees the husband ïmagining: Die liebeskranke Einbildung erhoht sein wirkliches Leiden durch ertraumte Ubel. Vielleicht glaubt er, du seiest im Tumulte der Eroberung von einer unmenschlichen Hand umgekornmen; oder du schmachtest in der Gewalt eines Barbaren, der fühllos für die hohere Schonheit der Tugend nur für das reizende Weib brennen kann. Selbst auf seinem einsarnen Lager, wenn ein mitleidiger Schlummer seine Schmerzen einzuwiegen scheint. begegnet ihm in Traumen dein Bild, und zwingt Triinen aus seinen geschlossenen Augen; baid scheint dein Schatten, bleich und mit Blut befleckt, vor ihm

vorüber ai gehen; oder er sieht dich in flehender Stellung, mit zerstreuten Haarlocken und glühendem Antlitz, in Triinen gebadet, m den FüOen eines barbarischen Herren, der mit dem Dolch in der Hand von seiner allm bezaubernden Gefangenen eine Liebe erzwingen will, die ihrem Abradateç heilig ist. - O Panthea! ich me,wie ihn diese Besorgnisse martern, die der Traum zu Wirklichkeit erhebt (J 627) Multiple wishes are compressed uito this "Liebesdienst." Araspes envisions the husband imagining the rapist and in this way expresses two fantasies in one. He envisions himself as the harbinger of reason to a man who is a captive to his imagination at the same time as he conjures up the wildest products of imagination. He creates Abradates in his own image as a man plagued by imaginations, but he fashions hirnself into the agent of normalcy, in this sense placing himself above the husband. He would escape Panthea, but the rapist he would dispell f+om the husband's dreams would be himself if he stayed. Finally, he imagines that his fantasies can materialize as reality ("Besorgnisse [...], die der

Tram ni Wirklichkeit erhebt"). From the tactical standpoint of the il1 self, Panthea's rejection of the offer represents a gain. Araspes has successfûlly shifted the subject and intensified the language of their intercourse. The subject is no longer Cyms7sbattle against the extemal chaos of the passion-driven world but the intemal and explicitly sexual chaos of Panthea's intimate relations. In this context, Araspes expresses his own valor instead of Cyrus's. Most irnportantly, the would-be messenger attempts to convey to Panthea the message that he himself occupies the interstice between husband and rapist. With the force of his images and words, Araspes edges himself one step closer to the object of his desire.

Disclosure is both need and inevitability for Araspes. In stops and starts that reflect boldness and hesitation, it progresses through cycles of increasing intensity. For the il1 self, which in this text is the sexual or repressed self, this is a process of becorning by which something is expressed, then strategically masked, intensified, excited by partial revelations, confessed again under more daring circurnstances, exposed with greater risk and urgency, spoken in soliloquy, then with openness, daring, audacity, and forced upon the resistant world as a physical reality. Coincidentally, the good sou1 disfigures and reconfigures as the constant infiation of desire combines with the alternation of discursive partners, situations and ai~ns."~Bamer after barrier is broken, words beget more heated words, and the subject is created Ui the act of its dividing. By the subject, I mean that which is not predetermined either by a higher moral and interpretive order (the good self) or by its simple inversion (the il1 self), but the indeterminate element that emerges (dialectically) fiom the two. Unlike the cornfortable spaces afTorded by the erotic love groves of the Corn ische Erzühlzrngen, this text never leads its protagonist to the threshold of satiety and languishhg. There are no "open spaces," no protective overgrowths

"'Liselotte Kurth-Voigt calls Araspes the "culmination" of Wieland's "early development of the point-of-view technique," without actuaiiy describing the use of this "technique" in the text (Perspectives and Poi~sof View 11 1) . where the two lovers can meet. Panthea's moral demeanor is not a corseting that in some intirnate recess can be gently undressed. Rather, we have here a tight bail of duties, loyalties and vimies that must be tom apart to be exposed. Under the reign of Whie, Araspes's sexual consciousness leads to social disaffection. Released in stormy soliloquy and progressively unmasked in the Company of others, that which is forbidden hds narration and representation through Araspes. At the same time, his voice falls on Panthea's non- comprehending ears. Throughout the drama, the need for sexual affirmation leads Araspes's beyond Panthea to substitutes. For instance, he tums to nature, only to encounter disappointment: "Diese Baume sind so stumm, so unempfindlich; ich muB einen Zuhorer haben, der mein Entzücken miternpfinden kann" (J 656). He curses the trees - "weil sie nicht aufhiipfen" - because nature is not an extension of his excited ernotional state, but empty, unresponsive and alien. The sexual nature of disclosure is evident not just in Araspes's escalatuig declarations to Panthea, but also in the first encounter with his confidant. In it, Arasambes serves as a communicative surrogate for Panthea, and disclosure becomes a form of release. Resting undisturbed in the shade of a paim, Araspes has '"pleasing novelties" for his &end hove~gon "his impatient lips;" and he promises to "satiate" their desiring sods with intimate converse: '"LaB uns dort unter jenen umschattenden Palmen ausruhen, und unsere begierigen Seelen ungestort mit fieundschaftlichen Gesprachen sattigen" (J 6 15-16). These fiiendly words are acts of daring ("erk~ihnt"), but they are rewarded by a feeling of liquid release ("Erleichterung," "ausgieBem): O Arasambes, ich fühle hier ich weiB nicht was fiir eine süBe Erleichtemng, wenn ich die Empfindungen in deinen vertrauten Busen ausgieBe, von denen ich rnich noch nicht erhhnt habe mit ihr selbst zu reden. (J 620) In cornparison to soliloquy, the presence of the substitute heightens the risk and the reality of disclosure, adding an excitement that transports the speaker over previous hurdles. He dares to Say to the other what he could not admit to himself- These partial thresholds of release multiply dong the repressive mechanisms of society. Each new audacity raises the stakes of disclosure, but also entails a temporary reduction of tension and a shift backwards to the former self- For example, Araspes later confides to Arasambes his wish that Cyms reward him with Panthea for his military service, only to be stemly rebuked. In the ensuing monologue, Arapses expresses regret at having gone too far: C'~arum muBte ich mich ihm in einem Augenblick zeigen, worin nur leblose Zuhorer unnachteilig suid! Warum konnte ich mich nicht ohne Zeugen fieuen?" These questions point to the insufficiency of soliloquy for the sexual self and to its erotic need not only to embrace the single love object, but also to implicate the confidant and indeed al1 of nature in its outward expansion. Araspes may well have lost Arasambes7sfiiendship and respect. However, at this price, he has implicated someone else in his spoken-sexual "intercourse." This is followed by a passing moment of rest: "Mich dünkt, ich bin vie1 ruhiger, seitdem ich das ÜbermaB meiner Freude ausgesprudelt habe" (J 665).

Ultimately, disciosure leads to attempted rape - the end-point which makes confession possible - and, fiom there, to the shocking details that Araspes reports "mit der getreuesten Wahrhaftigkeit" to Mandane, who is a mother-figure as well as Panthea's former nursemaid iJ 671). Crime and confession end in recognition. The moment when the two selves are no longer mixed, the slide dom the slippery dope is complete and stability is regained. Since the drama iacks a narrator to interpret and assign rneaning, the violent act serves this function. It confirms the worst possible interpretations of Araspes's heated expressions, just as it establishes the majesty of Panthea's de.The violent stmggle between Araspes and Panthea is the transformation of evil and Wtue into manifest, separate realities. As an added bonus, dedes the day, since by overcorning her attacker Panthea demonstrates that vuhie is not a chimencal idea, but a more powerful "passion" than the sex drive (J 672). With vimie regained, the path is now clear for a remto oomalcy, hence the return of Cyrus, and the reintegration of Araspes in the project of enlightened ditarism. The act, however, is preceded by failed recognition. In their penultimate meeting (the last one rendered in direct speech) Araspes finally speaks "the fatal word" love, leaving no doubt his love means possession.133But Panthea, schooled in sympathies and sisterly affections, and certain that "love cannot hm the virtuous," replies with literal incomprehension: "ich verstehe diese Sprache nicht" (J 647). Her refusal to understand is a last attempt to salvage a discourse of sensibility from the double or multiple meanings of its key ternis. Hers is a well-intentioned acceptance of the mask at face value and a willful ignorance of the unspoken underbelly of language. Indeed, as soon as his rhetoric regains a self-sacnficing, chivalrous tone, she welcomes anew her troubled koight, inviting his remwith further misrecognition: "Ich erkenne wieder die Stirnme rneines Freundes" (J 648). In the soliloquy that follows, Araspes maps out a scheme to exploit misrecognition over the long tem: Der gefahrlichste Schritt ist getan. Sie kmsich nicht rnehr weigem, die Erklaningen meiner Liebe annihoren! Nach und nach wird ihr gewohntes Ohr sich willig zu den gefallenden Tonen neigen, und syrnpathetische Triebe werden in ihrem erweichten Herzen erbeben. In Freundschafl verMeidet, wird die unverdachtige Liebe ihr

133 "[Ilch fühlte, ddnur die Gegenliebe, nur der Besitz des Geliebten, glücklich rnachen kann" (J 645). Veruauen gewimen; sie wird die feurige Beredsamkeit meiner Lippen, sie wird das

bedeutende Schrnachten meiner Blicke, und selbst rneine Liebkosungen dulden [.. -1O Araspes, du wir~glückiich sein! (J 652) The communication of desire is intrinsicaIly seductive. The lover's "most dangerous step" is to introduce Panthea to a code whereby sensibility stands for physical desire. Following this plan, seduction would not amount to an "abrupt break," rather, it would blur the difference between Wtue and vice and effect the gradual, imperceptible transformation of its victïm. The impulsive lover, however, is unpracticed in the art of restraint. Like the failed Est self, the second self also needs experience and self-reflectionto succeed. But as the elaboration of the art of seduction must await the Comische Erzahlungen, the second self, like a bumbling teenager, suffers fkom a "manque d'adresse" (Michel, CM. Wieland 16 1). Because he lacks schooling in erotic language, Araspes must resort to force (leaving Panthea psychologically untested). Araspes's "manque d'adresse" anticipates Wieland's composition of erotic texts which 1 offer a schooling in the very art he lacks. Out of a similar linguistic naiveté, Panthea exposes herself to attack. Mandane, on the other hand, wants to train her in the recognition of signs and offers, ein[e] Art von geheimer Auslegungskunst, welche die Herzen der Menschen vor uns entziffert, und am gewissen Anscheinungen ihre verborgenen Bewegungen, ihre aufsteigenden Leidenschaflen und den zukünftigen Sturm mit besserm Grunde vorher sagen lehrt. (5633) Confinning every woman's need for a secret art of deciphe~gthe hidden motives behind the vïrtuous appearances of this "argiistigen Geschlechte" (J 632), the attempted rape brings to an end the possibility of a naive sensibility unmarked with do~bt.'~Araspes's violence reverberates backwards through the text, shaking the entire world of its vimious signification and stabilizing the negative interpretation of his previous words.

The desire Panthea fails to recognize, Arasambes fails to understand. The confidant represents moral rectitude, convention and detached reason, but lacks Cyrus's authority and so can be easily ignored. He meets Araspes's "ahtiefe Eindrücke" with remonstrations and argument, with appeals to vimie and to the forgotten ideals of Cyrus, but mostly, fiom Araspes's perspective, with "mmome[r] Kalte" (J 6 18). In Araspes's opinion, Arasambes has become a "statue of a man" ("Bildsaule von einem Menschen"). As emotionally responsive as the "cliffs and trees," Arasambes demonstrates the futility of attempting to control the onslaughts of passion through the voice of reason alone (J 657). His sententious appeals to morality are a laughable substitute for the authority of the absent king. They are the backdrop for a declaration of alienation that anticipates the Sturm und Drang in its dissatisfaction with the strictures of reason. Araspes soliloquizes: - Aber diesen Leuten, deren weises Blut so gelassen durch die tragen Adern dahin schleicht. glühet jeder Anek zu stark. Ihre eiskalte Fühllosigkeit sol1 das Mal3 unsrer Empfindungen sein; und weil ihre Nerven stumpf und unreizbar sind, wünschen sie sich selbst zu ihrer Weisheit Glück. (5624-25) Thus the vitalist monologue of unreason begins in alienation fkorn a society that is characterized as overcontrolled and unfeeling. Without establishing a better self

134 "Mit dieser Fahigkeit der Dienerin [...] ist der gro13e Gegensatz zur einst propagienen 'Naivetat' des jungen Wieland am deutlichsten exponiert: Die ideal ausgemdte Einheit von Fühlen, Denken und Reden, von AuBen- und Innenseite menschlicher Komrnunikation weicht der vorher als Signum einer 'verderbten Welt' gebrandmarkten Notwendigkeit, die Gespaltenheit des Menschen als selbstverstiïndliche Ambivalenz seiner Natur vorausmsetzen." (Erhart, Entmezung 60) as "inspecter or auditor," the subject's voice moves impulsively fiom one idea or impression to the next. The words precipitate fiom his Lips, as the coolly observant Mandane reports, "in stonny c~nfùsion'~("in ungestümer Verwimg7'), a testament to the "intense inner turmoil" ("heftigen innedichen ALdhhr") of a sou1 that flips back and forth between its two irreconcilable sides (J 633). When the subject in monologue finally recognizes his "impudence" ("Vemessenheit") and calls upon vimie to gather its scattered powers in a final charge agauist the tyranny of passions, the result is heightened pathos, not heightened resolve (J 636-37). Resolve, however, would set lirnits on human vitality, whereas the unresolved position of this rnixed figure is both fnghtening and alive. His pathos is registered in discomected paratactic sentences, in exclamations and interjections, in question marks that mark the futility of resolute answers, and in dashes which signal the unmediated succession of tho~ghts.'~'Arasambes, despairing "because reason is powerless against this turmoil of the senses" ("weil doch die Vemunft in diesem AuWder Sinne nichts vermag"), can ody wish for "magic words," or a "mysterious talisman," or the rnagic tones of music that would lull to sleep the force of love and coax reason to rem(J 643). With no such hocus-pocus available and without a strategy to counter the sway of the irrational, his remonstrations demonstrate the inadequacy of conventional reason. Indeed, the fact that Araspes gains an indirect sexual satisfaction from their intercourse rnakes reason simply laughable.

In one page-long soliloquy, 1 counted contains 21 exclamation marks, 8 question marks. 12 dashes and 10 penods (3 -4, J 636-37). 3.2.3 Natures of Love

..1 The Unspeakable SubIhe The last section attempted to descnbe the process of dividing at the level of language. It touched upon the double talk of the dividing self, the attempt at disclosure as the completion of the act of division, his disaffection and alienation. I now hope to augment the description of this process by tuming to the representation of nature. Nature wears three different guises in the text, each of which suggests a different spirituai and philosophical orientation. The sensibility and Platonism of Theages is suggested by the appearance of a pastoral harmony that is full with the presence of God; a tragic pre-Romantic dishannony is evoked by images of nature as either wild and uncontrollable or as empty and void of God; hally, eroticism with its indulgence of sensual urges is reflected in the landscapes of Araspes's erotic fantasies and voyeuristic adventures. Disharmony is the flip-side of harmony, while eroticism represents a third path. 1will tum first to harmony and its opposite, but these thoughts must first be prefaced by some observations on the undetailed and typified representation of nature in the text. Araspes's portrait of Panthea suffers f?om a lack of specificity in the representation of beauty. While Araspes minutely details the effects of a perfect beauty on his psyche, he scarcely remarks on the specifics of her appearance. He discovers "thousands upon thousands" of "unnarned channs" (J 6 18), but neglects to mention the color of her hair and whether she has dirnples. At certain hot points, standards of decency may impede the depiction of sexual detad, but the text, like most texts of its age, adheres to a poetic of typifïcation that accords little relevance to "circumstantial reality . Moreover, physical description is unnecessary in drama and dialogue, because it posits the physical presence of actors and a set. Yet while there are multiple reasons for the lack of detail, Araspes's insistence that Panthea's thousand charms are "unnameci" and his inability to assign specific names to them suggests that feminine beauty never cornpletely loses its mystique even in a process of demystification. Indeed, when the lover turned erotic voyeur spies the naked queen bathing under a waterfall and relates to Arasambes that "she is just as earthly as the rest of the women" he suddenly pulls to a reverent halt: Denke nicht, dai3 ich sie durch eine Beschreibung entweihen werde. Niemals, niemals würde ich dir nur den kleinsten Teil aller dieser namenlosen Rehngen begreiflich machen, die meine schauende Seele bezauberten. (5658) The reduction of the 'tje ne sais quoi," the feminine mystique, to physical attributes would be an act of desecration ("entweihen"). Thus, even as beauty is secularized ("irdisch") it maintains the secret of its namelessness ("namenlos"), its intangibilty, its irnrnateriality. The text describes a process of demystification and recognition, but it stops before the "outer shell" ("auBem Schale") that is the human form and the matenal essence of nature. Panthea never completely loses her status as an archetypd image.

136 See Oettinger Phuntasze und Erjiahnmg for a thorough examination of the effect of bath the Swiss poetic of possible worlds and the French poetic of (Diderot) on Wieland's Agu~hon(the reference here is to page 30). Neither eighteenth-century poetic valued the circumstantial, i-e., that which is time and place specific, unique and irreproducible- In Ararpes, the main characters are typified and their story is part of an unending human drarna that stands outside the specificity of history and locale. Accordingly, the text fds to present the physical world in its unique and tactile materialness, and the "realistic" details of "circumstantial reality" are almost wholly absent. Sensual impressions are the accidental stimuli of a hidden, psychological process. The physical world is the visible axis of an invisible (Platonic) continuum that extends into the nether regions of the spirit. The low end is as invisible as the pure spirits of the hi& end, for it lies in the subconscious reaches of human desire. Yet within these nether regions where one encounters the secret and invisible motives of the hidden 'anùnal" psyche, the Platonic continuum and the Great Chain of Being lose their vertical architecture and devolve into a series of labyrinthine paths that no longer heed the organizing dictates of the repressing good self. It is this new psychological reality that Araspes divulges, not the surface reality of the merely perceptible. On the psychological level, nature's outer face is concentrated in the figure of Panthea; she opens a narrow channel of physical reality through which psychic energy passes fiom the spiritual to the animal regions. Outside of Panthea, nature is unresponsive to the inner tunnoil of this precursor of Stunn und rang.'^^ "Motherly nature," Araspes argues, has endowed mankind with a "delicate feeling" (J 603) that enables one to see an inner truth that exceeds the "the outer form alone" (J620); but it is "woman," "the most beautifid visible creature," that animates and intensifies this feeling that distinguishes man fiom animal.138 Panthea is the locus where the outer fom rnelds and vanishes into the divine.139 Panthea alone realizes the potential of physical nature to manifest the sublime.

13' Nature does not conform to Araspes's fantasy; it is not an extension of the self. Recall again the following lines: "Diese Baume sinci so stumm, so unempfindlich;" and "Venvünscht seien diese Baume hierl weil sie nicht aufhüpfen, und jeder eine Dryade hervor ldt, durch gaukelnde Tanze und Freundengesuge diesen Hain zu beleben!" (J 656). 138 .J 603 - Note, for example, the following passage: "Die Blumen und balsamblühenden Stauden schütteten ihr süBere Gerüche ni, der Mond schaute mit hellerm Antlitz auf sie herab, die ganze Natur schien auf die Empfindung stolz ai sein, die sie ihrer hirnmlischen Seele einfloBte." (56 19) 13' "Bei ihr verliert sich das Iiebreizende Weib in die holde Majestat des Engels." (J 618) The thought of losing Panthea "extinguishes al1 creation" for Araspes, leaving only the prospect of flight into an inhumane wildemess 'khere nature never smiles, where all is dead around me, abandoned and alone" ("wo die Natur nie lachelte, wo des tot urn mich her ist, verlassen und einsam" J 629). The flip-side of plenitude is emptiness, at which point Araspes imagines an abandoned death- scape in which his sole counterpart is the pale ghost of an dominate consumed by love. This image prefigures tiis self definition as a "soulless shadow" after the failed attempt at rape and the irrevocable loss of Panthea. Nature cannot always be reduced to an extension of Araspes's psychological state - one recalis his dissatisfaction with unresponsive cliffs and trees -, certain images of nature are pregnant with the ambiguities of Araspes's evolving relationships with Panthea and Cynis, the sexual other and the patriarchal other. Thus, when Panthea holds sway in the discourse, nature is evoked as an image of universal harmony. On an evening stroll, Panthea relates to Araspes and Mandane a feeling of communion with God and nature: '"diese zauberische Ruhe, dieses Einschlummem aller Sorgen, dieses angenehme Staunen."' At nightfall in His shadow, a subordinate nature harmonizes with the Heavenly Father: Wie süB mht die Natur unter ihren urnschattenden Flügeln, indem der ganze Himmel seine strahienden Heere vor dem Auge ihres Beherrschers auEhrt ! (56 19) The sense of the divine in nature is paradoxically a sense beyond sensation, beyond the sensual world ("vom Getümmel der Sinne ungestort"). Its promise of inner peace may not be a direct repression of desire, but it heady sedates any untoward urges that might disturb this perfect balance. Nature, it is hoped, assuages and mollifies. At one point, Panthea surnmons the night to "pour its gentlest balmmon the stomy lover, so that he wiU awaken cured (J 648). But for Araspes, it is the "lovely mouth" and the "melodious voice" of Panthea as nature's summoner that promises the dreams of wish fulnllment (5 6 19). He slumbers only to awaken the next moming after his dreams have transfomed the pastoral into an unmistakably erotic landscape. The demystincation of universal harmony results in powerful images of a destabilized continuum and a dishmonious cosmos. To defile Panthea is to send tumbling the nature she evokes, including its patriarch and "his radiant my." Without God as patriarch and the ordering principle, nature acquires the energies of chaos. Chaos inspires terror, which saw as the most powerful hurnan ernoti~n.~~~It also opens an unexplored dimension of subjectivity: the subjectivity of estrangement and unresolvable loss of self. Estrangement, combined with an urgent (sexud) need for the other, intensifies subjectivity and reveals its dangerous potential. As Araspes's subjective sensibilities separate fiom the stable detemllnants of order, a new consciousness emerges fiom disorientation, volatility and changeableness, and the protagonist expresses the sublimity of universal doubt: Was ist aus dir geworden, meine Seele? Ein Spiel fieberischer Traume; ein Ball, von streitenden Leidenschaften hin und her geschlagen; ein Nachen, den der brausende Orkan und die schaumende Wut der Wogen bald an die Wolken schieudert, bald in schwindlige Tiefen hinab stürzt ! (J 636) Twisting in the vortex of the holy flame, Araspes is self-mythologized as a second Phaethon whose "Unsinn" - unreason and sensuality tuming on its head - is an unstoppable, elemental force, a demonism whose essence is to destroy the artificial limitations that figures such as Theages have attempted to impose:

'" For Burke terror is ''the ruling principle of the sublime" (58), which is "the strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling" (39). Burke's Philosophical Enquiry Nlto the Origirr of mir kof the Sublime and Beuzi~zfirlalso emphasizes the "violent effects produced by love," which can become a madness of the imagination, engrossing and shutîing out any other idea and breaking down "every partition of the mind which wouid confine it" (40-4 1). 152

Amer Phaeton! Die wilden flammen-hauchelnden Rosse schleppen dich unaufhakbar

fort durch Wddnisse von regellosen Traumen, von Begierde ni Begierde, von Unsinn N Unsim! (5636) Since Araspes's descent occurs within a rational fiamework and is accompanied each step of the way by the beseeching of his wholly rational counterparts, one is obliged to agree with Erhart that the text does not aBmi the powers of irrationality, and that it is not in this sense an early example of Sturm und Drang (Ent&veiung48). It nonetheless represents these powers; and it does so with an irnmediacy that is unparalleled in Wieland's oeuvre. Moreover, unlike Lessing's Philotas, which, Erhart argues, presents a similar thematization of kationality in a similar discursive model, Wieland's drama gives voice to a main character who is conscious of the dimensions of the irrational force he faces. His powerlessness, his surrender to overwhelming forces, and, above d,his consciousness of universal disorientation and doubt are rendered with the pathos of a collapsing primum mobile: Ach! welch ein gewdtiger Kampf von Leidenschaft und Pflicht, Vernudl und Liebe. hat seitdem rneine Bmst zerrüttet! Was ist das Getümmel fallender Welten und das Brüllen des Chaos gegen den einheimischen Krieg einer Seele, die mit ihrer ganzen

fùrchtbaren Macht auf sich seIbst losstürmt! Eine bremende Seele - O Arasambes, wuen ihre Krafte nicht durch den Leib eingeschrênkt, sie würde, wütender ais eh zügelloser Komet, alle Elemente in ihren Streit verwickeln, und diesen gottlichen Bau harmonischer Sphiiren rings um sich her zu Staub zertrürnrnem! (J639) Destruction is liberation. Sexuality is the explosion of the strictures of a repressive moral order. The sexual self is characterized by the uncontrolled violence with which it cornes into being. Whether Wieland intended to glorifi the explosion of order is not our concem. What is cmcial is the potential to which these passages give expression. It is the potential for a release of unirnagined Ievels of energy, expressed in images of unstoppable movement. 14' Looking past its rational fiamework, the text documents the possibility of a self outside of self- definitions and beyond all accountability and control, a selfthat is impelled by "Unsinn" and "Begierde," a self that flies like a wild "cornet," creating its own (dis-)course that, despite the reassuring predictions of Cyrus, invalidates the charted cosmos: Ach rnein Freund, du hast vergessen, daB ich nicht mehr Araspes bin. Was vermag der Steuermann, wenn der unbadige Sturm mit tausend Donnem daher rauscht, und das mastlose Schiff durch stürzende Wassergebirge wala? Ich finde keine Bilder stark genug, dir die Gestalt meines inwendigen Zustandes begreiflich ni machen! (J 640) Araspes confronts an inexpressibiliîy that differs fundarnentally from the reverent silence he later observes before Panthea's perfect image of sexual fulfillment. Here he needs images, but he has none; the "images" that mark this uncharted temtory have yet to be created. The "form of his inner condition" cannot be comprehended, for it neither adheres to established models nor follows an established discourse. Araspes is too far ahead of its &es; there are no Wertherian signposts by which to navigate his cornet-like (dis-)course. His chaotic trajectory finds only the unresponsiveness of a nature that literature has yet to inhabit.

By eroticism in Araspes, 1 mean the fantasy of a pleasure-taking indulgence in the sensual that promises the imminent satiation of transitory physicd wants. An erotic text can Iimit the destructive potential of repressed desire by idenbfjmg

"" Thus Iife after the withdrawal of Panthea, the source for al1 movement, is imagined as calcification and irnmobility. Between the twin cypresses of an overhanging clic Araspes would lie in rnoumfûl contemplation of his lost love "wie ein Toter von starren Marmorbildem, die um sein Grabmahi versteinerte Triinen weined' (J 629). desire with ephemeral and appeasable physicd urges. With Wieland's erotic texts, the erotic strategy of &amhg and limiting desire by openhg a space for the representation of sensuality will be appiied in a sustained manner. However, Araspes already hints at this possibility, although the protagonist is unable to convert the landscape and the civilization he inhabits into a passive and yielding erotic world, and ultimately drastic words and actions rule the day. There are two erotic passages. The fkst is the relation of an erotic drearn in an exchange with Arasambes in which Araspes attempts to convey the unspeakable intensity of his emotions. Many of the strongest expressions of Araspes's cometlike (dis-)course are also found in this exchange. The erotic dream which transports its dreamer into "Elysian Fields," where "all objects" respire "love and joy," where "Amor" nses "on a cloud of sighs," and where the divinely untouchable Panthea is transformed into an inviting and willing "forest nymph" is an alluring illusion of Mfillment that makes mockery of the glorified rnisery which the lover inhabits. But the dishonest drearn suddenly takes on a radically different permutation and the fantasy of erotic fiilfillment reveals itself as a c~eljoke. In the narration of this brutal transition, the textual landscapes Araspes evokes shifi shapes with a plasticity that defies the possibility of stasis. The erotic moment is a flittering phantasm that offers no respite from the catastrophic drive of a collapsing world: Indern ich mit stummer Entzückung sie betrachte, envacht sie, und streckt mit süBem einladendem Lacheln ihre willigen Arme nach mir aus. - Plotzlich verwandelt sich der treulose Traum. Eine unsichtbare Gestalt reiBt sie von mir weg; keichend eil ich ihr nach; fiirchterliche Wildnisse, schroffe Felsen und jahe Abgründe eroflhen sich vor mir; eine siebenfache Nacht umzieht den Hirnmel, mit feurigen Wolken durchkreuzt; sie flieht umsonst und nngt ninick schauend ihre um Hülfe bittenden Arme gegen mich; ehRegen von Flammen stürzt auf sie herab, und verzehrt sie vor meinen verzweifeinden Augen a, Asche! (5640) The unseen fom that intervenes in the erotic idyll tears away the willing nymph and rips apart the landscape, reproducing the cWs and the abysses of a tex dong the universe. The episodic sensuaMy of eroticism is powerless to retain the text. Beauty is a flame, and the woman (not her admirer) is reduced to ashes. Eroticism is a hoax, an illusion within this text. It cannot prevent repressed male sexuality fiom its outbreak into the irrevocable act of violence that this drearn prefigures. In the second passage, Araspes recounts to Arasambes the voyeuristic pleasure he derived from spying on a bathing Panthea. Compared to the flittering erotic dream, this represents an accretion of reality. The narration of this actual event evokes a strongly negative response f?om an actual other (Arasambes) and thus it represents the failed integration of real life erotic expenence into the social world of interpersonal communication (Imaginary and Symbolic Orders). This is Araspes's last meeting with his confidant or any one else before the violent attempt on Panthea. It is as a titillated and unsatiated voyeur that Araspes proceeds to the rape attempt. The reality of a stolen view of Panthea's "ail too human" sex parts rnakes the fantasy of sexud union a11 the more realistic. The illusory promise of semal union is that of a return to universal order in the fom of an erotic world that responds above all to the episodic impulses of body and heart. By guaranteeing the resolution of resolvable needs, eroticism offers structure, aim and orientation. Once the second self is defined by eroticism, it defines the world in these terms. It fïnds images for desire, familiar images fkom an established genre. Most irnportantly, it fills the abyss of the unknown with the diminutive deities of cupidity. With Wieland's erotic texts, its discourse, previously vilified in Wieland's attacks on the Anacreontics, will 156 ultimately prove safer and more familiar than the cornet like (dis-)course initiated in the more radical discontinuities of Araspes's speech. The erotic combines with the actual when, waking fkom "pleasant" dreams in which the erotic fantasy was undisturbed by competing discourses, Araspes is led, as he recounts to Arasambes, by the 'God of love" to a favorably placed thicket. Now "invisible," the voyeuristic lover Mews the object of his obsession strip and bathe. ''Mit sich selbst geschrnückt," Panthea, however, is doubly diminished. First, she is stripped of her other-worldly divinity. The initial sentiment of solemn awe before this "heavenly goddess" is soon felt as "hochfahrend und vergiinglich." Araspes has leamed through "experience" that "man is not made for ethereal love" (J 658-59). He recognizes Panthea's earthiness (J 658), a discovery that signals a changing of the Gods. The minor deities of eroticism, its spirits, fauns and nymphs diminish the religious foundation of Araspes's feeling. In a prefiguration of the rape attempt, the lover imagines Panthea fieely granting hirn pleasures "was nur tninkne Faunen, die an einem Bacchusfest unter fiechen Manaden auf den thrazischen Bergen rasen, mit Gewalt ni nehmen fàhig sind" (J 659). In a more restrained and, properly speaking, erotic formulation, Panthea is a "bathing Diana, disarmed of all rigor, and dl this presumed solemnïty" (J 660). He imagines her "'halfdo~ing~~cast into the grass. Nature conspires with fantasy. The midday wuids are "lascivious," toying with her "lightly billowing robe." These are no longer the impenetrable layers of Theages's Graces; rather, there is entrance through Panthea's mouth as she inhales "the spint of the spring," so that a "sweet poison flows through her veins" and dreams of ecstasy swim about her eyes (J 660). The sublime is atomized into a "swm of zephyrs" who transport the lover's dream. Araspes senses his own weightlessness and cm barely resist becorning a zephyr himself (J 656). The subversiveness of sexual indulgence is couched in images of passivity. "Half dozing," Panthea is imagined halfhay between the actual and the irrationd world. In this sense, eroticism represents an episodic compromise between reason and the wholly irrational, a compromise that in this text remailis unrealizable. Thus, the act of rape remains the sole accretion of reality. It is the tuming point where fantasy forces itself upon reality and meets resistance. Afterwards, Araspes confesses in great detail the stages of the struggle. He documents attack, resistance and flight with the faithfiilness of a battle scene report. Yet the rapist's "sevenfiold strength" and the woman's "strength of an angel" point to opposing forces above and below surface reality that exceed the boundaries of the passive sexuality of eroticism (J 67 1-72). In the physical confkontation of Araspes and Panthea, the subhurnan and the superhuman are for a brief moment physically manifest on the surface of their encounter. While the il1 sod fails to impose his fantasies on a living ideal, Panthea, strengthened by divine powers, regains the pedestal of Whie. Tested, Panthea proves that ferninine Mmie is not a rnere projection. It is sublime vimie, physically manifest in action. The feminine mystique, ultirnately unassailable, is palpable in the physical event.

3.2.4.I Limitations of Cyrus As Phaethon or as a "soulless shadow," Araspes seems fated to end his life pitifully, either destroyed by fiery, untamable passions, or reduced to a shadowy, subhuman existence. Yet the final scene with Cyrus averts the tragic. In fact, the tragic stage reveals itself as a sort of experimental laboratory, in which Cyrus, having submitted his underhg to a "Robe," an "allm teure[n] Versuch," admits to being the "Urheber derder Übel" (J 678-79). The king, the source of dl the woes, is also the experimenter who watches the progression of a psychological case as an objective observer. His hdings here confum a previously established de:the dangers of passion can only be effectively avoided by an act which military men would elsewhere consider cowardly, that of flight: "Und wie, wenn ich diese Tugend, die du so u~tiggeflirchtet hast, bloB der Flucht zu danken hatte?" (J 678). Cyrus may be referring to the hypothetical danger posed by the current Panthea or to sirnilar Pantheas he faced in his past. The point is, knowledge is gained through experience. In order to have leamed to recognize and avoid the dangers of passion, one must have experienced one's own sexuality, either first hand, as in the case of Araspes, or, perhaps, second hand, in which case, Araspes may have served as a substitute for the necessarily dispassionate king. There is a contradiction here, for Cyms emphasizes equally the necessity of experîence and the need for avoidmg the object of love. By separating the operations of experience and avoidance into two distinct phases, he in part overcomes the contradiction: "Erst alsdann würdest du strafbar sein, wenn du, nachdem du erfahren hast was die Liebe vermag, dich zum zweiten Mal in den Fa11 setztest überwunden zu werden." (J 678) This rule implies that the first transgression may be a rite of passage. In this sense, the text suggests a cyclicd and ritualistic process. Contrary to Araspes 's fears, "father" Cyms understands rather than punishes; he recognizes the "legitimacy of individual self-experience7' (Jaumann, "Anhang," J 884). Yet, while comprehendïng, Cyms does not ernpathetically dwell on the unresolvable problems of a mental state Araspes had earlier recognized as "romantischen ~nsinn."'" The king's maturity, his rnastery over

'" Considered the first major German writer to popularize this adjective, Wieland, according to Raymond Immerwah, basicdy used romantic (romantisch, romanhaft) %th conscious reference to Iiterary romance and with the wider connotation of a rich stimulus to his physical and psychological domain and his superiority to a second selfwhich he has personally expenenced place him on the opposite end of this experience. Cyrus therefore represents the hope that the diEcult period currently experienced by Araspes is a necessary passage or initiation, and that beyond the disappointments of naiveté and youth the prospect of maturity and manhood awaits. As Erhart notes, Cyms, unlike Panthea and Arasambes, no longer appeals to Araspes's "moral sense" or moral obligations, but demands instead the application of a technique of self-control that marks a depamire fiom the discourse of sensibility: "Nicht 'Mitleiden', sondern der Hinweis auf das notwendige MiBtrauen gegen die unberechenbaren AfKekte ist die Reaktion des Cyms auf die Krankheit seines Günstlings" (EnLweiung56). The remedy Cyrus prescribes is a militay mission, but one that differs in nature f?om the battle exploits Araspes previously shared with the male collective. Having leamed the secret languages of the human heart, this two-souled "individual" is now an ideal double agent. In the guise of an outcast who takes flight fiom the punishing hand of Cyms, the good sou1 is called on to recomoitre. He must disappear behind enemy lines (to the forces of decadence), and assume their rnask and play a part arnong them, discovering their secrets. To play the part of the villain convincingly, the double agent "muB einen Namen führen," according to Cyrus (J 680). Araspes's tarnished reptation parantees this name. Cyms foresees the restoration of Araspes to honor afler he completes this mission. And it is not inconceivable that after many years of faithful seMce the "wise" Araspes will also corne to represent the enlightened, patriarchal order. It the imagination" (55. see also in sarne edition: Ham Eichner, "Germany: Romantisch Romantik Rornantiker."). While Immerwahr does not discuss this early example of the term, Araspes's cs, - "Wie verschrnahe ich jeta den romantischen Unsinn, den meine aufwallende Hitze ausschaumte!" (J 630) - is undoubtedly a critique of overheated, hence "romantic" imaginations. must be noted that this prospect of Araspes entering a en succession of fathers" is purely speculative. However, while Cyms does not detail such far-reaching plans, he guides Araspes through this first period of sexual awareness, independence and rebellion as a gentle father would guide his son, suggesting the cyclical nature of this experience. If Araspes represents part of the Me cycle, so too does Cynis. Yet this structurally implicit happy end fails to answer the problem of desire. The sex drive does not end with youth, for the mature king still feels hpelled to flee the objects of physical desire. Problem avoidance is hardly problem resolution. Politically, Cyrus can incorporate Panthea into his strategies; she is the capital by which he acquires the aliiance of her husband-king. However, at no point is it hinted that he possesses his own sexually fulfilling spoil of peace - these can only be enjoyed be the enemy, the counter force to Cyms's project of civilization. Withùi the context of this text, Cyms remains the bachelor-king, the father figure who lacks a de. His progeny are purely political. Therefore, he cannot serve as a mode1 for the integration of sexuality into the good soul.

3.14.2 Limitations of Panthea The text does not return to Panthea after the attempted rape. The central issues of her story are not raised in its remainder. One can only speculate on the "collateral damage" Araspes7sself-discovery has inflicted on her discourse of sensibility; on whether this discourse cm survive Mandane's "secret art of deciphering" based on the principle of "mistrust" (J 633); and on whether Panthea is now psychologically "divided" between opposing discourses, if not souk In his post-assault confession to Mandane, Araspes resets Panthea on the pedestal of a goddess of virtue. For Mandane, however, this account proves nothing but male vanity. Since an impetuous youth can scarcely be considered a "test7' for the Whie of the wife of a great king (J 671), the final image of her Wtue is but one of many of Araspes's projections. The wife of the great Abradates remains untested, undiscovered. Despite her double-billing in the title, Wieland failed to begin her drama. This lack of interest in Panthea, her unwritten, ahistoncal and in this sense typically female character, does not mean that the psychological domain of "forbidden" desire is an exclusively male province. As a manied woman who can look forward to the joys of reunion with her husband, Panthea obviously has little reason to problematize her own position by sha~gin the bachelor's importunate needs. Nonetheless, in the dramatic structure of the text a split occurs in the voice of female youth that is analogous to the psychic split in Araspes. The split is between high and low genre discourse. It happens with the late inseriion of a cornedic element, the gossipy chatter of Panthea's slaves. At crucial junctures in the fourth act, two "cornedic" scenes are inserted which present slave women gossiping and singing arnongst themselves. The first scene occurs while Araspes spies on the bathing Panthea, and the second, during the rape atternpt. In the chronological sequence of events, the scenes replace Araspes's visual and physical assaults. They do so with a change in discursive registers. With their "girl talk," the slaves fieely express in a jokmg banter that which in the high register is the source of much secrecy, disclosure and pathos. In her own register, the slave Sheristany demands with a commoner's straightforwardness the right to fernale passion: Aber im Ernste, dünkt dich nicht auch, die Mmer seien unbillig, uns wie ihr Eigentum zu behandeln? Gleich als ob wir nur da wkren, Ïhe Leidenschaflen und nicht die z~mrigenni vergnügen! Sollten wir nicht eben so wohl ein Recht haben, fur unsre kieinen Bedürfnisse ni sorgen, ais sie fir die ihngen? (J 655) The slave's demand for equal rights and equal enjoyment and her protest against the treatment of women as possessions contrast with the queen's faithfulness and devotion to a husband-master. Furthemore, Sheristany argues that the present state of captivity invalidates Panthea's earlier ties to Abradates. She insinuates that this shining example of Wtue shares in the same lowly passions as cornmoners, and thereby diminishes the stature of her mistress. She "liberates" her fellow prisoner fiom the mle of her husband's title, whereas it is precisely the worth of this title that distinguishes the queen fkom her slaves (J 655). Sheristany demonstrates how the "kleinen Bedürfnisse" are levellers, since they imply a world where everyone, irrespective of gender, class and moral stature, is equally driven by the same needs. This concept increases female-slave mobility, socially and sexually, ergo the longing of slave Zelis for the right to mobile, transient joys: Die Untreue meines Liebhabers hat mich keine halbe Stunde schwermütig machen komen. Wamm sol1 ich mkh krànken, wenn ein Sommervogel von mir weg zu einer andem Blume flattert? Das ùbel ist nur, daB wir nicht auch umher flattem dürfen. Ach! den Blumen nur alhahnlich, müssen wir im Boden eingewurzelt stehen, und warten. bis es einem dieser gaukelnden Schrnetterlinge gefallt - (J 666) Expressed in an image of an unselective pollination that is amoral, undramatic, and "natural" in its unselectiveness, this erotic notion of "circulation" is juxtaposed to the entire pathetic course of the drama. Yet since Panthea never becomes a servant to liberated passions, hence, an equal to her slaves, the authority structure of her world is never overtumed. The slaves continue to serve Panthea, just as the body serves the spirit; the hierarchic sexual structure remains immobile. Indeed, when in their second scene the slaves turn fkom unstnictured gossip to the structure of a three-part Song, they decide to sing the favorite Song of King Abradates, fahgunconsciously into roles that pleased the husband- patriarch. Mer an entreaty that women plug their ears fiom Arnor's enticing tones, the Song ends with a celebration of hymen as the unity of wisdom, virtue and syrnpathy (J 660). Thus the slaves' counter-discourse ends by musically harmoniz;ing with Panthea's noble ideal of mamage and with the favorite text of husband, rnaster and patriarch. Yet for the slaves, the Song is a text, perhaps one of many. They sing what Panthea lives.

In conclusion, despite the final note of victory for the good soul, the main issues of this text are nowhere successfully resolved. A belief in life as an dl- encompassing, harmonic continuum is destroyed, but the military mission that follows in its aftermath does little to restore the greater cosmological sense of order. A second soul, that of the body, of the repressed instinctud drives, is discovered, but only to be repressed more effectively. There is no reintegration of the body with the established order. Cynis does nothing to directly counter the radical and subverting force of desire, rather, his far offmilitary missions disguise a strategy of avoidance. The king does succeed in averting the full bnint of tragedy; but he also minimizes the "cleansing effect" of Araspes's "bourgeois" drama. There is no cathartic celebration of the human condition as tragic. According to the poetic strategy that will soon be proposed by the fictional editor of Wieland's Don Syivio (1764), texts cm cure certain adolescent fevers by imitating hem, "eben so wie der gifbge BiB der Taranteln durch nichts anders als durch die sympathetische Kraft gewisser Tiinze, die dem Kranken vorgespielt werden, geheilt werden kann." "''In Araspes, one would like to imagine that the

143 1 :74. Quoted by Ivar Sagmo, "Über die asthetische Erziehung des Eros" 185. For Sagrno, eros is the source of Don Sylvio's affliction and cure: "Der Eros ist hier Krankheitserreger und Therapeutikum mgleich; die Libido ist die Quelle von Don Sylvios 'Schwiimerey', und sein seelisches Gleichgewicht 1st sich nicht eher herstellen, bis dieser Trieb befnedigt kt" (1 89). The text presents a therapy of sexual eniightenment. Also see: Jutta Heinz, "Von der Schwiirmerkur zur Gesprachstherapie." text also serves this imitative fiuiction, familiarizhg the reader's psychological immune system with the mental state represented by Araspes through a fictive and therefore vaccinating second-hand experience of his malady. The elements are here for such a reading, but they have yet to be fully integrated into a consistent strategy. The text lacks a distanced (doctor) narrator to control the course of disease and to adrmnister the vaccinating irony.'*l Furthemore, the uony of Wieland's preface does not correspond with the dominant tone of the text, which is serious apart fiom two late comedic insertions (Panthea's slaves). Rather, its abnegation of moral utility would seem to undermine the message of Araspes's concluding speech, making the drama, in opposition to Shaftesbury's imperative for the self-reflective practice of soliloquy, a morally non-binding work of art. The text does not offer a seamless strategy that both produces doubt and protects against its unwanted consequences; and no single solution or discourse succeeds in imposing itself with authority. The universal rupture in the moral history of Araspes opens itself in multiple directions; and the need to bser the representation of tragedy leads to the application of contradictory discourses in diffe~gdegrees of remove from Araspes's tragic act. In immediate vicinity to the act, countering it gesture for gesture, even non- verbally, is Panthea's demonstration of virtue in the manner she fends off her attacker. This is a physicd dernonstration, augmented at one remove by manifold exhortations to Wtue and duty in the course of the drama, dl of which are powerless to halt Araspes's slide towards otherness, chaos, subversion. Thus, the inexorable progress of tragedy is accompanied step by step by a moralism whose

lu "Erst in der Gestalt eines Endders, der das Geschehen kommentierend und 'psychologisierend' begleitet, findet Wieland in den Romanen der sechziger Jahre eine Losung dieses in Araspes und Pantheu gestellten Erzahlproblems." (Erhart En~weiztng49) profusion is the kst sign of its fbtility. At a Merremove, the complete tragic process is fiamed by the dialogues with Cyrus (thesis play). Panthea's sexually naive gestures of universal fkiendship and Cyms's sexually wary imprisonment of the femaie body are obviously incompatible; and Cyms's intervention occws at a higher level of abstraction to the Mmediate cirama, before and after the event. The irony of the preface is a last b&er against the representation of tragedy; it occurs at a final remove from the representation of tragedy with little comection to the representation of the event. While it throws in doubt the moral purpose of the uplifiing verbiage in the text, it nonetheless contributes to the cumulative effect of the multiple buffers that encompass the representation of tragedy. These three main strategies point in three Merent directions for future efforts to solve the problem of desire. The kt, suggested by Panthea's sexually naive and universal fiiendship, is the strategy of private sensibility. It will continue where the Sympathies and Theuges left off by attempting, in C.'lementina, to depict a bond of love between man and woman in which the vestiges of sexual passion have been sublimated or repressed. ïhe second strategy, suggested by Cynis's separation of men and women and the mission which effectively channels Araspes's sema1 trauma into military valor, is the strategy of male enlightened absolutism. In Cyrus, the strict segregation of genders will be rewarded by an imperialistic extension of civiiization on the lascivious body of humanity. The bonds here fomed will be male and therefore, it is hoped, less vulnerable to the double language of fiïendship and seduction. The thxd strategy neither seeks to universalize love nor aspires to civilize humanity. Rather, the irony of the preface, the comedic insertion of the slaves' discourse and the fleeting suggestion of episodic eroticism all point to the friture development of an immunization program in the Comische Erzahlungen and Don 166

Sylvio. Wieland's erotic texts wiiI attempt to bracket the sexual moment in a fiame that offers knowledge in the form of second hand experience and control in the form of narrative techniques of irony and intervention, and finally that produces pleasure as a derivative. At the same time, however, it wiU promote neither the Christian God of universai love and repression nor the beneficent genius of an exclusively male histoncal project. Its deities will be minor, they will parody the divine. 1. Restoraüons of Order, Public and Private

- Eine unsichtbare Hand schien mich wider meinen Willen foruuziehen, und unvermuthet befinde ich mich in einem Labyrinth ohne Ausgang, ohne daB ich mir einen vorsezlichen Fehitria vorzuwerfen habe - (Grandison in Clementina, AA V3 :237) It is tempting to make short shrift of the morally e-g texts that stand between Araspes and the paradigrn shifi of the Comische Erzahlungen. Indeed, the preface to Araspes would seem to encourage such neglect. In it, Wieland rejects (with some degree of irony) the notion of human betterment through edi-g literature and thereby effectively dUninishes the importance of the morally ediwg texts that he wrote at about the same tùne. He refers specificdy to the epic Cyrus, dismissing its project of representing an ideal hero as a "Verwegenheit." As a hero who would not only be "more worthy" of syrnpathy than Araspes, but also "greater and better" than the greatest heroes of literature, Cyrus is presented as the product of a "kind of enthusiasm" from which, with a healthy dose of irony, the speaker of the Araspes preface recovers two years later (J 833). CIementina von Porretta and Lady Johanna Gray, the other two texts we will examine in this chapter, are also linked to Cyrus by means of prefaces. The 1759 preface to Cym refers specifically to Clementina and other Richardsonian characters as "models" for what Shaftesbury calls "the moral Venuses and the moral Graces."lJ5 It also refers to Euripides, whose "simplicity7' is also cited as a

'" Wieland referred throughout this period to the texts of . He is reported to have read Clarissa while working on Araques and alludes in neages to Lovelace. Clanssa's dangerous pursuer; and may have found in Richardson's virtuous characters models of ''moral Venus." The reception of Richardson does not end in the Swiss years, rather, his poetics and his mode1 characters become negative foils (mon obviously in the introduction to Agathon) and objects of satire (for example, the "Jacinte episode" in Don Sylvio; see: Guy mode1 for Lady Johanna Gray, accorduig to its 1758 foreword (AA Y3: 147). Thus the "classical" epic is situated in the same constellation of modeis as the "tragic" dramas. The dissociation in the Araspes preface £iom the poetics of moral edification is also a dissociation hmthese texts. Wieland research is largely ïndifferent to these texts, despite the fact that they are situated in period of "great transformation." Jmgensen, for example, States that Johanna and Clernentina show little of Wieland's intellectual transition and revert to "outdated" literary models. 146 Without being fdse, such statements hardly encourage the study of these neglected texts. Yet 1 believe that their examination will add nuance and contour to the problematization of the relation between body and spirit in Wieland's writing and help comect ideationdy the "buffered tragedy" of Aruspes with the eroticism of later texts. While they retum to the principle of moral edification, the texts are not mere repetitions of earlier positions and poetic strategies. Rather, each represents a new attempt to Save the principle of edification that involves a new approach and brings new problems to

C'TUS, Lady Johanna Gray and Ciementïna von Porretta display thematic continuity in their search for virtue, but each situates the exemplification of virtue in a different sphere of activity and present it in a different literary form. Considered in sequence, the texts cmeven be read thernatically as a progressive

Sterne, "Saint or Hypocrite?"). The fact that the representation of moral perfection in a character runs counter to another of Shaftesbury's artistic dictates is discussed in the section on Ckmeminu von Porretla (see: lergensen in Jsrgensen et al., Epoche 47; Ench Schmidt, Richardson, Rozrssem und Goethe 46-48). 1% "In den Dramen der Schweizer Zeit ist von dieser Wandlung wenig ni spüren, vielmehr sind sie immer noch stark von der engiischen, mordisch-empfindsamen Stromung gepragt, ja er emeuert sogar mit einer Tragodie Lat@ Johanna Gray ( 1758) das im 18. Jahrhundert eigentlich überholte Protestantische Mzütyrerdrama und zeichnet auch in der zwei Jahre spater erschienenen Clementina vott Porretra konfessionelle Konflikte." (Jsrgensen in Jsrgensen et al., Epoche 46) retreat of wnie - fiom Cyrus's ambitious military enterprise to the privacy of Clementina's convent. The epic fiagrnent Cyrus represents virtuous activity in a heroic and exclusively male domain. It depicts the enlightened king who is guided by his beneficent genius into a war effort that would extend the domain of the civilized world. The link between this heroic epic and Araspes's non-heroic drama is obvious. In the closing hes of the play, Araspes attributes the ascendancy of his good sou1 to the innuence of Cyrus's presence and the power of his stronger genius (J 681). Araspes's moral orientation is no longer derived from the pantheistic God of Nature, rather it is now dependent on the directives of the highest hurnan in command. Given Araspes's failure to establish vhewithin an autonomous individual, the writing of Cyms responds to a need for male authority. Thus, the representation of an ideal king suggests, in the wake of the destniction of a concept of universal order, a hurnan replacement for the divine. Yet despite the dailkg exemplariness of Cyrus's figure, the narration of these heroic sentiments and actions ends as a fragment. Indeed, the text makes evident that the problem of desire cannot be barred from the exclusively male domain. In close proximity to the production of a male epic, Wieland undertakes two dramatic projects in which ideals of vimie are demonstrated by fernale protag~nists.~"Just as the epic representation of Cyrus responds to the problems raised by the figure of Araspes, Lady Johanna Gray and CTlementina von

147 For the reader's convenience, 1 will repeat a previous footnote: Cyns was started in the rniddle of 1757, when Wieland had stopped working on Ararpes, then worked on sporadically until the beginnuig of 1759, when it was lefi as a fiagrnent (published 1759). Lady Johmna Gray was begun in the summer of 1757, set aside until the arrival of the Ackermam theater troupe in 175 8, then promptly completed. Chentzna von Porretla was begun in the second half of 1759 and completed derArques, but before the composition of the Araspes-preface. Porretta may be read as attempts to complete the ferninine ided implied by the "unwritten history" of Panthea. The search for a female mode1 for vimie fist tums to Johanna, who as Queen of England occupies a position comparable to that of Cynis. Unlike her male counterpart, she neither wants the crown, nor is she legally entitled to it; and rather than redraw history through conquest, her fate is to become a martyr to its unf'athomable and unstoppable progress. Her position as a "patnarch" is antithetical to the femuiine virtue that she embodies; and her martyrdom salvages meby retreating fiom the histoncal scene. Finally, Clementina von Porretta represents an dtimate narrowing of the sphere of activity for the vimious woman. This Italian Catholic is an apolitical character who never leaves her parental house and her private world. A stranger arrives with whom she falls in love, an English Protestant. Facing the possibility of mixed maniage as a betrayal of her religious confession (schism), the young woman's final act of Wnie is a retreat to a convent. There, her Whie will rernain intact by its cornplete removal fiom the social world (and also fiom the possibility of its future drarnatic depiction, since the recluse will no longer participate in dialogue). One observes in these "regressive" texts a renewed search for images of virtue coupled with a questioning of vhe. Yet the end result is something quite unexpected: the representation of virtue in retreat: fiom the patriarchal male to the apolitical female; fiom the public hero on the march against barbarianism to the private individual whose crowning glory is to shut herself off fiom the surroundhg world. Afier the retreat, the abandoned positions are largely unrepresented. Yet one must assume that they are occupied by unresolved questions and repressed desires. The pattern will become clearer as it is detailed in the next sections. 4- 1 Cyrus: Active, Public Virtue and the War on Lust With the first draft of Araspes at an impasse, Wieland tumed his attentions to the epic project Cyrus. Later, in the completed version of the drama, the servant also turns to king Cyrus when his life seems to be at an impasse. "Cyrus" is thus the savior king in a double sense. As an ideal king, the character fortifies the vanquished sou1 of his servant; as an epic poem, the text rescues Wieland from the daring innovations of Aruspes, such as its undefhed genre, the mixed character of its protagonist, and its lifelike representation of passion.1J8 In my analysis of this "rescue," I will first consider the overall epic project as it is Earned in the original preface (1759), then examine its viability in the text itself. The war effort, it wiil be seen, is directed at least in part against the fear of an uncontrolled Eros. The text attempts to integrate the discourse of sensibiliw into the narration of an entirely male battle. The males of Cynis's elite forces bond emotionally in a love of their king, and, whatever sexual substratum these bonds may have, they further the release of energy in the heat of battle. Like Araspes, the five completed books of Cyrus are also based on events detailed in Xenophon7sCyropaedia, specifically, on book 3, chapter 3, which recounts the preparation of Cyrus and his Persian led troops for battle and their victory against the Assyrians at Arbela. Xenophon's text is a mode1 for the tradition of the prince's mirror, with which Wieland's adaptation is also

'" Wieland had asked Künzli (and others) for an assessment of the first draft of Araspes. Sengle comments on their reaction and its consequences: "Künzli und WOM auch andere Freunde versagten vor der ihnen gestellten Aufgabe, die freilich auch eine ungewohnliche Vorurteilslosigkeit verlangt hatte. Sie kamen, vom Ideal der alten Vorbildsdichtung befangen, über die lebensgetreue Leidenschaflsdarstellung in Wielands hhnem Fragment nicht hinweg, und so fixïerte sich der Cyrus-Plan in dem Dichter, welcher - ein neuer Umweg für ihn war." ( 100) 172 aligned.lJ9 As a prince's mirror, the details of battle should be of secondary importance in Cyrus to the portrait of an ideal leader; however, the two aspects of the narrative cannot be easily separated. Indeed, Wieland's disappointment with the waning exploits of a contemporary hero may be one of the reasons he abandoned the epic project. In 1758, Wieland co&s in a letter to Zimmermann that his hero "resembles a certain king," implying a likeness to Friedrich II of hssia, then at battle in the Seven Years War. One year later, with the epic project permanently on hold, Wieland writes to Bodmer of his disgust with wming leaders in generd: wir detestieren [...] alle diese Nimrode, und Attilas, und Gengichane, und aile diese Wohltater des menschlichen Geschlechts, die uns durch Cartatschen und dreiBigpfiindige Kugeln ihre Gewogenheit bezeugen. Ich bin des Würgens so überdnïssig, daD mir so gar der Cyrus verhaBt zu werden anfagtljO Wieland's ideal king is inextricable fiorn the violence that kings regularly perpetuate and the destruction they regularly cause. The brief foreword to Cyrus in the 1762 Poeti.de Schrflen des Herren Wieland extends the dismissive attitude to epic itself. Parallel to the earlier registered surfeit of warring kings, the literature of the "heroic" Gexman nation suffers fkom an overabundance of heroic epics:

149 François Salignac de la Mothe Fénelon's Les Aventures de Télémaque,fils d'&ses (1699)is the classic example of a prince's rnirror. Jaurnann also refers to the following influential exarnples: Madame de Scudéry, Artamène oir le Grand C's, 1 649; Andrew Mic hael Ramsay, Les Voyages de Cyrus, Avec iuz Discozrrs nrr la Mythologie, 1 727; Abbé Jean Terrason, Sethos. histoire ou Vie tirée des mommens anecdotes de I 'ancienne Egypte, tradiritc d'un mm~cscripiegrec, 173 1; and Abbé Jacques Peméty's Le Repos de C''rus, 00u /'Histoire de sa Vie depuis sa seizième jusqu 'asa quaraniième amée, 1732 (J 8 19). For further information on the genre, see: Helmut J. Schneider, "Staatsroman und Fürstenspiegel." See J 82 1, "Anhang." Letter dates are Feb. 24, 1758 (WB W 1 :322-25) and Sept. 6, 1 759 respectively (PKB W 52 1-24). unter der Menge von Helden-Gedichten, womit unsre heroische Nation bereits gesegnet ist, spürt sie den Abgang des C'rs eben so wenig, ais man ehmals zu Sparta den VerIust eines dapfern Mannes merkte, der in einer Schlacht umkam. (J 826) From the distance of a post-epic author, "Cyrus" as the double-savior of "Araspes" fails both as a character and as a text. As a character, the ideal king is inseparable fiom the violence of kings. As a text, the classical poern is condemned dong with an overused and indifferent genre. Yet at the time of its writing and in the frame of its original 1759 preface, Cyms can be seen as a text of remand renewd. It retums to one of Wieland's preferred literary forms in the first half of the decade, epic poetry in hexameters, but it extends its application beyond the limitations of biblical narration (Bodmer's Noachzde, Wieland's Der Gepryfie Abraham, etc.), and it depicts its hero on a more human scale than the superhuman biblical patriarchs (Jaumann "Anhang," J 820). The hexameter in Cyms surpasses Wieland's previous attempts in language and meter, and even anticipates Goethe's Achdleis (Jmgensen in Jmgensen et al., Epoche, 35). These innovations, coupled with a new poetological stance announced by the preface, have won the epic some degree of scholarly praise. In particdar, Uaus Oettinger in Phontasie und Erfhnmg sees Cynis as a key text in the development of Wieland's narrative strategy. With Cyms, Wieland's epic muse loses her Christian halo. The poet now summons "tnith" and a "Xenophonian muse" (J 527;566), rather than the "heavenly muse" and "fiend of Seraphs" kvoked in Cidli (AA Y2:256). In the preface, Wieland declares independence fkom the Bodmerian poetic of the marvelous that favors the agency of Gods, angels and spirits, and aligns himself instead with the theories of Glover and Diderot. Following "Glover's exampie," the speaker claims to almost entirely dispense with "mat manner of the marvelous that results fkom the use of machines, Le., the introduction of Gods and Angels as characters" (J 825; Oettinger 49-50). This statement distances Wieland fkom the assumptions about the use of the marvelous that govemed his earlier epic production. 15' In De la poésie dramatique and Entretiens sur le Fils naturel, Diderot calls for a causal organization of events in accordance with the naturd order of things (Oettinger 6 1). It follows that drarna must represent cause and effect in the human world. Diderot's objective is not what later would be called realism, but a form of representation that makes evident the general order of things. By citing Diderot as an authority, Wieland signals a move from representation of the supernaturd to representation of the extraordinary within the realm of nature. Yet for Diderot, the scope of the extraordinary is resûicted to singularly revealing situations; characters must be depicted "'as they are"' (Oettinger, 65). The situation is extraordinary, not the character of the humans it effects. Wieland's hg,by contrast, is extraordinary as a character. He embodies an ideal, "the kalokagathie of antiquity, and Shaftesbury's virtuoso ideal, [.. .] the noble, beautiful soul" (Sengle 10 1). The preface stresses that the epic will dways respect the principle of plausibility ("Wahrscheinlichkeit"), but it also states that it will present Cyms "in the rnost beautifid and multifarious light as a £iiend of man, as a hero, as a lawgiver, as the best of men and kuigs" (J 823). Cyrus lies, contrary to indications in the preface, outside of the intentions of Diderot's poetics. He is the product of a combinatory process: an amalgam of the greatest

15' While this statement distances Wieland fiom Bodmer, it should be noted that the subject matter of Cyms is non-Christian, whereas Bodmer primarily supported the use of the marvelous in religious depiction. The real target, according to Reinhard Tschapke, may have been Klopstock' s Messzas (Arlmzctige Vernzini 62). heroes lïterature has conco~ted.~~~The epic does not set out to demonstrate cause and effect, but to paint 4cbeuutzfirlnature," specifically, "the beautifid in characters, manners, emotions and actions" (J 824). It presents an ideal figure, "who rises above his imperfect fellow beings, but without rernaining unapproachable as a superman in rnythical distance" (Jaumann, "Anhang," J 820). The representation of Cyrus as a mode1 figure is essentially an extension of the position developed in Theages. God as the highest ideal is supplanted by a Shaftesbwian, but no longer explicitly Christian, "moral Venus." The muses remain "undesecrated;" and the secular poet is still inflamed by the conflation of beauty and vimie. The poet creates a truth that is visibly manifest in beauty (J 527). The added emphasis on the aesthetic quality of the moraily uplifhg expenence (the Venus in moraiity) is accompanied by a characterization of the intended readership as refined. Whereas the poet of Der gepryfte Abraham sang for an audience that was distinguished by its moral piety fiom the sin-loving "Pobel" (AA V2: 10 5-06), the preface to Cyrus addresses Shaftesburian "virtuosi" '1 822). These are distinguished as "Kennef' who have gained insight through a lengthy acquaintance with great works of art, people of talent or genius who have

"'"Es ist wahr, er komte seinen Helden weder tapfier machen als AchNes, noch klüger ais U&s.ses, weiser ais Botdhz, oder grof3rnütiger ais Leonidas - aber er komte, ohne die Wahrscheinlichkeit ni verletzen, diese Tugenden in ihm vereinigen" (J 823). The preface makes allusion to 's Panthea as a mode1 of beauty. In that discourse, Lycinus creates an image of the greatest of beauties through an art of combination. Lycinus draws to Polystratus's attention the most stunning women of art and literature: "Wohlan denn, aus allen diesen Bildem will ich versuchen, dir durch eine schickliche Zusammensetzung ein einziges darzustellen, das von jedem derselben das auserlesenste haben soll." Through combination, the creation of an ideal beauty is bound to succeed, "wem wir dem Verstande Vollmacht über diese Bilder geben, und ihm erlauben die einzelnen Theile zu trennen, ni versetzen, und dam wieder so passend und symmetrisch zusamrnen zu tugen und in einander ni schmelzen, daf3 die Mannichfaltigkeit der Einheit des Ganzen keinen Schaden the." (Wieland's 1788/89 translation N3 :284) been "educated and polished" by wide-ranging experiences. In particular, the narrator appeals to a rehed female audience, since "nature itselfhas made them models of all that is beautiful and charming" (J 823). The impiicit argument that model people are the best judges of model characters blurs the lùie between existing people and arîistic creations. If art and breedùig both involve the imitation of pre-existent models, then it is irnperative that art furnish a supply of superîor models to people of breeding. In him, since superior people have intemaiized the hest models, they alone can judge the ûuly beautiful. They alone possess the requisite '"refined taste" and "delicacy of feeling": Von ihnen findet man am gewohniichsten diese Lebhafiigkeit und Zarte der Ernpfindung, diese Geschwindigkeit des Geistes, diese Leichtigkeit das Wuhre, das Schor~r,das Feine, das GrüJe zu saisieren, dieses Feuer der Einbildungskra, diese schone Stirnmung der Anekten, welche allein fàhig machen, an Werken des Genie Geschmack m finden, und ihren Wert nchtig m bestimrnen. (J 823) These qualities contribute to the production of a moral "sense" that, while sensual, can never pose a threat to reason, for reason has pre-selected its models of the beautifid. The senses are educated, cdtivated, refined; and sensual enjoyment is always paired with moral appreciation. These are the minimum conditions of moderate sensual indulgence. Thus, the preface situates this "in the best sense of the word noble poe~" (Sengle, Wiee(and,102) between the earlier biblical epics and the malfomed project that is now at an impasse. Its muse has left the Christian heavens to situate itself in the liighest regions of the humanly possible. In doing so, it has been transformed fiom an angel uito a kind of Venus, a Venus, so to speak, on best behavior, a Venus who wears a veil made from the same impenetrable fabric that embellishes Theages's Graces. Only the "geistigen Schonen" are recognized as Venus's offsp~g(J 527); and these "spiritual beauties" appeal only to refined, ennobled tastes. According to Jaumann, the problernatization of the subject, evident in Araspes, is scarcely visible here, with the exception of the preface ("Anhang," J 883). The fa11 of Araspes demonstrates that the perception of "beauty" in a female body is inextricable fiom male sexual desire. In thought and action, Araspes is misshapen; and the text reflects this misshapemess with a dissatisfactory form. Cyrus, on the other hand, is rnorally beautifid, but also male, and therefore, it is hoped, safe withùi the confines of the male encarnpment from the confusion of aesthetic form with sexual want. Thus, the epic's representation of moral beauty is a conservative response to the "ugliness" of the Araspes-fi yeand lus disharmonious drama. Moreover, the epic poem is an exercise in controlled versification. On a purely fomal level, the text is perfectly in keeping with its refined and noble ideals. The discipline of the hexarneter imposes structural demands on the text. Each utterance conforms to the discipline of its rhythm. The technical masteiy this demands is a means for gaining control over the text (ùiat series of signifiers whose signification, with Araspes, threatened to escape control). Moreover, to Wieland's credit, the versification is not rigid, but subtle and full of seemingly unforced rhythmc altemations. The narration is not il1 suited to the epic hexameters that agree with the laws of convention; rather, the poetic voice reproduces this rhythm naturdly; it arises seemingly effortlessly, attesting to the poet's connoisseurship of the finest poetry in the epic tradition. If Wieland had finished the epic as planned and contained the story of Araspes and Panthea therein, the soliloquies of subjective disruption would perforce round themselves into even sequences of hexameters. In this sense, the fluidity of the verse would be an erasure of extremes and in itself the evidence that a balance has been

reached. j3 The beauty of the disciplined text is not limited to its formal aspects. While lascivious gazes are banned from the narrative, the text nonetheless abounds with figures whose moral and physical attributes are pleasing to contemplate. Since the tale itseifresides in a pointedly male domain where rnisogyny is comrnon currency, the confidence with which the preface solicits the favor of female readers is at first consideration baffling. Of course, Wieland did not have to contend with the scrutiny of our present day feminists. Rather, as a &end of women, delicacy and refinement, the narrator offers his female guests a tour through a domain into which they are rarely invited. The path of his narration is the "genus medium" on which Theages, also a fragment, had already started. In a sense, the maleness through which the text travels is mitigated by the choice of a language that is palatable to women connoisseurs with their heightened sensibilities. The appeal to female readers in the preface has a function in mitigating the "masculinity" of the narrative itself.

4.1.1 Gender Discipline Cyrus introduces the reader to athletic warriors who radiate a male vitality that is a function of their isolation fkom the feminine sphere. The soldiers,

lS3 Since the use of hexameter is in keeping with epic tradition, it serves to stylistically anchor the "genre identity" of the text. On the other hand, this choice of meter may have been ill-timed, which would account for the lack of positive echo the text received. According to Dieter Martin, the hexameter was falling out of fashion by the time Cyrus was published: "Konnte sich Wieland 1 75 1 auch durch die Entscheidung fir den Hexameter Bodmers Gunst Gr seinen Hermann sichem, so verhindert der gleiche Vers acht Iahre spater die giinstige Aufiahme des Cyms, mit dem Wieland die Beachtung einer breiteren ~ffentlichkeitund den Weg aus der parteiischen Isolation sucht. Die auBere Form seines epischen Fragments hat damit wesentlich zu der von Wieland noch Jahre spater beklagten 'Kaltsinnigkeit' des Publikums beigetragen." (hdeutsche Versepos im 18. Jahrhunderl 187) hardened by military duty, exercise decidedly male virtues in a male landscape. Gone are the gardens, nature paths and love nests that fiunished the spring setting for Araspes's sexual awakening; gone, the intimacy and privacy of the enclosure which cut off Panthea from direct contact with the outside world and encouraged the development of a relational drarna. In their place are the blood-drenched theaters of war, the encampments where war councils plan troop operations, the mapped progress of lines across the panorama of history. Panthea's "'feLninifle" passivity, whose greatest Wtue is the resolute "no," has receded fkom the Iandscape, replaced by the challenge of active participation in the supra-persona1 forces of political change. In the "ideal discipline of the peers" who form a military column (Xenophon, Cyropaedïa, 1 :3 O3), little space remains for the luxury of a private self and other such experiments with subjectivity. The epic is a tactical retreat fiom the seductive force that the Cyrus of Araspes called the "tyrannical power of love" (J 594). It circumvents the problem of desire by winning the easy victory against a soft male opponent. The Assyrian tyrant has characteristic female weakness without the sex appeal and the psychological threat that fernininity entails. Male sofhiess is associated with enslavement; and the Assyrian troops are emasculated both as slaves to a tyrant and as slaves to the tyranny of desires. By contrat, manliness is equated with fkeedorn, for only fkee men in the double sense of politics and desire cmfight the good fight. Thus the "manly women" of Babylon will be easily crushed. Their fiequently pierced armor and liberally gushing blood will compensate for a Panthea too strong to be defiled. The collective impotence of the numerous amies under Babylonian nile has many causes,'" but the greatest is the Uiability of the debauched and weakened tyrant to iinifv through leadership. Sharing neither purpose nor character, his countless troops are militarily and aesthetically inharmonious. They are a "Pobel in Waffen," monstrous in their heterogeneity. Ein ungeheurer gigantischer Korper, Ungeschmeidig in jeder Bewegung, aus wilden Barbaren, Üppigen Vdkem unwilligen Sklaven und friedsamen Hirten Unharmonisch aisammen gefügt; ein Pobel in WafEen! (J 569) Thus, the army that is led by a slave to the pleasures of the body cannot cohere into an organized military body. The inability to attah control over the private body manifests itself collectively as a rnisshapen and ineffectual giant. "Wollust" is diametrically opposed to discipline. The schooling of the allies' military elite amounts to a hardekg of the body and the will against the acceptance of sensual pleasure:

[. ..] Vom Morgen der Jahre Wurden wir, mih der Wollust entwohnt, durch stahlende Ubung, Durch Enthaltung und Zucht mr mànnlichen Stiirke der Seelen Und des Leibes geformt. (J 560) With this schooling, the soldier Pharances levels an invective against Babylon and its easy life of wine, women and Song. The young man disciplined in sacrifice and abstinence directs his anger against youths who freely enjoy that which is withheld him:

154 Many of the nations under the tyrant's yoke are simply unfit for military service. The Babylonians themselves are effeminate because of debauchev, others, for example, the coastai Persians who are "peaceful shepherds" fiom a culture that is as mild as its dimate, simply suffer from pastoral innocence. One is weak because of its innocence, the other; because of its comiption. Among the wonhiest opponents facing the Persian phalanx are the Kadusiens who were raised in harsh conditions and remain wild and unspoiled by civiking refinement S. Oder soiien die Jünglinge Babels, die zierlich gelockten Balsam düftenden Knaben, die kürrlich vom üppigen Busen Ihrer Dimen gerisseh aus goldnen Helrnen ita Iacheh,

Sollen die mannlichen Weiber, geübter ni Kiimpfen der Venus Als mr blutigen Arbeit der Schlacht (Ofeiger Gedanke!), Sollen uns diese den Sieg entwenden? Der persische Phalanx Sol1 erzittem? Vor wem? Vor jenen weichlichen Hiinden Einzig gewohnt mm lydischen Tanz auf silbemen Saiten Und um den Nacken der Madchen ni fingem? -Die zürnende Wange Glüht mir vor Scharn! (J 536) Indulgences in the ferninine - in balsam aromas and delicate touches, in the of music and dance fingered on a lute or a woman's neck - produce "manly women," who, weakened in battles with Venus, draw the scorn of tnie warriors. Venus in this context, the original Venus without the qualmg adjective "moral," is the Goddess of immorality and emasculation. As in Araspes, the battles of Venus are inherently political. In the descriptions of Babylonian tyranny, sexual indulgence, the "sch&dlichen Joche des niedngsten Sklaven der Wollust" (J 532), is the key symbol of a slave economy. Slave sexuality represents al1 forms of oppression; and sexual enjoyment retains its traditional, socio-historical association with privilege and power."' Yet opposed to this unendmg cycle of stimulating and satiating desires

15' In a socio-historic context, two dominant, class-specific moral attitudes towards sex persisted throughout the 18th century: sex as a sin, or, in its enlightened variant, a disgusting animality to be purged; sex as an "aristocratic" right and (extramarital) pleasure. In day-to- day life, eroticisrn was not unknown, but it was acknowledged only in extramarital love. AS such, it was an exclusive privilege of the aristocracy, practically institutionalized with the courtesan economy. This social reality began to change with the emergence of the nuclear farnily based on free choice of partner, which made privacy and affective relationships, hence the formation of a new "AEektenstruktur'' with stronger sexual ties between husband and wifé, increasingly possible (KieseVMünch Gesellschafr zcndLiteratw 62-65). The process that led to the development of the companionate marriage in England is examinecl in detail in Lawrence Stone's The Fmily. Sex andMmriage in England, 1330-1800. Stone observes is the histoncal progress towards an enlightened, just and liberating absolutism that Cyms represents. Cyrus's intention of liberating the masses fkom the tyranny of their lascivious, oversexed masters is an extension of the hands-off policy towards Panthea in Araspes. Indeed, "no wornan has set foot" in the camp he controls (J 53 1). The regimen of sexual abstinence that upholds male virility is also the royal guarantee against abuse of power. The notions of sex as a threat to individual and social control and of sex as the motive of societal injustice dovetail. At the same tirne, however, the lost landscape of the feminine is recuperated by the narrator's characterizations and Mages. For example, despite his disciplined abstinence, the youth Pharances is also a libidinous creature, who blushes, like an embarrassed lover, at the huit of personal weaknesses - in matters military. We lem that he too has a "lustige Daphne," but she is the battlefield, that he too hem a "siren song," but this is a Song of the glory of dangerous exploits (the heroic epic?). The melding of the feminuie and the erotic into the depiction of soldiers extends f?om Pharances to the entire troop. Headmg for battle, their supposedly fear-inspiring rnarch is depicted as a pastoral parade: So eilet ein Tmpp von blühenden Hirten Hüpfend mm festlichen Tanz, wenn auf den Auen der Frühling Jugendlich schem, von Freuden und Liebesgottern umflattert. Alle rosenbekriht; sie fliegen mit schlüpfenden Tritten

that in continental Europe the theorizing of companionate mamiage in the cultural movement of sensibility and specifically in the literature of "romantic" love largely preceded its sociological realization (Stone 390, see also: Jean Hagstrum. Sex and Sensibzlity). For this text. it should be noted that opposition to what may be identified as the moral decadence of "court arktocracy" cornes from a king and his military elite. The values of a compt king are opposed to the values of an ideal one who can hardly be identified as bourgeois. Moreover, the connaisseurs for whom the text is supposedly written are mernbers of an elite, if only a cultural one. Über die Blumen, es winkt ein Chor von Liebiichen Madchen Gegen über, den Grazïen gleich mit den Amen verschlungen. (J 564) In this improbable image, battle is reduced to a "Scherz," a courtship dance, an entertainment played out by youthful shepherds for a choms of Graces. A night raid, led, significantly, by ~raspes,"~is prefaced by the hero's apology to the "gracious nymphs" ("holde[n] Nymphen") that inhabit the holy grounds where the unsuspecting enemy peacefully sleeps: "'Ein stiirkerer Gott lenkt / Unsem FuBtritt hierher; wir folgen dem Glücke des Cyrus!"' (J 549) The conflict potential between Arcadia and epic are diminished by this sort of reference. The wamors, govemed by the stronger force of historical necessity (Cyrus), take military possession of a pastoral landscape, but in doing so pay respect to the local deities they tread upon, and by extension to the women readers who witness the invasion of the pastoral. Their warring efforts are analogue to the peaceful activities of shepherds. Authentic shepherds, however, are wholly unfit for battle, hence the unenviable fate awaiting the innocents of Saba fighting under the enemy banner. It is related with laconic predictability Friedsame Hirten, im SchoB der Natur mr Einfalt erzogen, Ungebildet, gesetzlos und fiernd in den Künsten des Wiues, Hatte sie Nerigiissor dem hdlichen Frieden entzogen, Dd sie den persischen Speer mit hemBlute befleckten. (J 567) The nymphs do not side with these dominates. Rather, they cheer fkom the sidelines as Cyrus's troops advance on the scdgprey.ls7 Their alliance may

156 Along with establishing the heroic character of Araspes, the non-hem of the Araspes-draina, the epic also confirrns the "artistic" character of Axasarnbes, whom Araspes had found cold and unfeeling. Here, Arasambes combines the qualities of warrior with those of the artist: "Mit den sanfiern Künsten der keuschen Musen verband er / Jede kriegrische Tugend." (J 578) These are concrete two exarnples of the "rescue work" undertaking in the text. lS7 "Die Nymphen der felsigen Zagnis / Jauchzen von fem den Eiienden nach." (J 53 8) be explained by the fact that the real children of nature are simpletons for whom the arts of wit are foreign. Civiiization is necessay for the technological advancement of war, and it is dso necessary for the production of witty and graceful pastoral naiveté, the textual habitat of nymphs and graces. The local nymphs, feminine inhabitants of shadows, acquiesce to the stronger god of history, represented by Cyms. Their own fate is Iinked to the progress of civilization. The physicd contact that ensues, the transformation of love-groves into battlefields, bonds the allied troops together in devotion and love to their semi- divine hero. The heroes are inflamed not with the unrealizable desires of a hapless lover, but with the "desire for victory" as they rush into the wild hy, brandishing glittering swords, expendhg projectiles, drilling the enemy's "naked breasts" with the "iron length of the spears" (J 551). Needless to Say, battle and conquest elevate the beauty of the male body and its actions, so that the muscles of the heroes' bodies swell with the "spirit of their godly leader" (J 572).

It may corne as some surprise that the heroes who trample the sacred ground of nymphs reject as emascuiating not only the wanton pleasures provided for by tyrant Nenglissor's "multitudes of subservient women" (J 546) but also the cornforts of a "cornpanionate" family life. In this respect, one must admire the loyalty of Wieland's epic to the spirit of its source text. Thus, Tigranes recounts how Cyms rescued him fi-om the "lap of sensual pleasure" ("Wo~ust"), meanuig the "sweet embraces of my loving wife who filled my life with joy" (J 561)- "Flrst fühl ich mich selber," Tigranes attests, upon leaving those "tragen, weiblichen Freuden" and joining Cyrus on the grandiose stage of world history. Despising the "luxuriant peace" ("üppige Ruhe") of family Me, Le. the Company of his wife, his child and his father, Tigranes extends the critique of effefninization ftom the palace excess of privileged oppressors to the idyll of peaceable bourgeois stability. These sentiments are repeated in the description of Korsades, first victirn of the enemy counterattack. The "magic power of renowny7 ("Zaubergewalt des Ruhrnes") has tom him away fiom the "fawning ams of his amorous bride" ("schmeichelnden Armen seiner zartlichen Braut" J 550). His early, but glorious, death is contrasted to the inglorious prospect of a life wasted in the "luxuriant peace" of marital bliss. Instead of a positive valuation of marital stability, one which would, for instance, motivate the soldier to defend home and country, marriage is cheapened as a regressive sensual pleasure and lumped together with the enslavement of the enerny court as a threat to manhood, male energy and historical mission."* The relations that Tigranes rejects are not those of slave subse~enceor "aristocratie" sexuality. Rather, he describes a warm, private relation, one that brings to mind the nuclear family, which, in conjunction with the rise of the bourgeoisie in the eighteenth century, began to supplant the extended family as a primary social unit. As in the nuclear family, Tigranes's family bonds were affective and companionate, beginning with the sexual relations of husband and wife. For the warrior, however, affective companionship in the private sphere drains ambition and energy out of duty in the public domain, which by definition

158 Later, the troops of Babylon are inspired to make a last stand by the implonng embraces of their desperate mothers and vives (J 582-83). This passage does not illustrate the notion that rnarriage and family can also be sources of courage, however, for the defeated Assyrians are not suited to provide examples of good behavior. Rather, the passage shows that the vanquished soldiers are even more "effeminate" than the women they are supposed to protect. Thus, the women chastise their men for being "unrnanly" while their own "female bosoms" are swollen with "male anger." is political and exclusively male. In this sense, the military formation implicitly rejects the cultivation of a private Me. Sensibility as a cultural rnovernent that promotes the creation of affective bonds between private individuals, culminating, for instance in Richardson's Sir Charles Grandison, in the bond between man and wife, is transferred in this military sphere to male relationships that are public, political and Platonic. Yet even a soldier's bond is a cause of sharne. Love can still play hide-and-seek in the dynamic of suppression and spontaneous demonstration, even when what is being demonstrated is the Mmie of military loyalty. Tigranes acts out this dynamic by blushing and restrainuig himself fiom impulsively embracing a beloved who also happens to be his leader: [...] Sein Auge vol1 Seele Hiingt an Cyrus, schon streckt er, entzückt von Liebe, den Arm aus, Ihn zu umfangen; doch plotzlich enthalt er aus Ehrfurcht sich wieder Und ein glühendes Rot f&bt seine sittsamen Wangen. (J 56 1) While it is tempting to read a homosexual undercurrent into such passages, the strategic advantage of these outpourings over the affections that Araspes showed Panthea lies in the fact that, with wornen excluded, the soldiers appear to be safer fiom the danger of confùsing sympathy with sexual desire. The discourse of love is partially recuperated under the guise of aEected fiïendship - by no means an unusual or unproblematic occurrence, given the eighteenth-century "cult of fkiendship."' j9

159 Simon Richter's "Winckelmann's Progeny" revises the notion of the eighteenth- century ''cuit of friendship" by emphasizing the homosocial aspect of the Greek fnendship mode1 and its German modernkation. In doing so, Richter and others have made possible the sexualization of reading fnendship texts. It is not necessary to establish through biography that the author of a given text had homosexual tendencies in order to register the presence of a homoerotic undertone in fiiendship passages. Just as a person cannot always be reduced to a single, unifiable identity, a narrative cannot always be conceptualized as spoken Eorn a 4.1.2 The Via bility of Cyms To some extent, the epic integrates the emotionai contents of sensibility hto the depiction of war. The "combinatory art" by which Cyrus's character was assembled serves precisely this integrative function. Being a combination of different heroes, texts and ide& Cyrus bridges the gap between militarism and sensibility, transporting the contents of sensibility into an exclusively male, hence sexually "safe" field of conquest. Shifting between his responsibilities as military leader and his moral convictions as caring humanist, Cyms patches over the conflict potential between the hard "discipline" of the troops and the "sofl" and "wasteful" home lives they ostensibly defend. In contrast to his elite soldiers, the bachelor-king, spared the necessity of choosing between deand home, is above confus@ the emotions of sympathy and sex. Unllke Tigranes, his defense of the homeland is therefore emotionally laden with the images of needy infants, mothers, children and e1derly.160Cyms is the feeling hero, the ''fiiend of man," who, "full of sympathy," sheds a "'tender tear" even for the enemy's suffering (J 542-43). He loathes the prospect of unnecessary bloodshed. Neither fortune nor renown, but a love of justice, a universal sympathy for suffering hurnanity, and a single "voice" definable in terms of "gender" and "sexual preference." Indeed, the text may be polyphonie; it rnay voice hornoeroticism, even despite the author's biographically verifiable heterosexual proclivity . In Wieland's oeuvre, texts such as Araspes tr~2dPu~hea and Mzisariun illustrate the sexual potential of cross-gender "Platonic" friendships (on Platonism as the point of depamire in Mzis~o~c,see Joachim Rickes, Fiihrerin und Gefiihrîer 84-88). Hippias's atternpt to "philosophicaily seduce" the slave-boy hem in Agathon may be interpreted as an extension of this potential to sarne-sex relationships; and the relationship of Zeus and Ganymed in the Comzsche Erzühltrngen is overtly homoerotic. "Dich rief des Vaterlands Stimme, / Gottlicher! auf, dich rief das Wirnrnem des ziirtlichen Sauglings / An der bebenden Bmst, die Unschuld der Jungfrau, der Mütter / Heilige Keuschheit, der Knabe, der schon zur Tugend des Vaters / Seinem Vaterland wuchs, die zittemde Stimme des Greises, / Rief dich, O Held, ins eiserne Feld! Vor schnoder Entehning 1 Und vor sklavischen Fesseln die Freigebomen zu schüaen, / Eilst du getrost den Tyrannen entgegen, ein schützender Engel." (J 53 9) quasi-Messianic sense of mission force hïm reluctantly to the field. Cyrus is the quintessential "sensitive guy" who makes the military epic palatable for its equally sensitive readers. Yet this assembly of the hest qualities must work in conjunction with heroes of a different order, and the advancement of Cyrus's grand design is dependent on three ascending levels of activity. The lower two are morally problematic, while the highest compromises the p~cipleofplausibility. The lowest level is that of the ordinary foot soldiers. They Iack breeding and eiite training and are largely driven by base desires. Rather than dampening their Iesser passions, however, Cyrus instnicts his generals to encourage and exploit them. He thus betrays a more cynical type of connoisseurship than that which the poet had recommended to his audience: Malet mit weislich gewahlten Farben den Persem und Medem Jeden die Hofiungen vor, die ihre Sehnsucht entzünden. Jeden locket sein Trieb. Nur wenigen Sohnen des Himrnels 1st es gegeben, den Reiz der nackten Tugend zu fühlen. (J 537) hcluded among the passions they are to ldarne is the promise of the "'jewels of the enemy camp," notably, their c'blooming girls," who, Cyms unhesitatingly adds, will "willingly receive the tired victors in their arms." We later discover, however, that these women fear the victor's arrival. When the hurnihated troops of Babylon scurry behind their fortress walls, the women, fearing their imminent defeat, drop to their feet and embrace hem in desperation (J 583). Only by glossing over the likelihood of rape with this improbable prediction does Cyms succeed in obfuscating the practice of slave sexuality that will be continued by the lower levels of his regime. This practice would fatally compromise the moral basis of the entire project. 189

The next level, as we have seen, is the domain of the elite troops who are formed around a notion of military duty and historical force that opposes the family and its private, c'bourgeois" pleasures which supposedly run counter to an active participation in hstory. The inherent misogyny of the military elite is hidden behind the dl-encompassing love that emanates fkom Cyrus and behind the worthy goal of his military advance, which is to end the mle of debauched tyranny and to secure the conditions that favor the prosperity of family through good govemment and lasting peace. At the third and highest level of activity, the "body" that is the passion- dnven mass of soldiers, and the "will" that is the elite, misogynist troops, are harnessed by Cynis, a quasi-divine amalgam of reason and spirit. This embodied ideal answers al1 the requirements of what Panthea in Araspes called a "spirit out of a higher order" (56 14). Without a guiding spirit, she argued, the "throng" that is hurnanity would be a "soulless body." Yet cm a leader who is "an Macht, wie an Güte, die Gottheit vor den Sterblichen" be represented in the human sphere without compromising the principle of plausibility vaunted in the preface? Given the predominance of passion in human affairs ("Jeden locket sein Trieb"), is it psychologically plausible that the king cm remain untouched both by the material passions of the foot soldier and the tyrant and by the "passion for posterityiYthat motivates his elite troops without the intervention of a supernaturd machine? Indeed, Cyms's "Wollust [vlieler Vdlker Erretter ni sein" (J 544), this extraordinary "passion," is stimulated and maintained by the use of such a machine. The "benevolent genius" to which Cyms alluded in passing in Araspes here grows to five Ioquacious and ethereal stanzas, in which a divine spirit dispells the sleeping hero's nascent doubts and instills in him a sense of holy mission. The guardian spirit concludes: "Dich met, O Cyrus, / Unsichtbar, aus den Wolken gestreckt, des Allmachtigen Rechte!" (J 554). Yet with the motivation for actions at this highest level removed fkom the scope of human psychology, Cyrus's ascent above the quagmire ofhuman desires is psychologically unbelievable. Thus, while the narrator cmpoint as proof of the "natwal order of things" to an absence from the field of battle of pugilistic, intervening Gods, such as those of the IIiad; psychologically the text presents a dependence on the moral ordering powers of the supematural that is reminiscent of the pre-Araspes texts. Ultimately, the much vaunted fieedom of these soldierly products of discipline is as illusory as every other fieedorn. God is the "primay mover of al1 things," and dl our noble operations are the results of divine intervention '1 545). This intervention is represented by a prophetic dream and a Visitation by a holy angel. Whde îhis dream fùlfills the progenitor wish by transfomiing the bachelor king into a "father" of nations (J 544), it also erases the possibility of more disturbing dreams that rnay have announced a return of the repressed. God intervenes in the unconscious and smoothes over the fissures that dreams may reveal in the hurnan psyche. Akhough the text is laden with inner contradictions, the narrator never explicitly betrays the impression of confidence about the vïability of Cyrus's project. On another level, however, such doubt rnay be conveyed by the fact that ultimately the disparate elements of the text fail to combine into a hmonious and disciplined whole. Since ïncomplete efforts cannot be tolerated under a tdy disciplined regime, the epic undermines its inner-textual logic on a meta-textual level by remaining a kagment. In ths sense, the non-completion of Cyrus is more problematic than the non-completion of, Say, Idris und Zenide, which does not make the same pretense to universal harmony. Considering the doubts Wieland expressed at the the of writing, with respect both to the value of military heroes and to his own appropriateness as a singer of heroic Whie,'" perhaps the most astonishing quality of this epic is the consistency with which it upholds the ideal of a perfect enlightened der. Moreover, the appeal in the preface to a Venus beneath the veil of moraliw and to disthguished readers who possess an appreciation for an urbane beauty is also perfectly consistent with a text whose stylistic mastery attests to the narrator's intimate literary acquaintance with works of beauty and refinement. It is in the playfulness and preciosity with which the namator works reminders of the 'ferninine" domains of pastoral repose into the exclusively male domains of conflict that one may imagine the emergence of a kinder and gentler sensuali~, than the one that divided the character of Araspes. As we have seen, the text is replete with inner contradictions. Whle it does not achieve harmony, unlike the drama of Araspes, it goes a long way to maintaining a harmonious appearance.

16' 1758 letter to Zimmermann: "Ich bin allzu weit vom einem Helden, um ehen Helden würdig und nach dem Leben schildem ni konnen." (WW1 :377-82, cited by Jaumann, "Anhang," J 820) 4.2 Lady Johanna Gray: Queens hip versus Passive Virtue Wieland began work on Lady Johunna Gray in the same "entscheidungsreichen" surnmer of 1756 in which he lefi Araspes to work on Cyms (Sengle 102). He soon lost interest in the project, but the arriva1 in the following winter of the Ackermann theatrical troupe in Switzerland prompted him to complete the drama. It was first performed in Winterthur on July 20, 1758. Wieland's report on the fist performance presents the play as a successful sentimental drama, for the heroine, bdliantly portrayed by Charlotte Ackemann, enchanted the spectators, moved them to tears and inspired inexpressible feelings. '62 The heroine of the play, Lady Jane Gray, was a Protestant grand-niece of Henry WI of England. In 1547, she was declared successor to the throne by her mortally il1 cousin, Edward VI, then King of England. Both Edward and Jane were Protestants. Mer his death, she signed a document proclallning herself Queen of England. This incited a rebellion, and, after a short battle, she was deposed by Mary 1, the Catholic daughter of Henry VIII. Shortly thereafter, Lady Jane was executed for high treason (Martini, "Anmerkungen" MS 3:803-04)- Wieland's drarna covers the period fiom Edward's death to Jane's execution. It shows her unwillingness, hesitation and eventual acquiescence to the demand of her entourage that she assume the throne, and, after the collapse of the Protestant cause, her condemnation for treason, and, finally, her brave refusa1 to renounce her confession, which was the condition the Catholic victors put upon her life and that of her father and her husband. The source for Wieland's martyr

'" "Tous les spectateurs en étoient enchantés ravis et extasiés, tous les yeux étoient mouillés de larmes, on étoit incapable d'exprimer ce qu'on sentit." (Letter to Katharina Zimmermann, August 1, 1758 WBW 1 :351-53, cited in MS 3:804) drama, according to its 1762 foreword, is Gilbert Bumet's History of the Refonnation of the Church of England (AA 1/3 :21 5). More irnportantly, it fieely borrows materials fiom Nicolas Rowe7s 1715 Tmgedy of Lady Jme Grey. The playwrïght's objective, as set out in the 1758 foreword, is familiar from other texts we have examuied: to stimulate moral sensibilities with a moving representation of "the greatness, the beauty and the heroism of de.,7163 particular, the drama promises to place the "moral greatness" of its heroine in the "brightest light" (AA Y3: 148). Like the Cyrus epic, the tale of Johanna is written in a respected genre, tragic drama. Its mode1 is the "gewohdiche Simplicitat des Euripides" (R4 W3: 148). For both texts, the application of classical tradition is, according to Sengle, an attempt to create works of universal validity in face of the uncertainties raised by ~raspes.~~However, rather than lasting acclaim, this conservative tum was greeted by a devastahg review by Lessing, fiom which, according to Martini (in 1967), the reputation of the drama never recovered (MS 3946). While Lessing's main accusation is plagiarism,165a secondary cornplaint reveals the difficult position of Wieland between Switzerland and the North German critics. Cyrus and Johanna, which both showcase models of perfection, were begun immediately after Wieland's Swiss fkiends reacted davorably to the

'63 "Die Tragodie ist dem edlen Endzweck gewidmet, das Grosse, Schone und Heroische der Tugend auf die rührendeste Art vormstellen, die Empfindungen der Menschlichkeit und der sympathetischen Theilnehrnung an allem, was die Menschen angehet, auf lebhafteste zu erwecken und ni unterhalten, und überhaupt die Tugend in Handlungen und nach dem Leben ni mahlen, und den Menschen Bewundrung und Liebe für sie abzunothigen-" (AA V3 : 148) 164 'Araspes irnd Pmzthea, dieser getamte Roman, muBte ihrn auch abgesehen von den mordischen Bedenken seiner Freunde als zweifelhaft erscheinen: durch die seltsarne 'Zwitterform', mit der er kaum den Anspruch auf Dichtung erheben komte. Um etwas Allgemeingültiges ZLI leisten, greift er ehrgeizig ni den traditionellen 'hochsten' Gamingen der Dichtung: Epos und Draa." (1 04-05) 165 See: Raimund NeuB. '"Einen prachtigen Tempe1 eingenssen.. .' Zu Lessings Plagiatsvorwurf gegen Wielands Martyrerdrarna Lady Johmna Gray." depiction of a divided character in the Ur-Araspes. Yet the subsequent production of wholly good characters draws scorn fiom Lessing. He sees that whch is "moralisch gut" in Johanna and ber entourage as "poetzschbiise" (Lessing7s emphasis): Sie sind alle in einer Fom gegossen; in der idealischen Fom der Vollkommenheit, die der Dichter aus den atherischen Gegenden gebracht hat. Oder weniger figürlich zu reden: der Mann, der sich so lange unter lauter Cherubim und Seraphim aufgehalten, hat den guthemgen Fehler. auch unter uns schwachen Sterblichen eine Menge Cherubim und Seraphim, besonders weiblichen Geschlechts, zu finden. (3 : 1 19-20) This criticism, echoed by Mendelss~hn,'~~places Johmna in the same ethereal regions as the Empfindungen, which Lessing also scathingly reviewed. Yet while Cyrus and Johanna retum to haditional and possibly outdated poetic strategies, they also attempt to renew them. Indeed, this "Trauerspiel" introduces an innovation to German dramatic verse fiom which even Lessing will greatly benefit. It is, according to Lucie Schadle, the first example of blank verse perfonned on the Geman stage (Derfihe deutsche Biankvers 162). In this sense, it is more forward-looking than Cyrus, for whereas the hexarneter epic was a form losing favor, Johanna's blank verse anticipated a new epoch in German drama (200). In cornparison to the distancing and sentenhous alexandrines of the tragediees that preceded it, the blank verse offers, according to Martini, pater intimacy, naturalness and nuance; it accommodates the expression of the inner rnovements of the sou1.l" 7 terms of content, Martini also sees in this "drama in

'" "Die Kunstnchter. welche den Dichter rathen, nichts als vollkommen tugendhafte Personen aufnrführen, mogen aus dem Exempel dieses Trauerspiels lemen, wie schadlich ihr Rath fir tragische Dichter sey." (GesmelteSchr~j?etz 4:386) Mendelssohn's criticism of moral perfection becomes much more pointed in the review of Clementina (referred to below). 16' 16' "Wieland erkannte, dlder neue Vers, der fortan mm VersmaB des klassischen Drarnas werden sollte, eine Entspannung mm Lyrïschen und Endderischen und die groDere Intirnitat. Natürlichkeit und Nuancierung der Sprache erzeugte. Das Lyrische forderte die the spirit and style of sensibility" a ni;w approach compared to the pathos of baroque tragedies (MS 3:947). Heroic greatness is no longer demonstrated by action, but revealed, "in the intenority of the heroine, in her spintual conflicts and in their conquest in suffering." With Johunna, Wieland locates the source of dramatic tension "in den Gefahrdungen und in der Selbstfindung euies auf sich allein angewiesenen Menschen" (MS 3 :948).

4.2.1 Public and Private as a Point of Division In the wake of the private feelings Araspes experïenced for Panthea, a figure of political importance, and the intimate relationship he developed while exercising a public hction, Cyrus and Johanna explore what Jutta Greis calls the "expansion of the discourse of sensibility in the public-political sphere" @rama Liebe 70). Yet the two differ fundamentally in their approaches to the problem. The following andysis will concentrate on two problems related to this expansion: the failure to extend the discourse of (Protestant) sensibility into the public domain; and the subsequent retreat to private idylls and life afler death. It will be show that Johanna reverses the solution to dividedness found in Cyrus. Dividedness is not conquered by heroic "public works" that externalize the "other self' into a lascivious opponent; rather, dividedness is discovered in the atternpt to extend the discourse of sensibility beyond the private realm. Johmna's answer to the crisis of dividedness is to retreat to apolitical Me, or, when hs cannot be honorably attained, to martyrdom and disembodiment. Johanna's solution recalls the pre-Araspes position of the Empfindungen, in which salvation is ultimately reserved for the great beyond ("Jenseits"). However, Johanna also envisages a seconday location for the norrnalization of order: the apolitical musikalischen Schonheit swirkungen der Sprache; das Erzahlerische lockerte das Sentenziose auf und kmder Aussprache imerer seelischer Bewegungen entgegen." (MS 3 :950) household. This is the location of Clementina von Pori-etta, Wieland's next major literary endeavor. Cyrus is an epic of empire. It depicts an army that inhabits an exclusively public and male domain. The army's first law is the exclusion of the "sofiening7' sex. Even the loyal wife is excluded fiom an dl-male enterprise that reasserts authority and disciplines libido. The sexual undertones of the battlefield sûuggles with same sex partners remain unspoken; and the tyrannical and barbaric cultures of desire are physically eradicated. A limited articulation of sensibility occurs in the attestations of loydty, expressed warmly as a bond of lovuig fiiendship; and behind the war effort, tl~ereis the dream of establishing a society that promotes intimate, family based relationships. The character of Cyrus embodies both sensibility and authority. Yet the king is never forced to choose between public and private, between war and inner peace, between a desire for historical change and the intimacy of love, between the God of action and the God of providence. Rather, for the natural der, leadership, war, and histoncal change are a means to an end. That end, that firture compensation, is the well-govemed, peaceable and harmonious world where familial intirnacy will someday flourish, a dream vouchsafed by providence. The optimism of this self-actualizing teieology of societai perfectionhg conceals the inherent conflicts between public and private. Johanna, on the other hand, is a "tragedy7' of fate??Whereas history is a solution for the male warrior; for the fernale martyr it is the catastrophe that invades an apolitical idyu. Her ultimate salvation is the thought of an afterlife, and the thought of God's dathomable yet providential plan. Johanna's schism is

168 The tenns "Trauerspiei" and "Trag6die" are used interchangeably by Wieiand in the preface. Martini, however, argues that "Johanna's Christian inwardness transcends the tragic" ("Nachwort," MS 3 :949). located at the intersection of war and sensibfity, action and providence, public and private spheres. Whereas the masculine epic depicted active involvement in the world as a virtue, the feminine "tragedy7' shows integrity in sacdice and powerlessness. Cyrus ends as a fiagrnent with a perfect king battling for an ideal; Johanna begins with the death of a perfect king and enters into a situation of loss and increasïng estrangement f?om the world. Wieland's heroïne Johanna is essentially an ideal representation of faith as constancy. The nationalistic teleology of Rowe's T'gedy of Lady Jme Grey is missing, its political intrigue is greatly simplified, even the tenor of its anti-papal polemics is considerably toned do~n.'~~We are left with the presentation of a figure who is not so much opposed to the assumption of power by May and the Catholic faction as profoundly suspicious of the incursion of herself and her select communi~into the world of power politics. The ultimate figure of authority for

169 Wieland simplifies the depiction of Catholicism by eliminating the "unhistorical" character of Pembroke, the representative of a moderate and tolerant Catholicism. AS a result, Bishop Gardiner's negative roie increases in significance, leading to the one-sided portrayal of Catholicism that Wieland later called "etwas ni hoch getriebene Religions- Parteilichkeit" (AA Y3:2 17). At the same time, one should remember that the tenor of Rowe's play, despite the figure of Pembroke, is consistently anti-papal. Moreover, it is fiarned by the nationalistic Protestant polemics of its prologue and epilogue; for example: The only love that warmed her bloorning Youth, Was Husband, England, Liberty and Truth. For these she fell; while, with too weak a Hand, She strove to Save a blind ungratefil Land. But thus the secret Laws of Fate ordain; WILLIAM'S Great Hand was doom'd to break that Chain, And end the Hopes of Rome's Tyrannick Reign. For ever, as the circling Years return, Ye gratefil Britons! crown the Hero's Um. (7) This frame is completely absent From Wieland's play, which is presented as a "tragedy" based on a timeless (hence ahistorical?) classical modei. See Raimund NeuB for further discussion of the charges of plagiarisms, which date fkom Lessing: "Wieland hat keinen "prachtigen Tempel eingerissen, um eine Heine Hütte davon ni bauen" Lessing's charge], sondern hat von einem recht baufdiigen 'Tempel' gerettet, was ni retten war-" (NeuB, "'Einen prachtigen Tempel eingerissen"' 487) Johanna, which is a codation of her notions of God, King (earthly Father) and (Enghsh) Law, becomes confused and divided in her mind between one authority who demands that she and the Protestants retreat fkom power and another who demands that they assume the reigns of power in order to maintain the moral order of the world. At the same time, in order to persuade her to assume the crown, her entourage compromise the highly moral language they share with Johanna. The play begins with the report of the death of King Edward VI, who was the linchpin for Johanna's mord system. The departed king possessed the "wisdom of Solomon" and a "whole chorus of sister-virtues." He also displayed the distaste for material enticements that one requires of examples of moral perfection, scorning the "Siren-lips" and "shameless sweetnesses7'of "sensud pleasure" ("Wollust," AA U3:150). Moreover, as a Protestant, he established a legal concord between Protestant heaven and Protestant earth. ''O Yet Johanna states that "this world did not deserve such a me"(AA 1/3: 149). Perhaps if Edward had been less virîuous, he would have suMved longer, behg more at home in this world. Mortal monarchs are insufficient guarantors for the continued dominion of the good; and Edward (scoming "sensual pleasure") died without fathering an heir to the throne. Like Wieland's Cyrus, he was a bachelor hg.

''O Blasig insists upon the Protestant character of the play: "Wenn Wieland die 1758 erschienene Ausgabe seiner Lady Johanna Gray mit dem Untenitel oder der Tn'umf der Relzgzon versehen hat, so kt hierbei die Betonung wohl nicht so sehr auf das Substantive 'Religion' ni setzen als vielmehr auf den Artikel 'der'. Denn es hat in diesem mehrfach als Martyrerdrarna bezeichneten Stuck ~chtdas Chrktentum ais Ganzes sich durchgesetzt, sondem es hat letztendlich der Protenantismus, um genau ni sein, der Anglikanismus, vertreten durch Johanna Gray, über den Kathoiizismus, reprasentiert durch Maria Stuart. obsiegt. Der Tnumph gilt also dem Protestantismus!" (302) One should note, however, that the Wieh~zd-Bib~Ïogrqhiefirst lists this subtitle for the 1762 edition of hham(125). The subtitle was an afterthought. Blasig's emphasis on the definite article designating the Protestant religion may be misplaced in light of Wieland's moderation of Rowe's anti-papal polemics. Wehe left the question of succession in doubt, he pointed with his death to heaven as the permanent residence of virtue. Edward's death poses the problems of idenmgthe legibmate successor and identifjmg the legitùnate law of succession. Johanna's Protestant supporters advance the clah that she is the legitimate successor to Edward and support it with Edward's dying decree that names her future queen. Johanna, however, protests vehemently, for Edward's last decree contradicts the will of his father, Henry VU,who destined Edward's sister Mary to succeed Edward. For Johanna, Henry, not Edward, is the "father of law." His will must be done. Disobedience to this distant and long-dead hgruns against the £irst principle of virtue: Wie konnte Edward, er, in dem die Tugend Uns sichtbar ward, des Vaters Angedenken So sehr entehren? - Nein! das konnt' er nicht! (AA Y3 : 156) Johanna sees her ascension to the throne as an assault on English tradition and English Iaw. She invokes the "'holiness of the laws of the Empire" and accuses her entourage of obscuring "dawful, sacrilegious deeds" behind the facade of a "good design" (AA Y3: 160-63). Johanna's protest recalls Edward's final payer, in which the king acquiesced to a rule that directly conaadicts his written decree ("Doch nicht mein Will, o Vater, sondem deiner / Gescheh!" AA I/3: 152). However, it does not answer the question, as to why Edward's will would run counter to that of Henry/Empire/God, it does not locate the ongin of the split between the will of God and the will of one who is govemed by virtue. The Protestant God, represented by Henry, however, would appear to be quite different hmthe God of vimie, represented by Edward. Mary's dethreatens to spell an end to the earthly reign of Protestantism and therefore to break the concord between heaven and earth. By willing Mary, God wills the remof disorder and catastrophe @erhaps as a punishment against the superbia of power that effects the Protestant believers). With Edward's death, order retreats fiom the world to the immutable stmctures of the divine. Only in heaven is there one religion, one unchanging hth, one authority, unshakable and unattainable by the vagaries of the divided reality in which we live. The need to preserve law is the one conviction that distinguishes the heroine fiom the realpolitik of her entourage. However, the epigraph that proceeds the drama would seem to suggest that the Law does nothing to preserve justice: - Fmstra leges et iania Jura tuenti Scire mori sors optima! - - (AA V3:147) Martini translates as follows: "Vergeblich und nutzlos sind die Gesetze, das

Gerechte ni bewahren; fieiwillig sterben ni wissen, ist das beste Los der Men~chen.""~ This contraction of two passages from De bello civile identifies futility with the law itself. Accordingly, the law does not uphold justice, rather, it creates the appropriate conditions for taking one's life in a heroic martyrdom. Johanna does not want to question the law, she does not want to trace the split between law and justice back to its roots in Henry/Empire/God. She must preserve the father, and yet doubt as to Iegitimacy of his law is forced upon her by the last will of the king she personally knew and loved and by an entourage

171 MS 3 :805. Martini identifies the epigraph as a contraction of two passages fiom Marcus Annaeus Lucanus's De beilo civile: "me solum invadite ferro, me hstra leges et inania iura tuentem" (2:3 16), and "Scire mori sors prima viris, sed proxima CO@'' (9:21 1)- These are translated respectively as "mich allein durchbohrt mit dem Schwerte, rnich, der vergeblich sich abmüht, Recht und Gesetz ni bewahren" and "fieiwillig sterben zu wissen, kt für M-er das beste Los; aber das nachstbeste, mm Sterben gezwungen zu werden." that includes her own father and husband, the pahiarchal authorities of her private world. Johanna's law, the rule of Henry, would seem to oppose the best interests of England, its religion and its interna1 peace; and her God would oppose what is reasonable and best. Johanna States: "Die Wege Gottes sind dem bloden Menschen, / Dern Sohn des Staubes, immer unerforschlich" (AA V3:153). The motives of her God cannot be understood by human reason; rather, they are found at a deeper, earlier, more irnpenetrable level. Rather than embrace the English throne, Johanna responds to the political entreaties of husband Guilford by situating in Edward's death a break with the past. As the present becomes an age of instability, an age without a king's authority, death stabilizes in an unchangeable past an image for innocence, wisdorn and (ferninine) invisibility: Vor wenig Stunden war mein hochster Wunsch, Von Unschuld und von Weisheit stets geleitet,

Mich unbernerkt durch diese Weit lu schleichen; Mein groBter Stolz, dich, mein Geliebter, glücklich Zu machen! (AA L/3:179) Born "[zlur Unterwerfung, zum Rivatstand," Johanna energetically defends her political non-existence as lawful and right. This right is threatened, not by the easily vilified Catholics, but by people she trusts. These kstbelievers in the nascent Protestant faith are, Johanna earlier stated, the "small band of the fist infants of mith" (AA Y3: 154). The image rerninds one of the select cornpanies of like-rninded believers that populated Wieland's pietistic texts. This commUILity espouses the same religious convictions and speaks the same terms of sensibility as Johanna; and yet it opposes the will and law of Henry as God the father. Lessing contends that Johanna and farnily are all painted with the same, morally untamished bmsh, that they al1 represent the same "ideal form of perfection," but the rnembers of her inner circle chase after power and may be covetous of it. If so, however, their covetousness is hidden behind the inherent ambivalence of language. The tragedy of double-talk extends fkom Araspes to Johanna. By the end of the play and their execution at the hands of the Catholic henchrnen, Johanna's husband (Guilford) and father (Suffolk) are absolved of moral reproach. Northumberland, Johanna' s scheming step-father, conveniently reveals himself as a villain, and thereby relieves his cohorts of the burden of guilt. in the second act, however, father and husband persuade Johanna to assume the throne against her previous convictions. In particular, they do so by appealing to her heart, to her sense of duty. Thus, they lead her into a "labyrinth'' of confusion between their argument for Mrtue in action and the God that demands that she rernain inactive. She calls desperately for the intervention of an ultimate authority. However, the king is dead, as is the king's father, and the father in heaven is only majestic in his silence:

[.. .] Wer fihret rnich Aus diesem Labyrinth? Wen kan ich fragen? Alle Sind wider mich! O! Hirnrnel, leite du Dein gleitendes Geschopfl Dein Willy allein Gebiete meinern WilIen! (AA V3: 168) Johanna vows to follow a character who is familiar fiom other texts, the ber genius, here chnstianized as the "voice of conscience" or the "voice of God;" and yet this voice, unfailing for Cyrus, now remains oddly silent (AA Y3: 168). In the meantirne, she is subjected to a discourse that redefïnes right and wrong in the name of heaven. With the fate of England at stake, she faces arguments that persuasively question the legitimacy of the holy law of succession. Indeed Northumberland's rebellious plan, as it is related by Guilford, would seem to aim at the same result as the glorious mission of Cyrus: to liberate an entire people fiom the deof barbarity. Guilford paints the prospect of fûture generations W~O, thanks to Johanna's intervention, would harmoniously Live the fdyidyll: Die Mutter, mit dem Saugling an der Bmst, Der fiorne Greis, der mit vergnügten Blicken Die Enkei überzahlt, die Gatten, die wie wir Sich zarilich lieben (AA L /3 :170) Such happy family scenes, Guilford ad&, will either be preserved and protected under Johanna's deor destroyed through the "cmelty of priests." Johanna's notion of right, hair-splitting and over-delicate according to Guilford, wavers against the united appeds of husband and father to "love," "duty" and "mercy" (AA V3:168-7 1). Like a woman who is overwhelmed by her lover and already anticipates her doom, Johanna surrenders unwillingly to the force of their familial and emotional plea: Mein Herz ersinket unter der Gewalt Der Bitten, die von deinem holden Munde So rührend schallen! Nehmet mich, mein Vater, Nirnrn, Guilford, mich, macht aus Johanna Gray Was euch gefdlt! - (AA Y3 : 17 1) Johanna is "taken" by words of Wtue that later become irnplicated in Northumberland's cynical power-grab. The persuasive devices which bring about Johanna's consent (the rhetoric of sensibility) are tainted with the villainy of North~mberland."~This does not mean that Suffolk and Guilford are not sincere

Reinhart Tschapke's study of Wieland's use of rhetoric does not include an analysis of the rhetoric of sensibility in Johama. Yet it should be noted that texts written under the banner of sensibility (Johannu' Cleme~~tina)and particularly the more emphatic religious tracts (Empfin Jmgen, Sympathzm) al1 include arguments and attempt persuasion on various levels. Here and in Clementznn, however, a rudimentary critique of the arguments of sensibility cm be read. This critique precedes Wieland's later critique of classical rhetoric that is put into the mouths of figures within the classical tradition (Le. Diogenes's nonsense speech in their appeals to Johanna3svirtue, but that it is impossible to determine exactly how sincere they are and exactly where their Ulterests lie.

4.2.2 Martyrdom as Restoration of Order

4.21 End of Uncertainty Johanna never has a chance to act as Queen. In total, she rests at the pimacle of power for one 68-line scene at the beginning of the third act, which is only time enough to contrast the instability of the crown with the peacefûlness of an unrecoverable childhood idyll. When Guilford arrives in the next scene to announce widespread rebeilion, it allows Johanna to complete a necessary connection, identifjing herself as the source of England's woes ("Ich Unglückselige! Ich bins, die über England / Den Jamrner hauft!" AA V3: 176). This paves the way to the resolution of the play as a martyr drama of sorts. Yet before the cruel Bishop Gardiner enters the scene, Johanna herself makes it clear that there is a deeper reason for her sacrifice than the assumption of power by her Catholic rivals. In the monologue that accompanies her ascent to the throne, Johanna, foreseeing her irnpending dernise, gives two names to this deeper reason. First, it is identified as c~mystenousfate," then, more penetratingly, as God's "justified anger" (AA Y3: 173). Johanna is anxious to sacrifice herself to appease this anger. She prays that God accept her as a sort of "sacrificial Wgin" whose death would reconcile heaven and earth:

[.. .] ist dein gerechter Zorn Noch nicht versohnt, und warten neue Plagen, Sich über dieses unglückselige Land Zu stürzen - Gott! So hore rnein Gebet!

about the man on the rnoon, see: Tschapke, Anmutige Vemzinft 13 7-54). Verschone seiner! laB auf mich allein Die Strafe fallen! Mich ailein Für mein geliebtes VoIk mm Opfer werden! (AA V3: L 72) The attempt to extend sensibility beyond the private sphere fails, according to Greis, because "power and sensibility cannot be thought together in the horizon of the tragedy." Through a renunciation of the world, however, Johanna ultimately recuperates "the position of sensibility as an ideal condition free of

domination and without contradiction.9- 173 Johanna' s entrance onto the political- tragic stage was accompanied with a new awareness of universal dividedness; her exit as a martyr will dissolve the divide between heaven and earth and restore universal order. In a sense, Johanna throws herself across the universal gap; she is the stitch, the embodiment of Mme, that holds together the two ends of the otherwise divided universe. Martyrdom is the restoration of God beyond the words and actions of mere humans and their ever-uncertain significations. It is divine salvation ~oma process of doubt (hence enlightenrnent?) that had begun for Johanna with Edward' s death. Johanna says: "Ich lebte nur urn glücklich einst

ni sterben!" (AA Y3:306) The "tnumph of religion" is a triumph of eschatology over history. The greatest uncertainty that faced Johanna was an elevation beyond her allotted position in life. Excess is smfid, even the excess of good fortune. It creates chasms and cliffs, rifts and faultlines in a subject whose identity is a function of her social position. Jolianna conveys her mental state with the image of an abrupt and dangerous landscape: "pliese Hohen 1 Des Glücks sind

ln "Macht und Empfindsamkeit aber konnen im Horizont des Trauerspiels nicht zusammengedacht werden. So leitet Johanna, die passive Empfindsame, die anderen zum würdevollen Weltverzicht an. Die Allianzdiskurse siegen in der politischen Realitat, aber der Untergang Johamas und Guilfords verklart die Empfindsarnkeit und seta ihren Diskurs ins moralische Recht." (Drama Liebe 69-70) schlüp£kïg, sind mit jahen Klippen / Und Tieffen rings umsaumt!" (AA Y3: 179) Unlike Araspes, Johanna remains an alien in this jagged, psychic temtory. She welcomes the prospect of her execution, because it relieves the psychic tension caused by her sense of uncerîainty and volatility: "Mein Hea ist nihiger, es klopfi mit sanftem Schlagen, / Ich athme wieder fiey, seitdem mein Schicksal / Entschieden ist" (AA W3:183). Thus, the execution allows Johanna to atone for the guilt, real or imagined,"" of having acquiesced to the petitions of her Protestant supplicants and momentarily lost contact with the inner voice of God/HeKy/Law. Johanna's fate is inseparable from that of her Protestant supporters and her death may be generalized: she dies, representatively, for their collective fatal flaw of political desire. Beyond that, she dies for the unspecified and innumerable sins of England, and, by extension, for Christianity and humankind, for the original sin dong the lines of "irnitatio Christi" (NeuB, Tugend und Toleranz 93).

4.2.2.2 Golden Ages Past and Hypothetical Between the chasms and cliffs of political life and the martyrdom that will eventually level this uneven landscape there is time in the drarna for Johanna's evocation of an earlier, idyllic age. Adorned with a crown that is, in her own words, a mere "bauble" ("Tand) and the royal purple that covers her "pale somow," Johanna mourns the passing of a golden age:

O! süsse Ruh, O heitre, Sorgenfkeye, Zufnedene Zeit der UnschuldsvolIen Kindheit !

174 The feelings of guilt Iohanna experiences in captivity (AA V3: 194) are an important innovation of Wieland's over Rowe's source text. As NeuB points out, Rowe's Jane has no such qualms about having tried to Save England at this late point in the text (Tugend und Toleranz 87). By contrast, Wieland's Johanna, like many eighteenth-century martyrs, is a contradictory figure, neither a wholly guilty protagonist to be tragicaliy purged and cleansed, nor the completely innocent martyr (90). O! Tag' in stillen unbereuten Freuden, Im SchooB der blühenden Natur, mit dir, mein Edward Und in der heiligen Gesellschaft

Der Weisen Gaciens gelebt, O goldne Tage! O! sanfie Nacht', in ungekrankter Ruh Und leichten Trgurnen unbemerkt verschlummert, Wo seyd ihr hingeflohn? Ach niemals, niemals

Mich wieder nt besuchen! (AA Y3 :174) Suice Johanna dozed through the worry-fkee halcyon days and the soft and tranquil nights of light dreams without notice, one can assume that the tale of this period of her life would not have warranted depiction by itself. When the action starts in Johanna's drama, this age is already over. Political tune cuts through the Arcadian universe, but it also makes possible its evocation on the tragic stage. Johanna describes it, because it is no longer there but desired, an irreû-ievable childhood rendered into language. This pst idyll is later joined by an idyll of mamage - now expressed in the subjunctive, representing an equdy unrealizable fùture: [...] O! lebten wir Fern von des Hofes ungetreuen Freuden, In unbekannter Einsamkeit! Verbiirge Ein schiechtes Strohdach unser Gluck dem Neide Der grossen Welt! O lebt ich da mit dir Im SchooB der ungekünstelten Natur, Von Sorgen frey und frey von eiteln Wünschen, Vergnügt mit den was die Natur begehrt Und willig schenkt, durch unsre Liebe glücklich! Wie freudig wollt ich an den Schaferstab Den Zepter tauschen und statt dieser Perlen Mit frischen Rosen meine Locken schmücken. (AA U3 : 178-79) 208

The "'dichotomy between political-public activity and private-individual idyu" expressed in this passage anticipates, according to Walter Hinderer, sdar moments in the dramas of Goethe, Schiller and Kleist and, in particda., the "synthesis of ethic and pathetic representation" ("Wieland und das deutsche Drama" 1 18- 19). Within the text, the idylls cm only exist outside of historic tirne, yet it is the incursion of time itself that makes possible their evocation. With history as a destructive force, the text succeeds in reversing the negative view of mamïage put fonvard by the military elite in Cyrus. In the voice of the virtuous woman, marriage is not a weakening and corrupting state, but an island of innocence, a sanctuary of natural concord, hidden and protected by the very humbleness of its surroundings. Johanna's understanding of mamage, dong with her conception of self, is "bourgeois" in the sense that it is affective, founded in the love of wife and husband, and nuclear, replacing the extensive alliances of arranged marriage with self-imposed isolation, and composed in opposition to the life of the court. This primary human relationship is "naturd7'and "martificial" because it wishes nothing outside of itself. It is self-contained, defined by the scope of a "nature" that raises and rneets the simplest demands ("what nature desires and willingly gives"). It is only represented, however, as part of a dichotomy (the inverse of vaniîy and the court, NeuB, Tugund und Tdem97) which is underscored in this passage by the figure of exchange ("Zepter7'- "Schaferstab," "Per1en"-"Rosen") . hdeed, while Guilford deludes himself hto hoping for a political amnesty that would allow them to exist humbly, living "paradisiacally" in the "poorest cottage" lke "the fist, newly created couple in Eden's beautifid isolation," Johanna evokes the idyll only in the certainty that the age of "sweet dreams," "innocent enchantment" and "youthfu! love" is over, and that the mors of a Catholic reprieve are vain and deceptive (AA Y3 :190). This leaves martyrdom as the last chance to recuperate the potential of Maue and love.

5.2-2.3 Dividends of Disembodiment As the drama inches ever closer to the execution of husband, wife and father, the beauty of Johanna, bathed in the virtue of her refusal to renounce Protestantism and thereby Save her own, her husband's and her father's lives, develops into a dominant theme. She becomes the visible manifestation of "Seelenruh und unbewollct[er] Stille" - a phrase that recds Winckelmann's ideal of classical beauty.17' Johanna's repose is unclouded, hence unshrouded and unveiled, an undressed spiritual state, "as one whose pure sou1 should now remove its body. ,7176 Along with Johanna's increase in beauty, the dramatic prominence of husband Guilford grows with each step f?om death row to the maniage bed of fate. In the first acts, Johanna and Guilford do not behave like an exceedingly romantic couple. Not Guilford, but Edward, the belated king, wodd seem to have been Johanna's dearest and most intimate cornpanion in the past. The golden age they shared, however, was childhood. Marriage is projected as an idyll into an unrealizable firture only after this break with childhood. The theme of co~utshipthat figured prorninently in the development of intrigue in Rowe7ssource text is left aside in Wieland's version. One assumes that Wieland's Guilford and Johanna are m&ed at the beginning of the drama, but it

175 AA V3: 189. For an examination of Wieland's reception of Winckelmann, which was initially enthusiastic, as here in Johanna (65), and then distanced, see Max Kunze, '"In deiner Mine."' The allusion to Winckelmann's 1755 Gedanken über die Nachahmzrng der grirchischen Werke in der Malerei und Bildhauerkunst reminds one of the reference to the "sirnplicity of Euripides," hence to classical antiquity, in the preface. 176 "mieeiner dessen reine Seele / Sich jeta entkorpern soll" AA I/3 :200-0 1. Neul) presents a short overview of the Lterary history of this "Entkleidungsrnetapher" From Plato to Wieland's contemporaries (Tzigend und Toleranz 109-12). is only with the prospect of execution that a romantic element enters and the marriage seems to approach its consrunmation. The bride conceives of death as a sort of slurnber one passes through before awaking in a heavedy embrace ("Wir schlumrnem berZeit und werden bald / Zu himmlischen Urnannungen erwachen" AA Y32 12). The groom completes this image: Seraphim will flock in myriads to their reunion, not unlike erotic cupids: Aus diesen Amen schwingt sich nun mein Geist Den Serpahinen zu. die, im Triumphe Dich einzuholen, aus des Himmeis Pforten Zu Myriaden stromen, und mit Traen Der himmlischen Entnickung deinen Tod Betrachten werden (AA V3:2 13) For Guilford, death presents the possibility of consummation to the extent that his wornan is "too holy for this world," thus presumably untouchable in the here and now (AA Y321 1). As a mere human, Guilford may not have been worthy of her tendemess and love, but he will soon be able to approach her as a partner in martyrdom ("Bald bin ichs werth mit solcher Zartlichkeit / Von dir geliebt zu seyn!" AA Y3213). He too will discard the "shell" ("Hulse") that is his hurnan form and, "undressed of body" ("vom Leib entkleidet"), they will conjoin in "pious love." To live beautifully was sirnply not possible under an angry and vengehl God. Now appeased, God lovingly bestows on thern the reward of a beautifid death ("schon ni sterben" AA V3 :20 1). Even in the marriage bed of the great beyond, Johanna owes love alone to her creator. Yet with Guilford's ascent, the codict between the principal male figures of authority will be erased. Above, al1 will be assembled around Johanna - the husband, the father, the brother-king and, finally, GocüHenry/Law. The audience may rain down sympathetic tears on the tragic scene, but the heavens will be clear and providential. Hence the pre-death martyr resists wdowing with her mother in the emotions of self-pity, rnisery and despair, and radiates instead cheerfulness and confidence. She demonstrates the stoic and Christian principle of "constantia" (Blasig 304), avoiding the emotional and linguistic excesses of sensibility, "without becoming harsh or rigid" (Hinderer 125), and so maintains the middle ground, the ideal of self-control. With the cliffs and chasms of pathos transcended in the afterlife, the outward signs of emotional rupture and inner division are smoothed over as the lover's pastoral path opens on the gallows. Johanna, like Aruspes, is written with reference to a cnsis of belief- Indeed, it poses the question of disbelief and represents, albeit briefly, the feelings of fear and vdgo that arrive as one approaches the edge of a precipitous c lifE O!Glaube der UnsterbIichkeit, Was wiir ich ohne dich! In welchen Abgrund Von Iammer würde sich die hofkungslose Seele

Vemeifelnd walzen! [. .. ] O Tod! dam wiirest du das schrecklichste Von den Ubeln! (AA V3:2 13) It does so, however, in order to create reassuring counter-images: God's just retribution and the timeless order imposed by heaven; constancy, beauty in death and heaven as the consmation of desire; an isolated and apolitical bourgeois idy11.'" The latter represents a worldly potential for accommodating the conflicting demands of morality and desire. It will be explored in Chentina.

1-77 "Der Dichter denkt keinen Augenblick daran, seine Heldin wirklich an ihrem GIauben zweifeln m lassen, was doch menschlich und tragisch wiire." (John Leslie Parker, "Wielands La+ Johannu Gray" 4 14, see also Parker's Christoph Martin Weld dramatische Tatigkeit 6 1 ) 4.3 Clementina von Porretta: Virtue and the Schism in Private Wieland began wrïting Clementina von Porretta in late 1759 in Bem, when the Ackermann troupe was again touring Switzerland; he completed it in the following winter. This places it after Cyrus and Johanna and conternporaneous with the rewriting of Araspes. The preface to Araspes was written in April 1760, shortly after C/ememina had gone to print (Starnes, CMW 1: 168-69). The play is reported to have been received even more favorably than Johanna by the Swiss public (Sengle 1 13). However, Wieland's original plan to follow ths adaptation of Richardson with a dramatic version of Clarissa never materialized (WBW 1550; AA Y3:234). Indeed, as early as February 22, 1760, the playwright expressed in a letter displeasure with the finished product. He was parhcularly apprehensive about its ability to satis@ the different groups that comprise the public. He bernoaned the difficulties of meeting the expectations of a public that extended fkom the 'bwkeand sensitive" to the "theater pit" to "poets and critics," and thereby announced a concept of audience that contrasts with the select Company of readers for which Wieland destined many earlier efforts."* While it is clear fiom the preface that Wieland was principally interested in pleasing that part of the public that is most likely to be moved to tears and therefore wrote a tragic ending for a non-tragic story in the n0ve1,~'~the notion of a diverse

178 "Il y a en venté quelques scenes dont je me felicite moirnême, mais le tout ne me plait pas et je crains que mes propres sentimens la dessus ne soyent l'augure de ceux de mes lecteurs. L'entreprise etoit plus difficile qu'on ne pense d'abord, le personnage de la Clementine est tout ce qu'il a de plus delicat; et vous avouerés, qu'une heroine à qui l'amour et la religion ont fait tourner la tête est tres propre à embarasser un poete, qui travaille en même temps pour des lecteurs sages et sensibles et pour un parterre frivole et frondeur, sans parler des chicanes de Messieurs les poetes et critiques qui ne se piquent pas ordinairement d'indulgence dans les jugemens qu'ils portent des Ouvrages de leur confieres." (WBW 1: 5 8 5) '" "Man hat Clementinas Schiksal, welches Richardson unentschieden IaBt, durch ihre Entfemung von der Welt bestimt; weil dieses die rührendste Art von Entwiklung ni sep audience may help explain the fact that a new element of perspectivism accompanies this ending. The different views presented on stage may correspond with the Merent possible readings by Wieland's contemporaries (emotive and believing vs. critical and doubting). The inability of CIernentina (and by extension plays that follow this model) to rneet these different reader expectations successfully is a possible reason for Wieland's disinclination to continuing writing in this vein. The new play, Like Johanna, borrows heavily from its source text, Samuel Richardson's The Histovy of Sir Charles Grandison. As an adaptation of Richardson's popular novel, it appeals primarily to an audience that hopes to be moved by a stage representation of an episode in a novel that they have already read and loved. Josef Ettlinger counts thirty-eight passages derived wholly or in part fiom Richardson, including numerous direct translations ("Wielands Clernentina von Porretta und ihr Vorbild" 437-38). At times "too slavishly" translated, according to Moses Mendelssohn, these passages serve to heighten the audience's recognition of the cherished original in a dramatic adaptation. In a highly critical review, Mendelssohn questions the appropnateness of Wieland's attempt to adapt the contents of Richardson's novel to a dramatic form (5243-59)- Mendelssohn takes up the argument against morally perfect characters in drarna from Lessing's review of Johanna, and supports it with an excerpt fiom, of al1 places, Shaftesbury's Characteristics: In a poem (whether epick or dramatick) a compleat and perfect character is the greatest Monster, and of ail poetic fictions not only the least enguging, but the least moral and zmprovi~ig.(cited from Mendelssohn, 5:246)

schien." (AA V3:225) Mendelssohn does not neglect to apply this passage to contemporary literary debate: Sehen Sie! So strenge ist Schuflesbury gegen die vollkommen tugendhafken Charaktere in der Poesie. Wer hatte das geglaubt? Schafiesbzuy! der unsem nissen Schwatzem ailezeit die Gewahr leisten muB, wenn sie uns enveisen wollen, dd sie das sittliche

Ideal besser ni veffen wissen, als Homer (S:246). The discovery of a Shaftesbury who differentiates between the moral benefit of the text and the morality of the model characters it represents flies in the face of the poetic strategy that Wieland presented under Shaftesbury's banner in the preface to Cyrus. It also points the way to the dramatic representation of irnperfect characters. In the next paragaph, Mendelssohn defends Lessing's Philotas, a tragedy of a faulted character that, as Erhart observes, is in some ways similar to Wieland's Araspes. One can infer that Araspes would have ais0 fomd favor with Mendelssohn, who disapproved of Clernentina and Johanna. At the time that Wieland was completing Aruspes, he was stiil attempting to apped to a Swiss audience with the depiction of rnorally exemplary characters. Yet Clmentina is also his last major literary text before the shift to a different understanding of the function of literature. Like Johanna, Ckmentina purports to be a "Trauerspiel," but ends with the prospect of sublunary sacrifice and eternal recornpense. Unlike the two preceding texts, however, there is no allusion to a (Greek) classical mode1 in its preface. Rather, following Diderot's theories on bourgeois drama with its contemporary setting and subject matter, and its use of prose and pantomime (Albert Fuchs, Les apports français 436), Clementzna is seen as Wieland's "first and only bourgeois tragedy" (Parker, Wielands dramatische Tatigkeit 75). In light of the previous texts this means the completion of a move towards the private sphere. The model of nmie which had exited the epic stage with Cyms and lefi the field of politics with Johanna is now placed within the walls of a private home. Despite its pnvacy, however, this space also becomes the center of schism. This necessitates a further retreat, and Clementina's final act is to leave for a convent (hence to a life that cannot be represented by dramatic dialogue). This final retreat occurs in a text that is in a sense more thematically complex than its predecessors. For one, there are no evil persons or groups that can be pointed to as the source of dividedness. Neither tyrant Neriglissor nor Bishop Gardiner serve as reassuring images of an evil that is disassociated from the virtuous. Rather, the awareness of schisrn as a reality that effects people's lives occurs with the amival on scene of Sir Charles Grandison, a figure who is the very embodiment of gentlemanly virtue. Ln a more obvious and direct rnanner than in Johanna, the conflict is situated in the minds of the vimious themselves. As a lower-aristocracy English Protestant who has won the heart of an upper- aristocracy Itdian Catholic, Grandison problematizes the relationship between the old social, national and confessional alliances and a new, universalking alliance of sympathetic hearts. The religious basis of Clementina's virtue, however, is a strong belief in Catholicism. In a sense, the new relationship with Grandison throws the validity of confessionally based Mmie into doubt. The act which is the apogee of Clementina's virtue, the retreat to the convent, is not, as in Johanna's case, the "triumph of religion," but the "triumph of confession, 73180 a confession, moreover, that neither Wieland nor his immediate audience share with the heroine. The result is that Clementina as a mode1 for vuhie is context-specific and not universal. In the representation of this de,the drarna allows for a

180 "War Joharna Gray als der 'Tnumph der Religion' bezeichnet worden, so muB Clemerztii~avon Porretta als der "Triumph der Konfession" angesehen werden, wobei weder Religon noch Konfession die imere tiefe sittliche Uberzeugung der Seele und des Gewissens verkorpem, auf die es Wieland ankam" (Parker, Welmdsdramatische Tatigkezt 87). degree of perspectivism that is absent in Cyms and Johanna. The text may not be dramatically effective, but it accommodates the problematization of perfect characters at the same time as it represents models of perfection. For this reason, there some confusion as to its interpretation. On the one hand, Clementina's martyr-like withdrawal to a convent in the final scene is viewed as an edifjmg example of piety and Whie - and the text is criticized for its perfect characters and their ovenveening piety -; on the other, the critical signals are registered and the text is understood as an implicit critique of the excesses of religious fervor.18'

4.3. i Clementina: Sacrifice and the Representation of Innocence

3 i.i Sacrifice Demanded by God As we know fkom Richardson's novel, Sir Charles Grandison, the perfect English gentleman, spent much of his youth on mainland Europe. Traveling in My, he saved the life of Jeronymo von Porretta and thus came into contact with the Porretta house. There, a warm affection grew between daughter Clementina and the handsome and Wtuous foreigner. Tlie relationship was broken off, however, by the Porretta parents who disapproved of Clementina's love for a man who shared neither their nationality, class, nor religion. Grandison retumed to England, yet he was called back to Italy by the distraught parents. Their daughter had taken il1 after Grandison's removal. Her situation was then worsened by a

lgl One thinks of Uwe Blasig's recent juxtaposition of Sengle's statement that Wieland wrote as the "frommelnde Dramatiker" and his own opinion that Wieland worked as "der für religiose Fragen offene und engagierte Dramatiker," who promotes the confessionai tolerance of Grandison and the Porrettas at the same time as he criticizes Clementina's finai act of enthusiastic excess (3 14). It should be noted, however, that Sengle's view was more nuanced- For Sengle, the increasingly rationalist Wieland had ceased to believe in his "sentimental tragedy" and was "aiready closer to laughing about it than to crying." Indeed, Sengle concludes that the "okkasionalistisch[e] Rührstück [.. .] bildet die Vorstufe ni der satirisch- komischen Dichtung Wielands" (1 14-1 5). 1 am again indebted to his work. reghen of "tough love," in which a cousin, Laurana, treated her cmeliy in an attempt to forcibly rid her of her thoughts of Grandison. The retum of the English gentleman also marks the retum to mental health for the Porrettas7 afflicted daughter. The parents agree to a mixed rnarriage on Grandison's ternis, realizing it is Clementina7sonly hope for recovery. Clementina, however, has a 'trision" and becomes convinced that God would not approve of the marriage. Wishing no other marriage, she retreats, in the final scene of Wieland's version, to a convent where she will end her days in prayer. Wieland's drarna simplifies the relationship between Grandison and Clernentina. Wieland explains in the preface that "the plan and interest of the tragedy did not allow for a Hamiet Byron, who would have taken half of his heart fiom Clementina" (AA I/3:235). Without the narrative perspective of an English love interest and the consequent emphasis on England, two of the principal reasons for Grandison to feel "divided in himself' are removed. At the same time, the elimination of novelistic breadth in drarna (for instance, geographic distance and extended periods of the) heightens the importance of the single theme. Thus the religious schism now becomes the sole source of discord and its effect on Grandison's and Clementina's relationship becomes the main issue of drama. The end of the play in a sense etemalizes the tragic schism with the finality of Clernentina's irreversible departtue from the social world. Wieland's "'tragic" cure, in contrast to Richardson's novel, does not demonstrate the success of sensibility and reason to arrive at social and individual improvement within the ~orld.'~~Rather, it ends with the failure of sensibility to bridge the religious

'" Richardson's novel prepares for the reintegration of hero and heroine into their native cuitures and their native institutionai identities. Grandison marries Harriet Byron. Clementina's heated passions (both for the Protestant lover and for the cross) subside in due time. In her case as well, the arguments of reason and duty eventually prevail. As an independent individual, freed from her own infatuations and her parent's importune demands, schism. At the same the, a disbelieving perspective is also represented. In the following, 1 will look first at what is most familiar fiom previous texts, the notion of self-sacrifice to a punishing God (Clementina), then turn to the possibility of bridging the schism with a universal form of sensibility (Grandison). This will lead to a consideration of the difficulties of representing virtue in this text and to the consequent introduction of perspectivism. While Araspes would have been unthinkable on the Swiss stage, C'lementina adapts the representation of irrationality to the sensibilities of the drarnatic public. The obvious differences between the two principal characters make this representation possible: one is the assailant, the perpetrator, a man unworthy of syrnpathy; the other, the victim, the innocent, a girl most worthy of syrnpathy. Like Araspes, Clementina suffers fiom a crisis of identity and orientation that is linked to an act of violence;lg3but whereas Araspes pursues the course of rnadness in an aggressor, Clernentina follows a traumatized victim on the path of reco~ery.'~In this sense, Clementina is a sequel to Araspes. Instead of the violent outbreak of a guilty subject's inner connict into the greater world, it stages a victim's attempt to escape the devastation rendered on her innocent sou1 by the outer world. Since Grandison and Clementina are models of Wtue, violence does not so much reside within them, fostered by their assiduously repressed desires, as it

she prepares at the end of the novel to many Belvedere, a decision which represents a norrndization of her statüs as an Italian aristocrat. 183 For instance, she claims to no longer recognize her former "self': "Ich keme rnich selbst nicht! [...] Ich bin nicht mehr ich selbst, nicht mehr die Clementina, die sie liebten, die jedermann liebte -"(AA V3 24849) 18.8 Araspes's illness culminated in an attempted rape - the forcing of his will on another person's body. Clementina's malady is precipitated by the abuse of her cousin Laurana, who, through acts of physical cruelty, attempted to forcefuily impose on her the will of the family . originates without in proxies. These are secondary characters, the enforcers of familial authority: Generd Pometta, Count Belvedere, and above all cousin Laurana. These characters reinforce the notion that the religious schism is an unbridgeable social reality and thus they make somewhat plausible the notion that Clementina is a "martyr7' to something larger than herself. With Clementina entrusted to her care, Laurana exercised a violence (before the play) that endowed its recipient with the requisite suffering for martyrdom, as Pater Marescotti relates: Der zehende Theil dessen, was sie unter den Hiinden dieses unmenschlichen Geschopfs

gelitten hat, wiire genug, eine Mârtyrerin ni machen! (AA Il3 :23 1) This early passage prepares for Clementina's ultimate self-fashioning as a ma.. It situates the instruments of oppression within the family, the society and the confession. While the family's most intimate connections (mother-father- daughter) are affective, hence sympathetic to Grandison, the extended family which Laurana represents is "institutional" in nature. It imposes its "identity" by resorting to an extreme and inhuman rigor. That which is "unmenschlich," however, may reveal itself as divine; and Clementina's God, like Johanna's, tums out to be more conservative and more inflexible than either mother or father. Clementina links Laurana's unforgiving whippings to the will of this God, accordingly, they represent a good deed performed by the "hand fiom the clouds": die dich von dem Abgrunde zurükril3, in den du mit verblendeten Augen auf dem sanften Imvege der Liebe und der irrdischen Freude Gefahr lieffest, auf ewig hinabmstürzen (AA Y3 265-66) For Grandison, the fate that united sympathetic hearts across the schismatic divide is unfathomable; for Clernentina, this fate is recognized as a temptation to which she succumbs and for which she must be duly punished. Clementina's punishment at the hands of Laurana is proof in itselfthat she deserves to be punished, hence the self-accusation of harboring profane desires: Unglückliche, betrogene Clernentina! du hieltest dich für unschuldig; du nahrest eine Neigung in deiner Bmst, die du für rein, fiir untadelhafk hieltest, weil sie den liebenswürdigsten unter den Menschen mm Gegenstand hatte. [...] - Was ich fir unschuldige Neigung hielt, war Verbrechen. Der enümte Himmel fdlte sein Urtheil über rnich! - Was tur ein verkehrtes Geschopf muRte ich seyn, um solche Strafe verdient zu haben! (AA U3 265) This passage is in a manner reminiscent of Araspes, for it also depicts the progress of desire "însensibly, and by natural degrees" (Shaftesbury I:l19) as it proceeds fiom "innocent liking" to "crime." In both cases, the awareness of personal guilt is the product of an act of violence; in both cases, the protagonist seeks to escape fiom the confusing realm in which the conflation of sensibility and desire occurs: O fliehe, fliehe! Alles ist Bezaubemng um dich her; alles ist Gefahr und Verführung und Verderben! Fliehe, unglükliche Clementina, fiiehe die Liebe, die Welt, dich selbst! (AA U3:266) Admittedly, the spell, danger, seduction and corruption invoked by Clementina are less convincing than the similarly designated turmoils which afflict Araspes. In the literal sense, the young woman has never really ventured on the "soft errant paths of love and earthly pleasure" whch she so urgently flees. She is never depicted outside the house; she strolls the gardens with neither of her suitors. The landscape of their interrelationships never progresses beyond a few chambers of the parental estate, within which nothing much happens. Despite the fact that her love for Grandison is, according to her brother Jeronymo, the very essence of innocence and purity ("'Niemals hat eine so reine Zartlichkeit eine so heilige Liebe in einer unschuldigen Bmst geglühet." AA Y3:239), she is branded with a consciousness of personal sin that leads her to seek atonement from a punishing God. The root of this "sin" is the incontrovertible reality of schism which has forced its entry into the life of the private individual with the appearance of a foreign lover. Clementina wins parental concession to a mixed marriage with Grandison afler she demonstrates suffering in the form of a mental breakdown from which she may not recover. It is at this point that the remof Grandison would seem to usher in a retum to reason for Clementina, that their rekindled afEective relationship would seem to hail a secular transformation of religious feeling into universal sympathy, and that the physicd desire of the lovers would no longer seem to be taboo, but socially acceptable within the Limits of courting standards. Yet this crucial juncture in the text is also the point of Godysintervention. In the middle of her fist interview with Grandison, Clementina experiences a sudden "vision." It is accompanied by a confusion in Clementina's language: "Sie müssen wissen, Hem Grandison - Was wollte ich doch sagen - Ach, mein Kopf!" This fragmented sentence is followed by an abrupt break in their inte~ew.God intervenes, then, as Clernentina £kst begins to speak the words of tendemess and courtship and enter into conversation with a lover who for the fkst thecan declare the senousness of his intentions. At this moment the fiamentariness of Clementina's words reproduces the discontinuity of a discourse that cannot "marry" sympathetic souk who are divided by schi~rn.'~~

Ig5 Here is a fiiller extract: Clementina: "Sie müssen wissen, Herr Grandison - Was wollte ich doch sagen - Ach. mein Kopfl [Sie legt die Hand auf die Stirne.] Wol! - aber sie müssen rnich jezt verlassen - Es ist etwas nicht recht - Verlassen sie mich! - Ich keme rnich selbst nicht." The passage is lifted from Richardson, but its importance is greatly increased by its greater prominence in the drama, where the sudden end to Clementina's discourse foreshadows her decision never to reintegrate into society. God's intervention translates into a complete sacrifice of human pleasures. Confession is the one exception for the wornan who would smender all to her Protestant lover. It is the "chastity belt," the point of resistance to the earthly supplicant and of complete submission to the God above ("Meine Religion ist das einPge, was ich nicht aufopfem kann." A4 Y3:259). In its abnegation of the body, Clementina's visionary Catholic pie@ reminds one of the "Protestant" seraphisrn of the Empfindungen: Ich entziehe rnich den Freuden der Welt - aber diese Freuden shd Traume, die mit würklichen Plagen, mit immerwzïhrender Unnihe, mit dem Verluste reinerer Freuden und der Gefahr der Seele zu teuer erkaufi werden - (AA V3:29 1) The mode1 of morality represented by Clementina is one that ends in making the selfa prisoner in a ceil, deprived of al1 sensory stimulation. In the convent, each sigh, each vestige of the repressed amorous discourse, shall be borne by angels to throne of the eternal Father: In der Stille einer einsarnen Celle werde ich ungetadelt und ungestort meiner Zmhlichkeit und meiner ThriInen geniessen. Nur unsichtbare Engel werden sie sehen und die Seufier zu dem Throne des Ewigen tragen, in denen sich meine Seele Gr sie aushanden wird. (AA V3:286) This sort of holy commerce is made tolerable by the prospect of a quick death. In the "bloom of her youth" (M Y3:284) and with her mental health steadily improving, the all-suffering Clementina basks in the image of a grave that opens underfoot. Beyond the convent doors, she will sink "every earthly wish, every hope for worldly happiness" in a "worthy image of the grave." She addresses this image with the familiar pronoun 'du" and rejoicingly predicts, "1 will soon lay down this body that has been consecrated to death" (AA 1/3:293). In the dying words of the play (which telescope the dying words of its title character), Clementina reassures her parents as to the soundness of her mind with the prospect of this happy future. And so the model of Wtue proves herself, in Wieland's version, doubly resistant to the wishes of her parents (rejecting Belvedere, then Grandison) and asserts the radical privacy of a relationship to God that severs ties not only with the extended family but also with mother, father, and a companionate lover who hself is a model of a Whie. No select Company is enjoined to follow Clementina on her path, rather, she sacrinces herself to the God of worldly abnegation only to face her aloneness.

4.3.1.2 Innocence and its Prolongation Clementina's renunciation of worldly existence is the logical conclusion to a representation of spiritual beauty that begins by recalling a childlike, pre- schismatic innocence. Whereas Grandison is portrayed as a worldly-wise and experienced negotiator of competing desires who makes the best of things even while intemally at odds with himself, his fernale counterpart has not developed the faculty for negotiating a divided existence. Rather, her cornportment in psychologicai trauma betrays the remnants of an earlier "whole" existence. This is most evident in Clementina's first appearance on stage, a much delayed and anticipated scene (eighth scene of the second act!) that applies Diderot's drarnaturgical innovation of pantornime.lg6 The convalescent, her eyes focused on the floor, withdrawn into herself, is brought before her family. Holding her rnother7shand, she begins to look about the room then, suddenly and with shock, she registers the sight of the long absent Grandison. The scene is short on dialogue, but long on stage directions:

186 See: "De la pantomime," section 2 1, De la poésie dramatique X:408- 19. The scene is modeled on Richardson's text. The lengthy stage directions represent an attempt to recreate the non-dialogue part of the novel in a dramatic setting. Clementina. (schlagt die Augen auf und erkemt merst die Mutter. Sie umfdt mit ihren beyden Hiinden derselben Hand und beuget ihr Haupt auf selbige: hierauf dreht sie ihren Blik langsam gegen Jeronymo und erblikt Grandison, welcher hochst gerührt ist. Sie stüa über diesen Anblik; sie schaut mm zweyten mal nach ihm, ds ob sie ihren Augen nicht traue, und ma wieder: dmIaût sie plotzlich ihrer Mutter Hand los, steht auf, schlagt ihre Arme um Camilla und ruft:) O Camiila! (AA V3:244) The gravity of Clementina's mental affliction is not demonstrated verbaily, but by her inability to talk. In the spoken dialogue of the scene, the most she can muster for Grandison is the exclamation "Ach, Chevalier!" However, her body speaks volumes with its precipitous and most Likely involuntary gestures - the tears, the si&, the abrupt movements. Araspes found no images strong enough to convey his emotions; Clementina, however, conveys the inexpressible by physical means. The immediate and unbidden physical gesture is purer than "mediated" language, and less susceptible to hypocrisy and double-tak. When Clementina' s unsuspectïng eyes fist meet Grandison's, brother Jeronymo seizes on the uniqueness of the moment. He detains the English gentleman, requiring him to observe in Clementina the "beautifid soul" ("schone Seele"), that is captmed for one bnef moment in its pure and chldike state: (In diesem Augenblik steht Grandison in einer hefiigen Bewegung auf, als ob er auf sie mgehen und sie umarmen wolle; er wird von Jeronyrno nirückgehalten.) Jeronymo. Bleiben sie auf ihrem Stuhie, liebster Grandison! Lassen sie uns die Würkungen beobachten, die ein so unverhofier Anblik auf das Herz des lieben Endes macht. (AA V3244) Surprised in her afnicted state, Clementina exemplifies in her physical presence the child's heart as it receives a fresh impression. Jeronymo's "unhoped for view" is that of a remnant of an earlier state, a state that is both wholly innocent and wholly unfit for existence in the schismatic world ergo the "child's" psychic trauma. The failure of language echoes throughout the play, for instance, in the distorted words that accompany Clementina's vision, and in the letter that she hands Grandison to explain her decision to join the convent. Here as in the novel, the contents of this letter are not disclosed, although the audience is witness to the great effect it has on Grandison. The letter, we are informed, contains her deepest thoughts, and it reveals to Grandison the "majesty of her soul" (AA V3:282). Perhaps the author and the playwright sensed that her deepest thoughts should not be disclosed to the audience and thereby laid bare to the reductive activities of reason.''' Unlike the play's ending, this unspoken majesty is not compromised by the representation of disbelief In the above scene, Jeronymo retains Grandison and thus extends the demonstration of childlike innocence at the expense of an embrace with a male suitor that would signal the end of (sexual) childhood. God's intervention in the initial phase of courtship more directly extends the virginal state. Yet the ending in which Clementina through renunciation and self-abnegation attempts to demonstrate her moral grandeur and to act "like an immortal" by precipitating her death (AA Y3279) is less innocent and charming. It is preceded by a speech in which Clernentina declares herself desiring and therefore sinful and thus fashions herself into a sexual and adult being. As cm be expected, the prospect of self- sacrifice and death rnakes her more beautifûl. In Grandison's eyes, she becomes radiant with the "shinùig perfection of an angel" (AA Y3:281), until hally she

"'This has been interpreted as a sign of dramatic weakness by Parker: "Der schwachste Punkt in der dramatischen Bearbeitung und ein Fehler in der Dramaturgie des Stückes ist vielleicht der Urnstand, daB Clementina ihren EntschluD in einem Brief erlautert, welchen sie Grandison überreicht. Ein Brief hatte wohl in der objektiven Atmosphiire eines Romans - eines Richardson-Romans - eine dichterische Rolle, doch im Draa wirkt er als schwacher Ersatz fiir ein direktes, unmittelbares Ereignis." (Wielmds dramatische Tiïtigkel 82) This of course runs counter to my own interpretation which sees in the non-disclosure of the letter an example of the inexpressibility of emotion. settles as a sort of fixed image, "theimage of the heavenly Clementina" who will lead Grandison like a "guardian spirit," through the very "labyrinths of We" that as a mortal she dared not travel. Her act of total effacement will make the remembrance of her piety "unerasable" (AA I/3:293). Yet since Clementina7s self-sacrifice validates the confessional divide, her death does not hold the promise of a union in heaven between Catholic and Protestant. As Johanna had prornised Guilford, Clementina now promises Grandison: "Abetter world shall return to us that which this world denies" (AA I/3:279). For the Protestant couple, heavenly recompense was only a scafTold away, and the foretaste of remaniage lent a sensual quality to the closing scenes. Such is not the case here. Grandison and Clementina will not wak the gangplank together and much life wdl continue to separate Grandison from the day of reckoning. Indeed, Clementina will be obliged to renew her prayers without cease in the convent, if only to maintain the faint hope that God will allow their love to traverse the confessional schism in the form of an after-death mariage with ~randison.'~~In heaven as on earth, the author-ity of God is interposed between Clementina and mamage. The dream of the wedded state is left unfomulated, its pleasures unimagined. Worldly desire is channeled into prayer and the lover is a name whispered in passionate supplication.

4.3.2 Grandison: Tolerance versus Tragedy

4.3.2.1 Living with Schism Unlike the previous texts, Clementzna presents two mode1 characters who represent two different and, to a certain extent, contradictory models of

18' ''Diel3 sollen meine unermüdeten Gebette und meine glühenden Thriinen vom Himmel erbitten!" (AA V3279) perfection: one who attempts to flee schism and its trauma; and one who Lives within its realiq. The fkst is Clernentina von Porretta, the second is Sir Charles Grandison. Grandison arrives in a precarious situation. An English Protestant in Catholic Italy, the perfect gentleman is also the foreign body carrying schism into the Porretta household. Without his presence, there would be no need for Clementina to worry about Protestants. Her identity would remain tied to the "institutions" of nation, confession and extended aristocratie family, and an manged mamage (with Count Belvedere) would insure its fiiture stability. The love she feels for Grandison and the specter of a mixed marriage based on companionship that it raises threatens these traditional alliances.'89 Grandison, however, negotiates this dinicult situation with what can be called the Wtue of sympathy and experience. He does not propose to somehow reverse the tear in the universe (Le. the confessional divide) through an act of supreme self-sacrifice, rather, he seeks tolerance and proposes a compromise that would minimize the tragedy of the universai gap by making life livable within it. For example, the Porrettas originally proposed a marriage under conditions that would fatally compromise Grandison's identity as an English Protestant by requiring his conversion to Catholicism and his permanent residency in Italy. Grandison, on the other hand, produces a counter-proposal that would perpetuate a double identity for the couple: Charles and Clementina would alternate yearly

189 The intricacies of negotiating a balance between traditional institutional order and affective order and the challenge of augmenting the established order with a complementary affective one are main preoccupations in Richardson's novel. Grandison's involvement with Clementina, which spans its entire length, illustrates these difnculties. When Richardson's Charles defines himself as "a man divided in myself, not knowing what I cm do, hardly sometimes what 1 mght to do" (2:383), he refers to his opposing alliances to Italy and Clementina and to Engiand and Harriet Byron. between English and Italian domiciles; they would maintain their separate religious beliefs; and their male and female offspring would be raised separately in different confessions and national cultures (Enghsh boys and Italian girls). The Porrettas onginally reject this offer, then accept it after reWgthat only Grandison's Love cm restore their daughter's hedth. Hence, they prepare for a comprornised fiiture, one in which schism would be woven into the daily fabric of their lives, a permanent tear or open space in the tapestry of institutional and affective ties. Neither side hds this solution ideal, but both agree to it as the only means to avert tragedy. As exemplified by the compromise proposal, Grandison is not a tragic figure, but a figure who would bring about the prevention of tragedy through his actions. Sir Charles bridges the gap between the confessions that had earlier seemed unbndgeable. One by one, the members of the Porretta house learn to love the man they had vilified as the evil other. In the play's opening scene, Pater Marescotti recalls how he had inveighed against this "heretic," "enemy of the church and "depraved being" oniy to be "overpowered by his merits" (;IA V3:226). The following scenes dernonstrate a similar transformation of amtudes on the part of Count Belvedere, the rival for Clementina's hand. On the grand scale of Cyrus and Johanna, it was necessq to resort to arms in order to resolve the conflict with the enemy. Although battlefields are excluded f?om the limited parameters of the Porretta's house, Count Belvedere and later General Porretta still have recourse to the park in which to meet their opponent. Thus, Grandison is challenged to duels, the traditional means of resoiving codict among gentlemen. Grandison refuses to duel and offers instead hs even-tempered reason, his attentiveness to the opponents concem, and, above all, a demonstration of his lack of self-interest. Grandison's final pany to Belvedere is to state that he wishes that the Italian suitor would one day be rewarded with Clementina's hand. The passage implies that Grandison's love for Clementina is not one of possession and exclusivity, but one of inclusion and commonality, a sympathetic emotion that transcends the boundaries that separate like souls. A love so generous, so brotherly and so apparently divested of sema1 and personal interest,'" ove~vhelmsthe Count who, in his surrender, still maintains the military imagery: "Ich bin übewden! [...] Ich weiche die Obemacht ihrer Tugend" (AA V3:236). Grandison disarms through words of commiseration and concem; he finds a common ground that subverts the binary opposition of Protestant and Catholic. The strategy is diametrically opposed to General Ponetta's military policy of not f?aternizing with the enemy. "Ich bin nicht gewohnt, mich der Zunge statt eines

WafTens ni bedienen," the General states. "Ich bin gewohnt, mich in die Stelle andrer ni setzen," his would-be opponent counters ( AA V3273). Grandison's practice of putting himself in the position of others suggests a luik between sympathy and perspectivity. It also suggests a readmg for the conclusion of the text according to which one at the same time empathizes with Clementina @uhg oneself in her place) and Mews her decision cntically (staying in one's own place).

Ig0 "Die uneigemiitzige Freundschafl, nicht die Liebe, hat mich nach Italien zurükgeführt. Es ist mit dem Beyfall des Markgrden und der Familie geschehen. Wem ich an ihrem Zustande den zartlichen Antheil nehme, so ist es nichts rnehr, als wom mich der Name eines Bruders berechtiget, womit sich mich auf Befehl ihres Vaters beehret hat." (AA y3 :235) Even when Grandison later attempts to court Clementina, love plays a secondary role to duty, for marriage is resorted to by both parties primarily in order to restore the daughter's health. The fact that Grandison's marital inclination coincides with the dictates of duty may be nothing more than a happy coincidence. Throughout the text, Grandison feels with others, but promotes his own feelings only with the utmost delicacy and caution. Sensible to others and a mode1 of self-restra.int, he must therefore lem to be insensible to himself. This is the inner cost of social peace. Rather than a single great sacrifice such as a martyrdom, Grandison bridges the gaps by orchestrating an entire range of minor sacrifices, always putting hirnself second, always acquiescing to the needs of his opposite."' The schismatic divisions of human coexistence are overcorne, yet the condition of dividedness remains within the self. After the confkontation with Belvedere, the selfless foreigner is at pains to understand why virtue would seem to exact the pnce of his personal happiness: Ich handle gerecht und groBmüthig gegen andere und kmdennoch weder ihren Vonuürfen noch ihren Beleidigungen entgehen; ich bezahme meine Leidenschaften und muO durch fremde Leidemchfien geplagt werden; ich bemühe mich, andere giüklich zu machen, und bin seibst nicht glüklich! (AA V3237) At this and other junctures, Wtue must rely on its Uiherent aesthetic appeal as a personal motivation. Sir Charles concludes his monologue by reasoning that suffering enhances virtue's "irresistible beauty," making it "more amiable the more we sder for its sake" (A.V3:237). The resolution is less reassu~gthan it may seem, because it proposes the perpetuation of suffering, making pleasure and

191 Grandison demonstrates the practice of viitue not in the single act, but in multiple acts in each hour and minute of daily Me. For instance, when Sir Charles first fell in love with Clementina the fact of their religious incompatibility made it necessary for him to exercise total self-censorship. This effected each second they spent together and every aspect of their intimate conversation: "Wie sehr muBte mein Geist deseine Stiirke anwenden, die schonste, die gerechteste Leidenschaft ni unterdrüken, die das tagliche Anschauen der allzu reizenden Vorzüge ihrer Schwester in mir erwekte! - des euizigen Frauenzimmers unter den, die ich je gesehen habe, von der mir mein Herz sagte, daO ich sie über alles lieben konnte. Wie sehr muBte ich meine Zunge, meine Blike, meine Minen beherrschen, damit nicht die mindeste Spur von demjenigen sichtbar würde, was ich in meiner schweigenden Bmst ni bewahren entschiossen war! Ein bedeutender BIik, ein verratherischer SeufIer würde in meinen Augen ein Verbrechen gewesen sep" (AA V3 :240) beauty inextricable fkom pain. This monologue, Sengle argues, gives expression to the "incomprehensibdity of fate" and to a "doubt about a harmonious-rational order" of the universe, moments which fa outweigh the play's "forced conclusion" in importance (1 14): Wie wunderbar ist mein Schiksal! - Von dem Tag an, da ich rneiner eigenen Führung

überlassen wurde, war meine groste Sorge, den geraden Weg der Rechtschaffenheit ni gehen, und mich nicht durch eigene Schuld, durch Unvorsichtigkeit oder Leidenschaft in Schwierigkeiten m verwikeln - Was hat es mir geholfen? - Eine unsichtbare Hand schien mich wieder meinen Willen fortniziehen, und unvermuthet befinde ich mich in einem Labyruith ohne Ausgang, ohne da8 ich mir einen vorsezlichen Fehltritt vomwerfen habe - (AA V3 :237) Sengle observes that "fate" is not clearly identifiable as providence for Wieland's Grandison. Instead of the divine guidance which the nanator of the EmpJndungm wholly tmsted to keep him on the straight path, Grandison's "invisible hand seems intent on situating the virtuous hero in a "labynnth without exit." In a play of intenors where the action is restricted to a few charnbers of a house and even the manicured nature of the surrounding gardens is excluded, the labyrinth is reproduced in the soul, where it coincides with the unerring path of vùhie. Fate is here that inexplicable force which innames the ideal lover with "the most beautifid and the most just passion" (his love for Clementina) at the sarne time as it demands its repression (because of the confessional divide). It is the inscription of a schism that encompasses the entire Christian world into the intirnate lives of lovers. It is, simply put, religion, the universal authority thzt here as elsewhere forbids the fblfillment of desire:

Ich wuate ni sehr, daB wenn auch alle andern Hindernisse gehoben werden komten, diejenigen, die mein Vateriand und meine Religion machten, unübersteiglich wiiren - (AA V3:240) And yet Grandison makes Living with schism tolerable. %ylistening, empathizing and acquiescing, he appeases his male opponents. By proposing a compromise when marriage seems to be the last alternative for restoring Clementina's health, he plans for a fiiture in which neither parhier will lose their premarital identity. In the interior, however, things are not resolved. The moment of "strange fate" that we know fiom Johanna retums, but this time without the surety of providence. u.î.2 The Moment of Disbelief

1 stated above that these texts written in the wake ofAraspes represent new attempts to Save the principle of edification involving new approaches and bringing new problems to light. One may ask, however, to what extent Clementina's model of whie is innovative or importantly different fiom the worldly abnegation that was so intolerantly espoused by the preacher of the Emppndungen. A cornparison of the two prefaces points us toward a fundamental Merence. The moral purpose of the Empfindungen is clearly stated: it is intended to stimulate the religious feelings of its readers. The moral purpose of Clementina's drama, by contrast, is nowhere stated. The quasi- apotheosis of Clementina with which the play ends was chosen, we are infomed, "because this appeared to be the most moving sort of resolution," but nowhere does the playwright suggest a moral application for this emotional effect (i-e., "RUhnuig," AA Y3:225). 1do not believe that the absence of a stated moral position is a simple oversight. Rather, it is a sign of the text7sproximity to the departure £kom the poetics of moral edification that would soon be announced by the preface to Araspes. Unlike Cyms and Johanna, both of which contain statements of moral utility in their original prefaces, the depiction of a model of moral perfection in Clementina is accornpanied by a series of not overloud but nonetheless unmistakable question marks. Clementuia is a moral model, but there 233 is also an alternative mode1 (Grandison); and her final sacrifice is not necessary because of a moral reason, but because of a dramatic one. With Clementina, one senses that the notion of a virtue that bridges the gap in the universe can no longer be represented without also including a moment of doubt. The incorporation of this moment of doubt into the text is not as confident and sophisticated as it will become in the highly ironic texts that follow, but it nonetheless brackets Clementina's representation. Inside of these brackets, we find the innocent Wtue of Clementina; outside of them, we find the skepticism of those who cannot agree with her decision to enter a convent. Grandison is neither entirely inside or out; he is, in a sense, mediating between the two positions, both rnarveling at and questioning Clementina' s innocence and grandeur. Clementina for Grandison is an object of beauty, and, like beauty, she is "more amiable the more we sdfer for ber] sake." Beauty is a wound in the sou1 and the religious schism to which Clementina sacrifices herself keeps the wound open. As the prospect of resolution disappears into the horizon, removed to the illusion or the hypothesis of a distant hereafter, Clementina, wounded and wounding, becomes increasingly beautifid and appealing to Grandison. "Diese Mischung von Martem und Entzückung ist mehr, als das mannliche Herz ertragen kann!" Sir Charles exclaims (AA V3:245). Yet the mixture of martyrdom and joy, and, with it, the weaving of sin into innocence and death into Iife, make Clementina precious, beautifid, mattainable, and ultimately the perfect object of desire. Without tlie schism that erects a permanent barrier to their maniage, their relationship would unfold normdy; and irrationality, speechlessness and speech distortion would not be represented. One senses an element of masochism in the dingness with which Clementina submits to the dictates of a punishing God. It surfaces, for instance, when Clementina states that she is a plague on everyone who is attached to her and that therefore her suffiering is just ("Ich bin eine Plage der gewesen, die mir angehoren - es ist billig, daB ich leide!" AA Y3:267-68). It is also registered by Grandison, who bemoans the "selfkade pain" with which she tortures herself and the "unkind doubts" with which she mais hirn (c~selbstgemachten Schmerzen," "ungütigen Zweifeln" AA Y3:285-86). Selfkacrifice, she argues, is the will of God; the nun's habit is her destiny and her desire. More importantly, the magnitude of the sacrifice she perfoms is a kind of objective proof for the existence of (the punishing and confessionally lirnited) God as the motive force behmd her actions. 192 Given the lack of drarnatic motivation for the conclusion chosen by the playwight (in contrast to Johunna), the heroine must martyr herself for what ultimately are subjective reasons. This lays her open to the charge of excessive religiosity, i.e., enthusiasm as "Schw~erei,"which is tactfdly formulated by Grandison: Ihre Einbildungskraft, die durch ihre Krankheit über die natürliche Hohe getrieben worden, hat die Bedenklichkeiten ihres Gewissens geschaft. Sie wird sich verpflichtet glauben, dem Hirnmel ein Opfer von ihrer Liebe ni machen. (AA U3 281) The voice of God, it is suggested, is a figment of the imagination, a side-effect of mental illness. The point is stated more clearly by the bishop who warns against the "highfl ying enthusiasms of a fantastical girl" ("hocMiegenden Schwiirmereyen eines phantastischen Madchens" AA I/3:282) and by the general, who, amidst the pathos of the final scene, diagnoses this "enthusiastic nobility" as proof "that her mind has not yet returned to its natural state of composure" (AA

19' 19' "Schliessen sie aus der Grone meiner Selbstverlaugnung, mit welcher Stiirke die Beweggründe auf mein Gemüthe würken müssen, die rnich derselben fahig machen!" (AA V3:283) 235

Y3:292). Thus, Clementina's enthusiasm is at the same moment both edined and condemned. The skeptical moment is not dominant, but it is unmistakable.'" Since Wieland and his immediate audience do not share Clementina's confession, her faith cm be examined without accounting for their own. Faith is thus fictionalized and the text is liberated fiom the function of a sermon. With faith as fiction instead of tmth, the doubts Grandison expresses, dike similar phrases used by Johanna, cannot be limited to their rhetorical function: O Clementina, wenn nicht ein besseres Leben auf uns wartete, wie unglücklich wiire es. gebohren ai sep! (AA V3:286) The better Me, of which Johanna could be certain, now resides in fiction, in the suspension of belief that allows us to see in one and the same person the inspired enthusiast and the religious fanatic. Both reside in the private realrn as products of the universal schism.

193 Unforninately, Kurth-Voigt's snidy of "perspectives" in Wieland's early texts ignores this example of dialogue perspectivism. 5. Conclusion The concept of desire dows us to uiterpret Wieland's pre-erotic representations of sexual need - its sublimation and its repression - as exarnples of the emergence of subjective consciousness in the awareness of the division between body and spirit. 1 hope to have interested the reader in the individual texts that have been examined, but, true to Wieland's spirit, 1 also must make certain that 1have not missed the forest for the trees. For this reason, 1will now recall the major moments of the analyzed texts and draw the necessary connections between thern. The main body of the dissertation was devoted to seven texts, each of which presented a different strategy for the resolution of subjective division in the separation of body fkom spirit. Thek analysis was arranged in three chapters, with the middle chapter, which discusses Araspes, serving as a main point of reference and cornparison for the other two. In this structure, the first three texts were seen as anticipatory, laying the ideational groundwork for the representation of subjective division in Araspes, and the final three were seen as reactionary, responding to the cnsis of belief by presenting models of moral perfection that reaffirmed the possibility of universal harrnony and spanned the divide between thîs world and the next. Each text is linked ideationally withui a global trend but each is also unique. Each responds to the same problern and covers the same ground, but also employs a new strategy and creates a new form. Each reorders and reconfigures the constellation of relationships that deterrnine the position of man between the forces of spirit and body. This constant alteration of form is rooted in the fundarnent instability of a subject that emerges £iom the consciousness of division. With the exception of Araspes, these texts hold on to a belief in a 237 binding universal order - this is what distinguishes them from the non-binding playfulness, the skepticism and the irony of the erotic period. By upholding the union between this world and the next, the individual believer and the select Company of sympathetic souls counter the consciousness of subjectivity with images of universal harmony. From the Empfindungen to Clementzna, there are numerous projections of union and repletion on the other side of the divide - in the heavens, the grave and the Great Beyond. Yet in the present, repletion and resolution are impossible; spirit and body remaui forever opposed in the sublunary world. The "line of desire" is always the %.neof conflict;" it is always the cut-line ninning through universal harmony. The bar is never lifted. For the promise of an undivided state, God the Father always demands a sacrifice and always exacts a price. In the Empfindungen, the act of sacrifice is the condition and the justification for an expansion of subjective consciousness. Thus, the believer pays tribute to God by rejecting the pleasures of the body and undertaking the "sweet annihilation" of the self. At the same time, the believer becomes the center of the universe, registering God's existence in subjective sensation. As a consequence, the spiritual sensations are thrown into cornpetition with the sensations of the material world for the attentions of this hurnan, hence, worldly and pleasure-seeking, subject. The divine is thus conceived of as a passion analogous to the passions of human love. Holy authority is dependent on the maintenance of a vertical architecture that subordhates this world to the next, yet since the divine is registered in the consciousness of a pleasure-seeker, it is always brought up against the labyrïnthine paths of the physical world, paths that undermine and subvert these relations of verticality. When expressed in absolute terms, binary division means either that the spirit completely rejects the world or that the world completely rejects the spirit, and either that the subject is completely subse~entto God and denies the pleasures of the body, or that it wantoniy indulges in animal passions while the heavens sink into the earthly mires. Man as the middle link is not a restuig point, but a volatility between these two extremes. The concept of moral beauty allows for a negotiation between the two orders of pleasure, and it enables the sensual perception of worldly beauty to stimulate and augment the sensation of the divine. Accordingly, the female fom is not only the object of base desires, it is also the most eloquent expression of human morality. The face of a young woman on the threshold of adult sexuality is the most persuasive argument for either Wtue or vice (Sympathen). As the mirror for the Wtuous soul, the woman bridges the division between this world and the next. As an instrument of persuasion, her body softens the animal heart and prepares it for the acceptance of higher immaterial beauties. Behind the undularing flows of a cloth that hstrates the pomographic gaze, the female body harmonizes the physical reah with the immaterial order (Theages). The innocent beauty of the Graces inspires a project of rennement that transforms the wildemess of animal passions into a tamed pastoral landscape that hides the extemal signs of the spirit's acts of repression. We cannot retum to the age of innocence, but, in the select Company of the virtuous and refined that assemble around Theages, we can create havens of harmony and islands of utopia that are buffered fiom the incursions of the fallen world. Within these secure fictions, we cmalign the lower and higher orders in a Platonic continuum and rediscover mord Venus in the sublimation of sexual need. In Aruspes, however, we are faced with the step-by-step destruction of these strategies of repression and sublimation and with the creation of a new form of counter-subjectivity. The progress of the illicit desire of the protagonist's second self opens the divide between spirit and body to exploration and discovery. It opens, between the opposing selves, an ever-widening universe of disorientation and disorder, an increasingly unbridgeable gap that is occupied by the speakmg subject. The subject of this division speaks both the good self and the il1 self with one and the same word straining the double meanings of language until language itself fails and the brutality of the physical act is needed to re- inscribe the world with stable meaning. With the expression of sexual desire in the strongest and most immediate terms available to German literature before Sturm und Drang, the irresolvable dichotomy of body and spirit becornes the prime symbol for the collapse of rational and spiritual systems of order and for the emergence of subjective consciousness. Despite its tragic nature, Wieland's Araspes is not a tragedy. Rather, it compounds multiple discourses on multiple levels and presents in a compressed form an entire range of discursive textual potentials. These would open themselves to the subject who relinquishes an illusory belief in a unified and monolithic order, i.e., to the "tramtextual" subject of the later erotic texts. While the restorative texts continue to present models for moral perfection and thereby retain the illusion of unbroken unity, they do not simply revisit positions that are no Longer valid or believable.lm Rather, in their failure to plug in the gaps that the radical form of divided subjectivity have laid bare, they also lay the ideational groundwork for the new approaches to the representation of subjectivity. Of the three texts, Cyms presents the most direct response to

194 Cym and Johmna respond to the formal challenges presented by Ararpes as a text "without a name," i-e. an identifiable genre, by retuming to the classical forms of the epic and the tragedy. The texts respond to the uncontrolled and unstable (dis-)courses of Araspes by exhibiting a formal mastery over language. This is not exactly a step backwards, however- Indeed, on the fodlevel, both texts are credited with anticipating classical efforts of Goethe and Schiller. Araspes by countering the loss of patnarchal authority with the depiction of a perfect king. The power of the king (whose absence in Araspes made possible the expression of soliloquy) is restored; with it, discipline and order are imposed on subse~enttroops. The military project entails the segregation of soldiers fiom the softening sex and the channeling of sexual energy into hand-to-hand combat with the enemy. War is engaged against a tyrant who represents the tyranny of libido. Cyrus invades the erotic landscape and hstnicts Araspes, retumed to his subordhate role, to massacre the enemy troops that sleep in pastoral groves, the habitat of nymphs. A series of images and references weave the erotic moment into patriarchal discourse so that even in bioody massacre the erotic landscape remains below the wa~~iors'feet. Yet as a fist condition to the return of moral order, the rnilitary endeavor rests on shalq foundations: victory is dependent upon exciting the lust of the footsoldiers and exploiting misogynist discipline of the elite. The fiiture harmony promised by the military project is undemiined by the compromised nature of its victory. Wieland soon distanced himself f?om the unfinished epic, indicating an awareness of the illusory quality of the harmony it projects. In Johanna and Clementzna, however, the signals of illusion are placed within the texts. The martyr drarnas continue to fumish images of moral perfection, but the conditions of these representations become increasingly problematic. Virtue is no longer on the offensive, as it was in the expansive military epic, rather, it retreats uito increasingly private and restncted circles where it is nonetheless powerless against the encroachment of universal schism. While Cyrus and Johanna are both models of moral perfection, the vheof the reluctant queen is incompatible with that of her entrepreneurid counterpart. She opposes the forces of history that he champions and afnrms instead a passively understood concept of providence. 24 1

Johanna invalidates Cyms as a mode1 of perfection by revealing that the moral language that is used to juse political involvement is a screen of double-talk for purposes of seduetion. Power compts the tems of sensibility that define Johanna's moral universe. Her drama is still written in the "language of the heart" on which the moral systems of the pietistic texts were founded, but the language of illicit desire is written in the same terms. In a sense, the heroine is a martyr for the same reason that Araspes is a rapist: only the irreversible physical act cm restore stability and confer meaning on the otherwise divided universe. The final text attempts to repeat this irreversible act under even more difficult circurnstances. From an ideational standpoint, its great accomplishment is its failure to do so. From this perspective, Clernentinina and not Araspes is the most radical text in the series: whereas Araspes had recourse to an ineversible act in order to assign value after the destruction of stable language, Clementina fails in its staging of a parallel event and the meaning of her speech remains suspended. The heroine runs through the garnut of sympathies and sacrifices that we know fiom the pietistic texts, yet the enthusiasm that these acts demonstrate is equally the product of moral perfection and mental illness. Some of Clementina's entourage, inspired by the beauty of her sacrifice, shed tears as the heroine heads for a gallows-like convent. Others simply shake their heads in disbelief- Grandison, the ided spectator, is also the divided spectator, inspired and disbelieving at one and the same time. On one level, he sees the act as irrational and unmotivated; on another, he recognizes that withui this moral system fernale beauty cm only be represented in sacrifice. He too is divided in hunself, and yet he can partake in the spectacle of sacrifice without actually hadghimself. Grandison is free to move beyond Clementina's play to other fiames and 242 representations of the human state. Thus, the baroque dichotomy of heaven and earth ceases to be the defining tragedy of subjective consciousness. It becomes instead one of numerous texts which present themselves to the self-constituting subject as paths for exploration and self-discovery. 6. Works Cited.

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