“Ich bin ud bleibe bloß Poet und als Poet werde ich auch sterben.” Friedrich Schiller’s Sense of Poetic Calling and the Role of the Poetic Idea in his Emerging Professional Identity as a Dramaturge Item Type text; Electronic Dissertation Authors Cser, Agnes Judit Publisher The University of Arizona. Rights Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author. Download date 25/09/2021 13:31:04 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/627671 1 “ICH BIN UND BLEIBE BLOȕ POET UND ALS POET WERDE ICH AUCH STERBEN.“ FRIEDRICH SCHILLER’S SENSE OF POETIC CALLING AND THE ROLE OF THE POETIC IDEA IN HIS EMERGING PROFESSIONAL IDENTITY AS A DRAMATURGE By Agnes J. Cser __________________________ Copyright © Agnes J. Cser 2018 Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the DEPARTMENT OF GERMAN STUDIES In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY In the Graduate College THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA 2018 1 3 STATEMENT BY AUTHOR This dissertation has been submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the University of Arizona and is deposited in the University Library to be made available to borrowers under rules of the Library. Brief quotations from this dissertation are allowable without special permission, provided that an accurate acknowledgement of the source is made. Requests for permission for extended quotation from or reproduction of this manuscript in whole or in part may be granted by the copyright holder. SIGNED: Agnes J. Cser 3 4 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am very grateful for the steadfast support of my research advisor and dissertation chair, Steven D. Martinson, PhD. I am thanking Barbara Kosta, PhD, and David H. Chisholm, PhD, for serving on my dissertation committee, Albrecht Classen, PhD, for serving as the fourth member of my comprehensive exam committee, all the faculty and staff, and my teaching colleagues at the Department of German Studies, University of Arizona, for their support and encouragement. The guidance and professional knowledge of my professors were invaluable over the past five and half years. I thoroughly enjoyed working with each of them and am very much appreciative of their collaboration with me. I cannot express enough thanks to Dr. Steven D. Martinson, who as an expert in Friedrich Schiller steadfastly supported my research on the German poet’s productive literary oeuvre. I am very grateful to Dr. Barbara Kosta for supporting my graduate studies and professional development with scholarships and travel funds. My sincerest thanks to my first reader and editor, Alyson Luthi Wicker, for her priceless support and questions. My heartfelt thanks to my family and friends for helping me along my undertaking. Most of all, I am grateful to my dear husband Steve. Without his support and understanding I could not have finished my project. I truly appreciate him! My heart is overwhelmed with gratitude. Thank you all! 4 5 Table of Contents EDITIONS AND ABBREVIATIONS ..............................................................6 ABSTRACT.......................................................................................................8 PART ONE: SCHILLER AND HIS SENSE OF POETIC CALLING...........20 1. CHAPTER ONE: SCHILLER’S INTELLECTUAL AND ARTISTIC DEVELOPMENT IN THE LIGHT OF THE GERMAN $8)./ٍ581* ...........................................36 ENLIGHTENMENT 2. CHAPTER TWO: THE POET SCHILLER AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF HIS POETIC POSTURE..............................57 3. CHAPTER THREE: THE POETIC IDEA (DAS DICHTERISCHE) .........................................................................................................129 PART II: THE TRAGEDIAN SCHILLER ...................................................187 4. CHAPTER FOUR: SCHILLER’S DEBUT PLAY: „MENSCH... SEIN": DIE RÄUBER .....................................................................202 5. CHAPTER FIVE: DON CARLOS (1787) Ein dramatisches Gedicht .........................................................................................................265 CONCLUSION: REFLECTIONS ON SCHILLER’S PROFESSIONAL IDENTITY .....................................................................................................365 BIBLIOGRAPHY…………………………………………………………..377 6 EDITIONS AND ABBREVIATIONS I. ABBREVIATIONS ÄE Friedrich Schiller, Über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen in einer Reihe von Briefen. (FA 8: 556-676). Companion Steven D. Martinson, (ed.) A Companion to the Works of Friedrich Schiller. Discourse Rene Descartes, Discourse of a Method from the Well Guiding of Reason, and the Discovery of Truth in the Sciences. Printed by Thomas Newcombe. London: 1649. D/R Kenneth Dewhurst and Nigel Reeves, Friedrich Schiller. Medicine, Psychology, Literature. Elend der Geschichte Norbert Oellers, Schiller. Elend der Geschichte, Glanz der Kunst. FA Friedrich Schiller, Werke und Briefe. (ed.) Georg Kurscheidt. Bd._8. Frankfurt am Main: Deutscher Verlag: 2002. HT Martinson, Steven D. Harmonious Tensions: The Writings of Friedrich Schiller. PP Friedrich Schiller, Philosophie der Physiognomie. Rede Jakob Friedrich Abel, Rede über das Genie. Rede über Güte Friedrich Schiller, “Rede über Die Frage: Gehört allzuviel Güte. Leutseeligkeit und große Freygebigkeit im engsten Verstande zur Tugend?“ Schaubühne-Rede “Was kann eine gute stehende Schaubühne eigentlich wirken?“ Schillers Gedichte Friedrich Schiller, Schiller. Sämtliche Werke. Gedichte. SHW Aurnhammer, Achim, et al., Schiller und die höfische Welt. 7 II. EDITIONS Schiller, Friedrich. Werke. Nationalausgabe. Weimar: Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1962. Schiller, Friedrich. Werke und Briefe. (ed.) Georg Kurscheidt. Bd.11. Frankfurt am Main: Deutscher Verlag: 2002. Schiller, Friedrich. Briefe II. 1795-1805. Friedrich Schiller Werke und Briefe in zwölf Bänden. (ed.) Norbert Oellers. Bd. 12. Frankfurt am Main: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 2005. Schiller, Friedrich. Schiller. Sämtliche Werke. Gedichte. Berlin-Weimar: Aufbau Verlag, 1980. Schiller, Friedrich. Die Räuber. Durchgs. Ausgabe Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam, 2001. Schiller, Friedrich. Don Carlos Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam, 1979. 8 ABSTRACT My dissertation, „Ich bin und bleibe EORȕ Poet und als Poet werde ich auch sterben. “ Friedrich Schiller and the Role of the Poetic Idea in his Emerging Professional Identity as a Poet-Dramaturge, examines how Schiller’s deep sense of poetic calling and his desire to ennoble human character informed his literary works. His conceptions of drama, early dramatic practice, and the exogenesis of his own aesthetic theories crystallized his understanding of what it meant to be a poet. Furthermore, Schiller’s studies on human physiology strongly impacted his pursuit of portraying and developing whole characters on the stage as models of human behavior in the interest of forming an efficacious society. Schiller’s main material was the human being. His study of human nature, I argue, greatly informed his poetic impulse. As a dramatist, Schiller sought to capture human beings’ best possible expressions. The serious play of creating poetic form—therewith cultivating the beautiful--became for him a joyous inspiration. In reestablishing ‘form’ as a key literary concept, the field of literary studies pursues ‘poetics of culture’ and diverse cultures of form.1 I contend that the imaginative intellectual quality of his poetic pursuit, das Dichterische, becomes intuitively comprehensible to us through Schiller’s conceptions and creative productions of form via Geistestätigkeit, the purpose of which is to drive human faculties towards mutual cooperation and wholeness of being. 1 See, for example, Robert Matthias Erdbeer, Florian Kläger, and Klaus Stierstorfer, 201. 9 This study thus explores how Schiller sought to counteract the one-sided development of human beings through his presentations of dramatic characters and their interactions. We focus, first, on theoretical conceptions of the aesthetic education of human beings and, second, the dynamic relationships that Schiller’s creative acts explore in his dramas, Die Räuber and Don Carlos. We seek to account for the sources that fed Schiller’s poetic imagination and the forces that determined the forms of his creative activities. Then trace the manners in which Schiller’s concept of the beautiful expose new interpretive perspectives, in particular how the poet’s dramatic art ennobles human character. Methodology Schiller dedicated himself to the creative activity of the light of his mind, his writings will guide my thoughts on this topic. Selected contributions to scholarship that relate to our topic are also consulted. We embark on a process of inquiry into the imaginative-intellectual quality of Schiller’s poetic pursuits that is both chronological and inductive in nature. Following the intuitive process that developed Schiller’s poetic consciousness, we scrutinize “sources” that fed the German author’s imagination and “forces” that guided his understanding of himself as a poet- dramaturge.2 Throughout this project, we engage the following seminal theoretical writings: Die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen in einer Reihe von Briefen, Über das 2 Helmut Rehder, „The Four Seals of Schiller.” A Schiller Symposium (11). Following Helmut Rehder’s contribution to the Schiller Symposium of 1960, I propose to