Hörmann, Raphael (2007) Authoring the revolution, 1819- 1848/49: radical German and English literature and the shift from political to social revolution. PhD thesis. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/1774/ Copyright and moral rights for this thesis are retained by the author A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the Author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the Author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given Glasgow Theses Service http://theses.gla.ac.uk/ [email protected] University of Glasgow Faculty of Arts PhD-Thesis in Comparative Literature Authoring the Revolution, 1819-1848/49: Radical German and English Literature and the Shift from Political to Social Revolution Submitted by Raphael HoUrmann @ Raphael H6nnann 2007 Acknowledgments I like to thank the various people and agenciesthat have provided vital help during various stages of this research project. First of all, I am greatly thankful to my supervisors, Professor Mark Ward and Dr. Laura Martin. Laura's pragmatic and practical advice and assistanceproved very helpful for overcomingall major obstacles in the course of my PhD studies at the University of Glasgow. Mark has not only been a tireless proof-reader at various stagesof the thesis, but his great enthusiasm with which he supported my project has been a continuous source of inspiration and encouragement throughout the writing and revising process. The same applies to my friend and fellow PhD-student Eugene de Klerk, who was much more than a mereproof-reader. His extremelyinsightful and astutecriticism often causedme to rethink and reformulate my argument. Moreover, he has been a great friend throughoutand was alwaysthere when 'the Beast'proved a tough enemy.Among the many other friends in Scotlandand elsewhereI like to thank particularlymy fellow Phl)-students Meggie Hiley and Ruth Irwin, my one-time flatmates Lorenzo Ranalli and Ben Ward in Scotland, my outdoor mission friend Eleanor MacGregor and Niamh Neylon, Barbel and Micha Frank who have all beenmost faithful friends ever sinceour student days together in Konstanz. Last but not least, my girl-friend Chantal Riekel has beena constantsource of supportthrough her lovelinessand her greatsense of humour. In respect to the final form of this thesis I am also thankful to my examiners Dr. Barbara Bums and Professor Martin Swales for their very diligent corrections and thought-provoking comments and suggestions. In respect to my research on Georg Weerth, Dr. Bemd FOllner of the Heinrich-Heine-Institutin DUsseldorfhas been extremely helpful. Not only did he kindly provide me with an electronic draft copy of a ii brilliant new edition of Georg Weerth's works he has been working on, but his enthusiasmfor this unjustly neglectedrevolutionary writer has been inspirational. Regarding financial assistance,I ain indebted to the AHRC for a tuition fees scholarship and the Faculty of Art for a one-year Postgraduate Scholarship. However my greatest and warmest thanks in this respect go out to my grandma Maria Hennig, whose generousfinancial support has enabledme to write this thesis in the first place. Finally I like to dedicate this thesis to all my good friends (also those not explicitly mentioned here) for their enduring friendship over the years. iii Abstract This thesis addresses, from a comparative perspective, an important lacuna in the research devoted to German and English revolutionary literature in the period from 1819 up to the European revolutions of 1848/49. It illustrates that a major shift from a concept of political revolution to one of social revolution took place within these years which is reflected in radical literature between the 'Peterloo Massacre' (1819) and the failure of the bourgeois political revolution of 1848/49. During this epoch of European history the entire radical discourse increasingly challenged the republican ideology of political revolution moving towards a social- republican or even socialist notion of social revolution. While the advocatesof the former assertedthat a mere changein the systemof governmentwould be sufficient to achieve decisive change, those who adheredto the latter revolutionary ideology insisted that a transformation of the socio-economic system, the capitalist mode of production and of the distribution of property and capital was necessary genuinely to change contemporary society. The shift from one concept to the other that can located both in the majority of contemporary revolutionary discourse (both literary and non-fictional) and within the texts of particular writers has to be viewed as a gradual and painful process of transition fraught with strong class anxieties, ideological tensions and contradictions. Since it encompassedthe non-fictional and fictional discourseand revolution alike, this development will be investigated from an interdisciplinary, intertextual and inter-discursive perspective, which decisively questions the validity of the still dominant intra-literary approach to radical literary texts. Theoretically based on selected writings of the early Marx and Engels on ideology, consciousness and political and social revolution as well as on more recent Marxist theories of cultural studies, this study shows how the contemporary philosophical, socio-political, socio-economic and literary discourse on revolution must be regarded as closely interlink-ed. This interconnection is not limited to an ideological, but also extends to a rhetorical and even metaphorical level. Ho%%-c%-cr,although it foregroundsthese shared textual elements,the purpose of this thesis is not to add yet anotherphilological analysis of literary works, but rather to flesh out the shared ideological involvement of the fictional and non-fictional revolutionary discourse. Texts and authors drawn upon to prove these theses include in the British context of 1819 Percy Bysshe Shelley and British radical journalists such as Richard Carlilc as as working-class pamphleteers. In order to analysc the shift in revolutionary discourse in the years between the French bourgeois July Revolution of 1830 and the early 1840s, texts by the literary rc%-olutionary writers Lud%%igB6mc, llcinrich 11cine, '17homasLovcll Bcddocs and Georg BUchncr are contcxtualised -*%ith the pamphlets and writings by the most radically socio-rcvolutionary among the French early socialists, Louis Auguste Blanqui, by rcbelliousweavers, by the Parisian German early proletarian mo%-cmcntas well as Marx's earliest socio-philosophical justification of a proletarian social revolution, the "Einleitung Zur Kritik der Hegel'schen Rechts- Philosophie" (1844). The analysis of the years between the mid-1840s up to 1848149 focuses Engels Marx on the German Communist .%-ritcrs Georg %Vecrth,Moses HeB, and and their common project to write a Marxist poetics of revolution. V Table of Contents Introduction I 1. Charting the Limits of Political Revolution: Percy Bysshe Shelley's Mask qfAtiarcliy, "Song to the Men of England" and A Ailosophical Vie)t, ofReforn: (18 19-182 0) 35 I. I. Political, Social andlMoral Revolution: The Stakes of Shelley's Dilemma 35 1.2. Social Revolution at the Crossroads of Republicanism and Socialism 43 1.3. The Ethics or Proletarian Resistance: Moral versus Physical Force 59 1.4. "Song to theMen of England" versus TheMask qfAnarchy: The Limits of Moral Revolution and the Collapse of the Concept of 'Aforal Economy' 69 I. S. "'I I We I lave Eaten From the Tree of Knovs-ledge" - Proletarian Socio- Revolutionary Consciousnessand the Bourgeois Didactics of Revolution 84 2. The Social Turn in Revolutionary Ideology during the 1830s and early 1840s: Heine, Brime, Beddoes and BUchner 90 2.1. The Socio-Ifistorical Background and Revolutionary Ideology in 1830s Europe 90 2.2. A Social Revolutionwithout the Proletariat? The Myth of Ileine as a Socio- Revolutionary Author 96 2.2.1. A Programmeof ProletarianSocial Revolution? Heine'sManifesto of Sensual Liberation in Zur Geschichteder Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland(183 5) and its Critics 96 21.2. Prophes)ingthe Social Revolution: Heine as a Precusorto Marx? 112 2.23. I-Icinc'sLuthrig B6rne: Eine Denkschrift (1840): A Polcmic againstProlctarian Social Rcvolution 119 2.2.4. "Ein Fluch dem König, dem König der Reichen": Heine's"Die Schlesischen NN"cbcr"(1844) as a Call for Prolctarian Social Revolution? 125 2J. 'Ter Krieg der Arinen gegen die Reichen": Bürne's Shifting Perspective on the Proletarian Social Revolution 147 2.4. "With upright Toasting Fork and Toothless Cat": The Impending Proletarian Revoft against the Effete Bourgeoisie in Beddoes and Blichner 164 3. The Drama Class Struggle Social Revolution: Georg Weerth, of ft and Marx and the Evolution of a Socialist Poetics of Revolution 175 3.1., Nfodern Tragedy and the Proletariat as its Ifero 175 32. "Und wullte nicht warum": The Tragic Lack of Social Consciousnessin "Es war ein armer Schneider" (1845) 188 3.3. Anagnorisis, Catharsis, Peripeteid in the Proletarian Revolutionary Drama 202 3.4. The Revolutionary Drama bctvw-cenTragedy Farce: Marx's Weerth's 15 and and Poetics of the Revolutions or 1848149 224 3.4.1. Marx's Shifting Poeticsof Revolution from 1844to 1852 224 3.4.2. The Farceof ChartismAccording