NOVALIS, NIETZSCHE, AND THE RHETORIC OF ENCHANTMENT by ROBERT EARL MOTTRAM A DISSERTATION Presented to the Department of German and Scandinavian and the Graduate School of the University of Oregon in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy June 2015 DISSERTATION APPROVAL PAGE Student: Robert Earl Mottram Title: Novalis, Nietzsche, and the Rhetoric of Enchantment This dissertation has been accepted and approved in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in the Department of German and Scandinavian by: Kenneth S. Calhoon Chairperson Michael Stern Core Member Martin Klebes Core Member Forest Pyle Institutional Representative and Scott L. Pratt Dean of the Graduate School Original approval signatures are on file with the University of Oregon Graduate School. Degree awarded June 2015 ii © 2015 Robert Earl Mottram iii DISSERTATION ABSTRACT Robert Earl Mottram Doctor of Philosophy Department of German and Scandinavian June 2015 Title: Novalis, Nietzsche, and the Rhetoric of Enchantment This work reopens the question of Nietzsche’s relationship to Early German Romanticism through critical readings of moments of enchantment in the writings of Novalis. It unveils the seemingly conciliatory gestures of enchantment as moments of discord between subject and figure, self and world. These readings attend to the tropes, ironic registers, and performative dimensions of texts that occlude rather than facilitate a strict demarcation between Novalis and Nietzsche. That the thinkers in question are shown to anticipate their critical reception is consonant with the present work, which, in foregrounding both the entanglement between self and language and the materiality of reading, attunes itself to enchantment as the manifestation of compulsion, imposition, and ecstasy. The principle of continuity that allows Nietzsche and Novalis to be read and to read each other is asceticism. Its secret ally, following Nietzsche, is the absolute will to truth. In its function of assigning an aim to the aimless, asceticism provides for both truth and its incessant undermining, for form as well as flight. It engenders a mode of expression that is only as true as it is provisional. Through a reading of Nietzsche’s Apollonian and Dionysian as the collision of epistemological anxiety and its anthropological stopgap, this work advocates an operation of double-reading iv that views the conceptual sphere itself as palliative and the nonconceptual as the possibility of an ascetic flight from ossification. In setting such double-reading into motion, this work traces the subterranean relations between Novalis and Nietzsche that allow the proto-Modernism of the former to interrogate the residual Romanticism of the latter. An erudite study that combines problems of representation with discussions of the theater, painting, and music, this work seeks to reenchant questions of interpretation and reading that constantly threaten to petrify into all-too-self- evident truths. v CURRICULUM VITAE NAME OF AUTHOR: Robert Earl Mottram GRADUATE AND UNDERGRADUATE SCHOOLS ATTENDED: University of Oregon, Eugene University of Montana, Missoula DEGREES AWARDED: Doctor of Philosophy, German, 2015, University of Oregon Master of Arts, German, 2008, University of Montana Bachelor of Arts, German, 2006, University of Montana AREAS OF SPECIAL INTEREST: Literature, Philosophy, and Aesthetics in the long 19th Century PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE: Graduate Teaching Fellow, Department of German and Scandinavian, University of Oregon, 2009-2015 GRANTS, AWARDS, AND HONORS: Departmental Summer Doctoral Research Fellowship, University of Oregon, 2014 Astrid M. Williams Dissertation Fellowship, University of Oregon, 2012 Roger Nicholls Memorial Fellowship, University of Oregon, 2011 vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am indebted to the Department of German and Scandinavian at the University of Oregon for financial as well as intellectual support for the duration of this project. Likewise, I am grateful to have a family that supports higher education. Additionally, I thank the members of my dissertation committee: Michael Stern, Martin Klebes, and Tres Pyle. I am especially grateful to my dissertation director, Kenneth S. Calhoon, for his invaluable insight, patience, and example. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page I. ASCETICISM AND FORM ............................................................................................................ 1 Preface ........................................................................................................................................... 1 Playback: Irony and Method ................................................................................................. 7 Reintroductions ......................................................................................................................... 15 Ecce Homology ............................................................................................................................ 18 II. SHIPS AT SEA: ALLEGORIES OF THE VANISHING SUBJECT IN NOVALIS, NIETZSCHE, AND J. M. W. TURNER ........................................................................................... 22 Introduction ................................................................................................................................. 22 Novalis’ Robinson Crusoe and the Recession of Land ............................................... 23 Listening Bound ......................................................................................................................... 31 The Moment of Petrifaction .................................................................................................. 56 III. THE LIMITS OF AESTHETIC JUSTIFICATION: READING DIE CHRISTENHEIT ODER EUROPA WITH NIETZSCHE’S “THEATER-EYE” ..................... 70 Introduction ................................................................................................................................. 70 The Stage of History ................................................................................................................. 70 The Pathos of Distance: Aesthetic Justification and the Justification of Aesthetics ......................................................................................................................... 74 (Dis)figurations of Historical Ascent ................................................................................ 85 The “Dizzying Heights” of Interested Spectatorship .................................................. 99 IV. CRITICAL DESCENT: CAVERNS OF SUBJECTIVITY ..................................................... 105 Introduction ................................................................................................................................. 105 viii Chapter Page In the Grip of Descent .............................................................................................................. 106 Chthonic Asymmetry: Mythification and Romanticization ..................................... 109 The Hermit Sings: Music and the Fantasmatic Body ................................................. 119 Heinrich and the (In)coherence of Meaning .................................................................. 133 V. SUMMONING THE PHANTASMIC: VAMPIRISM IN NOVALIS’ HYMNEN AN DIE NACHT AND NIETZSCHE ............................................................................................... 148 Introduction ................................................................................................................................. 148 The Vampire as Body and Representation ..................................................................... 149 Anatomy and Vivisection ....................................................................................................... 156 Dematerialization ...................................................................................................................... 168 VI. SYNTACTIC MIGRATIONS: TRACING THE SUBLIMITY OF DISCIPLESHIP IN SCHILLER, NIETZSCHE, AND NOVALIS’ DIE LEHRLINGE ZU SAIS ............................... 177 Aberrations of Play ................................................................................................................... 177 Dissimulation and the Artifice of Nature ........................................................................ 180 Allegories of Edification ......................................................................................................... 187 Un-Veiling Sais ............................................................................................................................ 196 APPENDIX: KEY TO WORKS CITED .......................................................................................... 206 REFERENCES CITED ....................................................................................................................... 207 ix LIST OF FIGURES Figure Page 1. J. M. W. Turner, Snowstorm—Steambship off a Harbour’s Mouth, 1842 ............ 49 2. J. M. W. Turner, Peace—Burial at Sea, 1842. ................................................................. 60 3. J. M. W. Turner, Slavers throwing overboard the dead and dying—typhoon coming on, 1840 ........................................................................................................................ 66 x CHAPTER I ASCETICISM AND FORM [T]he form in which something may be thought, is not indifferent to what is thought. Adorno,