Andrea Wulf brings back the first romanticism by retracing the very romantic history of the circle of men and women who in Germany invented the modern self.
After his biography of Alexander von Humboldt published in 2015, the German writer and historian specialist in natural history Andrea Wulf proposes to draw up, in her latest work Magnificent rebelsthe living portrait of an era which, in Jena, from 1794 to 1806, saw the first German romanticism flourish and die. Rather than a study of the history of philosophy seeking to explain the genesis of concepts and their developments within systems, or else an analysis of literary and critical works, the work takes the side of clarifying the nature of relationships – of friendship, of love, but also of enmity – of a community of individuals who, together, invented the self with a modernity to which we still belong. By means of a careful study of the different correspondence and critical works, we access the idiosyncratic features of men and women who were as well poets as novelist, translators and philosophers, until they introduce themselves into the prosaic intimacy of their lives.
The prologue of the book first presents some biographical features of Andrea Wulf to explain the reasons which led him to invest this moment of German cultural history, showing how our lives still hear the echo of what was created in Jena for more than a decade. Indeed, it is to our own present and, therefore, to our own subjectivity that the reading of the first romantics brings us back. In this, it is justified that the reading of their works is not intended for the only curious of German intellectual history, but that it reveals a necessary path to us for self -awareness and the understanding of our present. “” Their ideas have infiltrated so deeply in our culture and our behavior that we have forgotten who we hold them (P. 45-46).
As a prologue, this work of memory opens us to the romantic world of Jena by the recall of a striking episode of the life of Caroline Böhmer, née Michaelis. We discover her imprisoned for her revolutionary ideas with her Auguste daughter, pregnant with a new child, desperately looking to recover her freedom and hide her pregnancy. Here we see the first features of a subjectivity affirming his freedom against the heteronomous powers of a transformation world. It is then the marriage that she contracts some time after her release with August Wilhelm Schlegel, which makes the romantic community to come possible. “” He would make a good companion to count on, and would give him the social status which was so cruelly lacking. A new name, she hoped, would augur a new start (P. 118). This new start would lead the two young people to Jena, from which the romantic circle was gradually being formed.
We can only rent the place rendered to Caroline Böhmer throughout the work, a figure which was too often, not to say systematically, overshadowed in its depth. As Andrea Wulf reminds us, she was however the heart of the Cercle d’Iéna: “ L’ “spirit of Caroline “reigned supreme (P. 172), we can read, and it is fair to have returned his place among the big names of the first romanticism.
Birth of the romantic circle
If the first part of the work ends on the triumph of Caroline in Jena, it is however with the generation of Sturm und drang What begins the investigation into the genesis of the first romanticism. Andrea Wulf located in her narration the trigger for the drama in July 1794, during the meeting of Goethe and Schiller at a conference of the Natural History Society of Jena. True rebirth for these two authors, who, although famous for The suffering of young werther (1774) and Brigands (1781), were then looking for a new inspiration. Their friendship and intellectual collaboration gave birth to the review Hoursfollowed later by Muses almanacwhich will have great success in the literary world, calling for many contributors to publish both poems and critical reviews, philosophical and aesthetic essays, as well as translations.
Among his most regular and most serious contributors are August Schlegel the first who, by the translations of Shakespeare which he made with Caroline, as well as tests on poetry, made a strong impression on Schiller. The latter brought the couple to Jena, around whom the future protagonists of the romantic circle were going to be closed. It was then Friedrich Schlegel who entered the scene, soon joined by his friend Novalis, pseudonym of Friedrich von Hardenberg, ready to revolutionize the ways of thinking and writing. The circle was indeed going to challenge theestablishment Literary to assert radically new conceptions of human existence, giving creative subjectivity a power capable of grasping truth by means of imagination, poeticizing natural sciences to unify art and science.
However, such a revolution could not have occurred without the triumph of Fichte on the German philosophical scene, the same year when Goethe and Schiller became friends. Revolutionary personality both by his political ideas and by his philosophy of the absolute ego, her teaching in Jena, from 1794 to 1799 (date of his “ resignation Following the quarrel of atheism engaged with Duke Charles-Auguste), a whole new generation of students in search of a new philosophical system. A pretender to fulfill Kantian criticism, Fichte gave the ego an absolute freedom capable of overthrowing the order in place to replace it a form of free community. Andrea Wulf thus reminds us of the leading role he played in the constitution of the first romanticism.
Athenaeum
By resuming from a figure dear to Andrea Wulf – Alexander von Humboldt -, the second part of the book first reminds us of the importance of natural sciences and their developments at the end of XVIIIe century. But against a science of understanding, devoid of imagination and freedom, it was still necessary to unite it with a poetic spirit to reveal in nature the depth of the self. We thus understand that this literary movement is inseparable from contemporary research in natural sciences, as well as a philosophy capable of uniting the different human productions in a whole. Novalis, who worked in the administration of salt mines, thus sought in the depths of the earth a truth allowing to clarify the night of the self and to constitute a new universal encyclopedia. Later, it is the young Schelling who will join the romantic circle in Jena and teach there at the University Naturphilosophyhaving to complete the Fichteen system.
The Schlegel brothers, however, blurred with Schiller, and the intellectual life of Jena experienced a new metamorphosis. Exempted for some time in Berlin on the advice of Goethe, the circle, joined by Ludwig Tieck and Dorothea Veit, tackled the writing of a review intended to supplant existing literary journals. L’Athenaeum experienced six volumes published between 1798 and 1800, in which these friends experienced the writing of the fragment together and theorized romantic irony. A true declaration of war against the German literary world, with the exception of Goethe, this review brought them as much glory as many enemies. “” It turned out that sales (…) were not up to their ambition. But people borrowed it, the review was hand in hand, and its long -term impact was considerable (P. 230-231).
The summer of the year 1798, in resort in Dresden, certainly marked the summit of the romantic circle. Besides the “ Japanese palate », The city housed one of the most beautiful collections of paintings in the country in the Gemäldegalerie. “” They bicked and argued, passed in front of the works in one direction then in the other to scrutinize them from all angles, raised their voice in their exaltation, ignoring other visitors or not notating them (P. 238). It was also in Dresden that they met Schelling, who was later to tie a love affair with Caroline Schlegel, before marrying her.
Fragmentation
However, the circle was going to experience deep internal dissensions and little by little disintegration. In addition to the scandal caused by the Lucinde From Friedrich Schlegel, revealing the intimacy of his antics with Dorothea Veit, Caroline’s connection with Schelling was going to feed new tensions. “” By taking Schelling for lover, she poisoned the friendship well (P. 340). The tragic events followed one another, and the circle dispersed, abandoning the hopes placed in their community.
In addition to the romantic circle which passed out in the early 1800s, it is the city of Jena that we then gradually see in the last two parts of the work. Fichte’s departure in 1798 for Berlin, that of Schelling in 1803, the death of Schiller in 1805, then the capture of the city by the Napoleonic troops, all these events had to vanish the dreams and promises of an entire generation. However, it was Hegel who, so far in the shadow of Schelling, was to accomplish by his Phenomenology of the Spirit Romantic fate, and supplant his old friend, as well as Fichte, on the philosophical scene.
However, this decline of the romantic circle should not be seen as a simple failure. Andrea Wulf reminds us how these few years have helped to forge the conscience that we have of our world, and, thus, to develop a new relationship with existence. “” Only self -awareness allows us to experience empathy towards others. Only introspection allows us to question our behavior with others (P. 458). It is thus up to us to reread the first romantics not to mop in a certain nostalgia, but to raise our consciousness and open up to otherness, from what it is only possible for us to alter ourselves, and, in this sense, as the romantics wanted, unite our body and our mind to the whole of nature.
The French reader can therefore be delighted to have access in his language to a synthesis of biographical research published essentially in German language, written in a language accessible to an audience foreign to the works of the time, while remaining very rewarding both for the familiar reader of German romanticism, as for the specialist. If the book chooses not to propose a fundamentally new conceptual interpretation, it gives, on the other hand, a striking portrait of the multiple lives disappeared in the formalism of their conceptual systems, as well as an exploration of the living movement of poetic creation, today sealed in literary works detached from their world.
The bibliography, essentially German -speaking and English, is precious. We will also appreciate the map of Jena supplied, as well as the pictorial representations, facilitating the creation of an imaginary place capable of welcoming all the characters of the “ drama »D’Iéna. In this this work agrees with its object: favor, as the romantics wanted, the creative imagination that the reader must implement to grasp the truth of romantic life. So, whether by reading it according to our reveries or more meticulously for research, we are doing through The rebels magnificent A part of romanticism that lies in each of us.