Goethe's "Ilmenau" and the Origins of the Aesthetic State

Abstract

MATT ERLIN Goethe's "Ilmenau" and the Origins of the Aesthetic State Goethe's 1775 decision to move to Weimar met with skepticism on all sides. Father Johann Caspar Goethe was openly hostile to his son's attachment to the insignificant statelet and its inexperienced duke, and peers wondered why the erstwhile champion of titanic individualism, the affluent citizen of a free imperial city, would willingly subject himself to the constraints of life as a court poet.1 Many believed that his artistic career was over, and the marked decline in literary activity that characterized his first ten years in the duchy seemed to confirm their suspicions. Goethe was far from inactive during this period, but progress on major projects faltered. After finishing the prose version of Iphigenia in 1779 and a satirical adaptation of Aristophanes' The Birds in 1780, he failed to complete any literary work of length for five years.2 Confronted with both the reduction in volume and the shift in the nature of the works produced during these years, scholars have often viewed them as a kind of latency period that comes to an end only with Goethe's 1786 departure for Italy and his equally decisive engagement with the French Revolution.3 The works that were produced during this period, however, deserve closer attention. No one would deny the impact of Italy and the Revolution on Goethe's artistic and intellectual development, but crucial aspects of his later thought, especially as regards the relationship between art and politics, were already taking shape in response to the challenges of this first Weimar decade. W. Daniel Wilson has pointed out this period's significance as it pertains to Goethe's political activity more narrowly defined. As he writes in Das Goethe-Tabu, " [es gab] in politischen Fragen viel mehr Kontinuität zwischen der vorrevolutionären und der revolutionären Zeit... als meist angenommen wird."4 The evidence suggests that a similar claim can be made for his conception of the political function of art, more specifically, for the notion of aesthetic education that evolves into a central pillar of Weimar Classicism. Goethe and Schiller's efforts to cultivate "true humanity" through art must of course be seen in the context of the perceived catastrophe of the Revolution. Nonetheless, Goethe's early Weimar works already reveal an intense engagement with questions regarding the appropriate and inappropriate relationship between the aesthetic and the political spheres. Torquato Tasso, of which two acts had been completed by 1781, constitutes the most obvious example of this Goethe Yearbook XIII (2005) 54 Matt Erlin engagement, but lphigenia aufTauris can also be read as a reflection on the status of the artist-intellectual in the absolutist state.5 The most remarkable lyric investigation of art and politics from this period is to be found in the poem "Ilmenau" composed on the occasion of the duke's twenty-sixth birthday in September 1783- Given the circumstances surrounding the poem's production, it is not surprising that the few existing interpretations of "Ilmenau" have used it primarily to shed light on Goethe's relationship to Carl August, or on the author's state of mind in the early 1780s. In the words of Hans Tümmler, for example, "Ilmenau" solves "das Rätsel dieser Lebensfreundschaft" between poet and duke.6 Subsequent interpretations have recognized the need for new perspectives and have addressed the poem's significance for understanding the evolution of Goethe's aesthetic views, but here as well the primary goal seems to be a reconnection of the poem's pronouncements to specific events and experiences in the author's life.7 A recent essay by Theo Stammen breaks new ground by emphasizing the political and naturalscientific content of the poem. Stammen, however, is less interested in the way in which this content intersects with the implicit poetological reflections contained in the work.8 Yet precisely the complex character of this intersection makes "Ilmenau" unique and justifies an exhaustive interpretation. Although the biographical looms large in the poem, it can also be seen as a reflection on the political function of poetry in the absolutist state. Its self-referential narrative thematizes and problematizes several conceptions...