Le Philosophique chez Gotthold Ephraim Lessing: Individu et vérité by Charlotte CoulombeauLessing im Reinkarnationsdiskurs: Eine Untersuchung zu Kontext und Wirkung von G. E. Lessings Texten zur Seelenwanderung by Daniel Cyranka

Abstract

MLR, 102.2, 2007 553 positive proof of the outright historical 'scepticism' thatNiefanger (p. 293) sees in them. Gottsched's Parisische Bluthochzeit is a remarkable example of historical theatre,not because it shows amodern 'uncertainty' inhistory (p. 300), but because, through extreme fidelity to itshistorical source, it fails completely as drama. Uncer tainty (as to the guilty party) could be the honest answer to the historical question. But that isnot a satisfactory dramatic answer. Agis is a dull enough work in all con science, but since the action is centred on the hero's determination to return Sparta to the path of Lycurgus, it is rightly singled out as a genuine historical drama. As indeed might be Schlegel's Canut, which shows aman (Ulfo) leftbehind by history. Lessing's Henzi is indeed a speculative fragment,but its main thrust isdramatur gical.When Lessing asserts thathe neither knows nor cares whether Ducret was in (historical) fact the betrayer, he is not relativizing historical truth,but declaring his allegiance, as a trueAristotelian, to the truthof 'Nature'. His 'concept of historical truth' (p. 343) is aworld away fromHayden White's, as a perusal of thecontemporary Lemnius letterswould show.More interesting for the student of drama is the im pact of history on actual behaviour that emerges through the characters' propensity forpatterning themselves on Roman 'heroes'. There is a poignant echo, later,when Odoardo Galotti demonstrates tohis daughter that there still is at least one fatherof the ancient Roman stamp. Klopstock did seek lessons for the present in a 'German' past, but itwas one that lacked substance and yielded no material for a dramatic action worthy of the name. Goethe's Gotz does conjure up a convincingly German heroic age. But that is Sengle's territory(see Friedrich Sengle, Das historischeDrama inDeutschland (Stutt gart:Metzler, I952)). And thisbook isnothing ifnot anAnti-Sengle. NEWCASTLE ALANMENHENNET [ProfessorMenhennet, a regular contributor to MLR, died on i6November 2006.] Le Philosophique chez Gotthold Ephraim Lessing: individu et verite. By CHARLOTTE COULOMBEAU. (Wolfenbiitteler Forschungen, 105)Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. 2005. 652 pp. EI28. ISBN 978-3-447-05I88-0. Lessing imReinkarnationsdiskurs: Eine Untersuchung zu Kontext und Wirkung von G. E. Lessings Texten zur Seelenwanderung. By DANIEL CYRANKA. (Kirche Konfession- Religion, 49) Gottingen: Vandenhoeck& Ruprecht. 2005. 522 pp. E62. ISBN 978-3-8997I-I98-I. Charlotte Coulombeau's massive work examines thephilosophical significance of all major areas of Lessing's activity under such headings asmetaphysics, poetry, scho larship, theology,history, and ethics, and identifieshis attitude towards truthas their unifying factor.The author's approach is systematic,with a high degree of abstrac tion and generalization. She defines the relationship between the different areas by analysing such distinctions as theory and practice, ethics and aesthetics, and tran scendence and immanence. In itself, a systematic approach of this kind is perfectly legitimate. But when it claims todiscover a parallel systematicity inLessing's thought, itbecomes more de batable. For although theauthor does on occasion concede thatLessing's writings are full of inconsistencies (e.g. p. 490), she claims to detect an underlying system, fore shadowing those ofGerman idealism, inhismetaphysical writings (p. 264) and even identifies 'une architectonique reconstituee de la pensee lessingienne' in his works as a whole (pp. 54i and 562). This conclusion, which goes against the consensus of Lessing scholarship over the last fifty years thathis thought isunsystematic, becomes 554 Reviews even more problematic when themetaphysical system in question ispieced together fromphilosophical fragments ranging in date from I753 to 1780 (p. 233), and when these unpublished fragments are accorded the same weight asmajor published works such asDie Erziehungdes Menschengeschlechts (pp. 30I and 306). The untypical anti intellectual fragmentGedanken uiberdieHerrnhuter of I750 (ormore probably I75 1, for it is full of echoes of Rousseau's first Discours of that year) is also given undue prominence (pp. 142, 4I0, 543, etc.). There is little sign here of that differentiated treatment of Lessing's works, and of his changes of attitude over the years, which one finds inanother French work towhich the author pays justified homage, Georges Pons's magisterial Lessing et lechristianisme (Paris: Didier, I964). Such weaknesses are compounded by the author's apparent failure to consult the new I2-volume edition of Lessing's Werke und...