PHILISTINE IN GERMAN LITERATURE: GOETHE AND THE ROMANTICS

Abstract

The article traces the function of the word philistine in German literature — from Sturm und Drang to Romanticism. Its etymological premises, two biblical variants are touched upon, its statement in secular literature is fixed. The initial use of the word philistine — in the socio-philosophical works — and accompanying, and sometimes preceding it, the corresponding artistic design of the concept is noted. Th e author considers the emergence of the antithesis ‘philistine — genius’ in the aesthetics of Sturm und Drang and the change of Goethe’s Sturmer ideas about philistine to the period of late Romanticism — an unambiguously negative accentuation of the word. Th e use of the word philistine at two stages of Romanticism is analyzed as an indicator of reaction to the innovations of the French Revolution of 1789. Th e meaning of the word among the Jena Romantics is revealed: the definition of a nature devoid of a romantic worldview — and its subsequent reinterpretation in the propaganda lexicon of the Heidelbergers as a statement of the German ‘elect’, which develops into anti-Semitism. Th e actualization and politicization of the concept of philistine in the course of the social movement in Germany on the eve and aft er the revolution of 1848 is noted.