Schiller-Handbuch (review)

Abstract

Goethe Yearbook 331 Beautiful to "the Tragic," or at least puts the tragic at the tip of the pyramid of art and downgrades the non-tragic. In the end one must of course question Ui principle whether the artist can actuaUy intuit and depict the ultimately necessary connections between Nature and existence and whether such depiction can UifaUibly evoke the proper accepting Dionysian understanding and response Ui the spectator. In the Ught of the twentieth-century historical experience of malevolence and destruction affirmation becomes impossible (at least in the moral reahn) and we are overcome not by pity but by horror and outrage; any attempt to make the order of Nature the ultimate culprit and beneficiary of the process is not higher understanding but an evasion. Yet Costazza's work is fascinating, the most searching study of Moritz's aesthetic thought so far; the two volumes together, quite aside from what they contribute to our understanding of Moritz, add much to our understanding of eighteenth-century aesthetic thought Ui general and are to be highly recommended. University of California, Irvine Thomas P. Saine Helmut Koopmann, ed., Schüler-Handbuch. Stuttgart: Kröner, 1998. 966 pp. Helmut Koopmann has assembled a team of 25 distinguished contributors for his Schiller-Handbuch, and the generaUy high standard of theü 44 pieces means that it deserves to be consulted regularly by aU students and researchers. To discover the overaU strategy behind it, we must turn first to the editor's own contributions, which amount to about a quarter of the whole. The crucial programmatic statement is a paragraph in the introduction (xvü) where Koopmann writes, "Schüler erscheüit hier (auch) Ui seiner Fähigkeit, ein schier unermeßüches Arsenal an überkommenen VorsteUungen, Themen, Stoffen Ui seinem Werk synthesieren zu können. . . . Die VorsteUung vom aus sich selbst heraus schaffenden Dichter soUte man ein für aUemal begraben." Further key concepts here are "Kombinationsfáhigkeit," "Aneignungsverm ögen," "Spiel," and "Experimentierlust." Koopmann pursues this argument later on m the context of SchUler's relation to dramatic traditions , claiming, "seine Literatur lebt aus der Literatur, ist nicht Abbild der Wüküchkeit" (140). In part such Statements hark back to the formaUsm of which Gerhard Storz was the older champion. (hicidentaUy, they also represent a striking reversal of Koopmann's own sociopoUtical interpretation Ui his 1988 volume for the series Artemis Einf ührungen). But Koopmann is not just going back to Storz. When he writes that, instead of an "Original-Genie," Schüler seems now to embody "den Typus des InteUektueUen Ui einer Spätzeit" (xvü), he is claiming to detect a kind of postmodern consciousness Ui him. This is not, Ui other words, the commonplace denial that SchiUer was an "Erlebnisdichter ," but rather an attempt to apply to Schüler the deconstructionist slogan, "Il n'y a pas d'hors-texte." 332 Book Reviews After three decades of research that has m various ways concerned itself with the relation of SchUler's oeuvre to socio-political reaUties past and present, this represents an interesting change of course, and it is reflected Ui the structure of the volume. Between the four introductory articles, which appear under the heading "Schüler Ui seiner Zeit," and section 4, which deals with individual works, we find twelve articles divided into two sections titled "Schüler und die kultureUe Tradition " and "Ästhetik," the latter containing articles not on phUosophical aesthetics but on style. If a new formaUstic view of Schüler is on offer, these sections are where we are to find it. It is noticeable that three of the authors are Koopmann's assistants from the University of Augsburg and that, more than the other contributors, they explicitly echo Koopmann 's programmatic statements. Despite the dUigence of the authors Ui compiling these twelve articles , I am not convinced they succeed in estabhshing a new paradigm. In part the editorial structure is to blame here. For example, in section 2 Andrea Barti writes on "Schüler und die lyrische Tradition," in 3 we have Sandra Schwartz on "Schülers lyrischer Stil," and in 4 there is yet another article by Koopmann himself on "Schülers Lyrik." The result of aU...