Title Figure Research Articles

A Probable Source for “The Silver Plough-Boy”

A Probable Source for “The Silver Plough-Boy” Sidney Feshbach WHEN THE SECOND EDITION of Harmonium appeared in 1931, Wallace Stevens not only added fourteen poems, he also decided to delete three: “The Silver Plough-Boy,” “Exposition of the Contents of a Cab,” and “Architecture” (Cook 29).1 Thus, “The Silver Plough-Boy” disappeared from view for the rest of Stevens’s lifetime; it was not included in The Collected Poems . We still need to turn to J. M. Edelstein’s descriptive bibliography to trace its publication history to Alfred Kreymborg’s magazine Others, where it first appeared, together with “Peter Quince at the Clavier,” in August of 1915 (Edelstein 195). The poem was subsequently republished in the annual anthology of Others that Kreymborg collected in 1916, as part of a set of nine poems, four of which Stevens chose never to include in any of his later books (Edelstein 148).2 Here is the text: The Silver Plough-Boy A black figure dances in a black field.It seizes a sheet, from the ground, from a bush, as if spread there by some wash-woman for the night.It wraps the sheet around its body, until the black figure is silver.It dances down a furrow, in the early light, back of a crazy plough, the green blades following.How soon the silver fades in the dust! How soon the black figure slips from the wrinkled sheet! How softly the sheet falls to the ground! (CPP 42) In February and March of 1914, Harley Granville-Barker, a famous London playwright, actor, and director and producer of plays, staged a version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream that was radically different from conventional Victorian performances in its handling of text, scenery, costume, and music. Details of this unique production appear to be reflected in “The Silver Plough-Boy.” Stevens probably attended a performance, possibly accompanied by his Harvard friend Walter Arensberg, who was strongly committed to the Baconian theory of Shakespeare’s authorship. These are some of the facts that we may assemble about the production: [End Page 97] Harley Granville-Barker created in February 1914, his famous, startling A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Savoy Theatre. A year later [c. February to March 1915] it was brought to New York. Among its innovations, which included simplified, suggestive scenery and stylized costumes . . . Granville-Barker did away with [the music of Felix] Mendelssohn. . . . Old English folk songs and dances were used, provided by Cecil Sharp. . . . Titania’s call for “a roundel and a fairy song” was answered by a round; it then led into two folk melodies which Sharp selected to fit the lullaby itself. . . . An arrangement of several folk dance tunes was used for the final dance of the fairies—Granville-Barker’s famous golden fairies, gilded from head to foot in bizarre costumes with hair of metal shavings, rope beards, scimitars, and wire head-pieces. In the last scene, they weaved in and out among seven silver pillars set against a black and silver sky. (Williams 65–66) The woodland setting, like most of the other scenes, was created entirely through draperies. . . . [T]he dances were based on English folk dances. Somewhat contrarily, the fairies . . . were painted gold and moved slowly and artificially. (Chaudhuri 16) Click for larger view View full resolution Oberon (Dennis Neilson-Terry) and Titania (Christine Silver) in Granville-Barker’s production, Savoy Theatre, 1914. Reproduced in Shakespeare 17. [End Page 98] The moment captured shows Oberon standing to the left and Titania prone to the right. She seems to be wrapped in a silver sheet. “The Silver Plough-Boy” begins with a description that could be taken to describe, in part, the scene on stage: “A black figure dances in a black field.” Stevens has changed Oberon into another performer, costumed in black, who “dances” before the black and silver drapery woodland; he performs with folk music. The replacement of Oberon with a single figure in black has drawn the scene in the poem into an expression of the single figure. Thus, both “The Silver Plough-Boy” and, at the least, the name of the title figure in “Peter Quince at the Clavier...

On Being Out of Touch: Evan S. Connell and the Aesthetic of Social Oblivion

"On Being Out of Touch: Evan S. Connell and the Aesthetic of Social Oblivion": Evan S. Connell (1924-2013) is widely regarded is an innovative, talented and under-studied American writer. This essay seeks to contribute to his wider critical appreciation by examining a central element of his oeuvre, namely his depiction of the socially oblivious, or those who function in life, but are what popular parlance calls "out of touch." Specifically, the essay explores the portray of two such oblivious characters: Mr. Bridge, the title figure in the 1974 novel of the same name, and Muhlbach, in the 1974 novella, The Connoisseur. The argument claims these figures have an aesthetic sense of their own, and that Connell cultivated a special aesthetic in bringing them to the page. The essay also explores the implications of this idea in that one of Connell's special gifts was the capacity to extend artistic considerations to a category of people who are typically regarded as beneath or beyond the purview of serious art. Simultaneously, the essay argues that a key reason why Connell remains noted but not really integrated into engaged critical reception is because the aesthetics of social oblivion receives insignificant attention. Placing oblivion "in focus" makes Connell's work more interesting and relevant for our age.

Prominentny przodek pogromcy Spartakusa – Publius Licinius Crassus Dives, konsul w 205 r. przed Chr.

The author attempts to answer to question, to what extent eulogy written down by Livy and concerning title figure of Publius Licinius Crassus (consul in 205 B.C.), corresponded with the facts (Liv. XXX 1, 4-6). Article presented stages of political and military career of the above-mentioned member of nobilitas and his competences. This activity can be followed by analysis his activity during holding consecutive offices (pontifex maximus, censor, magister equitum, praetor peregrinus, consul, proconsul). Where therefore we should seek origins of so high assesment given him by Livy? Analysing his activity the course Second Punic War (218-201 B.C.) author arrived at the conclusion, that it were not relatively modest war deedes, particularly in comparison with Roman outstanding leaders in this range, which decided about standing of Crassus. In his career, he placed himself in the role of the client of powerful gens Cornelia. He gained support from Cornelii during elections for pontifex maximus. In return for patronage and help in promotion on consecutive magistracies, he reciprocated undobtedly using his extensive juridicial knowledge. As a pontifex maximus he was also important link in the system of political control over sphere of the religion. Thus, origins of prestige of Crassus we should perceive above all in his mastery of the law. He was known not only as a expert in pontifical law, but also in advising Roman people and senate. It is emphasized not only by Livy, but also by Cicero, whose testimony, although late, it seems valuable, because it revels to us good memory of Crassus, which was preserved in Roman tradition. By advising in lawsuits, he was able to build own clientele, anywaythe network of obligations. This activity was also probably origin of his substantial profits (hence cognomen Dives). Example of the Crassus shows to us, that in Republican Rome, even in tumultuous times, it was there possibility to gain high political standing beyond sphere stricte military.

Twórczość Aliny Szapocznikow w świetle hermeneutyki egzystencjalnej (na wybranych przykładach)

The essay is a response to a biographical dominant of the critical discourse on the works of Alina Szapocznikow. It seems to miss an aspect of her sculpture which isthe most important from the point of view of art history – that of the impact of thespecific works on the spectator. Such an objective of art history has been formulated by Michael Brötje, the founder of the existential-hermeneutic study of art. That radical theory, based on the dismissal of the discourses which are external to the artistic object, instead turning the critic’s attention to the medium as the meaningful foundation of the work, is adequate to a perspective adopted in the present essay. It has been modified to fit sculpture since Brötje himself applied it mainly to painting. The essay includes analyses of her three works: “Stopy (Fetysz V),” “Maria Magdalena,” and “Dwuczęściowa.” In each case, the existential-hermeneutic method has been applied; focusing mainly on the impact of the medium, as well as the term “creation-analogy” has been used, also originally introduced by Brötje. That term makes it possible to express nonreflective qualities which constitute the meanings of the works in question. The descriptions present evidence that such qualities are inseparably connected to the substance of sculpture and stem from its structural order.The analysis of “Stopy (Fetysz V)” introduces the term “creation-analogy,” demonstrating that a description which reveals the artifact’s impact does not have tobe related to meanings implemented by external discourses. Autonomous reflectionon the work’s medium points at a visual analogy to the key stages of the history of salvation described in the Bible. A biblical parable, so distant from the usual contexts which have determined the perception of the work, coherently grasps each of the sculpture’s elements. Another analysis proves that the content can be intentionally grafted on the medium. In “Maria Magdalena,” Szapocznikow presented in a concise way the life of the title figure, including the stages of her advancement to sainthood shown in the Scripture. That allowed the critic to show a possible connection of the artist’s intention with a visual analogue. The description offered stresses also the formal complexity of the sculpture, which makes it difficult to follow the perceptual logic of the work. That contributes to a network of meanings, graspable only through non-rational contemplation. The last analysis demonstrates that Szapocznikow’s works can also generate parables which are not related to religion. “Dwuczęściowa” turns out to express the artist’s opinion on the influence of technology on human life. Still, the sculpture reveals also meanings far from those opinions, activating the archetype of “Mother-Earth.” That analogy, unrelated to biblical topics, is quite general, yet intelligible to all spectators who enjoy contemplation. The conclusion is that the results presented must be systematized to become a starting point for a future theory of systematic analysis of sculpture in terms of existential-hermeneutic study of art.

Ich bin nur ich.“ Zur ‚Krise des Subjekts‘ in Feridun Zaimoglus Roman Isabel

Feridun Zaimoglu’s novel Isabel presents life and border situations from the 21st century life in Berlin. It further visualizes the theme of non-integrity as well as the crisis of the modern subject of the present, which results from social problems and social conventionality. The aim of this article is to focus on the conceptualization of the title character, and the protagonist as well, through the constitution of the subject from an intercultural perspective. By introducing and employing the theoretical approach of Stuart Hall and Judith Butler, specifically on the notion of “subject”, I will first analyze the ‘crisis of the subject’ which the title character is engaged with. I will further examine the critical positioning of the female protagonist, that reveals itself particularly in the conventional discourse and attitude she is subject to. In view of her exclusive disgust against the fundamental issues in life, the protagonist is primarily characterized by a new concept of self. Therefore, she takes a firmly distant attitude toward any kind of conventionality, and thus isolates herself from society. However, she rescues herself from the position of the subjected and non-“recognizable” (Butler, 2008, p. 15) individual as she reverses the dynamics of society through her critical attitude and linguistic statements. This means the title figure performs a “subversive resignification” (Butler, 2008, p. 246), and through this, creates a space for her self-defined subjectivity. This process of revaluation, which is directly linked to the title character, can also be observed from an intercultural perspective. In this sense, I will proceed to explain how the novel undermines and recodes the ethnicized and culturalized female subject through the subversive title character. In this context, moreover, the novel leads to the critical reconsidering of perception patterns related to Turkish culture.

Repetition and Textual Transmission: The Gothic Motif in Goethe's Faust and "Von deutscher Baukunst"

Repetition and Textual Transmission:The Gothic Motif in Goethe's Faust and "Von deutscher Baukunst" Jessica C. Resvick Act 2 of faust ii opens in the same setting in which the reader first encounters the title figure in part one of the drama. As the title of the first scene in act 2 announces: "HOCHGEWÖLBTES / ENGES, GOTISCHES ZIMMER / ehemals Faustens, unverändert" ("A HIGH-VAULTED, NARROW GOTHIC ROOM / Faust's former study is unchanged").1 While repetitions or "wiederholte Spiegelungen" ("repeated mirror reflections"2) abound in Faust, this particular instance of repetition is noteworthy for the manner in which it initiates a lengthy series of references to the Scholar's Tragedy of part one. Not only is a previous setting recreated, but long-forgotten characters suddenly return, and Mephistopheles and the pupil from "Studierzimmer [II]" ("Faust's Study"), now a Baccalaureate, even review their earlier conversation. Yet explanations of the significance of these returns are surprisingly sparse. Jochen Schmidt sees in the two opening scenes of act 2 references to the Middle Ages that allow the modern economy and the spirit of the Renaissance to burst out all the more powerfully on stage.3 Jane Brown, by contrast, makes note of parodic elements in the opening scene as well as a general emphasis on generativity, both of which foreshadow the remainder of act 2.4 While these interpretations offer insight into act 2 as a whole, they do not go particularly far in explaining the return to part one within part two. Why, for example, is it necessary to preface the "Klassische Walpurgisnacht" ("Classical Walpurgis Night") with descriptions of Faust's study, or of the pen he used to sign the wager with Mephistopheles? Why do the Baccalaureate and Mephistopheles discuss their initial encounter from part one? Do these scenes merely remind the reader,5 as though he or she would forget, that a wager exists between Faust and Mephistopheles, or that the Scholar's Tragedy began in this setting? This article endeavors to clarify the significance of the hochgewölbtes, enges, gotisches Zimmer by tracing the Gothic motif throughout Faust I/II and throughout two of Goethe's essays on Gothic architecture, both entitled "Von deutscher Baukunst" ("On German Architecture"). As I show in the following, the repetition of this motif illustrates how the Goethean model of repetition—"wiederholte Spiegelungen"—operates at the paradigmatic level [End Page 133] of an individual text and how it functions more broadly as a means of poetic production across an entire corpus, providing structural links both between discrete linguistic elements or individual passages and between whole texts. Furthermore, I demonstrate that this paradigm of repetition is connected in "Von deutscher Baukunst" and Faust I/II to modes of cultural production, such as architecture and writing, as well as to their medial transmission, with Faust II performing via its own publication the mode of transmission central to Goethe's architectural aesthetics. The operative concept of transmission here works on multiple levels. It has an internal dramatic significance within Faust and has correlates in Goethe's natural-philosophical thought; more broadly, it relates to history and tradition and occupies a central position in the poetic process. Rather than examining each of these registers separately, I discuss them together so as to highlight the importance of transmission across Goethe's oeuvre. Since this article takes as its impetus an instance of repetition, it is necessary first to clarify Goethe's understanding of the concept. In an 1823 text, which Eckermann later gave the title "Wiederholte Spiegelungen," Goethe draws on an entoptical metaphor to outline the manner in which repetition intensifies [steigern] some original content of memory. An internal image [Bild] is externalized and reflected ("abermals abgespiegelt," FA 1.17:370). The impression (Eindruck) of the afterimage (Nachbild) upon the recipient then awakens a deep interest in the past, which is subsequently represenced. "Hier entsteht nun … die Möglichkeit ein Wahrhaftes wiederherzustellen; aus Trümmern von Daseyn und Ueberlieferung sich eine Zweyte Gegenwart zu verschaffen" (FA 1.17:370–71; There arises here the possibility of reproducing something true; of procuring from the ruins of being and tradition a Second Presence). This same mode of...

Charge correlations in cobaltates La2–xSrx CoO4

We report on an elastic neutron scattering study of the charge correlations in La2–xSrx CoO4 with x = 1/3, 0.4 and 0.5. We found that the checkerboard charge ordering correlations present in the x = 0.5 sample persist in the x = 0.4 and 1/3 materials. These checkerboard charge ordering correlations are robust and explain the occurrence of nano‐phase separation in layered cobaltates for Sr‐concentrations away from half‐doping. The half‐integer reflections then arise from the nanometer‐sized hole‐rich regions (blue areas in title figure) instead of the undoped ones (red areas in title figure). The appearance of nano‐phase separation is an important ingredient for understanding the formation of hour‐glass shaped magnetic excitation spectra in La2–xSrx CoO4. Nano‐phase separation in La2–xSrx CoO4 (schematically). Red areas: undoped La2CoO4 islands, blue areas: checkerboard charge ordered regions; black, green and blue balls represent nonmagnetic Co3+ ions, magnetic Co2+ ions and oxygen ions, respectively; green arrows indicate Co2+ spins [1, 2].magnified imageNano‐phase separation in La2–xSrx CoO4 (schematically). Red areas: undoped La2CoO4 islands, blue areas: checkerboard charge ordered regions; black, green and blue balls represent nonmagnetic Co3+ ions, magnetic Co2+ ions and oxygen ions, respectively; green arrows indicate Co2+ spins [1, 2].(© 2015 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH &Co. KGaA, Weinheim)

Philosophers into Fiction

Philosophers into Fiction Theodore Ziolkowski With the title figure of his final novel, Ravelstein (2000), Saul Bellow paid a moving tribute to his friend, the philosopher Alan Bloom (1930–92), author of translations and studies of Plato and Rousseau along with his best-selling diatribe against The Closing of the American Mind (1987) and, in his posthumously published Love and Friendship (1993), subjective analyses of such writers as Shakespeare, Stendhal, Austen, and Tolstoy. In accordance with Bloom’s own wishes, Bellow was unsparing in his depiction of his friend’s character: his love of gossip about his colleagues at the University of Chicago, his delight in insider news from former students well placed in politics, his open homosexuality, and his unmitigated pleasure in the luxury with which he was able to surround himself thanks to the royalties from The Closing of the American Mind—not to mention his equal pleasure in the rancor of his colleagues at his sudden wealth. What we do not find—again in keeping with Bloom’s specifications—is any systematic account of Bloom’s philosophy. “He clearly didn’t want me to write about his ideas,” the narrator states.1 “He had expounded those fully himself and they’re available in his theoretical books. I make myself responsible for the person.” This injunction, repeated several times in the course of the novel, provides a compositional clue to a group of other novels based on the lives of twentieth-century philosophers. [End Page 271] Few recent thinkers have had the same appeal for nonspecialists as did Hans Blumenberg (1920–96). His prolific and accessible writings on metaphorology, phenomenology, and myth draw on examples from literature, religion, politics, and philosophy, and include such books as Schiffbruch mit Zuschauer, 1979 (translated as Shipwreck with Spectator, 1996), a paradigm of existence; meditations on caves as a metaphor of life (Höhlenausgänge, 1989); and a posthumously edited collection of thirty-two reflections on lions as depicted in literature, art, music, and religion (Löwen, 2001). This last work caught the attention of the German prize-winning novelist Sibylle Lewitscharoff, who makes use of it in her novel Blumenberg (2011). The author never knew or studied with Blumenberg but enjoyed the benefit of an acquaintance with the philosopher’s daughter, who contributed personal details.2 The novel revolves around Blumenberg’s infatuation with lions, which is so compelling that one evening in 1982 a lion actually appears in his study and henceforth, unseen by others, accompanies him on his daily rounds, lying in front of the lectern during his lectures at the University of Münster. The novel includes accounts of four students, all of whom suffer early deaths—one by suicide, out of unrequited love; another by murder, in exile in Brazil, where he’d been driven by his intellectual shortcomings; a third by madness from excessive commitment to his ideas; and the fourth, Blumenberg’s most successful protégé, by fatal stroke on the eve of his promotion to tenure. The final chapter brings them all together, after Blumenberg’s own death, in—where else?—a cave, where—what else?—a lion “snatches him into another world” (B, p. 216). Again, as in Bellow’s case, Lewitscharoff concedes in her acknowledgment that “one will seek in vain for correct Blumenberg quotations” (B, p. 219). She has incorporated only brief formulations, modified thoughts, and single phrases, with no sustained exposition of his ideas. But several of Blumenberg’s more popular works—about the lions, the cave, and, in the protagonist’s memories of a trip to Egypt, the shipwreck—inspired the central scenes of the novel. Both Bellow and Lewitscharoff, in sum, are concerned with the lives of their philosophers and only incidentally with their thought. We find precisely the same emphasis in most other novels dealing with prominent philosophers of the twentieth century. It should be noted that this focus on the man rather than the ideas is quite different from that in another group of works that popularize philosophy into fiction rather than the philosopher.3 The international bestseller Sophie’s World (1991) by Jostein Gaarder, which—though [End Page 272] rejected contemptuously by professional philosophers...

The 'Absent' Pardon-Tearing of Piers Plowman C

Central to Piers Plowman, at least in its earlier A and B Versions, is the enigmatic moment in which the title figure tears the pardon sent him by Truth/God. In these accounts, Piers’s tearing is accompanied by an at least partial rejection of the terms on which Truth had offered the document, a reward for honest labour. However, in his last version, Langland excises this moment, generative in the earlier texts, altogether. This study, a ‘reading’ of the C pardon-scene, both truncated and supplemented in this version, aligns the account here with other initiatives peculiar to C. It argues that Langland consciously reformulated his entire poetic argument in his last version. This would render the poem more legible within the changed literary conditions of the 1380s.

A natureza jurídica do título executivo: da polêmica instalada entre Liebman e Carnelutti às teorias que se seguiram

This work aims with the enforceable title figure, its origin and historical context, and approaches the theories that intent to explain its juridical nature, through the famous controversy between Carnelutti and Liebman and the current conceptions in the modern juridical science.

Das Verhältnis von Liebe und Tod in Ingeborg Bachmanns Hörspiel ›Der gute Gott von Manhattan‹.

Once again not the love romance in itself but the title figure , "the good God", is placed at the centre of interest. What are the reasons for his persecution of the lovers and in particular his justification as "good"? And how can one explain the conduct of the judge, who sets him free at the end despite the still valid charge of murder? The answer derives from an understanding of the title figure, who must not be construed as a whimsical moralist but as an intellectual sceptic; equally, the audio play should be seen as parallel to the narrative >Undine geht<. Both texts have to be understood through their dialecticcomplementary relationship.

'De Kleene Soll Tanzen!' The Death of the Dancer in Gerhart Hauptmann's Und Pippa Tanzt!

This article focuses on the figure of the dancer and her dance in Gerhart Hauptmann's 1906 play Und Pippa tanzt. A close consideration of the play's two dance scenes is necessary to understand the title figure and the tragic ending of the play. Dance is connected both to the erotic and to the creative process, and both connections serve as possible motivations for Pippa's death. As the dancer becomes an alternative artist figure to the poet-seer Michel Hellriegel, the play reflects on the relationship of the material and the imagination, as well as on aesthetic tendencies at the beginning of the twentieth century.

"Uncle Tom is Dead!": Wright, Himes, and Ellison Lay a Mask to Rest

In his recent valorization of Tom's Cabin as ur-text in the fictional depiction of Americans across the color line (xxvii), Henry Louis Gates, Jr. explained that the novel's demise in the college classroom was due to utter disdain of the character by the black community in the postwar era (xxvi). For Gates as for Linda Williams, the text that mark[ed] the definitive end of the popular appeal (Williams 62) was James Baldwin's essay, Everybody's Protest Novel (1949), his infamous attack on Stowe's title character, a man robbed of his humanity and divested of his sex (18). Yet four other African American male writers produced equally revealing attacks upon the figure of at the time, beginning a decade earlier with Richard Wright's Tom's Children (1938). Chester Himes literally buried in the short story, Heaven Has Changed (1943); Ralph Ellison killed him off figuratively in the opening chapter of Invisible Man (1952). Duke Ellington's objective in staging his Los Angeles revue Jump for Joy (1941) was [to] take out of the theatre, [and] eliminate the stereotyped image that had been exploited by Hollywood and Broadway (175). Despite the vast literature on these artists, scholarship on Wright's collection rarely focuses on the title's figure of disdain, the Himes story has never received critical attention, and Ellison's opening chapter has not been analyzed in this context. Neither Gates nor Williams mentions any of these texts as their scholarship recuperates issues of gender and family lacking in these masculinist works. (1) In returning to the literary texts of Wright, Ellison, and Himes, I will change the register of the object of vilification: it was less Stowe's that incited these authors to literary attack than what I will call the Tom-mask. During the mid-1960s [when] the term 'Uncle Tom' became synonymous with self-loathing (xii) as Gates recalled its function as a metonym, black man all too eager to please the whites around him ... [was] the embodiment of 'race betrayal' and an object of scorn, a scapegoat for all of our political self-doubts.... We talked about him as the model to be avoided (xi; original emphasis). Here and throughout the essay, Gates conflates Stowe's Tom--the literary character with the set of gestures involved in the survival technique of masking, especially (but not only) in the U.S. South. It was not Stowe's who was model to be avoided; the African American vernacular had long since appropriated this figure and dumped its literary association. What was under attack was the lived embodiment of deference marked by the in the public sphere--as a convention of American theater and music, as a set of physical disciplines, as a marker read by whites of African American acceptance of national racial ideology. Stowe's perhaps retained purchase for older white Americans as a literary fantasy of African American passivity--the character had, after all, been transposed into minstrel, theatrical, and cinematic fantasy--but in the African American vernacular, Uncle Tom registered a survival practice of everyday life that required figurative literary murder in order to liberate both African American male artistic agency and the right to individualized social protest. In fact, Wright, Himes, and Ellison assess their Tom-masked characters with surprising nuance; they slay the yet manage to honor the survival strategies of Southern African American men. The postwar period marks the end of what W. T. Lhamon has called blackface lore cycle, a set of transgressive verbal and physical gestures--from whistling to dance moves--projected onto African American men and women in the minstrel theater, and often accepted by white Americans as authentic representations of black men and women. For Lhamon, the NAACP's lawsuits against the last minstrel shows in the early 1950s mark the retiring [of] the blackface mask (148). …

Forever Younger: A Reading of Sophocles’ Antigone

The article interprets the title figure of Sophocles’ Antigone as growing younger, more delicate, and more fragile with each successive scene of the play. It is as though she were living in the Age of Cronos as recounted in Plato's Statesman. The article expands on the thesis developed in chapters 9-11 of my book The Tragic Absolute: German Idealism and the Languishing of God (Indiana University Press 2005)

The Male Muses of Romanticism: The Poetics of Gender in Novalis, E.T.A. Hoffmann, and Eichendorf1

In German Romantic discourse generally functions as inspiration, source, and ground of poesy.2 This figuration appears to be metaphysical in nature: and feminine are troped as originary condition of possibility of Romantic self-definition and Romantic artistic production, and feminine descriptors shape Romantic conceptions of subjectivity and creativity. In scattered statements in Friedrich Schlegel's philosophical and aesthetic theory, for example, Der Geist ist d[as] ursprungl[ich] Weibliche (KA XVIII: 193, #796; emphasis in original), subject or I (das Ich) is feminine (KA XVIII: 334, #137), and woman's very essence is poesy (KA II: 269, #127); and in his autobiographical novel Lucinde title figure, who is both lover and mother to painter Julius, inspires his artistic creation. Similarly, in Novalis's Fichte-Studien self-positing ego defines itself in opposition to Muttersfare from whence it originated (Schriften II: 105, #1); subject or I is feminine (Schriften II: 261, #519); and in first of two dedicatory sonnets prefacing Heinrich von Ofterdingen dead beloved, das Urbild zartgesinnter Frauen, excites poet's metaphysical drive, functions as his muse, and safeguards his poetic (Schriften I: 193). Analyzing this female poetic ground from numerous theoretical perspectives, contemporary critics come to similar conclusions about primacy of feminine in Romantic poetic production: is idealized, unattainable other against which male poet defines himself in a gesture of wish fulfillment, priestess and source of enlightenment for male poet (Becker-Cantarino); and woman's voice are essence of Romantic poesy (Schlaffer, Kuzniar, Muller-Sievers); Romantic discourse is informed by a theory of feminine (Menninghaus, Roetzel); Romanticism itself is the discursive of Mother as source of discursive production (Wellbery on Kittler, Foreword xxiii). Clearly feminine forms an integral component of Romantic discourse, yet Romantics themselves programmatically question gender of their own poetic ground. To quote Friedrich Schlegel: Frauen werden in der Poesie ebenso ungerecht behandelt, wie im Leben. Die weiblichen sind nicht idealisch, und idealischen sind nicht weiblich (KA II: 172, #49), and his racy novel Lucinde is animated by a dizzying gender play in which a coded homoerotic aesthetic subtly debunks feminine ideal.3 Similarly, in fairy tale from Novalis's fragmentary novel Die Lehrlinge zu Sais, Hyacinth leaves his love Rosenblutchen and journeys to Sais on a quest for self-definition, and when he lifts veil of statue of goddess Isis, die Mutter der Dinge (Schriften I: 93), Rosenblutchen sinks into his arms. But in a famous distich to novel an apprentice lifts goddess's veil and sees that the mother of all things is not his beloved, but-wonder of wonders-himself (Schriften II: 584). In this instance, at least, metaphysical ground of Romantic project-presumed to be maternal, eternal feminine embodied in form of beloved-proves to be self-positing male subject.4 This essay examines figure of male muse in three canonical Romantic narratives that despite outward appearances likewise do not conform to a gynocentric paradigm and broaches a broad methodological question: Are contemporary theoretical approaches to Romanticism and gender studies shaping our readings of Romantic texts, predetermining woman's primacy and inflating woman's currency in Romantic poetics, and occluding important aspects of discourse on gender articulated by Romantics themselves? Motivating this open question is following observation: scholars cited above who argue for centrality of feminine to Romantic poetic all, in effect, concentrate on woman in constructing their textual analyses, and then conclude that woman grounds Romantic poesy. …

Fichte and Novalis on the Relationship between Ethics and Aesthetics

Fichte's moral [theory] contains the most correct views of morality. Morality says absolutely nothing determinate - it is conscience - a mere judge without law. Morality commands immediately, but always individually. It is decision through and through. correct idea of conscience. Laws are thoroughly opposed to morality.1 As is well known, the relationship between Fichte and the early German Romantic writer Novalis has been broadly explored in the last century and a half, though with diametrically differing conclusions. Both the extent of Fichte's influence on Novalis as well as the quality of Novalis's interpretation of Fichte have been the subjects of fierce dispute.2 Most recent work on the relationship between Novalis and Fichte has been devoted to the early notebooks, written by Novalis in the years 1795-1796 and normally referred to as the Fichte-Studien, and has considered this early work almost exclusively in its relationship to the 1794 Wissenschafislehre, and, even more narrowly, to its beginning sections.3 In this essay, I will be exploring this relationship at the extreme opposite end of Novalis's albeit very short career, focusing primarily upon the last completed section of the second part of the unfinished novel Heinrich von Ofterdingen in relation to Fichte's later Jena writings, specifically the System of Ethics. This section of the novel is composed of a dialogue between the title figure, the burgeoning poet Heinrich, and an older man, introduced as Sylvester, the doctor, who, as I will demonstrate, enunciates a particular reading of the ethical views developed in the System of Ethics. This dialogue appears to be the place where Novalis attempts explicitly to come to terms with his philosophical influences, in particular, with Fichte's ethics, and to find a place for his poetic vocation in relation to it, which as I will suggest in the first half of my paper, remains problematic in Fichte's system. A close analysis of this final scene will form the second half of my essay. Sylvester passage, which fairly brims over with words such as Gewissen (conscience) and Tugend (virtue), has not been especially popular among advocates of what has been the prevailing interpretation of the early Romantics in the past few decades, as avatars of an ironic, deconstructive, and/or postmodern sensibility.4 As with any passage in Novalis, a number of possible influences come to mind, here including such figures as Hemsterhuis, Schleiermacher, and Baader. 5 Here, however, I will focus my reading of this passage on its parallels with SE, seeing the passage also as a commentary upon it. Following Beiser,6 1 will thus highlight the importance of the ethical project for Novalis and its direct relationship to his aesthetic aspirations. Fichte on Aesthetics and Ethics I thus begin with Fichte's views on the relationship between aesthetics and ethics. One of the central texts in Fichte's work explicitly addressing this topic is §31 of the System of Ethics, titled The Duties of the Aesthetic Artist.7 As Hartmut Traub notes,8 this section contains a variety of ideas which can only be understood against the backdrop of Fichte's earlier writings, especially the essay written in 1795, the Spirit and the Letter in Philosophy,9 the subject of the famed dispute with Schiller, who refused to publish it in his journal. Because it appears in the System of Ethics, the fundamental question addressed by this section is the role which the fine arts have in the development of humanity toward its final goal, namely, the self-sufficiency of reason. At the beginning of the section, a certain resistance to the topic is palpable; Fichte discusses the theme if only for the sake of completeness and because such discussions must happen due to the necessities of our age.10 This latter comment is likely a reference to the claims that Schiller made in his On the Aesthetic Education of Humanity which posit the pedagogical effects of beauty as the only way to escape the dilemmas of modern society which have led, for example, to the failure of the French Revolution. …

Temperature‐dependent magneto‐photoluminescence spectroscopy of carbon nanotubes: evidence for dark excitons

AbstractWe review recent experimental and theoretical studies on the radiative properties of excitons in single‐walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) as a function of magnetic field and temperature. These studies not only provide new insight into the fundamental properties of excitons in the ultimate one‐dimensional (1D) limit but also reveal new phenomena associated with the unique crystal and electronic structure of SWNTs. During the past several years, SWNTs have emerged as one of the most ideal systems available for the systematic study of 1D excitons, which are predicted to possess a set of properties that are distinctly different from excitons in higher dimensions. In addition, their tubular nature allows them to exhibit non‐intuitive quantum phenomena when subjected to a parallel magnetic field, which breaks time reversal symmetry and adds an Aharonov‐Bohm phase to the electronic wavefunction. In particular, a series of recent experiments demonstrate that such a symmetry‐breaking magnetic field can dramatically “brighten” an optically‐inactive, or dark, exciton state at low temperature (see the title figure on the right). We show that this phenomenon, magnetic brightening, can be understood as a consequence of interplay between the strong intervalley Coulomb mixing and field‐induced lifting of valley degeneracy. Detailed temperature‐dependent photoluminescence studies of excitons in SWNTs in a varying magnetic field have thus provided one of the most critical tests for recently proposed theories of 1D excitons taking into account the strong 1D Coulomb interactions and unique band structure on an equal footing. Furthermore, results of these studies suggest the intriguing possibility of manipulating the optical properties of SWNTs by judicious symmetry control, which can lead to novel devices and applications in lasers and optoelectronics.

“‘One immortality’: The Shaping of The Shelleys in The Last Man”

As long noted, in the first novel written after Percy Shelley’s death, The Last Man, Mary Shelley created the figure of Adrian to begin the process of idealizing her husband that she would continue in the notes to his Poems. In this essay, I look closely at her use of literary models to understand her husband’s life and death, and, especially, to construct an image of her husband that allows her to believe in the couple’s continuing union after death. I suggest that she not only reshapes her husband in her own image, but, in the title figure of “the last man,” creates a corporate figure who symbolizes the couple’s complete intimacy by ultimately combining qualities of both Shelleys.

Romanticism Repays Gothicism: E.T.A. Hoffmann's "Councilor Krespel" as a Recovery of Matthew G. Lewis' The Monk

The presence of many aspects of Matthew G. Lewis' novel, The Monk (1796), in E.T.A. Hoffmann's The Devil's Elixirs (1815/16; Die Elixiere des Teufels), as in many Romantic writings, has long been acknowledged. Until recently, however, Hoffmann's Gothic novel has been held in fairly low esteem in his own canon, and Lewis' influence on even such a dismissed work has been sniffed at as local or superficial.1 The chances appear good, however, that the The Monk's influence extends far beyond The Devil's Elixirs to Hoffmann's more internationally esteemed fiction, especially "Councilor Krespel" ("Rat Krespel"), the originally titled story that helps begin The Serapions-Brethren (Die Serapions-Brüder) and that inspired both Thomas Carlyle and Jacques Offenbach.2 Moreover, Hoffmann's translational use of The Monk seems highly meditated, to the point where Hoffmann seems to be less a creative writer than a literary critic finely attuned to one line of concerns in Lewis' novel. Perhaps Hoffmann can repay his debt to Lewis by leading us to an enriched reading of The Monk, which itself has suffered a rather neglectful response history.3 The part of The Monk that particularly influences "Councilor Krespel" is the relation of Ambrosio to Antonia and its connection to Krespel and [End Page 311] his daughter, also named Antonia. Ambrosio is the title figure of The Monk, who after being seduced by Mathilda de Villanegas is consumed by desire for the young Antonia. After raping and killing her, he is tortured by the Inquisition. He escapes with the aid of the Devil, who reveals that Antonia was Abrosio's sister and throws the sinner into an abyss. The exact similarity of the women's names seems more than coincidental given Hoffmann's interest, unusual for his time, in names that repeat one another precisely.4 The shared name, "Antonia," itself is striking because it is mysterious on at least two grounds. First, its "etymology is unknown" and was disputed even by the Roman families who had the name "Antonius."5 Second, the origin of the woman's form, "Antonia," which had quite a vogue in France and Italy, is unclear. It may be a feminine formation from St. Antony the Great, or be directly derived from St. Antonia of third-century Byzantium.6 Hoffmann was known for playing with the names of early Christian saints,7 and of course the literary possibilities involved in having a female "St. Antony" are immense. One more immediate reason Hoffmann could easily be sensitive to the name in Lewis' text is the identity of one of its most famous recent bearers, German "Maria Antonia," French "Marie Antoinette." 8 Both in Lewis and in Hoffmann, Antonia is saintly, tempted, and martyred, and even if the writers had come to the name by independent routes, the routes themselves must have been very similar.

Puns in "The Gold-Bug": You Gotta be Kidding

RICHARD HULL Puns in "The Gold^Bug": You Gotta be Kidding Did not the most profound of all early thinkers, Heraclitus, discover the depth of meaning contained in the play on words? Gadamer The gold-bug" rests on the overarching pun of its title. Supporting this arch is an abundance of other puns, such as those on Kidd, antennae, and gold/ghoul. Poe makes the story out of literalizing the title 's figure for obsession with wealth (getting bit by the gold bug), in having a gold-colored bug bite Legrand: "Upon my taking hold of it, it gave me a sharp bite" (59)· Legrand is interested in the bug because he thinks it will make him rich. But for Jupiter the bug's bite is terrible, and the scarabaeus a scary bug: "Massa Will cotch him fuss, but had for to let him go 'gin mighty quick, I tell you—den was de time he must ha' got de bite. I didn't like de lok of be bug mouff, myself, nohow" (46). The predominant device in this story is the hearing of words in other words, letting a narrative rise out of the uncontrollable connections puns make. "The Gold-Bug" is comprised of two parts, a narrative of coincidences which stupefy, and then Legrand's triumphant explanation of his code cracking—an explanation which builds on rather than eliminates the stupefaction of the first part. Though we must admire Legrand's logical method, logic is neither the only method nor Poe's ultimate method.1 Legrand's "definite point of view, admitting no variation" (68), is what Heidegger calls Enframing, a thinking which Arizona Quarterly Volume 58, Number 2, Summer 2002 Copyright © 2002 by Arizona Board of Regents ISSN 0004-1610 2 Richard Hull banishes man into that kind of revealing which is an ordering. Where this ordering holds sway, it drives out every other possibility of revealing. Above all, Enframing conceals that revealing which [works] in the sense of poiesis. (QCT 27) Legrand's rigid, self-absorbed logic or ordering drives out Jupiter's kind of revealing. But to disdain the chaotic wordplay which clashes with Legrand's ordering, would be to lose much of the story, miss poetry, and miss Poe. It would be to miss in what Heidegger finds most important in "art": "the letting happen of . . . truth" (PLT 72). For as we shall see, Jupiter's doubling of meanings lets a truth happen. Legrand describes an uncanny, stupefying effect of a coincidence of meanings in the same sign, as he finds something he didn't intend in his own drawing. I perceived, in fact, the figure of a death's-head, just where, it seemed to me, I had made the drawing of the beetle. ... I was too amazed to think with accuracy . . . that, unknown to me, there should have been a skull upon the other side of the parchment, immediately beneath my figure of the scarabaeus, and that this skull, not only in outline, but in size, should so closely resemble my drawing. I say the singularity of this coincidence stupefied me for a time. The mind struggles to establish a connection—a sequence of cause and effect—and being unable to do so, suffers a species of temporary paralysis. (58-59) Something other has intruded, something out of Legrand's control. Why should two things be so alike? What brings them together? What is there immediately beneath our signs besides what we intend? Legrand 's stupefaction leads to an important generalization about the way puns paralyze the mind. The same coincidences affect Jupiter and Legrand. That Jupiter should be "stupefied" (56) when they find the treasure together with corpses exactly reflects Legrand's stupor at the coincidence of gold-bug and death's-head. "And dis all cum ob de goole-bug! de putty goolebug ! the poor little goole-bug what I boosed in dat sabage kind ob style" (56-57). Jupiter sees a truth, that Legrand's bug means death, but Legrand 's drive for wealth imposes an order that drives out any such connection between the bug and death's-head. Puns in "The Gold-Bug' 3 Legrand's buried...