The Paradox of Aesthetic Discourse: J. M. R. Lenz's "Anmerkungen übers Theater"

The Paradox of Aesthetic Discourse: J. M. R. Lenz's "Anmerkungen übersTheater"

Patrizia C. McBride

German Studies Review, Vol. 22, No. 3. (Oct., 1999), pp. 397-419.

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The Paradox of Aesthetic Discourse: J.M.R. Lenz's Anmerkungen iibers Theater

Patrizia C. McBride University of Minnesota

I Since the late eighteenth century, aesthetic discourse has sought to describe art as a mode of signification that stands in opposition to cognitive practices grounded in conceptual thought-most notably philosophical inquiry and the enterprise of science.l And yet theoretical reflection on art cannot dispense with rhetorical and discursive strategies rooted in conceptual thinking, in other words, with the very structures deemed inadequate for grasping the specificity of aesthetic meaning. When considered from this perspective, modern aesthetics appears to be founded on a paradox. Even as it seeks to demonstrate that conceptual thought cannot hlly comprehend art, it has no alternative except to employ the tools of rational discourse. This dilemma raises a fundamental question about the legitimacy and status of aesthetic discourse. What can be gained from a reflection on art,which is compelled to operate within a cognitive and discursive mode that is ultimately incompatible with aesthetic experience? This question is confronted by one of the first documents of modem aesthetics, J.M.R. Lenz's Anmerkungen iibers Theater (1774), whose paradoxical answer is inscribed in its apparently idiosyncratic style.

Lenz's treatise on dramais commonly regardedas a landmark inthe development of a distinctively German dramatic tradition over and against an Enlightenment aesthetics imbued with the spirit of French neoclassicism-a project that began with Lessing's dramaturgy in the mid 1700s and culminated in the practice of the Sturm und Drang. Within this frame, the Anmerkungen emphasize the specificity of art, particularly drama, as a system of signification that escapes the rational discourse of French aesthetics. The essay is also known as an extreme example of the unconventional rhetoric and mercurial style that distinguish Lenz's theoretical writings. Indeed, it seems to live from the tension arising, on the one hand, from the dogged determination with which Lenz pursues his objectives-the recognition of

398 GERMAN STUDIES REVIEW

art's distinctiveness and the advocation of a truly German drama-and, on the other, the idiosyncratic form of his discourse, which threatens to undermine his polemical endeavor. While critiquing French aesthetics for its reliance on conceptual and discursive structures that are not applicable to art, Lenz is compelled to acknowledge that his text unfolds within an analogous mode of discourse, and that there are no real alternatives to this discourse. If it is considered within the overall argument of the Anmerkungen, the text's self-undermining style appears as a rhetorical device that reflects the paradoxical nature of its aesthetic endeavor. In particular, it serves to highlight the author's awareness that the reflection on art's distinctiveness cannot take place outside of a conceptual and discursive mode which is bound to remain extraneous to art.

Within the German context, this insight is commonly associated with the speculative experiment of early Romanticism. In their compelling account of the genesis of Romantic aesthetics in Germany, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean- Luc Nancy maintain that the short-lived experience of the Jena Romantics was fueled by their insight into the gap that separates an aesthetic practice anchored in a nonconceptual, nonrational terrain and an aesthetic reflection grounded in the conceptual. When filtered through the philosophy of idealism, the Romantics' awareness ofthe aesthetic paradoxresultedin the notion of ir0ny.l Early Romanticism markedthe culmination ofthe eighteenth-century turnfrom the normative aesthetics of the Enlightenment to a modern understanding of art as the spontaneous, time- bound production of an artist. To be sure, this turn was made possible by the new aesthetic thinking that flourished in the sensualist andhistoricist currents epitomized by Hamann, Herder, and the authors of the Sturm und Drang. Nevertheless, the Romantic project owes much of its momentum to the philosophical discourse that originated from Kant and culminated in the practice of idealism. It is this reflection that established itself as the leading aesthetic paradigm over the course of the nineteenth century.

Lenz's reflection predates this framework. As a consequence, his formulation of the aesthetic paradox does not appear immediately recognizable, for it is located outside the philosophical straitjacket that has restrained aesthetic thinking since Kant. His primary frame of reference remains an understanding of art as the depository of the historical, i.e., particular and not hlly generalizable, experience of a people, an idea which finds its epitome in Herder's notion of Volhpoesie. Within this horizon, art appears as the primarily sensuous-i.e., nonconceptual-medium for conveying the meaning of finite human existence. Georg Braungart is among the critics who have drawn attention to the often overlookedpotential of this tradition. As he notes, the emphasis this discourse places on the materiality of the artwork and the sensuous nature of aesthetic experience makes it largely immune to the linguistic skepticism and epistemological nihilism that haunted Kantian and post-Kantian aesthetics-and were subsequently inherited by twentieth-century aesthetics in general, and poststructuralism in particular.) Lenz's reflection clearly

399 Patrizia C. McBride

benefits from faith in the sensuous character of aesthetic meaning. This grounding is, in fact, what enables him to ponder the paradox of aesthetic discourse without being paralyzed by the logical contradictions engendered by this endeavor. As the Anmerkungen demonstrate, one possible way to cope with these contradictions is to forge a discursive mode that exhibits its limitations in its form, without relinquishing its force and authority. What Lenz's treatise can teach us today is that insight into the limits of the reflection on art does not necessarily undermine aesthetic discourse, but rather witnesses to its frankness and accountability.

Helga Madland has summed up two centuries of Lenz reception by juxtaposing two prevailing images of the dramatist, namely, the talented, but eccentric and unstable poet who left an uncertain literary legacy, on the one hand, and the misunderstood artist and social outcast whose significance could only be grasped by posterity, on the other.4 As she notes, only in recent years have these images begun to give way to a more nuanced understanding of Lenz as a self-conscious thinker whose contribution to the anthropological and aesthetic debates of his time stands on its own feet and whose uncompromising realism and sharp-edged blend of comic and tragic elements display a timeliness lacked by other Sturm undDrang author^.^ I would like to endorse this latter image and suggest that Lenz's timeliness primarily resides in the paradoxical nature of his reflection on literature, as it is exhibited in the unconventional style of his theoretical texts and explicitly reflected in the Anmerkungen.

I1 Lenz's treatise on drama is customarily placed within the eighteenth-century

line of theoretical reflection that sought to address fundamental issues of literary discourse through the analysis of literary genres. Its fiame of reference were the historic debates on a specifically German cultural tradition that were initiated by Lessing's "LiteraturbriefeM6 and played out, in the second half of the eighteenth century, in the writings of Herder, Wieland, Gerstenberg, and the young Goethe, among others. Thanks to its form, however, Lenz's text stands isolated within this tradition, which encompasses a wide spectrum of conventional and stylistic modes, ranging from Gottsched's highly structured taxonomy in Versuch einer critischen Dichtkunst7 to Lessing's more fragmentary and colloquial Hamburgische Dramat~rg ie .~What, at first glance, sets Lenz's text apart from contemporary works of genre theory is its unconventional exposition and rhapsodic, associative style-formal features that elicit an impression of complexity, disorder, and insufficient intellectual rigor. This impression is reinforced by the apparent lack of a single line of argumentation in the text, which instead pursues several, interlocking objectives at once.

Its overarching concern appears to be an all-out assault on the edifice of French aesthetics, undertaken because of the fundamental anachronism of its foundations, Aristotelian poetics, for contemporary drama. Lenz fiames this discussion within

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areflection on the time- and place-boundedness ofdrama andof aesthetic production in general. Within this context, drama is promoted as the genre that best delivers what aesthetic experience can accomplish, namely, an unbroken, synthetic picture of historical-i.e., inexorably finite and particular-human experience. But the objectives described above require drawing a qualitative distinction between the meaning extracted from aesthetic experience and the knowledge provided by other cognitive practices, most notably the philosophical aesthetics of French derivation. As it becomes clear from Lenz's argument, what disqualifies French normative poetics-its reliance on discursive structures bound to conceptual thought-also resurfaces in the inevitable sequentiality and logical discursivity of Lenz's own text.9 To understand the implications of this aporia and to analyze the textual strategies employed to cope with it, we must take a closer look at the arguments- some of which are quite well known-which theAnmerkungen deploy to establish the specificity of aesthetic meaning and to denounce the inadequacy of the French model. As we will see, the linchpin of Lenz's case for art's distinctiveness concerns the primacy of the visual sense as the anthropological foundation for the intuitive cognition to which art grants access. It is the optic sense that defines both the synthetic gift of the artistlgenius and the mode of drama's reception, over and against the linear unfolding of conceptual thought.

The treatise opens with a theatrical display of world drama, which serves to introduce an investigation of the domain of "Poesie." For Lenz "Poesie" embodies the broad field of literary production that culminates in drama. It draws from (and unites) "Nachahmung" and "Anschauung," the main principles which inform the "schone Kunste" and the "Wissenschaften" respectively. Inscribed inthis distinction is the functional separation-but also the symbiotic relationshipwith which the eighteenth century reinterpreted the medieval polarity of artes liberales and artes mechanicae.1°While the sciences-which encompass the natural sciences as well as philosophy-are concerned with the pursuit of truth, i.e., represent the realm of knowledge, the fine arts hlfill a quintessentially educational task. Following a mimetic procedure whose coordinates are ultimately based on the knowledge afforded by the "Wissenschaften," the fine arts make reality's deep meaning and harmony conspicuous by means of sensual representations.

Lenz is not afraid of overstepping the bounds of contemporary wisdom in reappropriating the canonical distinction that separates the discourses which produce knowledge from the practices which mediate this knowledge in an entertaining and instructive fashion. His account astutely seizes on familiar concepts for the purpose ofrecasting the polarity of "schone Kunste" and "Wissenschaften." Whereas, in the standard opposition, "Poesie" constitutes one of the "redende Kiinste," and is therefore located within the sphere of the "schone Kunste," in Lenz's model "Poesie" becomes an overarching domain that shares in the advantages of both the fine arts and the sciences. By merging the two sources in the one domain of poetrylliterature, Lenz invests "Poesie" with a different (and arguably greater)

Patrizia C. McBride

cognitive potential thantheUWissenschaften"can claim.'' To illustrate the advantages of "Poesie," Lenz takes recourse to an anthropologic theory that views the human mind as essentially tom between the sequential mode of the mind's perceptions and operations, on the one hand, and its innate yearning for a synthetic picture of reality, on the other. Because the faculty of understanding, which presides over the generation ofknowledge, operates on the basis of a temporal sequence of perceptions, the human desire to grasp and render heterogeneous reality as a meaningful whole cannot be satisfied through the rational dissection of experience alone. By contrast, "Poesie" proposes itself as the privileged human faculty that can tap into the cognitive source of the "Wissenschaften" while circumventing their shortcomings. Drawing on the mimetic procedure proper to the fine arts, "Poesie" succeeds in offering a sensual, synthetic picture of human existence (332-38).12

A more detailed analysis of the way the two principles presiding over the fine arts and the sciences-"Nachahrnung" and "Anschauung"-interact within the field of "Poesie" will prove helpful in further defining the specificity of aesthetic meaning, particularly as it applies to the activity of the artistlgenius. It must first be noted, however, that when Lenz speaks of imitation he has in mind something other than the neoclassicist injunction to reproduce reality according to a set of universal, suprahistorical rules imposed by reason. As Karin Wurst has shown, for Lenz the mimetic process that sustains artistic production does not entail a mechanical reproduction based on rational dictates, like those of neoclassicism, but is rather consigned to a refractory mechanism centered on the reorganization of perceptions and sensual stimuli in the artist's soul.I3 What the artist is called upon to imitate is not an external picture of the world, but rather the internal images reality summons in his soul. It is by means of this fundamentally creative process that the artist shares in the divine nature of God, the supreme creator. Along these lines, the artisttgenius is defined as the individual who has access to an all-encompassing grasp of reality, a penetrating insight, which is equated with the gaze of God:

Wir nennen die Kopfe Genies, die alles, was ihnen vorkommt, gleich so durchdringen, durch und durch sehen, dal3 ilue Erkemtnis denselben Wert, Umfang, Klarheit hat, als ob sie durch Anschaun oder alle sieben Sime zusammen wLe erworben worden. (336)

As this passage shows, the insight of genius is associated with a type of cognition ("Erkenntnis") whose uncommon scope and clarity depend not on the involvement of the intellect, but rather on the simultaneous activation of all senses. Lenzdefines this cognition as "Anschauen," the intuitive, nondiscursive apprehension ofreality. At issue is the idea of an "anschauende Erkenntnis," a cognitive mode that allows for the meaningful organization and synthetic presentation of the contents of experience before the intervention of intellect.14 At this point it is not difficult to discern the fundamental interplay of 'imitation' and 'intuitive knowledge' in


aesthetic production. The two principles help identify the specific gift of genius, namely, its ability to imitate-to give sensual manifestation to-the images reality evokes in his mind. These images are distinguished by their synthetic, 'intuitive' quality-a quality lacked by intellectual operations.

An investigation of the semantic ambivalence that characterizes the notion of "Anschauung" in the Anmerkungen yields further, crucial insights into the specificity of aesthetic meaning. At first glance, Lenz's usage of the key terms "Anschauung" and "anschauen" appears erratic-at times they denote a nonconceptual mode of cognition, while in other instances they designate the optic sense in a most concrete fashion. This inconsistency is the source of a disturbing conceptual confusion and may be seen as one instance of that intellectual carelessness, which for many marks Lenz as a brilliant but undisciplined thinker. Yet if one follows closely the development of the argument surrounding "Anschauung," one finds that Lenz's exploitation of the term's ambiguity is thoroughly deliberate, and in fact serves the purpose of grounding the text's claim about drama's superiority over other genres. It is the insistence on the primacy of the visual sense--only implicit in the notion of an "anschauuende Erkenntnis7'-that contributes to specifying the distinctiveness and import of aesthetic experience.

Martin Rector has highlighted the central role visual imagery plays in the Anmerkungen, suggesting that the text's inquiry into the essence of literature cannot be adequately understood if one neglects to reconstruct the essentially visual discourse the text stages. This, Rector argues, is a discourse on seeing as the highest sense perception. As he shows, Lenz once again appropriates the vocabulary of Enlightenment cognitive discourse while effectively turning its rationalist thrust on its head. Indeed, the idea of visual, poetic cognition outlined in the Anmerkungen has little in common with the rational, framing gaze ofthe Enlightenment. For Lenz, poetry grants access to a metaphysical "Wesenschau," i.e., an essential, comprehensive vision of human experience that eludes the temporal and spacial constraints that limit intellectual cognition.I5 Rector emphasizes how Lenz's argument on seeing inserts itself within a long-standing tradition that seeks to define the literary genre by drawing parallels to the visual arts-a tradition revived in the mid 1700s by Lessing's Laokoon.16 Indeed, the Anmerkungen take up the contested dichotomy between the static/visual and the sequentiaYconceptua1, which for Lessing defines the specificity-and the mutual boundaries--of the visual arts and poetry, critiquing Lessing's model with arguments that echo Herder's objections in the first of his Kritische Walder.17 Like Herder, Lenz rejects the polarization of, on the one hand, a literary genre that operates within an endless temporal continuum and is therefore necessarily partial, and, on the other, a range of visual arts that can render the image of a whole, but only by freezing it within an atemporal frame. Against this dichotomy, Lenz conceives of poetry as a genre that succeeds in presenting a synthetic picture of reality in spite of its sequential mode of operation.


It is significant that the text does not limit itselfto endorsing Herder's argument, but instead takes it one step further-a step that appears decisive in defining the centrality of the optic sense as the mediator of a synthetic, nonconceptual mode of apprehending reality. Lenz's claim on the preeminence of seeing does not apply to all fields of literary production alike, but rather serves to ground the advantages of the genre which relies primarily on the visual sense for its reception, namely drama. This argument is what provides the foundation for establishing a hierarchy of genres, in particular, for maintaining the superiority of drama over epic poetry:

Wenn wir das Schicksal des Genies betrachten (ich rede von Schriftstellem) so ist es unter aller Erdensohne ihrem das bangste, das traurigste. ...Was kann der Epopeendichter tun, unsere Aufmerksamkeit festzuhalten ... Der Schauspieldichter hat's besser, wenn das Schicksal seine Wiinsche erhoren wollte... (346-47).

Lenz's comparison of drama and epic poetry rests on the peculiar modes in which the two genres are received. Drama's advantage over epic poetry lies in its being presented and watched ("vorgestellt" and "angeschaut," 347), as opposed to just read. In virtue of its visual mode of reception, drama lends itself to mediating the simultaneous picture of a whole, and is therefore more likely to capture the attention of a modem audience. The impact of epic poetry, by contrast, is weakened precisely by the sequential mode in which it operates and is received. Along these lines, Lenz maintains that he does not want his plays to be read, but watched ("Trost ! Ich wollte nicht gelesen werden. Angeschaut. Werde ich aber vorgestellt und verfehlt-so mocht ich Palett' und Farben ins Feuer schmeiflen ..." 347). Implicit in this reasoning is the belief that the paradox of a sequentially operating literature, which nevertheless grants a simultaneous vision of reality, is best solved by drama, which relies on the visual as aprimary mode ofreception. If genius is endowed with a godlike, all-encompassing gaze for grasping reality in its totality, then the mode of communicating this vision to an audience must be quintessentially visual. In other words, the appropriate counterpart for genius's own "anschauende Erkenntnis" must be a mode of reception centered on "anschauen."

I11 Defining the gift of the artisdgenius becomes the cornerstone in Lenz's case

against French normative poetics. The crux of his argument lies in the contention that the rationalistic categories of French discourse cannot account for the genius's ability to share his nonconceptual vision with an audience. This discussion echoes many of the theses driving the eighteenth-century debates aimed at redefining the mechanism and the function of aesthetic activity--debates that crystallize, in the latter part of the century, around the Shakespeare revival in the theoretical writings


of Lessing, Herder, Wieland, Goethe, and Gerstenberg, as well as the innovative dramatic practice ofHeinrich Leopold Wagner andFriedrich Maximilian Klinger. l a

Shakespeare is reappropriated as the model of an artistic production grounded in the historically bound, cultural tradition of a people. The insight into the historical specificity of art produces the innovative aesthetic category of "popular taste," which comes to embody a situated reference point that cannot be translated into abstract, atemporal rules of reason. French neoclassic aesthetics is rejected for its blindness to the historicity and particularity of art,which results in an obsession with universal, suprahistorical aesthetic standards derived from the texts of classical antiquity.

Lenz's critique of French drama is modeled on these arguments. In the Anmerkungen the French are reproached for their naive faith in the authority of Aristotelian drama. Through their self-imposed enjoinment to Aristotle's yoke the French have chosen to elevate a historically specific, dramatic form to an ideal model.19 But in so doing they must ignore the specific cultural soils in which the drama of the Greeks and that of the Germans have grown, indeed, the distinctive "Volksgeschmack" (359) that nurtures the two traditions. It is this "taste" that provides the basic criterion according to which the drama of a people should develop, and explains why the tragedy ofmodern Germanic peoples centers around a remarkable personality, while remarkable events lie at the heart of Greek tragedy. Within this context, the artistlgenius becomes the mouthpiece of his people's distinctive tradition. Hence, "Die Italiener hatten einen Dante, die Engellander Shakespearn, die Deutschen Klopstock, welche das Theater schon aus ihrem eigenen Gesichtspunkt ansahen, nicht durch Aristoteles' Prisma" (348). Unlike these peoples, the French have enslaved themselves to the observance of foreign, external rules, and therefore have not produced any great poet.

The conclusions to be drawn from Lenz's discussion of the new categories of taste and genius are exemplary for Sturm-und-Drangpoetics: Art's nonconceptual, communicative potential resides in its rootedness in the finite historical experience of a people. However, for Lenz this rootedness also grounds art's distinctiveness with respect to other cognitive practices and explains the shortcomings of French aesthetics, which has subordinated aesthetic production to philosophical speculation. This becomes clear when one considers the way in which Lenz's text endeavors to come to grips with the conundrum that haunts the aesthetic of genius. Implicit in this aesthetic is the danger that art will be reduced to the imaginative, yet arbitrary play of a talented individual. But another, more fundamental inconsistency threatens to undermine the new aesthetic model at its foundations. Its most sophisticated formulation is found in Kant's discussion of a sensus communis in the Kritik der Urteilskraft. In raising the question of how aesthetic taste may be communicated and shared, Kant draws attention to the communicative riddle underlying the idea of an artistlgenius whose creations are original and incomparable, yet remain immediately accessible to an a~dience.~" At issue is the difficulty of identifying the


principle that makes the product ofthis process, the artwork, intelligible to an artist's audience, once one has ruled out a universal language of reason as the ground of all aesthetic activity. In Lenz's case, the dilemma can be restated as follows: Which faculty enables the audience of a play to perceive the fundamental link between the medium of representation and the object being represented, between the drama unfolding on the stage and the human experience it symbolizes?

It is with an eye to this problem of reception that Lenz insists on accounting for the way genius fulfills its prescribed task. If the poet is called to render reality according to the inner image it summons in his soul, he is not licenced to operate according to whim, but is instead called to choose a standpoint from which to observe and represent the real. This standpoint will dictate what he should do: "Der wahre Dichter verbindet nicht in seiner Einbildungskraft, wie es ihrn gefallt, was die Herren die schone Natur zu nennen belieben .... Er nimmt Standpunkt-und dam muB erso verbinden" (336-37). Lenz's much-celebratednotion of "Standpunkt" is central to understanding genius's ability to not only render the multiplicity of reality, but also to make this image accessible and meaningful to his audience. The link between artist and audience is not found in atemporal, universal principles of reason, but rather in the finite, historical horizon in which both artist and audience participate. It is the ability of genius to draw on this finite, situated 'standpoint' which in turn explains the difference between the artist and the "schonem Geist" (338). The latter is the term Lenz uses to describe the scholar, the man of science schooled in traditional (philosophical) aesthetics. As "Zergliederer" and "Kritiker" (336), scholars derive their knowledge from a predominantly rational, conceptual framework, which leaves no room for the inclusion of finite human experience, for the particular tradition of a people. Hence, they will never succeed in reproducing reality in its inevitable historicity (338).

The historical argument provides a powerful weapon for defusing the charge of unaccountability and unbridled subjectivity levied against genius accused of resisting the transparent constraints of reason. This very charge is leveled against the French themselves, whose contemporary dramas are judged to be nothing more than idiosyncratic, highly subjective flights of the imagination. As Lenz argues, because the French follow artificial rules that are not anchored in any popular tradition, French authors find themselves compelled, whether knowingly or not, to pour their subjectivity into their works in order to impart them with substance. Hence, in works by Rousseau and Voltaire one can hardly overlook the fact that "der Dichter malt das ganze Stiick auf seinem eigenen Charakter" (352). Nurtured by the individual psychology of the artist rather than by the cultural horizon of a whole people, such plays endup reflectingnot reality itself, but the artist's own personality ("Sein ganzes Schauspiel ...wird also nicht ein Gemalde der Natur, sondern seiner eigenen Seele" 351).

And yet, the impressive case the treatise mounts against French aesthetics cannot conceal the fact that the Anmerkungen walk a tight rope between the demand


to articulate the differences of distinctive dramatic models-the Germanic and the Greek-in an accessible and persuasive fashion, and the fundamental assumptions on which this demand relies, namely, that these differences can never be fully grasped within the discursive mode within which the text remains inscribed. The problem is that in the endeavor to define that which cannot be articulated within conceptual discourse one is constantly faced with the risk of saying too much, of formulating the 'untellable' in too positive a manner, and thereby of committing the same fallacy one set out to refute. Hence the frequent self-interruptions, the self- corrections, the retractions that punctuate the text's exposition, as though the speaker were cautiously walking along the edge of a conceptual precipice. If for the purpose of proving the French wrong the text sets out to describe the different structuring prinqples in Greek and modem German drama (unitary action as opposed to a central extraordinary personality), at the same time the reader is also continuously reminded that there are limits to what this investigation can accomplish, for the shared standpoint from which the whole of reality can be apprehended in drama cannot be itself described, let alone reduced to a formula. It can only be felt by the artist and his audience:

Und was heiBen denn nun drei Einheiten, meine Lieben? 1st es nicht die eine, die wir bei allen Gegenstanden der Erkenntnis suchen, die eine, die uns den Gesichtspunkt gibt, aus dem wir das Ganze umfangen und iiberschauen konnen? ... Was heiBen die drei Einheiten? hundert Einheiten will ich euch angeben, die alle immer doch die eine bleiben. Einheit der Nation, Einheit der Sprache, Einheit der Religion, Einheit der Sitten-ja was wird's denn nun? Immer dasselbe, irnmer und ewig dasselbe. Der Dichter und das Publikum miissen die eine Einheit fiihlen aber nicht klassifizieren. Gott ist nur Eins in allen seinen Werken, und der Dichter murj es auch sein .... Aber fort mit dem Schulmeister, der mit seinem Stabchen einem Gott auf die Finger schlagt (344- 45).

There is a unity to experience that drama can grasp and enact, that can be felt, but not spelled out in conceptual terms. In fact, "Verstand," the faculty that presides over conceptual thinking and forms the prerogative of the "Schulmeister," can only operate sequentially and is therefore unable to render synthetically the unity underlying the disparate richness of reality. More importantly, understanding operates through classification ("klassifizieren"), i.e., by reducing the individual instance to a universal class, and is thus fundamentally blind to the finite historical horizon that grounds the inner coherence and meaningfulness of modem drama. Because they are historically situated and culturally specific, the reality drama discloses and the method the poet follows cannot be reduced to universal rules. Hence it follows that the dictates of French neoclassicism, as well as any constraints based on a suprahistorical understanding of art, are to be rejected. In their

Patrizia C. McBride

universalizing, atemporal pretensions they purport to rule a domain-the aesthetic -whose multiplicity and unity they cannot capture. Lenz's argument amounts to a critique of the attempt, undertaken by a fundamentally rationalistic aesthetics, to impose its norms and guidelines upon the domain of art.

Iv Lenz's critique of the French neoclassicist model, which the Anmerkungen

dismiss for its reliance on a conceptual mode fundamentally alien to its intended object of investigation, begs the question of the legitimation of the discursive mode in which his own critique unfolds. There is hardly a commentator who has not remarked on Lenz's idiosyncratic style and its conspicuous deviation fiom eighteenth- century rhetorical standards. In one of the most complete and theoretically informed investigations of rhetoric in the Anmerkungen, Michael Morton relates the text's unconventional form to a pattern by which "the text's discursive substance merges with the form of the exposition intended to communicate itv2' As Morton argues, far from obsequiously reproducing rhetorical and stylistic conventions of its time, the text's formal gesture attempts to replicate or reinforce the objectives it pursues. For instance, it seeks to affirm the superiority ofthe dramatic genre over epic poetry by means of an exposition that is ostensibly theatrical in nature.22 Hence, the Anmerkungen open with an overview of drama's historical development as the opening of dramatic chambers and the display of theatrical performances on the stage of the speaker's imagination r ich zirnmere in meiner Einbildung ein ungeheures Theater," 329).

But Lenz's deviation from contemporary norms does not limit itself to the theatricality of the text's exposition. It is also inscribed in a meandering, self- undermining style, which seems to place into question the soundness of the arguments advanced and thus indirectly challenges the validity of the text's overall enterprise. Critics have generally agreed that the high degree of idiosyncracy and uncertainty, which marks the style of the Anmerkungen, cannot be accounted for merely in terms of the essayistic practices that flourished in the eighteenth century in opposition to the highly structured prose of Enlightenment rationalistic discourse.23 In this respect, early commentators have been inclined to view the 'deviant' character of Lenz's form as the unintended outcome of the author's insufficient mastery of his ideas, or even as a token of his own self-doubt concerning the soundness of his arguments.24 By contrast, more recent scholarship has sought to underscore the deliberate and constructive character of Lenz's stylistic choices, often establishing a link between the overall intellectual endeavor ofthe Anmerkungen and their apparent formal capriciousness. Along these lines, Karin A. Wurst sees in the text's meandering style the unfolding of an exploration leading to a knowledge different from that based on systematic perceptions and conceptual structures-a knowledge that requires a distinctive mode of writing and argumentati~n.~~ I would like to take Wurst's suggestion a step further and propose that Lenz's self-


undermining style follows as a logical necessity from the critique of French conceptual discourse, which represents one important aim of the Anmerkungen.

Key to understanding the relation between the text's endeavor and its style is the degree to which Lenz is impelled to accept the presuppositions ofthe conceptual mode he denounces, if he is to seriously engage the mode of thinking he seeks to disprove. This entails that his argument on art's distinctiveness remains ensnared within a conceptual and discursive mode that, at the same time, is deemed inadequate for grasping art's fundamental alterity. Ifconsidered from this viewpoint, the Anmerkungen incur a performative contradiction, in that they attempt to encompass a realm that they simultaneously declare to be inaccessible to their own conceptual and discursive strategies. The problem Lenz faces is a fundamental dilemma that arises when one postulates the existence of cognitive realms located beyondthe conceptual. How can one articulate andargue for acognitive domain not anchored in the conceptual, and simultaneously avoid falling back into a mode of argumentation grounded in conceptual structures? Is there a language capable of expressing and preserving the utter alterity of the nonconceptual?

Lenz's quest for grasping the Other of conceptual knowledge within the medium of art foreshadows in significant ways the Romantic experiment-although the epistemological framework of Romanticism is no longer the sensualistic strain of Enlightenment thought that extends from Hamann and Herder to the Sturm und Drang, but rather the elaboration of Kant's critical method in Schelling's and Fichte's idealism. The common ground shared by the empiricist, anti-intellectual currents epitomized by Lenz and the Romantics is perhaps most evident in Walter Benjamin's account of the genesis ofRomanticism. For Benjamin, the starting point of Romantic aesthetics lies in the post-Kantian insight into the impossibility of an unmediated, simultaneous, all-encompassing knowledge-that preconceptual "Anschauung," which forms a cornerstone in Lenz's model (and later gains preeminence inKantYs Kritikder Urteilskraft, though under different epistemological premises).26 The Romantics tried to solve the problem by pushing the limits of contemporary philosophy and positing a thinking that achieves immediate, all- encompassing self-knowledge within the aesthetic medium. For this task they drew on the idealist project of grasping the 'foil' of conceptual thought, its indispensable, yet unknowable Other-the "tain of the mirror" ofreflection, as Rodolf GaschB has vividly put it.27

Ifthere is one lesson that speculative Romanticism bequeathed to later aesthetic reflection, it is the realization that the inquiry into the nonconceptual is possible only from the perspective of the conceptual-an insight that, as I will argue below, is already present in nuce in Lenz's Anmerkungen. However, this recognition threatens to undermine any intellectual investigation of the aesthetic medium, for it raises the question of the soundness of an enterprise which purports to illuminate a realm- the nonconceptual aesthetic-from a position utterly alien to it. Thus it is hardly surprising that since the advent of early Romanticism in Germany, any quest to

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articulate that which lies 'outside' the conceptual has been haunted by the suspicion of a return of those conceptual structures that were to be banned. Given the impossibility of finding a viable alternative to the mode of conceptualization characteristic of Western discourse, any attempt at arguing against this tradition becomes entangled in a paradox, in that it is compelled, at least to some extent, to employ logic and argumentative strategies that pertain to the conceptual mode under scrutiny. In a similar way, much of contemporary poststructuralism is animated by the desire to sidestep the logical paradoxes that plague Western philosophical discourse.28

I believe that this aspect ofLenz's endeavor can best be illuminated by referring to the systems-theoretical framework developed in recent decades by Niklas Luhmann. Drawing on the sociological model of Talcott Parsons and the logic of G. Spencer-Brown, Luhmann interprets the unfolding of modem consciousness as an attempt to cope with the inherently paradoxical nature of cognition. In his account, human knowledge is primarily defined by its inability to synthetically grasp the distinctions within which it operates. This entails that cognition is haunted by a structural blind spot. In its inability to grasp its enabling Other, it remains permanently partial, incomplete, contingent. Nevertheless, the quest for grasping the blind spot through an infinite series of regression constitutes a paradoxical, yet necessary feature of all knowledge. Luhmann identifies two primary ways for dealing with this paradox. The first involves making it invisible, pretending it does not exist. This is by far the dominant course pursued within modernity, a dissatisfying choice to be sure, for the repressed paradox comes back to haunt the modems under the cloak of a metadiscursive critique caught up in an endless regression. In this light, a second path appears far more promising. It consists in acknowledging the paradox, underscoring its inescapability, and thereby recognizing in it an essential condition ofpossibility for any investigation into the structures of knowledge. This second path entails that acknowledgment of the double bind does not invalidate the inquiry into the Other of conceptual thinking, but instead forms an essential condition for its p~ssibi l i ty .~~

This, I contend, is the path Lenz chooses to take. Far from seeking to conceal the contradictory nature of his endeavor, Lenz resolves to emphasize it through his style. It is this choice which makes his text remarkable, perhaps unique for its time. Evidence of Lenz's awareness about the paradox his textual discourse cannot escape is found in the frequent passages that document the unfolding, within the Anmerkungen, of a coherent, critical reflection on the text's own discursive mode. These commentaries seek to highlight the limitations of the conceptual discourse inscribed within the Anmerkungen, while at the same time acknowledging the lack of alternatives to this discourse. In what follows I will reconstruct the development of this reflection, by analyzing the passages that fimction as a metacommentary on Lenz's exposition, often relativizing or even calling into question significant textual claims.


v The panoramic presentation of world drama which opens the essay, a theatrical

performance which seeks to capture the attention and the favor of the audience, closes with what appears to be afairly traditional declaration of intents: "so erlauben Sie mir, meine Herren... Ihnen eine miiDige Stunde mit Anmerkungen iiber Theater, iiber Schauspiel anzufiillen" (332). This passage emblematically displays the dialogical quality of the text's discourse, aimed at encouraging the reader to become actively involved in the text's investigation. In the apologetic tone of a captatio benevolentiae, the speaker underscores the modesty of his textual intent. Rather than claiming for himself the right of defining an ultimate objective for the observations he is about topresent, he invites his audience to join him and take active part in shaping the textual inquiry. In this way, they will perhaps be able to articulate the text's objective themselves: "so untersteh ich mich nicht, Ihnen den letzten Endzweck dieser Anmerkungen, dasZiel meiner Parteiganger anzuzeigen. Vielleicht werden Sie, wenn Sie mit rnir fortgeritten sind, von selbst darauf stol3en ..."(332).

This emphasis on the openendedness of the textual endeavor lends itself to multiple readings. It can be viewed, on the one hand, as a gesture with which the speaker seeks to pay homage to his audience-albeit with an obsequiousness that is not without irony. Onthe other hand, it can be taken more literally as an admission that the speaker does not quite know where his reasoning will take him. A third possibility is that we are confronted with a rhetorical stratagem for signaling a discrepancy between the discursive mode that sustains the text and its object of investigation. If conceptual discourse is quintessentially linear and aim-oriented, progressing inexorably toward an argumentative goal, failing to state an objective at the onset may be seen as a way for the speaker to distance himself from this discursive mode, with which he is nevertheless compelled to engage.

This hypothesis finds support in a passage that openly thematizes the critical, analytic discourse within which the Anmerkungen unfold. At the beginning of the second section, the speaker makes apologies for his insufficient mastery of critical reflection. He blames the shortcomings ofhis exposition on his youthful restlessness, which runs counter to the analytical forbearance and precision required in the enterprise he has undertaken:

Denn ich fiirchte sehr, das Jugendfeuer werde die wenige Portion Geduld auflecken, die ich in meinern Temperament finde, und die doch einem Prosaisten, und besonders einem kritischen-In der Tat, da die Kritik mehr eine Beschaftigung des Verstandes als der Einbildungskraft bleibet, so verlangt sie ein groDes MaB Phlegrna+337)

At first glance, the speaker appears to be asking his audience for leniency in its appraisal of the text, which unfolds within a mode of reflection with which he does not feel at home. At the same time, his apologetic tone can hardly mask his distaste

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for the role of "Prosaist" he has chosen to espouse, particularly for the apathetic, lifeless mode of reflection that goes with it. As suggested in this passage, critical activity pertains not so much to imagination as to the intellect, and thus requires a great deal of detachment and impartiality. By implication, the speaker identifies himself as a man of imagination-the juxtaposition of "Verstand" and "Einbildungskraft" here being a way to refer to the domains over which the two faculties preside, namely, conceptual thought and aesthetic activity. In other words, the speaker presents himself as an artist at a loss with his role as a critic. What appears remarkable, in this context, is his unwillingness to abandon the plane of discursive critique, i.e., to disavow the critical role ofthe "Prosaist" altogether. This is tantamount to an admission that there is no alternative to the conceptual mode of critical discourse, indeed, that this terrain constitutes the only ground on which the Anmerkungen can unfold. If this tacit acknowledgment helps define the text's discursive mode, it also contributes to establishing distance, a fundamental misgiving toward this mode of discourse.

The question that arises at this point is whether the speaker's apprehensions with regard to the rhetoric of the Anmerkungen originate from an awareness of his inadequacy in handling this discourse, or should rather be seen as symptomatic of a problem inherent in the discourse itself. A passage in the first section seems to support the first hypothesis, in that it dramatizes how the speaker manages to lose his bearings in the web spun by his own thoughts. The context for this 'incident' is the speaker's attempt to characterize "Dichtkunst" by means of a description of the mental processes presiding over the formation of knowledge. But what starts as an account of the way in which sensual stimuli are organized and subsumed to concepts soon becomes a digression which recounts how the collected impressions take on a life of their own in the mind. Michael Morton has aptly characterized this digression as a performative enactment of the very processes the text seeks to expound, noting that the description of a self-generating train of thought is staged and demonstrated in the text's own digres~ion.~~ What is more, to make sure that this digression will be recognized as such, the speaker wraps it up with the gesture of catching himself at straying from the intended path, which in turn allows him to reestablish the original train of thought: "Doch bald geb ich selbst ein solches [Beispiel] ab-ich finde mich wieder zurecht, ich machte die Anrnerkung ..."(333).

While ironically evoking the image of an ill-equipped and inexperienced writer, this self-conscious, self-reflexive passage suggests a high degree of sophistication and textual control. In playing the part of a writer who gets caught in the tangle of his ruminations, the speaker does not really intend to cast doubts on his own adroitness in handling this discourse, but rather to uncover the limitations of the discourse itself. There is a gap, as it were, between the way the mind works and the characteristics of the discourse employed to represent mental processes- traditionally, the conceptual discourses of science and philosophy. While the critical discourse of the "Prosaist" follows a linear, aim-oriented development, the


mind is simultaneously involved in multiple, partially autonomous operations. The tension engendered by the conflicting exigencies of a primarily conceptual mode and its object of investigation can be resolved in two ways. Conceptual discourse can either reduce the multivalence of the mind's operations to a monolithic, linear narrative. Or else, it can attempt to reproduce the associative, digressive unfolding of mental processes, and thus renounce its demand of linearity and conceptual clarity. This latter endeavor in effect hijacks the discourse, taking it off track and weakening it, according to its own standards.

But there are further, even more serious ramifications to Lenz's textual experiment. As it turns out, the attempt to turn thought onto itself, the mind to reflect on its own operations, actually sidetracks thought in that it ends up engendering those same operations that are being examined. These new operations get in the way of the initial objective of the mind's self-reflection, taking it in a different direction and eventually subverting the examination altogether. This type ofincident effectively challenges the idea of self-transparent thought that has represented a cornerstone of rationalistic epistemology since Descartes' meditation^,^' in that it shows that there is no neutral position fiom which the mindlthought could observe itself without altering its own operations. But if pure, unaffected self-observation is impossible, the myth of clarity and impartiality surrounding rational discourse is placed in question.

If, at the level of the text's argumentation, the conceptual discourse of French aesthetics is critiqued as being inadequate for grasping the simultaneity and particularity of aesthetic signification, the shortcomings ofthis discourse are further highlighted through examples that challenge the very grounding of this discourse, its postulates of objectivity, neutrality, and self-clarity. In this regard, the self- interruptions, the sudden changes of direction, the occasional irresolution that mark the text's argumentation serve the purpose of calling attention to the limitations of a discourse that continuously runs the risk ofbeing seduced by its own self-assured, generalizing gestures. This restraining and relativizing function is especially pronounced at critical junctures in the Anmerkungen. For instance, the emphatic exposition of the notion of "Standpunkt," which represents the culmination of the rhetorically masterful discussion of genius, is weakened at its conclusion by a sudden disorientation in the speaker, who appears to have once again lost his train of thought: "Wollte sagen-was wollt ich doch sagen?-" (337). Other passages go so far as to underscore the deliberate nature of such self-effacing gestures. A case in point is the lengthy tirade against French dramatists, whom the speaker lampoons for subjecting themselves to external rules of structure and diction in the hope that this might help camouflage the hollowness of their creations. As the speaker self- reflexively observes, however, his own contentions on this point fail to rise above the level of abstraction and generality for which he is reproaching the French. This calls for amending the argument that was just advanced: "DaI3 ich dieses trockene Stiick Rkonnement mit einem Nagelchen spicke, will ich-" (354) Through this

statement, which ends in one of the self-intemptions that are so typical for the Anmerkungen, the speaker himself resolves to punch a hole in the balloon of reasoning he has inflated before the reader's eyes. The way to correct this abstractness is to introduce concrete examples of the problem at issue. The flaws of the French models must be demonstrated hands-on, instead of through abstract calculations. The text proceeds to illustrate the shortcomings of the French model by means of a detailed comparison between Shakespeare's andvoltaire 's renditions of a proverbial dramatic theme, namely, the death of Julius Caesar.

The discursive critique, which the Anmerkungen unfold, culminates, at the text's conclusion, in the speaker's open admission of the deficiencies inherent in the discursive mode with which he is compelled to engage. In the same tone of exaggerated deference found at the beginning of the treatise, the speaker voices his regret for having tried the patience of his audience with such lengthy ruminations:

Das war's nun, meine Herren! ich bin mude, Ihnen mehr zu sagen. Aber weil doch jeder Rauchmachenmul3, der sich unterstehen will, ein Feuer anzuziinden. Ich bin gewil3, daB es noch lange nicht genug war, Aufmerksarnkeit rege zu machen-nichtsdestoweniger straft mich mein Gewissen doch, dal3 ich schon zuviel gesagt. Denn es ist so eine verdriil3liche Sache, vonDingen zuschwatzen, die sich nur sehen und fiihlen lassen, uber die nichts gesagt sein will-4361)

At first these remarks seem to amount to nothing more than self-reproach. The speaker expresses his feelings of guilt for having said too much-and thereby ironically undermines the preceding statement claiming he may not have said enough to arouse his audience's attention. The subsequent remark takes the reasoning in an unexpected direction, however, suggesting that it does not really matter how much or how little one says on such a topic; one always ends up saying too much, given the fundamental inadequacy of language for discussing it ("for it is irritating to talk about things about which nothing can be said"). The problem resides in the discursive mode within which the task of speaking is carried out. It once again points to the insufficiency of the text's mode of argumentation for grasping the specificity of drama, and, in turn, of the aesthetic domain.

VI These are only few examples of the commentary the Anmerkungen present on

their own discourse. From these and other passages like them, there emerges the awareness of a fundamental inadequacy of the critical discourse for its object of investigation. As I have argued, this awareness stems from the insight that any inquiry into the aesthetic-as the Other of conceptual practices-remains implicated, at least at the level of discourse, in these same practices. Faced with this paradoxical condition, Lenz refuses to brush the problem aside or yield to linguistic scepticism or epistemological nihilism. Instead, he chooses to follow the second path described


by Niklas Luhmann: He inscribes in the text's splintered, self-reflexive style his awareness of the paradox that any cognitive investigation into the structure of knowledge engenders. Through recourse to a professedly rhapsodic, deliberately self-contradictory style, Lenz creates a highly idiosyncratic discourse that aims at undercutting the universal claims still present in the structure of his argumentation. It is a discourse that attempts to express the particular, nongeneralizable knowledge to which the aesthetic grants access, and in the same gesture points to the inevitable erasure of the particular that conceptual discourse entails.

Lenz's reflection grows out of that current of Enlightenment thought that recognized in the contingency and ultimate incommensurability of historical epochs a discrete realm of meaning, and held the aesthetic to be a privileged site in which this meaning could be redeemed. In taking up the task of theorizing art as a domain of signification distinct from conceptual knowledge, the Anmerkungen register the paradox that underlies the endeavor of delineating the two realms from the position ofthe conceptual. Lenz chooses to confront this paradox by enveloping his reflection in a pointedly unconventional and self-contradictory style. In this way, he creates a mode of signification that calls attention to its limitations, without, however, renouncing the task of telling, in the awareness that contradiction itself is not an ontological category, but rather a by-product of precisely that rational discourse his deliberately fragmentary style attempts to circumvent. As one of the thinkers engaged in theorizing and creating a modem German literature, Lenz struck at the heart of a paradox that has loomed over aesthetic theory ever since. His paradoxical attempt at an answer displays a freshness and timeliness that remain undiminished more than two centuries later.

'One of the most compelling accounts of the rise of modem aesthetics within the German context is found in Peter Burger's analysis of the historical transformations that shaped the "institution" of modem literature during the eighteenth century. Drawing on Max Weber's sociological framework, Burger interprets the emergence ofthe modem "Autonomieasthetik" in the works of Kant, Schiller, and Moritz as a reaction to the increasing specialization of modem societies, and to the ensuing fragmentation of experience in disparate life spheres and value systems. In the wake of these transformations, art is theorized as the domain left unscathed by the all-pervasive rationalization that characterizes modernity. As such, it is identified as a realm which still holds the unitary meaning of a disjointed human experience. In virtue of its opposition to the rational principles that permeate all domains of life, including religion, art is perceived as the medium within which the nonrational, deeper meaning of human life manifests itself. Particularly the new institution of literature becomes a functional equivalent of religion, in that it offers a prerational insight into the sense and purpose of existence, which religion is no longer able to produce. Peter Biirger, "Institution Literatur und ModernisierungsprozeR,"Zum Funktionswandel in der Literatur, ed. Peter Biirger (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1983), 9-32. See also Gunter G r i m ' s discussion of the origins of modem literature in the critique of dogmatic rationality and erudite intellectualism, which culminates in the historicistmovement epitomizedby Herder's reflection. GunterE. G r i m , Letternhltur.

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Wissenschaftskritik und antigelehrtes Dichten in Deutschland von der Renaissance bis zum Sturm und Drang (Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1998). ZLacoue-Labarthe and Nancy characterize the project of early Romanticism as a blending of literary theory and practice fueled by the desire to grasp the essence or "truth of [literary] production" in itself, by staging "literature producing itself as it produces its own theory" (12), that is, a literary absolute. Though the ultimate aim of this project was to transcend the coordinates of present-day idealistic philosophy and thereby disclose a realm beyond the confines ofcontemporary thought, Lacoue-Labarthe andNancy emphasize that the Romantic project of a "literary Absolute aggravates and radicalizes the thinking of totality and the Subject" (1 5), that is, it winds up reinforcing the horizon of contemporary idealism. Far from uncovering the sought-for, new terrain of an absolutely self-present, self-cognizant literary 'consciousness,' Romantic thinking lapses back into the very structures of thought it sought to displace. According to the authors, this represents the main reason for the collapse of the experiment undertaken by the Jena Romantics. Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy, The Literary Absolute. The Theory of Literature in German Romanticism, trans. Philip Barnard and Cheryl Lester (Albany: SUNY Press, 1988). See in particular the "Preface," 1-1 7. 'Braungart's aim is to outline the historical development of the discourse unfolding alongside the dominant strain of modem aesthetic reflection-extending from Kant and the Romantics to modernism and poststructuralism. Braungart argues that the philosophical framework of this latter reflection-its exclusive grounding in language and thought-makes it prone to the danger of a divorce between word and meaning, signifier and signified. Where meaning and sign lack a stable connection, language loses its reliability and risks to dissolve in an endless, self-referential play of signifiers. Novalis's "Monolog" represents an early document of this awareness, which explodes within the language skepticism of modernism and the "Sinnpessimismus" of poststructuralism. Braungart insists that this is not the only avenue available to the reflection on art in modernity. He traces the origins of an alternative discourse to Herder's theory of corporeal expression-which encompasses both aesthetic production (aesthetic sense is present in the materiality of the body, which does not function as a 'mere' sign) and the reception of art (the senses, and not the intellect, provide the medium for conveying and grasping aesthetic meaning). The grounding in the material character of the artwork allows for an articulation of aesthetic meaning as contingent and finite, but definite, present, and communicable. According to Braungart, the overlooked strain of aesthetic reflection beginning with Herder and Moritz lives on in the physiognomic theories of the nineteenth century and asserts itself with force in the thinking of key modernists- Hofmannsthal, Rilke, and Doblin, among others. Georg Braungart, Leibhafter Sinn. Der andere Diskurs der Moderne (Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1995). See especially the introduction (1-8) and the sections dedicated to Herder's theory of plastic expression (53-107). 4Helga Stipa Madland, Image and Text: J.M.R. Lenz (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1994), 14-15. 51n this respect, see Alan C. Leidner's insightful appraisal of Lenz's work in the context of Sturm und Drang aesthetics in The Impatient Muse: Germany and the Sturm und Drang (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994), particularly the "Introduction" and chapter 7 ("The Patient Art of J.M.R. Lenz"), 1-12 and 92-106. 6Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Briefe, die neueste Litteratur betreffend. Werke und Briefe, vol. 4 , ed. Gunter E. G r i m (Frankfurt a.M.: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1985). 'Johann Christoph Gottsched, Versuch einer critischen Dichthnst. Ausgewahlte Werke, vol. 6, ed. Joachim Birke und Brigitte Birke (Berlin: DeGruyter, 1973).


'Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Hamburgische Dramaturgie. Werke und Briefe, vol. 6, ed. Wilfiied Barnert and Klaus Bohnen (Frankfurt a.M.: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1985). 9As Michael Morton has argued, underneath the surface chaos that ensues from the text's unconventional exposition it is not difficult to detect a fairly conventional, tripartite organization that structures the unfolding of a logical argumentation. Michael Morton, "Exemplary Poetics: The Rhetoric ofLenz's Anmerkungen iibers Theater andPandaemonium Germanicum," Lessing Yearbook 20 (1988): 121-51, here 122-23. "Tor an insightful discussion of the evolution of these distinctions in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century see Gerhard Plumpe's account of the genesis of modem asthetics in Asthetische Kommunikation der Moderne, vol. 1 (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1993), 26-36. "According to Wanda von Dusen, the opposition Poesie/Wissenschaften is implicitly introduced in the short opening paragraph to the Anmerkungen, where the speaker is described as an "objective dilettant" re in unparteiischer Dilettant"). Von Dusen argues that the understood specialist, to which the dilettant here is opposed, is in this context the man of science, i.e., the philosopher. Wanda von Dusen, "Reconciling Reason with Sensibility: Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz's Anmerkungen ubers Theater, Subversive Sublimities: Undercurrents of the German Enlightenment, ed. Eitel Timm (Columbia: Camden, 1992), 28. IZReferences to and citations from Lenz's Anmerkungen, identified by page number alone in the text, correspond to: J.M.R. Lenz, Werke undSchrif2en I,ed. BrittaTitel and Hellmut Haug (Stuttgart: Goverts, 1966). "Karin A. Wurst, "A Shattered Mirror: Lenz's Concept of Mimesis," Space to Act: The Theater ofJ.M.R.Lenz, ed. Alan C. Leidner andHelga S. Madland (Columbia, S.C.: Camden, 1993), 106-20, here 1 12. For a discussion of Lenz's position within controversies around the notion of imitation in the eighteenth century, see also Helga Madland, "Imitation to Creation: the Changing Concept of Mimesis from Bodmer and Breitinger to Lenz," Eighteenth-Century German Authors and their Aesthetic Theories, ed. Richard Critchfield and Wulf Koepke (Columbia: Camden, 1988), 29-43. I4The notion of an "unmittelbare, anschauende Erkenntnis" figures prominently at the closing of Lenz's "Versuch iiber das erste Principium der Moral." Here it denotes the intuitive, non- intellectual experience of the infinity of God (TiteV Haug, 482-500, here 499-500). Britta Titel and Hellmut Haug see in this "ein Lieblings- und Schliisselwort von Lenz" and relate it to an analogous term employed by Wieland. In Lenz's usage, it denotes a nondiscursive cognition that reaches into the essence of an object ("in intuitiver, nicht-diskursiver Erkenntnis in das Wesen einer Sache eindringen," TiteWaug, 652). The concept of "Anschauung" comes to play a critical role in Kant's first Critique (1781), where it absolves to the cardinal role of organizing and mediating raw sensual perceptions for elaboration through the intellectual faculty. See particularly the first "Abteilung" of Kritik der reinen Vernunft (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1956), 107-82. Lenz had been a student of Kant in Konigsberg between 1768 and 177 1. For a discussion of a possible influence of Kant's early philosophy on Lenz, see Ottomar Rudolf s Jacob Michael Reinhold Lenz. Moralist und AuJklarer (Bad Homburg: Gehlen, 1970), 52-5. ISRector identifies the foundation of Lenz's dramaturgy in the idea of the "Gemalde," which he considers to be the product of an original conflation of aesthetic and theological considerations. Martin Rector, "Optische Metaphorik und theologischer Sinn in Lenz' Poesie-Auffassung," J.M.R. Lenz. Studien zum Gesamtwerk, ed. David Hill (Opladen:

Patrizia C. McBride

Westdeutscher Verlag, 1994), 1 1-26; here 16. See also Rector's study "Anschauendes Denken. Zur Form von Lenz' 'Anmerkungen iibers Theater,'" Lenz-Jahrbuch. Sturm-und- Drang-Studien, 1 (1991): 92-1 05. For the importance of the visual as a structuring principle in Lenz's plays and dramatic theory, see also John Osbome's discussion of the concept ofthe "tableau" in "Motion Pictures: The Tableau in Lenz's Drama and Dramatic Theory," Space to Act: The Theater 0fJ.M.R. Lenz (Columbia, S.C.: Camden, 1993), 91-105. I6Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Laokoon. Werke und Briefe, vol. 5:2, ed. Wilfried Bamer (Frankfurt a.M.: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1985). I7Johann Gottfried Herder, Die kritischen Walder zur Asthetik. Schriften zur ksthetik und Literatur, vol. 2, ed. Gunter E. Grimm (Frankfurt a.M.: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1993). I8For a comprehensive account of Lenz's reception of Shakespeare within the broader horizon of the Shakespeare renaissance in Germany, see Eva Maria Inbar's Shakespeare in Deutschland: Der Fall Lenz (Tiibingen: Niemeyer, 1982). See also the more recent study by John Guthrie, "'Shakespears Geist.' Lenz and the Reception of Shakespeare in Germany," J.M.R. Lenz. Studien zum Gesamtwerk, ed. David Hill (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1994), 36-46. Lenz's effort to claim authorship for the new dramatic model centered on Shakespeare is well-known. In a statement placed at the onset of the Anmerkungen, Lenz insists that his essay predates the publication of the programmatic document of Sturm-und-Drang aesthetics, namely, Von deutscher Art und Kunst, which contains Herder's famed essay on Shakespeare. For a brief discussion of the controversy around the attribution of central tenets of the new dramatic theory involving Herder, Goethe, and Lenz, see Inge Stephan's and Hans-Gerd Winter's ))Ein voriibergehendes Meteor?(( J.M.R. Lenz und seine Rezeption in Deutschland (Stuttgart: Metzlersche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1984), 134. I9A case in point is the rule dictating the unity of dramatic action, in which Lenz views a demand which may have suited the Weltanschauungof the ancient Greeks, but is inadequate for the modem sensibility. If for the Greeks the whole of reality resided in an inexorable destiny, represented through the unfolding of a unitary plot, Lenz maintains that the modems see reality as a multitude of events which all converge around a strong personality. Thus, modem drama achieves through the main character that unity which in Greek tragedy was provided by a unitary plot. Anmerkungen, 345. 20See in particular $40, "Vom Geschmacke als einer Art von sensus communis," Immanuel Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraj. Werkausgabe, vol. 10, ed. Wilhelm Weischedel (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1974), 224-28. For a succinct, yet insightful discussion of the issue of the communicability of taste in Kant's third Critique, see Jochen Schmidt's "Kant: Das Genie in den Grenzen des human aufgeklarten Geistes," Die Geschichte des Genie-Gedankens 1750-1 945, vol. 1 (Darmstadt: WissenschaftlicheBuchgesellschaft,1985), 354-80, especially 359-60. 21Morton, 125. 22Morton, 135. 23For a discussion of the rhetorical and ideological horizon within which the essayistic genre develops in the German-speaking countries over the course of the eighteenth century, see John A. McCarthy's Crossing Boundaries: A Theory and History of Essay Writing in German, 1680-1815 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989), particularly chapter 8 on the essayistic experimentation spanning the period between 1750 and 1790,209- 63. 241n this regard, Fritz Martini holds Lenz's style to be the product of a linguistic crisis which can be traced back to a general crisis of values in a transitional epoch. The rejection of


traditional modes of thinking and interpreting experience would account for the demise of cogent, coherent reflection. Fritz Martini, "Die Einheit der Konzeption in J.M.R. Lenz' ))Anmerkungen iibers Theater,(( Jahrbuch der deutschen Schiller-Gesellschaft 14 (1970): 159-82. In a similar vein, Holger A. Pausch calls attention to the lack of coherence in the basic concepts ofLenz's dramaturgy. "Zur Widerspruchlichkeit in der Lenzschen 'Dramaturgie,'" Maske und Kothurn 17 (1971): 97-108. Recently, Alan Leidner has revived the argument relating Lenz's self-intempting style to his personal insecurity and psychological instability. Alan Leidner, "Zur Selbstunterbrechung in den Werken von Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz," J.M.R. Lenz als Alternative?, ed. Karin A. Wurst (Koln: Bohlau, 1992), 46-63. 25As Wurst argues, "The searching, encircling linguistic gesture or form is its content-a circumscriptive mode ofthinking that approximates the problem or issue without monologically finalizing a position" Wurst, 107. See also Michael Morton's suggestion that Lenz's rhetorical attemptto entangle the text in different forms of contradiction aims at apremeditated "multiplication ofnegativity," by which the text stages the paradoxical condition of a human existence tom between the poles of determinism and freedom. Morton, 125-26 and 136. 2hWalter Benjamin, Der Begriffder Kunstkritik in der deutschen Romantik. Gesammelte Schriften, vol. I. 1, ed. Rolf Tiedemann and Hermann Schweppenhauser (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1974), 19. According to Rodolphe GaschC, Kant's notion of "intellektuelle Anschauung" in the third Critique contains "the idea of a transcendental imagination, of a pure apperception which implicitlyserves to bridge intuition and understanding." It expresses the quest for "an original and synthetic knowledge, a sensible understanding," which becomes programmatic for German post-Kantian philosophy. GaschC's argument draws on what he considers to be the speculative seeds found in paragraph 76 of Kant's Kritik der Urteilskraft. Rodolphe GaschC, The Tain of the Mirror. Derrida and the Philosophy of Reflection (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986), 29. 27See "Towards the Limits of Reflection" in GaschC, 13-105. 28Emblematic in this regard is the exploration of linguistic and conceptual structures in the work ofJacques Demda and Jean-Franqois Lyotard. Demda explicitly reflects the paradoxical nature of this enterprise in his analysis of the styles of Nietzsche, the merciless critic of Western metaphysics. In confronting Nietzsche's writings, he endeavors to come to grips with the desire of overcoming metaphysical speculation and yet the impossibility of doing so without using metaphysical categories and metaphysical reasoning. His analysis of Nietzsche's styles is conducted in a highly self-reflexive and idiosyncratic mode of writing that aims at foregrounding the paradoxical nature of his textual endeavor and at highlighting the recognition that any critique of structures of thought linked to the tradition of Western philosophical discourse remains necessarily imbricated in these very structures. Jacques Derrida, Spurs. Nietzsche's Styles (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979). Within a similar framework, Lyotardundertakes an immanent investigation into the limits of thought. In an enterprise envisioned as the continuation of Kant's exploration of reflective judgment in the third Critique,the faculty ofjudgment foldsupon itself and attempts to outline the limits of reflection, i.e., its own limits, in order to attain the premonition of an outside, albeit in a purely negative fashion. Jean-Franqois Lyotard, Lessons on the Analytic of the Sublime (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994). 29For a discussion of the notion of paradox within a systems-theoretical framework, see Niklas Luhmann, "Sthenographie und Euryalistik," Paradoxien/Zusammenbriiche/ Dissonanzen, ed. Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht and K. Ludwig Pfeiffer (FrankfuM.:Suhrkamp, 1991), 58-82. For Luhmann's characterization of modernity's attempts at coping with the


paradoxical structure of human cognition, see his Die Wissenschaft der Gesellschaft (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1990), particularly the last chapter "Die Modernitat der Wissenschaft," 702- 19. 30Morton, 125. 3'RenC Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, trans. John Cottingham (New York : Cambridge University Press, 1996).

The Paradox of Aesthetic Discourse: J. M. R. Lenz's "Anmerkungen übers Theater"

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