Goethes Tasso: Klassizismus als ästhetische Regression (review)

Benjamin Bennett 241 Faust, der nicht mehr Getrübte (that is, cleansed of all that belongs to the realm of darkness) finally led in die Klarheit, as the Lord promised in the Prologue. Well then, why did Goethe suppress these scenes? Schöne's answer is self-censorship, and this is hardly surprising in view of his "secreting" certain of the Roman Elegies and leaving "Das Tagebuch" unpublished. He was afraid the public would be so shocked by such satanic indecencies that it would turn completely against him. Mrs. Grundy had the last word. "Werkästhetisch" such an action was unjustifiable, Schöne maintains, but "wirkungsästhetisch" understandable. Even today passages in the accepted text are printed with "decency dashes" (Anstandsstriche). I cannot imagine of any Germanist not perusing this book with absorbed fascination. The clarity of its style, the cogency of its arguments and the erudition with which they are supported, the sometimes truly revolutionary character of its conclusions make it a study to which our profession can point with justifiable pride. Hamilton College Robert M. Browning Girschner, Gabriele, Goethes Tasso: Klassizismus als ästhetische Regression. Königstein/Ts.: Athenäum, 1981. χ + 477 pp. To reverse Lessing's remark about the verse in Nathan, this would not be such a bad book if it were not such a good book. For it is really a very bad book. The word "pedantic" does not begin to describe it. Apropos the opening stage setting in Tasso, for example, we receive a ponderously learned disquisition on ancient hermae, which manages somehow to conclude that the images of Vergil and Arios to are mounted on a single pillar—whereas the stage direction makes perfectly clear that they are positioned one at each side of the stage, as an obvious visual allusion to Euripides' Hippolytus. But everything in this book is smothered in unnecessary and often misleading erudition. The author cannot speak of laughter without citing Bergson, or of history or aesthetics or stages of cultural development without the support of Hegel or Cassirer; she dares not utter a syllable about society in general or Goethe's society or Renaissance society without checking it in a half dozen sociologists and historians. She has an authority for every truism, and succeeds thereby in so blurring the distinction between truism and significant assertion that she often seems to overlook the significant assertions she herself has made. Especially distressing, by contrast with her very careful and frequently subtle explication of Tassopassages , is her tendency sometimes to cite an authority without bothering to understand it, even when the authority is Goethe himself. Goethe says, for example, "Die Menge, die einen falschen Begriff von Originalität hat, glaubt [den Künstler] deshalb tadeln zu dürfen, anstatt daß er höchlich zu loben ist, wenn er irgend etwas schon Vorhandenes auf einen höheren, ja den höchsten Grad der Bearbeitung bringt." And Girschner then equates "Grad der Bearbeitung" with "Grad... der an [dem Vorhandenen] vorgenommenen Veränderungen" (p. 306)—as if the "highest" degree of "change" would not mean simply choosing another object altogether—thus argues against the very point she is appealing to. But on the other hand, despite her passion for quoting, Girschner 242 GOETHE SOCIETY OF NORTH AMERICA hardly even makes a gesture toward testing her argument against other of Goethe's major works. One of her main points is: "Im Gewand einer politisch impotent und historisch irrelevant gewordenen Adelsgesellschaft präsentiert Goethe die Ineffizienz der bürgerlichen Ideologie des antikisch orientierten Humanismus seiner Zeit" (p. 379)· If this is not an immediately convincing point, it is at least a very interesting one, and cries out for at least a sketch of its ramifications in Egmont, in Faust, in the Lehrjahre, in Hermann und Dorothea, not to mention Goethe's direct utterances about society. But the only other work Girschner does more than merely mention in passing is Iphigenie. And yet, as I say, this would not be such a bad book if it were not such a good book. Girschner's criticism of the political world represented by Alfons and Antonio, and especially of the place of religion in that world, is excellent (pp. 19ff...