The Self as Muse: Narcissism and Creativity in the German Imagination, 1750–1830 ed. by Alexander Mathäs (review)

The nine essays in this focused and consistently fruitful collection explore the extensive interest in the self and self-examination in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century German culture. Alexander Mathäs, who has already established his credentials as a scholar of literary narcissism, presents in the volume’s introduction two important claims that frame the subsequent contributions. On the one hand, as the title Self as Muse would suggest, the collection asserts that narcissism is “a constitutive force” in German art and literature of this period (14). But the argument goes further, for the period in question has also been widely recognized as giving rise to a new concept of the autonomous self, or the I. Thus, on the other hand, the collection also asserts that narcissism holds a central place in the development of modern subjectivity. It is a strength of the volume that so many of its essays directly support the central theses put forth in the introduction.

The contributions are organized into four sections (Narcissism and the Senses, Narcissism and Morality, Over and Against Freud, and Reading and Writing Narcissism), but many of them could fall into two basic categories: those that treat narcissism as a positive function, and those that treat it as something that must be held in check. Mathäs’s lead-off article, “Narcissism and the Sublime,” provides a fitting example of the latter theme. While examining the inherently narcissistic elements in Kant’s and Schiller’s accounts of the sublime, Mathäs notes that the sublime’s fundamental selflessness can allow it to function as an antidote to self-absorption, as a means to transcend the limitations of narcissistic vanity. Similarly, Ann Schmiesing’s essay shows how Theodor Gottlieb von Hippel’s Über die Ehe casts marriage as an effective cure for narcissistic impulses. Or, if one was a bachelor, as Hippel himself was, one could perform philanthropic acts to mitigate such impulses. Finally, Susan Gustafson’s analysis of the “Bekenntnisse einer schönen Seele” in Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre asserts that the Beautiful Soul’s spiritual quest is driven primarily by a narcissistic preoccupation with herself and by her abject desires. Here it is not so much a question of curing or mitigating the Beautiful Soul’s narcissism but rather contrasting it with a preferable alternative, which Goethe presents in the figure of Natalie.

Whereas several articles treat narcissism as something that requires a cure or at least mitigation, Fritz Breithaupt argues provocatively that narcissism served in this period as an antidote in its own right—in this case as a protection against an easy, at-the-ready feeling of pity or compassion. Tracing the rising importance of empathy in the late eighteenth century, Breithaupt asserts that narcissism fulfilled a positive function in fictional works: it helped to block feelings of empathy and to prevent readers from projecting pity indiscriminately. Corey Robert’s essay on self-reflection in Ha-mann also sees narcissism as a productive literary force. While he explains how conversion narratives such as Hamann’s necessarily rest on layers of self-contemplation, he goes on to argue that Hamann’s subsequent writings, famous for their cryptic style, are not so different from the project of the Lebenslauf: they all rely on self-reflexive (narcissistic) forms of communication. Finally in this vein, Gail Hart’s thoroughly engaging piece on Fürstenspiegel explores how bourgeois writers of the time used narcissistic identification for political purposes. The idea is that actual sovereigns would see themselves reflected in literary depictions of rulers, and these mirror images could then induce them to become more humane and tolerant.

A study of narcissism cannot easily avoid addressing its methodological relationship to Freud and psychoanalytic theory, particularly when the study examines works written well before Freud introduced the term into the vocabulary of selfhood. Mathäs wisely tackles this issue at the...