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Pygmalion's Dream inzyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFED Herder's Aesthetics, or Male Narcissism as the Model for Bildung DOROTHEA E. VON MUCKE In the first issue of the Rheinische Thalia (1785), Friedrich Schiller provides an account of a visit to the Mannheim sculpture gallery as seen through the eyes of a hypothetical Danish traveler. Schiller begins his “Brief eines reisenden Danen” by depicting the traveler’s reaction to the misery and poverty which assault him in their stark contrast to the pomp and luxury of the ducal gardens and palace: Eine hohlaugige Hungerfigur, die mich in den blumigten Promenaden eines fiirstlichen Lustgartens anbettelt —eine sturzdrohende Schindelhiitte, die einem prahlerischen Palast gegenubersteht — wie schnell schlagt sie meinen auffliegenden Stolz zu Boden! Meine Einbildung vollendet das Gemalde. Ich sehe jetzt die Fliiche von Tausenden gleich einer gefrapigen Wurmerwelt in dieser groPsprechenden Verwesung wimmeln — Das Grope und Reizende wird mir abscheulich. —Ich entdecke nichts mehr als einen siechen, hinschwindenden Menschenkorper, dessen Augen und Wangen von fiebrischer Rote brennen und bluhendes Leben heucheln, wahrend dap Brand und Faulung in den rochelnden Lungen wiiten.1 (A hollow-eyed starving figure, which begs from me among the blooming promenades of a ducal amusement garden—a collapsing shingle hovel opposed to a pompous palace —how fast do they strike down my soaring pride! My imagination completes the painting. And now I can see the curses of thousands like a ravenous world of worms swarming among this boasting decomposition —The great and delightful is abominable to me. — I don’t discover anything but a sickly, 349 350 / KJIHGFEDCBA V O N M U C K E languishing human body, whose eyes and cheeks burn with a feverish redness and simulate blooming life, while gangrene and putrefaction are raging in the rattling lungs.) The tourist can no longer enjoy the beauty of the princely architecture and gardens, since the misery of the underprivileged—starvation, dis­ ease, homelessness —pervades even those delightful and luxurious places. The two extremes are joined in the image of the human body, where the sites of beauty become a mere simulation of health and life, a facade over the truth of disease and death. What could have been an occasion for a political critique is perceived as a physical and personal threat: the “curses of the thousands” are turned into the “swarming worms of putrefaction.” However, the Danish traveler does not remain with this “painting” of his imagination, this fedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA vanitas still life, reminding him of his own mortality and raising doubts about the immortality of the human soul. In fact, the entire scenario up to this point is merely the prelude to the visit to the Mannheim sculpture gallery, where the contemplation of Greek art restores to our tourist the belief in man’s perfectibility: Warum zielen alle redende und zeichnende Kunste des Altertums so sehr nach Veredlung? Der Mensch brachte hier etwas zustande, das mehr ist, als er selbst war, das an etwas GroBeres erinnert als seine Gattung — beweist das vielleicht, dap er weniger ist, als er sein wird? — so konnte uns ja dieser allgemeine Hang nach Verschonerung jede Spekulation uber die Fortdauer der Seele ersparen.2 (Why do all the speaking and painting arts of antiquity aim so much at refinement? Man was able to accomplish something greater than he was, which reminds us of something greater than his species—could this perhaps prove that he is less than he will be? —then this common tendency towards beautification could save us any further speculation about the permanence of the soul.) The sculptures of the Mannheim gallery represent the height of Greek art and serve as a document and reminder that it is in and through art that man can overcome his present situation of imperfection and suffering. Though Schiller published this brief article ten years before the Letters on the Aesthetic Education we already note the shift from a potential for political critique and intervention towards what he then came to call “the detour via the realm of beauty.”3 With this shift the aesthetic, particularly the art of classical antiquity, and above all Greek sculpture, becomes the locus of transforming man’s misery. According to Schiller, art becomes the condition of the possibility of...

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