Vielfalt 11: 2021-22

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IELFALT

A MCGILL GERMAN STUDIES STUDENT JOURNAL EINE STUDENTENZEITSCHRIFT DER MCGILL GERMANISTIK REVUE ÉTUDIANTE D’ÉTUDES ALLEMANDES DE MCGILL

VOLUME 11 | 2021-22 MCGILL UNIVERSITY MONTRÉAL

Cover photo taken in Berlin, Deutschland by Sean Hall

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IELFALT

A MCGILL GERMAN STUDIES STUDENT JOURNAL EINE STUDENTENZEITSCHRIFT DER MCGILL GERMANISTIK REVUE ÉTUDIANTE D’ÉTUDES ALLEMANDES DE MCGILL

VOLUME 11 | 2021-22

MCGILL UNIVERSITY MONTRÉAL

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Taken in Berlin, Deutschland by Sean Hall

Editors: Anna de la Fuente, Alison Dringenberg, Jannis Dupuis, Michelle Gu, Katrina Hermann, and Lucia Linaje-Ferrel

Graphic Design: Sean Hall Contributers: Kian Akhavan, Jacob Anthony, Blaise Brosnan, Asa Brunet-Jailly, Sean Hall, Ohrie Hasegawa, Sonya Liu, Nora Popescu, Fion Zhen

Special Thanks: We would like to extend our thanks to the Arts Undergraduate Society, the German Students’ Association at McGill, and the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at McGill University for their generous support.

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IELFALT VOLUME 11 | 2021-22

Editor’s Note/Vorwort . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Lucia Linaje-Ferrel

Schubert’s The Doppelganger . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Nora Popescu

Media After Stunde Null . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Sean Hall

Eine Phänomenologie der Schande in Lenz und Leutnant Gustl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Jacob Anthony

What is the Meaning of Life? . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Kian Akhaven

Traces of J. G. Herder’s Philosophy of History in W. G. Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn . . . . . 24 Asa Brunet-Jailly

A Picture of Language from the Foreigner's Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 Ohrie Hasegawa

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The Sublime Object and Desire's Destabilization of Subjectivity in Kafka's "A County Doctor" 29 Fion Zhen

The Synthesis of Bohemian Bourgeois Values in Thomas Mann's Tonio Kroger . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 Blaise Brosnan

The Depiction of Power in "A Cavalry Tale" Through Objectivity and Subjectivity in Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Sonya Liu

Vorwort/Editor’s Note I

was excited when Vielfalt’s editors welcomed me to the team in January: I knew this would be a great opportunity for me to reignite my old interest in German culture, while pursuing my love of editing. It is thus my pleasure to present the eleventh issue of Vielfalt, an academic-focused issue filled with fresh literary, philosophical, and historical insights on German and Austrian literature.

Lovers of music will want to tune into a discussion on the musicality of the German language as perceived by an immigrant in Yoko Tawada’s short story “A Guest”. They will also find a treat in an essay on Franz Schubert’s literal musical interpretation of a text by Heinrich Heine.

Readers who are partial to philosophical scholarship can look forward to surveying the social conditions that shaped Existentialist thought, unpacking visualisations of history in W. G. Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn, and even— in this edition’s featured German-language essay— exploring our most vulnerable human selves through a “phenomenology of shame” in works by Arthur Schnitzler and Georg Büchner.

Finally, my fellow students in the Art History & Communications department may appreciate examining the values that shape an artist in Thomas Mann’s Tonio Kroger, analysing different Post-War media’s portrayals of the Second World War, and tackling issues of narrative subjectivity in Kafka’s “A Country Doctor” and Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s ‘A Cavalry Tale’.

I thank the executives at the Vielfalt editing team for providing me with a valuable new writing experience, and I also thank our contributors for sharing their unique perspectives: in editing this issue, I had the opportunity to nurture my own critical thinking by deeply engaging with different writing styles and different methods of analysis by our contributors. I think the wonderful variety in thought and writing I encountered captures the spirit of Vielfalt’s name: diversity.

April 18, 2022 Lucía Linaje-Ferrel

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Schubert’s The Doppelganger: Music and Poetry

by Nora Popescu

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n his setting of Heine’s Der Doppelganger, Schubert portrays the text’s emptiness and displacement through harmonic and textural means. Throughout the piece, the piano minimally supports the recitative-like vocal line with a static harmonic rhythm of one chord per bar. The low register and soft dynamics of the piano introduction, along with the open voicing of the tonic and dominant chords without the quality-determining third, create an unsettling atmosphere. These four bars form the structural basis of the piece, and thus merit intricate analysis.

The interval in the top voice of the piano between the second and third chords is none other than the most dissonant interval in Classical music: the tritone, infamously nicknamed the “devil’s interval”. Since this interval is a diminished version of one of the most consonant intervals (a perfect fifth) and has strong tendencies to resolve to a stabler interval, it is a “rule” in art music to avoid it especially in an outer, melodic voice. Schubert’s blunt exposure of this dissonant interval reaching upwards signals longing and painful searching.

Schubert accompanies this melodic leap of a tritone to arrive on the mediant chord, whose major quality lends a sense of bittersweetness to the speaker’s homecoming.

Schubert promptly returns to the eerie dominant chord without the crucial leading tone, as if to dash any hopes that may have lingered from the brief major quality, which interestingly is not a complete chord itself. The fifth of the chord is missing, so it is also possible (although a rare and unstable interpretation) for it to be the tonic minor chord in an inversion (an arrangement of a chord with a note other than its bass as the lowest voice or “root”) without its root. Perhaps, this ambiguity symbolizes how much perception and projected emotions influence whether an event is positive or negative, major or minor.

Schubert uses repetition to depict a doubling of the speaker. The piano in measures 12-13 echoes the previous two bars of the vocal line. The echo is uncanny because it disrupts the symmetrical structure of the phrases which have been grouped into

four measures. The harmony is unresolved and in a weak inversion of the dominant seventh chord (V43). The added dissonance of the seventh heightens the tension.

Schubert’s musical form matches the poem’s trajectory of building tension. The singer’s first 26 bars revolve around the fifth scale degree. The open quality of this tone is the least stable of the notes that belong to the tonic triad since it also functions as the dominant degree and does not allow a cadence or harmonic closure. It is also interesting to note how the rhyming pairs of text that end with the same harmonies are their rhymed pair.

At the beginning of the second stanza (measure 26) the poem mentions the protagonists' rival, propelling Schubert to expand the melodic rise in vocal line, use more frequent and larger leaps, and louder dynamics. The harmonies become increasingly chromatic and complex with the words “von Schmerzengewalt”. Schubert depicts this “painful violence” with a large downward leap of an octave in the vocal line, over the same major chord as the one foreshadowed by the third chord of the opening piano introduction (III) and an augmented 6th chord (Fr6 on ♭2 which resolves to I.) This chord replaces the already unstable V43 of the last bar of the four-measure group with a more intensified chord.

The augmented sixth chord is one of the most tense chromatic chords in this era’s harmonic vocabulary as it requires a specific voice-leading, where the highest and lower voices demand a resolution in opposition by half-step (the smallest and most intense interval) outward to an octave (the most consonant interval). Schubert exploits the high-strung emotion of this chord to highlight the speaker’s alarm at watching his rival, who is a reflection of himself “wring his hands with the strength of his pain”.

The most unsettling aspect of the piece is Schubert’s musical illustration of the Doppelganger in measure 44. Rather than choosing a chord to support the single note in the vocal part, Schubert uses a tritone. The effect for an audience such as Schubert’s, whose tonal and harmonic expectations

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made them acutely aware of such a banned interval’s satanic connotations, would have been a direct link to the “unheimlich” persona it aims to depict.

The ascending chromatic line in the top voice of the piano, which spans a long five bars, accumulates tension until a brief tonicization of the distant key of #3 (D# minor in the original key of B minor).

Schubert uses the German sixth chord (another augmented sixth chord) to lead back into the tonic key.

Schubert highlights the temporal distance of “alter” by treating it melismatically (stretching it to cover multiple notes on one syllable) in contrast to the primarily syllabic setting of the rest of the piece.

The piano postlude echoes the opening fourbars, now with the filled-in thirds; the ambiguousness of the opening is no longer present. Schubert uses another special chord (the Neapolitan 6) built on the flattened second scale degree to replace the fourth

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chord of the pattern. This chord is very distant from the chords residing naturally within the tonic key.

Here, and in other instances in the Romantic repertoire (such as in Schubert’s Der Erlkönig) this chord is reserved for its colouristic effect of displacement.

In this poem, its distant feeling seems to depict the remoteness of the past events on which the speaker reminisces in his final words of the poem.

The last two chords of the piece offer a plagal resolution (iv to I) to a major tonic, rather than the original minor version. This solemn “amen” progression resolving to a major tonic suggests the speaker’s acceptance of his grief. However, as a major chord, it carries the potential to be a dominant of another key, perhaps suggesting that the song will continue. The fermata highlights the pause, maintaining the undercurrent of tension established throughout the song as a result of the multiplicity of meanings.

Media After Stunde Null:

How Different Media Portrayed the Second World War in the Post-War Germanies and Austria

by Sean Hall

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ow do you remember a war that you lost, in which you committed atrocities, and which tore the world apart? This question was essential to the three newly formed Germanies following the Third Reich's defeat in World War Two. This war left Europe in ruins, resulting in massive political and physical shifts. New countries were created and old ones resurrected. Europe was caught in a new battle between eastern forces of socialism, under the purview of the Soviet Union, and capitalist economic liberalism, backed by the United States. And at the dividing line of this new conflict was the newly conquered and divided Germany. After an unconditional surrender, Germany had to grapple with the effects of the war - not only economically, but also emotionally. The question soon arose: how would Germany remember the Second World War? Indeed, one reason this remembrance was so significant was the way World War One’s memory had been manipulated.1 This essay investigates how government-sponsored media, large-budget projects, and small-budget art, such as poems and short stories, sought to influence perceptions of the war and post-war society after the Third Reich’s defeat, noting the similarities and differences between these varieties of media. Additionally, this essay looks at discongruities in opinion from sources of the Soviet-influenced Deutsche Demokratische Republik (GDR) and the Western-influenced Bundesrepublik Deutschland (FRG) as well as the Republik Österreich.

After the founding of the FRG and the GDR on October 3rd and 7th of 1949, respectively, each country’s anthem would constitute some of the first publicly sponsored media in which objectives were laid out for what these new countries would be. In 1950, the FRG adopted the hymn of the former Weimar Republic, “Das Lied der Deutschen” (The Song of the Germans), a song that was written

by Heinrich Hoffmann in 1841 and set to Haydn’s “Kaiserhymne.” In East Germany, the national anthem “Auferstanden aus Ruinen” (Arisen from Ru-

ins) was written at the time of the state’s creation

by Johannes Becher, a socialist German poet. Both hymns set the tone for their respective new nations and how each sought to remember the era of National Socialism.

More specifically, both anthems stressed national unity and the legitimacy of their respective nations, while simultaneously situating themselves in contrast to Hilter’s regime. The FRG first sought to emphasize itself as the truly representative body of the German peoples with its proclamation of “Unity and Justice and Freedom.” This assertion framed the FRG as a land of and for the people without oppression, in contrast to the old regime.

This sentiment strongly echoed the words inscribed on the front face of the Reichstag following the unification of Germany “dem deutschen Volk” or for the German people. West Germany, too, had adopted “Das Lied der Deutschen,” from the Weimar Republic. By modeling itself after the Weimar Republic, a state the Allies sanctioned at its creation after WWI, the FRG thereby attempted to assert its own state as the legitimate one of the two Germanys. The FRG placed itself as the logical and legitimate successor state of the German Empire and the Weimar Republic - a tactic which skipped over the war itself. By framing itself as the continuation of the Weimar Republic, The FRG could portray the war as a blip in Germany’s history. By extension, too, the state could keep alive domestic hopes to restore Germany to at least its former Weimar borders and conditions - consistent with the Hallstein Doctrine, which did not recognize the new borders of Germany nor the existence of East Germany.

The emphasis on pre-war borders was also seen by the retention of the lyrics “from the Maas ‘till on the Memel,” recalling a larger Germany stretching from Belgium to Lithuania.2 The FRG’s anthem, in sum, attempted to diminish the impact of the war, portraying post-war society as one that would return to the normalcy of a democratic government sanctioned by the Western powers.

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The GDR anthem took a more direct approach.

Lyrics such as “Germany, united fatherland” asserted the GDR as both the answer to the German problem and the rightful German state. Whereas the FRG compared itself with the German state before Hitler’s rise to power, the GDR used the war and the old regime as an object against which to contrast their state. The GDR remembered the war as something done by “des Volkes Feind” or the enemy of the people, a reference to the fascists, a group against which the East German government was eager to contrast itself. This rhetoric became fundamental to the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) platform. The GDR would often call any western state, including the FRG, fascist, even labeling the Berlin Wall the antifascist protection wall or Antifaschistischer Schutzwall. The East German government clearly wanted to remember the war as something done by the enemy. Its citizens were all supposed to be enemies of fascism, despite the many former Nazi administrators working within the lower ranks of GDR institutions. The East German government portrayed the capitalist states to the west as forces on the side of the fascists, from whom the wall was protecting the GDR and over whom its anthem proclaimed victory. The name of the anthem, “Arisen from Ruins,” evokes imagery of a phoenix-like rebirth. The East German state saw itself as a state that opposed both the Third Reich and “fascist” West Germany, the latter which East German leaders like Erich Honecker would portray as a fascist puppet. Whereas the FRG glossed over the war and looked to the past to model its nation, the GDR government looked towards a Marxist utopia to model its state. In Austria, the Bundeshymne der Republik Österreich found its inspiration elsewhere, comparing itself with their German speaking neighbor Switzerland and the culture of the Alpine region. In the lyrics “land of mountains, land of rivers,” Austria sought to identify itself with this mountain culture and forge its own identity distinct from Germany, wishing to distance itself from its history of close relations with Germany and avoid blame for the Second World War. After the war, the Allies decided with the Moscow Doctrine that Austria would be treated as a victim country of Germany’s aggression, despite Austrians playing a significant role in the war. Their mountain units, who trained in the Alps, were used extensively in Norway’s conquest, and Austrians played a proportionally much greater role in the Holocaust than the Germans. However, the anthem portrayed the war as the act of a foreign nation and set Austria on a path towards creating a new and distinct national culture.

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Whereas government media portrayed the war as an almost foreign thing of the past, other media would seek to deal with its effects. Larger-budget films, made for the whole German public in the Trümmerfilme or rubble film genre, all sought to bring their interpretation of Vergangenheitsbewältigung, or coming to terms with the past, to the general public. They often addressed important topics in German post-war society that the previously seen anthems did not. Namely, they concentrated on how to get along after the war, how to deal with the past, and how the German nation would rebuild. Most of the films in this essay were filmed before large differences in East and West German media emerged, and were shown in both Germanies as well as Austria. The following section, therefore, will cover how post-war films portrayed the war to German and Austrian publics as a whole.

Die Mörder sind unter uns was one of the first of the Trümmerfilme to be produced and would establish many of the themes in the genre. The film follows the doctor Hans Mertens, who is scarred by a mass murder of a village while working as a doctor during the war. The film starts with his return from the war, now a drunkard scarred by his memories. He meets Susanne, a young woman who survived a concentration camp, and slowly they fall in love. Through this connection, Mertens’ is able to rebuild his life, and he is eventually able to practice his craft again after saving a choking girl by performing a tracheotomy. The crucial moment comes when Mertens confronts the military leader who forced his company (although not him) to fire on the Polish villagers. Mertens wishes to kill the former commander but, at the last second, Susanne convinces him to leave the man to the justice system. This movie constitutes an attempt to answer many pervasive societal questions at the time. The film uses the old commander to assert that there were evil Nazis, however, most Germans are simply moral people trying to get their lives back together, similar to the majority of the characters in the film. Through the portrayal of the commander, the director and writer Wolfgang Staudte links the war to a few higher-up evil Nazis. Normal soldiers and doctors such as Mertens were moral and, although they knew their actions were wrong, they had to follow orders. This placement of blame on Nazi elites would resonate with many Germans in post-war society, who would seek to avoid blame in a war that many had helped enact. And this was not an isolated occurrence. Peter Lorre’s movie Die Verlorene follows a “big Nazi” scientist and his journey of guilt following the war. In the end, he meets a former fellow officer and is overwhelmed

by guilt. He kills the Nazi officer and then himself.

Other than those officers, though, the general portrayal of people in the film was positive, with people simply trying to survive. In this interpretation, many could find a way to hide from their guilt by blaming the worst of the war on others.

Another important theme in these films was justice. In both films, every higher-up Nazi is in one way or another served justice. Instead of enacting Eigenjustiz or a form of vigilante justice, Mertens is able to place his trust in the justice system.

The use of the courts in this movie encouraged the populace that the Allied powers and new government would enact justice on the main Nazi perpetrators. However, in Die Verlorene the main character does resort to Eigenjustiz. The use of Eigenjustiz can probably be attributed to the historical moment in which these movies were filmed. At the time of Die Mörder sind unter uns in 1946, prosecutions of Nazis were an intensive process that was only just beginning. By 1951, when Peter Lorre’s film was released, many of these inquiries were by now in full swing. His film again tries to show Germany as a recovering society. Once all the bad Nazis are gone, society will be whole again. These portrayals further the idea that these higher-up Nazis are at fault for the horrors of the war. They also assert that the audience, their neighbors, and their friends, are moral and good people.

Additionally, by putting Mertens, a former member of the Wehrmacht, with Susanne, a former concentration camp prisoner, Staudte seeks to show how society can heal again. This was important because in post-war society there was a mix of people, from those heavily involved in the Nazi party to those who were forced into exile or concentration camps by the Nazis due to who they were or what they believed in. Putting these groups together shows that German post-war films believed that Germany could heal once the main “bad Nazis” were gone. Just as Mertens was able to overcome his fears and experiences in the war and practice medicine again, so too can German society rebuild and become a cohesive, good nation. Mertens’ return to work again shows a future where Germany can heal. These films, then, recognize the divisions and destruction of war more than the national anthems, and they place similar hope in a future that can, in time, come together.

“Building back better” was likewise a significant theme in the Trümmerfilme. Irgendwo in Berlin or “Somewhere in Berlin” addresses this theme of rebuilding in its physical aspect, but also its societal one. The movie concentrates on a father coming back from a POW camp who initially feels quite

hopeless, but then finds purpose in rebuilding the city. These films viewed the war as a horrible relic that destroyed the nation, but something that also gave Germany a clean slate. The “clean slate” theme can be compared to the same sentiment in “Auferstanden aus Ruinen'' – that Germany can build back better, physically and socially.

These Trümmerfilme portrayed Germany as a victim of higher-ranked Nazis, who destroyed and manipulated the country and its people. In so doing, the films place the fault of the war in the hands of these higher-ups and exonerates the normal people of Germany, who were just following orders. Those few responsible, too, can be brought to justice. And this justice is enacted, , whether it be from Eigenjustiz as shown in Die Verlorene or through the justice system as in Die Mördern sind Unter Uns. These movies take a deeper dive than the national anthems and consider problems that extend past the war’s end. They see a Germany that will take time to rebuild but, in the end, a Germany that can bounce back.

Poems and short stories, on the other hand, viewed such interpretations as wishful thinking and short-sighted. The progress and future hopes, as portrayed in the national anthems and the Trümmerfilme, are not reflected in these sources.

These authors thought that these grander media, prevalent in popular culture, were glossing over many societal ills that still existed within the two nations. They saw the Vergangenheitsbewältigung as perpetrated by the state and the large media to be incomplete and saw remaining flaws in the existing system. Poems and short stories, in general, portray the war as something that destroyed Germany not temporarily but rather as something that would leave long-lasting physical and mental scars on the nation. These writers depicted post-war life and “coming to terms with the past” in two stages; the immediate effects of the war and its injustices and inequalities, and the war’s underlying influence in the wake of the Wirtschaftswunder.

One of the first problems of German society was the mental and economic scars left on soldiers returning from the war. These soldiers would not be treated like heroes and given generous post-war benefits and resources, as in Allied countries. Rather, they were practically abandoned, e left mentally and physically scarred. In “Draußen vor der Tür,” Wolfgang Borchert saw that, coming back from the war, many soldiers were left without homes, money, or support systems. They were often left, as the title suggests, outside their own doors, left on the street to freeze. Borchert narrates the story of a mentally weary and destroyed soldier, one who upon his re-

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turn would be rejected by everyone – even the Elbe river as he tried to commit suicide. Everything that was good from before was now lost. Borchert was not the only one to narrate the scarred effects on these men. Heinrich Böll wrote in “Wanderer Kommst du nach Spa,” how many of these soldiers were only boys forced into a position difficult for even grown men. Despite just beginning their lives, they would have much of their future shaped by this war.

The young main character is not yet an adult, and is left physically and mentally destroyed, seeing no life ahead of him. These authors thus shift the focus from the society as a whole, as seen in the movies and anthems, to a personal level. They saw the shame and neglect that was cast upon the returning soldiers, and wanted to humanize them and show what they had to go through for their country. In this way, Böll and Borchert portray German society as awash with many left in ruins monetarily, mentally, and also physically.

Many of these immediate problems would be dealt with as Germany was rebuilt in the immediate years following the war. Although the rebuild may have covered up some of the economic ills discussed by Borchert and Böll, other social afflictions, such as mental ones, remained. In Austria, the concern was not necessarily that the war left deep scars, but rather that Austria's Nazi past was being ignored, as both state and people did not want to assume responsibility. This is recognized in Ingeborg Bachmann’s 1956 poem “Reklame,” with the hidden Vergangenheit becoming ever more suppressed under modern growth and the return to normalcy that swept Austria. She writes this poem in an alternating-line pattern. The one written in normal script is straightforward, asking the questions of “what should we do, and think, facing the end, and where to do we carry our cares and troubles all year?” However, these melancholy thoughts on the wartime past are interrupted by italic texts saying distracting with “don’t worry … more cheerful with music” and other frivolities. Modern Austrian society sought to drown out the memories of the war. The same scars existed, but Austrian postwar society chose not to remember. For Bachmann, her concern was that the mental scars remained and there was no open way to address them.

"Herbstmanöver,” or Autumn military maneuver, by the same author and written one year later, showed that the effects of the war on the Austrian people were still present beneath the surface. Unlike in the Germanys, Austria was not forced to take responsibility for the war and there was no publicly pursued Vergangenheitsbewältigung until questions began to be raised as late as the 1980s. That

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movement was still incredibly incomplete, and a museum on Austria’s role in the Third Reich opening in 2018 was controversial. Her poem starts with “I say nothing: that was yesterday” showing that at the beginning, on the surface, Austrians wanted to see the war as something in the past and not speak of it. However, despite this external portrayal, Bachmann saw memories of the war in everyday life – even in “the joyless death of the leaves in the rain.” For much of the Austrian public, these war memories would be just as hard to escape as Bachmann suggests. Even when trying to leave the past behind and let “the time work[s] wonders. It comes unjust, with the throb of guilt.” This pervasive feeling of guilt was still present in the private consciousness of many, especially because in public life there were few avenues to discuss how Austrians should deal with memory of the war. The war was something that was blamed on Germany and shoved into the back of people’s minds. However, Bachmann argues that these scars still existed and there is no escape without acknowledgement: “We cannot take the fleeing path to the south.” Post-war Austria in this time was a country of hidden guilt, one that wished to forget its violent past. Post-war time was defined as a time to ignore and the Austrian public subscribed to this mindset, despite knowing, deep down, the role Austria had played and the guilt it continued to carry.

In the wake of the Wirtschaftswunder, when most aspects of society seemed to have recovered from the war, we also see a similar concern with hidden guilt in later West German poetry. This concern, however, is due more to the new, economically prosperous society than public policy and norms.

The economy was improving to such an extent that by the late 1950s the FRG economy had a miniscule unemployment rate of 0.5%. Hans Magnus Enzensberger saw that the past was being plastered over by the new economic power in Austria and the FRG. In “Middle Class Blues,” Enzensberger writes “the grass grows, the national product, the fingernails, the past.” Ass the nation becomes more prosperous and Americanized, he suggests, the past recedes further and further into the distance. In his poem he addresses a duality between the Americanization of the economy, with growing front yards and capital, and the tendency to forget the Second World War in the wake of the more immediate Cold one.

Most of the developments he cites are good for the average German and are portrayed as such. However, lines like “we eat the past” show the author questioning German society's slow abandonment of post-war reconciliation.

As we have seen, Böll and Borchert viewed the

war as something destructive and scarring that would impact the lives of those affected long into the future. As certain destructive aspects faded away, a new concern arose that the war and the mistakes made by the Germans would simply be forgotten. German society had changed to one looking forward instead of looking back. In Austria, the forward-looking view was present since the war's end.

From the beginning, the Austrians tried to forget the war and escape blame. This phenomenon was something Ingeborg Bachmann would notice and seek to bring attention to. As the war grew more distant with time, so too did it in people's minds; these writers, however, sought to bring it back and help them to complete their own versions of Vergangenheitsbewältigung.

As the type of sources grew less ubiquitous, from the all-known national anthems on one hand to the poems and short stories known by only a segment of the population on the other, the remembrances of the war in Austria and the two Germanies became more complete and more intense. The national anthems saw the war as a place from which to rebuild, a blip in Germany’s history, or something to ignore. The movies, for their part, viewed the war as something caused by certain bad Nazis, and something that could be recovered from with hard work and coming together. Short stories and poems saw this war as something that would impact the people of Germany and Austria for their whole lives, and something with which they would have to and should deal. Whereas the national anthems and to a certain extent the movies were ready to move on from the war and leave the past in the past, the authors of these short stories sought to keep it in people's minds. They saw the war as something truly tragic and, in order to achieve their view of Vergangenheitsbewältigung, as something that must be on people's minds. The German-speaking peoples should work to come to terms with it, remedy it, and prevent it in the future.

Although these sources diverged in their interpretation of the war and post-war society, they together can show the varying forces acting on the public and how they sought to shape general perceptions of the war. On the ground, people most likely held a mix of these interpretations floating around within the societies of the former Third Reich, split into three lands.

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“Die Nationalhymne Der Bundesrepublik Deutschland.”

Bundesregierung. Accessed April 15, 2021. https://www. bundesregierung.de/breg-de/themen/die-nationalhymne-derbundesrepublik-deutschland-461412.

Hindenburg, Paul. “Testimony before the Parliamentary Investigatory Committee” Speech, Weimar, Thuringia, November 18, 1919. German History in Documents and Images. https:// ghdi.ghi-dc.org/about.cfm Hoffmann von Fallersleben, August. “Das Lied der Deutschen.” Lyrix, 2005. https://www.lyrix.at/t/nationalhymnedeutsche-nationalhymne-3-strophen-424. Accessed April 9, 2021 Krapfl, James. “Condominium of the Allied Powers, 194549” Zoom at McGill University, Montreal, March 24, 2021.

Krapfl, James. “East and West Germany, 1961-73” Zoom at McGill University, Montreal, March 29, 2021.

Krapfl, James. “East and West Germany, 1973-88” Zoom at McGill University, Montreal, March 31, 2021.

Krapfl, James. “Postwar Austria” Zoom at McGill University, Montreal, April 7, 2021.

Lamprecht, Gerhard. dir., Irgendwo in Berlin. 1946; Berlin, GER: DEFA, Kanopy. https://www.kanopy.com/product/ somewhere-berlin.

Lorre, Peter. dir., Die Verlorene. 1951; Hamburg, GER: Arnold Pressburger Filmproduktion, 2020. YouTube. https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozR7QxnRlq8.

Marin, Bernd. “A Post Holocaust “Anti-Semitism without Anti-Semites”? Austria as a Case and Point.” Political Psychology 2, no. 2 (Summer 1980) 57-75.

Staudte, Wolfgang dir., Die Mörder sind unter uns.

1946; Berlin, GER: DEFA, 2016. Dailymotion. https://www. dailymotion.com/video/x3v8t4q NOTES 1. Some factors that influenced Hitler and the Nazi rise to power can be attributed to the remembrance of the First World War. In a post-war speech, the German general Paul von Hindenburg refused to accept the defeat in battle, saying, “‘The German army was stabbed in the back.’ ... Where the guilt lies has clearly been demonstrated.” The “Stab in the Back” speech was used to argue the myth that both the Jews and Bolsheviks had betrayed the German cause and caused the Reichsarmee’s defeat.

Hitler exploited this misconception, and he played off both antisemitism and fear of Communism to win support. Paul von Hindenburg, “Testimony before the Parliamentary Investigatory Committee” (speech, Weimar, Thuringia, November 18, 1919), German History in Documents and Images, https://ghdi.ghi-dc. org/about.cfm.

2. One will not find these lyrics in the German national anthem today because Helmut Kohl changed the anthem in 1991 so that only the third stanza is sung. “Die Nationalhymne Der Bundesrepublik Deutschland,” Bundesregierung, accessed April 15, 2021,

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Taken in Quedlinburg, Deutschland by Sean Hall

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Eine Phänomenologie der Schande in Lenz und Leutnant Gustl S

chande wird naturgemäß von allen erlebt, aber nur von wenigen ausgesprochen. Dieses Gefühl ist so stark tabuisiert, dass wir uns laut dem Psychologen Gershen Kaufman so verhalten, als ob es keine Schande gäbe. Die Deutsche Sprache hat, wie die meisten anderen Sprachen (außer Englisch), zwei Wörter für Schande: Scham (Peinlichkeit) und Schande (Demütigung). Das erste ist eine alltägliche Empfindung, das letztere ist die „shame”, wie sie im Englischen genannt wird: kränkend, abstoßend und wird als Tabu gewertet. Diese „Schande” verdient Beachtung, denn ihre Fähigkeit, Existenzen zu zerstören, ist weitaus folgenreicher als der „Scham”, den Namen eines Bekannten zu vergessen. Vielmehr, wenn Scham ein Gefühl ist, ist Schande ein Zustand. Ebenso sollte eine Unterscheidung zwischen Schande und Schuld getroffen werden. Jennifer Biddle zitiert Helen Lewis und meint: „guilt is an affect associated more with formalised rules and norms. One is guilty of doing or not doing something.” Bei Schuldgefühlen ist die Ursache oft handlungsorientiert, und so kann auch die Lösung sein. Schande ist jedoch komplizierter.

Die Unklarheit über die Ursache und die Lösung der Schande führt dazu, dass es insgesamt schwierig ist, über diesen Zustand zu sprechen. Einigen ist es jedoch gelungen, Schande ganz ohne große Diskussion darzustellen. Zwei gelungene Beispiele dafür sind Arthur Schnitzlers Leutnant Gustl und Georg Büchners Lenz. Leutnant Gustl folgt dem titelgebenden österreichischen Militär, nachdem er bis an den Rand des Selbstmordes gedemütigt wurde, während in Lenz ein schizophrener Dramatiker durch die felsige Landschaft des alpinen Steintals und die noch felsige Landschaft im Inneren navigieren muss. Die Schande ist in beiden Geschichten in signifikanter Weise präsent, aber sie entspringt in den Protagonisten an unterschiedlichen Stellen. Außerdem ist die Reaktion auf die Schande bei jedem einzigartig. Zwischen Büchners Lenz und Schnitzlers Leutnant Gustl gibt es eine Dichotomie derjenigen, die Schande ertragen kann, und derjenigen, die es nicht kann. Während die Marginalisierung von Lenz es ihm ermöglicht

von Jacob Anthony mit seiner Schande zu leben, macht der Status von Leutnant Gustl das gewöhnliche Gefühl lähmend.

Von den beiden Protagonisten ist Leutnant Gustl in seiner Schande einfacher zu diagnostizieren. Der auslösende Vorfall ist eindeutig: Ein Bäcker beleidigt Gustl in der Garderobe der Oper und setzt ihn außer Gefecht, indem er sein Schwert hält.

Gustls ungezügelter Stolz löst sich nach dem Vorfall rasch in Schande auf, und seine Unfähigkeit, die Schande zu verarbeiten, führt dazu, dass er seinen Selbstmord plant. Obwohl die Schande des Leutnants im Großen und Ganzen mächtig ist, drückt sich dieses Gefühl im Laufe der Geschichte nur als eines unter vielen aus. Die Schande zeigt sich in einer vielschichtigen, amorphen Qualität. Das erste dieser Amalgame, beinhaltet eine Art von ängstlicher Furcht. Dort schreibt Schnitzler: „Wer ist denn das da drüben? Warum schau'n denn die zu mir herüber? Am End' haben die was gehört... Nein, es kann niemand was gehört haben... ich weiß ja, ich hab' mich gleich nachher umgeschaut! Keiner hat sich um mich gekümmert, niemand hat was gehört... Aber gesagt hat er's, wenn's auch niemand gehört hat; gesagt hat er's doch.”

Gustls Schande zeigt sich hier in Form von Angst. Man könnte auch bemerken, dass Gustl eindeutig das erste „Verleugnungsstadium” der Trauer zeigt. Später in der Geschichte stellt sich heraus, dass Gustls Ruf unversehrt ist, aber seine verkabelte Reaktion hätte wenig dazu beigetragen, seine Verärgerung zu verbergen, wenn es jemand bemerkt hätte. Jennifer Biddle kommentierte diese vulgäre Qualität von Schande mit den Worten, „The emotion that makes us most want to disappear makes us appear all the more vividly.” Auf der nächsten Seite ist Gustl bereits in der Phase des „Verhandlungsstadiums” und einer ganz anderen Gefühlslage übergegangen und sagt: „Ich werd' zum Obersten geh'n und ihm die Sache melden... ich werd' ihm sagen: Herr Oberst, ich melde gehorsamst, er hat den Griff gehalten, er hat ihn nicht auslassen es war genau so, als wenn ich ohne Waffe gewesen wäre... – Was wird der Oberst sagen? – Was er sagen wird? – Aber da gibt's ja nur eins: quittieren mit Schimpf und Schand' – quittieren!”

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Hier bleibt seine Schande mit Angst vermischt, zeigt aber auch ein Schimmer von Hoffnung und Verzweiflung gleichermaßen. Gustl ist sich des institutionellen Drucks, dem er ausgesetzt ist, sehr bewusst, und dieser Druck wird zum Gegenstand seiner Schande. Diese Zeile ist auch deshalb bemerkenswert, weil sie eine von Gustls wenigen Optionen aufzeigt, „quittieren mit Schimpf und Schand,” um seine Schande förmlich anzuerkennen. Später beschließt er fest, dass die einzige bessere Alternative der Tod ist.

Der bereits erwähnte institutionelle Druck, dem Leutnant Gustl ausgesetzt ist, führt ihn weiter in die Schamspirale: „…es ist eine Ungerechtigkeit! – Aber was geht mich denn das alles an? – Was scher' ich mich denn um solche Sachen? – Ein Gemeiner von der Verpflegsbranche ist ja jetzt mehr als ich: ich bin ja überhaupt nicht mehr auf der Welt... es ist ja aus mit mir... Ehre verloren, alles verloren!... Ich hab' ja nichts anderes zu tun, als meinen Revolver zu laden und... Gustl, Gustl, mir scheint, du glaubst noch immer nicht recht d'ran? Komm' nur zur Besinnung... es gibt nichts anderes... wenn du auch dein Gehirn zermarterst, es gibt nichts anderes! – Jetzt heißt's nur mehr, im letzten Moment sich anständig benehmen, ein Mann sein, ein Offizier sein, so daß der Oberst sagt: Er ist ein braver Kerl gewesen, wir werden ihm ein treues Angedenken bewahren!”

Selbst wenn er seiner Schande erliegt und Selbstmord plant, hat Gustl noch das Bedürfnis, sein Gesicht zu wahren. Dies entspringt nicht nur dem Wunsch, das zu bewahren, was von seinem Stolz übrig geblieben ist, sondern auch dem Stolz des Militärs. Wäre Gustl in seinen letzten Stunden wirklich egoistisch geworden, hätte er wahrscheinlich nicht über das Urteil seines Obersts nachgedacht. Das eigene Erbe zu bewahren, ist sicherlich ein egoistischer Wunsch, aber Gustls Überlegungen zu seinem Erbe im militärischen Kontext zeigen seine anhaltende Loyalität gegenüber der Institution, die ihn zu seinen Selbstmordgedanken veranlasst hat. In ihrem Aufsatz „Shame,” von 1997 stellt Jennifer Biddle einen Nutzen der Schande-Bedingung fest, der auf Leutnant Gustl zutrifft. Schande, nach Biddle, ist für die menschliche Gesellschaft wesentlich, da die menschliche Fortpflanzung von der Erotik abhängt und die Erotik von der Schande, die mit sexuellen Handlungen verbunden ist.

Dasselbe könnte man vom österreichischen Militär sagen; der Ehrenkodex des Militärs hängt von der Ehre seiner Truppen ab, und die Ehre seiner Truppen hängt von der Angst vor Schande ab. Die Schande spielt also in Leutnant Gustl eine weitaus größere Rolle, als es auf den ersten Blick erscheint.

Die Titelfigur (und, wie wir annehmen können, alle seine Kameraden auch) befinden sich in einer

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ständigen Flucht vor der Schande. Wenn Gustl einen Fehler begeht, bietet die militärische Institution keinen Mechanismus zur Wiedergutmachung, da seine Schande das System sowohl anheizt als auch zu untergraben wagt. Leutnant Gustl ist also weniger eine Reflexion über die Schwäche eines einzelnen Mannes, sondern über die des Ehrenkodex als Ganzes. In Georg Büchners Lenz hingegen ist der Protagonist mit wenigen oder gar keinen Erwartungen belastet. Die Novelle folgt Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz, einem Freund Goethes, der im Alpenpfarramt von Johann Friedrich Oberlin unter lähmenden schizophrenen Episoden leidet. Aufgrund von Lenz' Geisteskrankheit und der daraus resultierenden Ausgrenzung sind die Menschen in seinem Umfeld selten von seinem abnormen Verhalten überrascht. Wenn er zum Beispiel abends im Dorfbrunnen schwimmt, wird er mitleidig beäugt und zurück ins Bett geschickt. Aber trotz der überwältigenden Gastfreundschaft von Oberlin und den Steintalern leidet Lenz immer noch an Schande. Die Schande von Lenz unterscheidet sich von der von Gustl dadurch, dass sie den unlogischen und verschleiernden Einfluss einer Geisteskrankheit trägt. Aber sie ist dennoch als Schande diagnostizierbar. Nach dem Brunnen Vorfall schreibt Büchner, „Lenz war wieder zu sich gekommen, das ganze Bewußtsein seiner Lage, es war ihm wieder leicht, jetzt schämte er sich und war betrübt, daß er den guten Leuten Angst gemacht…” Dies ist das erste und einzige Mal, dass Büchner die Schande von Lenz unverblümt beschreibt, aber sicherlich nicht das letzte Mal, dass sie auftritt. Weiter oben auf dieser Seite taucht Lenz' Schande zum Beispiel auf, als er Oberlin trifft: „,Der Name, wenn's beliebt’ ... Lenz. ,Ha, ha, ha, ist er nicht gedruckt? Habe ich nicht einige Dramen gelesen, die einem Herrn dieses Namens zugeschrieben werden?’ Ja, aber belieben Sie mich nicht darnach zu beurteilen.” Seine Schande rührt in diesem Fall daher, dass er erkannt oder mit dem in Verbindung gebracht wird, was er einmal war. Diese Schande der Vergangenheit wird mit dem Besuch eines Bekannten in Steintal wiederholt: „Um diese Zeit kam Kaufmann mit seiner Braut in das Steintal. Lenz war Anfangs das Zusammentreffen unangenehm…jetzt kam ihm Jemand entgegen, der ihn an so vieles erinnerte, mit dem er sprechen, reden mußte, der seine Verhältnisse kannte.” Auch wenn es sich vielleicht um einen Scherz handelt, weist Lenz' Distanzierung von seiner Arbeit und seiner Vergangenheit auf einen Aspekt der Schizophrenie hin, der in der deutschen Kultur zu finden ist — die Angst, bekannt zu werden. In dem Papier von 1999, Comparison of Delusions among Schizophrenics in Austria and in Pakistan, identi-

fizierten die Forscher die primären Wahnvorstellungen von Schizophrenen aus zwei verschiedenen Kulturkreisen. Von diesen Wahnvorstellungen, war die Angst, bekannt zu sein, bei österreichischen Patienten am häufigsten und bei pakistanischen Patienten am wenigsten vertreten (16% vs. 1%). Auch beim Schuldwahn gab es eine große kulturelle Kluft (40% in Austria vs. 0% in Pakistan). (Das Steintal von Lenz liegt nicht in Österreich, sondern in der Region Elsass-Lothringen im heutigen Frankreich.

Dennoch sind sich beide kulturell ähnlich, mehr als Österreich und Pakistan es sind.) Da die frühesten Beispiele von Lenz' Schande-Episoden in der Studie als kulturspezifische Wahnvorstellungen von Schizophrenie ausgewiesen werden, wäre es nicht unvernünftig zu argumentieren, dass Lenz' Schande sowohl von seiner Erkrankung als auch von seinem sozialen Kontext beeinflusst (oder sogar verursacht) wird.

Später in der Geschichte, nachdem er versucht hat, ein totes Mädchen wiederzubeleben, wird Lenz von einer weiteren Welle der Schande geplagt. Aber in diesem Fall wird sie nicht als solche beschrieben, sondern als ,Grauen’: „Am folgenden Tag befiel ihn ein großes Grauen vor seinem gestrigen Zustande, er stand nun am Abgrund, wo eine wahnsinnige Lust ihn trieb, immer wieder hineinzuschauen, und sich diese Qual zu wiederholen.” Obwohl das Grauen eine eigenständige Emotion ist, ähnelt das „Grauen vor den eigenen Taten” in diesem Fall der Angst-Schande von Gustl. Darüber hinaus ist Schande häufig die Ursache für nicht-schamvolle Emotionen, insbesondere für solche, die durch Selbstreflexion ausgelöst werden.

Es ist also klar, dass sowohl Lenz als auch Leutnant Gustl Schande auf unterschiedliche Weise erleben. Darin ähneln sich die Geschichten, aber es gibt auch einige wichtige Unterschiede zwischen ihnen, nämlich die Erzählweise und die Reaktionen der Protagonisten auf die Schande. Was die Erzählweise betrifft, so nimmt Leutnant Gustl eine Ich-Perspektive ein, während Lenz sich in der dritten Person entfaltet. In Anbetracht der Umstände, in denen sich die Protagonisten befinden, wäre es ineffektiv zu behaupten, dass der Blickwinkel der beiden Geschichten die darin enthaltenen Emotionen in irgendeiner Weise beeinflusst. Vielmehr scheint es, dass die jeweilige Außen- und Innenperspektive notwendig ist, damit der Leser die Geisteszustände nachvollziehen kann. Wäre Lenz in der Ich-Perspektive geschrieben worden, hätten seine Gefühle durch die abnormen Logikmuster der Schizophrenie noch mehr verwirrt werden können. Ebenso gelingt es Leutnant Gustl auf wunderbare Weise, seinen Ennui unter dem Anstand

eines Soldaten zu verbergen. Eine Nacherzählung in der dritten Person wäre also nicht fesselnder oder aufschlussreicher als die Beobachtung eines Mannes bei seinem Abendspaziergang.

Lenz' Reaktion auf die Schande unterscheidet sich jedoch deutlich von derjenigen Gustls. Wie bereits erwähnt, wird von Lenz nicht erwartet, dass er sich anständig verhält, und wenn überhaupt, dann ist sein unberechenbares Verhalten die Erwartung.

Daher ist seine Schande antisozial und kommt aus seinem Inneren. Seine Reaktionen auf die Schande sind dramatisch, werden aber in der Regel überwunden, bevor er sich wieder der Welt stellt. Leutnant Gustl hingegen nimmt die Last einer ganzen Institution auf sich. Er ist nicht in der Lage, seine Schande zu überwinden, weil er sie als persönliches Versagen ansieht (wie es der Ehrenkodex vorschreibt). Und da er mit den österreichischen militärischen Sitten indoktriniert wurde, sieht er keinen anderen Ausweg als den Tod. Wie in Leutnant Gustl und Lenz gezeigt, kann ein Gefühl wie Schande je nach den Umständen entweder harmlos oder tödlich sein. Wird eine Person von hohem Status betroffen, deren Position in gefährlicher Weise von ihrem Image abhängt, kann der Zustand der Schande ruinös sein. Von diesen Personen wird ein perfektes Verhalten erwartet, und alles, was der Schande würdig ist (d. h. ein unvollkommenes Verhalten), kann ein schnelles Ende der Vorstellung bedeuten. Währenddessen werden anderen Menschen aufgrund ihrer "Andersartigkeit" Positionen der Schande zugewiesen.

Diese Teile ihrer Identität, sei es psychische Krankheit, Geschlecht, Herkunft, Sexualität oder anderes, haben sie an die Schande gewöhnt. Obwohl die Schande für sie nicht weniger schmerzhaft ist, erlaubt ihnen die Vertrautheit mit dem Gefühl, weiterzuleben, wenn es auftreten sollte. Einfacher ausgedrückt: Diejenigen, die nichts verloren haben, wie Gustl, haben alles zu verlieren, und diejenigen, die alles verloren haben, wie Lenz, haben nichts zu verlieren BIBLIOGRAPHIE Biddle, Jennifer. 1997. „Shame.” Australian Feminist Studies 12 (26): 227-239. Büchner, Georg. 1839. „Lenz.” Projekt Gutenberg. projekt-gutenberg.org/buechner/lenz/lenz.html. „Scham, die.” n.d. Digitales Wörterbuch der Deutschen Sprache. https://www.dwds.de/wb/Scham. „Schande, die.” n.d. Digitales Wörterbuch der Deutschen Sprache. https://www.dwds.de/wb/Schande.

Scheff, Thomas J. 2003. „Shame in Self and Society.” Symbolic Interaction 26 (2): 239-262. Schnitzler, Arthur. 1900. „Leutnant Gustl.” Projekt Gutenberg. projekt-gutenberg.org/schnitzl/gustl/gustl.html.

Stompe, T., A. Friedman, G. Ortwein, T. Strobl, H.

R.

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Chaudhry, N. Najam, and M. R. Chaudhry. 1999. „Comparison of Delusions among Schizophrenics in Austria and in Pakistan.”

Psychopathology 32 (5): 225–234.

Taken in Berlin, Deutschland by Sean Hall

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What is the Meaning of Life?

An Analysis of Existentialism in German Thought.

by Kian Akhaven

G

erman philosophers are among the most significant and influential in Western history. Their impact cannot be understated, with their works cited by totalitarians and anarchists alike. This essay will address the evolution of German philosophers’ attempts to understand the meaning and purpose of human life by evaluating the contributions of Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, and Viktor Frankl to the field of existential analysis. Although Freud and Frankl are not typically considered philosophers, their contributions to this field are invaluable. In this essay, “existentialism” is understood as seeking to understand the meaning of life through the exercise of free will.

Volumes can be written on this subject, so this essay will provide a survey of existential thought, focusing its analysis on each author’s justification for their respective theories, factors that affected these theories, and the extent to which they reflected German culture and society at the time. For the purpose of this essay, “German” culture and society refers to that of German-speaking Europe as a whole, including Austria.

Meanings of Existence The basis of much of Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophy rests on the concept of realism. While he never explicitly defines the term, realism can, in short, be understood as the phenomenological belief that there is a degree of normativity to facts and reality – that is, an individual can only experience reality through his or her own perception.

Since the possibility of normativity necessitates an objective, benchmark reality, Nietzsche, in a notable caveat to his typical nihilist outlook, elevates the importance of power as a natural property that is the source of all worldly objectivity. By increasing one’s personal power, an individual can enforce his or her will on others in an attempt to “define” truth. To this end, Nietzsche writes that “there is nothing to life that has value, except the degree of power.” Therefore, with power established as the basis for earthly truth, the philosopher argues that all people innately desire and thus pursue power.

In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, he writes that “Where

I found the living, there I found will to power.” To Nietzsche, then, maximising personal influence, a will to power, is the ultimate purpose and aim of human life.

Sigmund Freud adopts a decidedly pessimistic view of civilisation in his work, describing it as “largely responsible for our misery.” This is because he argues that humans in a state of nature are always in pursuit of happiness, which is supposedly expressed physically through bloodlust and sexual conquest. The desire to seek pleasure is so strong, he argues, that organised society is actually necessary to stop people from imposing themselves on each other, though some people may want to return to a rabid state of nature where they can pursue what Freud describes as “instinctual passions.”

Per this thinking, consistent, “original” happiness is therefore unachievable in a civilised world because of laws protecting against murder and assault, but can instead be experienced in doses, leading people to relentlessly seek a rush of this “intoxicating” feeling. Freud supports this axiom by pointing out that instead of merely avoiding unpleasantness, people actively seek pleasure and fulfilment of their innate desires. Though murder is illegal in modern society, sex is not, and so Freud sets it as the benchmark for physical happiness and satisfaction.

This is a particularly hedonistic approach to utilitarianism, which proposes that pleasure is the only natural antidote to the pain of daily life. Freud’s will to pleasure, otherwise known as the pleasure principle, sees an individual’s ultimate aim as obtaining as much physical pleasure as possible from life.

Viktor Frankl’s understanding of the meaning of life is much gentler than those of Nietzsche and Freud. Specifically, he focuses on the individual as a unique contributor to society rather than seeking to dominate it. To this end, in a line of thinking inspired in part by Kierkegaard, Frankl proposes that every life has its own meaning and adds to society in its own way. Therefore, he argues, establishing one’s purpose as a contributor to society is, in itself, both the meaning of life and the purpose of human existence. Frankl describes this theory in his book, Man’s Search For Meaning, as [t]he striving to find a meaning in one's life is the primary motivational

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force in man. That is why I speak of a will to meaning in contrast to the “pleasure principle” (or, as we could also term it, the will to pleasure) on which Freudian psychoanalysis is centered, as well as in contrast to the will to power on which Adlerian psychology […] is focused.

It is interesting to contrast how differently these authors approach ideas of existentialism.

Nietzsche’s will to power seeks to force truth and individual will on society; to him, to gain power is “to grow, spread, seize, [and] become predominant.” Likewise, Freud proposes a socially acceptable version of pursuing his aggressive understanding of “natural” happiness. Frankl, on the other hand, adopts a more laissez-faire approach, whereby people should be detached from wanting to control reality and instead trust that their fate is predestined by God, “the universe,” or some other cosmic force, depending on the individual’s religious convictions. Unlike both Nietzsche and Freud’s understandings of the meaning of existence as an instinctive concept that requires the imposing of one’s will on another, Frankl’s approach is somewhat more sophisticated, arguing that although some people are intrinsically aware of their purpose in life, others have to identify it through logotherapy, a type of psychotherapy which holds that an individual’s primary motivation in life is a will to meaning. A line can be drawn chronologically through these theories, with each approach corresponding to different eras of German culture and society.

The Realities of German Society Nietzsche wrote most of his literature between 1872 and 1889, before he suffered a debilitating collapse in mental health. With German Unification taking place in 1871, Nietzsche wrote with the unique perspective of a philosopher living through one of the most consequential events in European history.

In his famous book, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and again in The Gay Science, Nietzsche famously writes about how the Age of Enlightenment had fundamentally changed the relationship of European society to God; the rise of rationalism and scientific thought had diminished common beliefs in Divine Interference in daily life. Thus, he writes that “God is dead. God remains dead.” Furthermore, he notes that as a result of this incident, a void is left in contemporary Christian morality that can only be filled by an Übermensch – a hypothetical, all powerful earthly being who could impose his will on the world and, at the same time, introduce new

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understandings of morality. In 1871, Germany was the newest country in Europe and was still deciding its future, both on the continent and in the wider world. Pressing matters such as where power in the country ought to be centred, how big the country should be and whether it should have a presence outside of Europe were commonly debated. Max Weber, another German philosopher, went so far as to propose the widely popular idea that, after Unification, the natural next step for Germany was a bid for continental dominance. It would essentially be an Überland – an international Übermensch. Nietzsche’s idea of a will to power was widely popular, having captured the zeitgeist of the early culture and society of a united Germany. The concept remains scalable and can be applied to different levels of organisation; it is equally appropriate for individuals as it is for international actors. In fact, the will to power is the central tenet of modern political realism, which proposes that states seek to amass as much power as they can to ensure the pursuit of their interests in the global arena.

Freud released his famous essay, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, in 1920. This essay is the most important piece of literature related to the Freudian will to pleasure, despite having first hinted at this idea as early as 1895. It is not clear when Freud first devised this theory, although European history in the years immediately prior to 1920 imply that his inspiration was itself not particularly pleasurable.

The First World War, which was fought between 1914 and 1918, remains one of the deadliest conflicts of all time, with an estimated death toll of over 20 million. The ensuing Spanish Flu pandemic killed up to 100 million more people. Politically, the victorious Allied Powers sought to punish the Central Powers with punitive peace treaties. This resulted in the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, in which Freud had lived his entire life. A professor at the University of Vienna at the time, Freud was at the epicentre of the intense economic and social turmoil that plagued Central Europe in this period – including hyperinflation, the fallout from both a pandemic and a World War as well as miscellaneous political upheaval. It is perhaps unexpected, then, that Freud proposed that the meaning of human existence as being a will to pleasure rather than something perhaps more fitting for the political period in which he was writing, including the will to power – victorious states were flexing their political and military muscle to impose their will on the defeated states. This would certainly be in line with his understanding of the state of nature as a savage and violent place. In fact, it is thought that Freud’s outlook was profoundly shaped by the

horrors of the First World War, having experienced them from the home front; he argued that events of collective crisis and extreme social hardship revealed aspects of human nature otherwise hidden beneath the surface of daily life. Though he died in 1939, Freud’s theories about the depths of human depravity would have been bolstered by the cruelties of the Second World War and the Holocaust.

It is also possible that Freud’s ideas were perhaps presented a few years before their time. By the mid-1920s, Germany (and to a lesser extent Austria) experienced a cultural boom known as the Golden Twenties. This period was characterised by an increasingly hedonistic and debaucherous cultural liberalism. The era was made possible by greater financial security as a result of large loans from the United States. Therefore, it is possible that Freud’s theory was correct, but only under certain conditions. That is, after years of intense, all-encompassing hardship, the Dawes plan seemed to alleviate the various crises of the region. Sudden economic growth and stability, coupled with a collective urge for relief from the previous years’ suffering, provided the level of general freedom necessary for people to tap into a more liberated part of their intrinsic selves. It is interesting to note that the one extreme of Freudian “human nature” seen in the Golden Years was directly opposite to the violent extremes of the First World War. Perhaps the will to pleasure is best suited to explain human nature in relation to intense hardship, as if seeking to offset the misery of daily life made worse by several concurrent crises.

Much like Freud, Frankl first published his theory of existential meaning after a period of crisis and world war. However, of the three thinkers addressed in this essay, Frankl was the only one with the benefit of being able to study the work of the other two. Early in his career, he questioned Freud’s theories and methods of psychoanalysis before being taught by Albert Adler, who psychologised Nietzsche’s will to power. He fell out of favour with Adler, who cut off all communication with his former pupil after a heated exchange about the role of spirituality in human existence. Frankl had begun his lifelong exploration of existentialism in the years prior, reading the attempts made by thinkers like Nietzsche to make sense of what they saw as a nihilistic world. These ideas were particularly poignant in German society in an era as turbulent as the 1920s, generating widespread cynicism and pessimism that Frankl understood as a threat to the well-being of society.

Unlike Freud, Frankl was directly involved in the horrors of war, having been a prisoner of four

concentration camps, including Auschwitz, over three years. He describes his experience in these camps in detail in his landmark book, Man’s Search For Meaning. These horrifying experiences undoubtedly cemented his conviction for the theory that pursuing meaning was the foundational aim of human life. At a 1980 conference about logotherapy, Frankl discussed how his experience in concentration camps forced him to resist the nihilism of widely accepted understandings of existentialism, criticizing these theories along the way: I am not entitled to speak […] of Sigmund Freud and Albert Adler but as far as logotherapy was concerned, I gladly and readily confess that as a young man I had to go through the hell of despair over the apparent meaninglessness of life, through total and ultimate nihilism. But I wrestled with it like Jacob with the angel did until I could “say yes to life in spite of everything,” until I could develop immunity against nihilism. I developed logotherapy. It is a pity that other authors, instead of immunising their readers against nihilism, inoculate them with their own cynicism…

Not only does Frankl provide personal evidence of the power and importance of the will to meaning, but he also warns against the dangers of excessive nihilism and cynicism. After the Second World War devastated Europe, the continent was forced to come to terms with its immediate past.

In Germany, despite opinion polls indicating that many still considered National Socialism to be beneficial in principle, people had to accept the role that their tacit or active support of the Nazi government had in both the war that destroyed Germany and in its efforts to exterminate entire racial and religious groups. Then, they had to decide how to come to terms with it and how to somehow move Germany forward. This search for meaning is evident in the massive success of Frankl’s first postwar publication – the first printing of Man’s Search For Meaning, published in 1946, quickly sold out in Germany.

Existentialism and the German Question Considering the enormous size and complexity of German society and culture, it is important to analyse the effect, if any, of German sub-identities on Nietzsche, Freud, and Frankl’s theories of existentialism. While there does appear to be a difference in thinking between these philosophers based on their country of origin – Nietzsche was German while Freud and Frankl were Austrian – these similarities appear to be largely superficial. Most notably, the aggression of each theory decreases based

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on the period in which they are proposed. Specifically, while Nietzsche’s will to power involves the accumulation of power in order to impose one’s will on society, Frankl’s will to meaning requires that an individual stops trying to pursue control over his or her situation, and rather trust that they have a predetermined purpose to fulfill. Freud’s theory, on the other hand, falls somewhere in between the other two. Namely, while he argues that human behaviour is of course dictated by an innate bloodlust and desire for sexual gratification, he points out that the existence of civilisation allows people to control these urges. Therefore, while the will to pleasure is theoretically extremely harmful, with people in the state of nature forcing themselves on each other in various ways, modern society tempers these urges and by extension makes the pursuit of pleasure a more consensual, collective experience. Therefore, the location of each author’s residence is incidental to its message. Nevertheless, it is possible that Nietzsche was emboldened to advocate dominance because he lived in the centre of the German political universe, rather than on its southern border.

One important point of contrast between these three theories is the varying effect of personal experience on each theory. As alluded to above, Nietzsche’s theory appears to be based entirely on his other theories about society and human nature more broadly. Freud experienced the suffering of the First World War, for example dire food shortages, from the home front, and would have learned about the horrors of the battlefield through stories and news reports. Frankl, on the other hand, is the only one of the three authors who explicitly cites personal experience, in this case being sent to a concentration camp, as justification for the validity of his theory.

Without engaging in a complex theological debate, it is worth considering if the religious convictions of each author influenced their understandings of existentialism. Freud and Frankl were both Jews, whereas Nietzsche was irreligious.1 Only in this context could Nietzsche propose that an Übermensch, rather than an omnipotent God, could single-handedly impose his will on society. Freud and Frankl, both of whom were religious, incorporate a degree of inevitability into their theories of existence. Nevertheless, Freud’s theories about the state of nature are by no means clearly influenced by his religious convictions. To conclusively establish this fact, it would be necessary to look one step before the state of nature and gauge Freud’s understanding of creation – how did humanity get to the state of nature? Was it placed there by an act of God? The history of Judaism in German Europe is

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plagued by centuries of anti-Semitic persecution.

This peaked in the Third Reich, when the Nazi government sought to systematically exterminate European Jews. The Holocaust remains the deadliest genocide in recorded history.

Having fled Austria in 1938, Freud escaped the worst of anti-Semitic persecution in Austria.

Frankl, still in Austria by the outbreak of war, was not as lucky. Nevertheless, both psychologists were profoundly impacted by the effects of anti-Semitism and suffered under the Nazi government.

However, due to the extreme suffering he endured during his internment in various concentration camps, to which he was sent because of his faith, it can be reasonably assumed that religion had a larger role to play in Frankl’s life and thus his will to meaning than it did in Freud’s will to pleasure or Nietzsche’s will to power. As is therefore perhaps expected, Frankl’s theory is undoubtedly the most clearly theistic of the three. Logotherapy is prefaced on a degree of predestination; whether or not this is a result of Divine Will is left to the reader’s own interpretation. Although Timothy Pytell argues that logotherapy was developed based on Frankl’s personal experience as a religious man, he never explicitly equates spirituality with religiosity.

Ultimately, there is a clear development of understandings of existentialism in German thought in the period from Unification through the end of the Second World War. While understandings of existential meaning began as a pursuit of putting one’s own happiness, convenience, and satisfaction above that of all others, after the cataclysm of the Second World War there was a notable shift towards introspection and a will to discover one’s role as part of a wider society. Nietzsche and Frankl capture the zeitgeist of German-speaking Europe in their respective periods, but Freud seems to take a more timeless approach, with the evidence of his theories made clear to the general public years after he first proposed his theory. Due to a lack of relevant information, it is impossible to know the full intentions and influences of Nietzsche and Freud’s personal experiences on their theories, while Frankl has clearly stated on several occasions that his experience in Nazi concentration camps provided him with proof for his theory of the will to meaning. Each theory has merits based in human nature, and so they will all remain relevant in different contexts so long as human nature remains unchanged.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Bentham, Jeremy. An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1907.

Conway, Daniel. “Beyond Truth and Appearance: Nietzsche’s

Emergent Realism.” Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science 204 (1999): 109-122.

Frankl, Viktor. The Feeling of Meaninglessness. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2010. Frankl, Viktor. Man’s Search For Meaning. London, Rider Books: 2004.

Freud, Sigmund. Civilisation and its Discontents. In Mitchell Cohen. “Princeton Readings in Political Thought: Essential Texts from Plato to Populism.” Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018.

Freud, Sigmund. “Thoughts for the Times on War and Death.” 1915. Available online at https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/ freud/ex/175.html.

Gay, Peter. Freud: A Life For Our Time. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2006. Hagen, William W. German History in Modern Times: Four Lives of the Nation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.

Kirkegaard, Søren. Søren Kirkegaard’s Journals and Papers, Vol. 5. Edited by Edna & Howard Hong Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978.

Klingberg, Haddon. When Life Calls Out to Us: The Love and Lifework of Viktor and Elly Frankl. New York: Doubleday, 2001.

Leiter, Brian. “Nietzsche’s Moral and Political Philosophy: Privilege Readings.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 27 February 2020. Retrieved 14 April 2021. Available at https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nietzsche-moral-political/.

Morgenthau, Hans. Politics Among Nations. New York: Knopf, 1966.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. Beyond Good and Evil. Translated by W. Kaufmann. New York: Vintage, 1966.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Gay Science. Translated by Thomas Common. New York: Dover Publications, 2020.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Will to Power. Translated by W. Kaufmann and RJ Hollingdale. New York: Vintage, 1968.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. Thus Spoke Zarathustra. In The Portable Nietzsche. Edited & Translated by W. Kaufmann and RJ Hollingdale. New York: Viking, 1954.

Pytell, Timothy E. “Extreme Experience, Psychological Insight, and Holocaust Perception: Reflections on Bettelheim and Frankl.” Psychoanalytic Psychology 24, no. 4 (2007): 641- 657.

Royde-Smith, John Graham. “World War I.” Encyclopaedia Britannica, 17 March 2021.

Retrieved 15 April 2021. Available at https://www.britannica. com/event/World-War-I. Schatzman, Morton. “Obituary: Viktor Frankl.” The Independent, 23 October 2011. Accessed 14 April 2021. Available at https://www.independent.co.uk/ news/people/obituary-viktor frankl-1237506.html.

Spreeuwenberg, Peter, Madelon Kroneman and John Paget.

“Reassessing the Global Mortality Burden of the 1918 Influenza Pandemic.” American Journal of Epidemiology 187, no. 12 (2018): 2561-2567.

Young, Julian. Nietzsche’s Philosophy of Religion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

NOTES 1. Although Nietzsche rejected God on several occasions (adopting Schopenhauer’s belief that both religion and God are human constructions), it is widely accepted that he is neither areligious nor atheistic. For more information on this subject, please

Taken in Quedlinburg, Deutschland by Sean Hall

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Traces of J. G. Herder’s Philosophy of History in W. G. Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn W

. G. Sebald’s sweeping, hybrid novel The Rings of Saturn is a meditation on intertwined moments in history. It chronicles events from the narrator’s own past and present as well as important episodes in world history, such as the World Wars, the horrors of colonization, and silk production in imperial China and Nazi Germany as the narrator treks around East Anglia. One of the novel’s major features, which Sebald builds into the formal structure of The Rings of Saturn, is a strangely coherent collage of multiple disparate events with only small details to connect them.

In so doing, Sebald hints at The Rings of Saturn’s larger historical vision, connectivity, and intertextual influences. Being German himself and thereby steeped in German literature and philosophy, Sebald was likely influenced by the rich philosophical tradition of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Germany, including the writing of J. G. Herder, who remains well-known for his work on history and nationalism through books like Another Philosophy of History. In this essay, I will argue that through Sebald’s formal separation of his work into chapters, his dissatisfaction with the bird’s-eye view perspective in the study of history, and his conception of human history as one of recurrent destruction, Sebald shows that he is not only influenced

by Herder’s ideas but challenges and adapts them as well.

A significant aspect of Herder’s theory of history, outlined in Another Philosophy of History, is his theory of progression. This theory binds diverse eras together into one cohesive historical timeline and, in turn, emphasizes progression from one stage of development to the next. Early on in this work, Herder outlines the central aim of his argument: If I could succeed in binding together the most disparate scenes without entangling them, to show how they are mutually related, growing out of one another, losing themselves in each other, all only moments in the particular, mere means towards

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by Asa Brunet-Jailly a purpose through progression**—what a view!

(Herder 32) In this passage, Herder maintains that to understand how one era evolves into the next, one must link “disparate scenes without entangling them” (32). By linking them, one can depict how each scene’s development shows humanity’s “purpose through progression” (32). Indeed, Herder argues that each era builds on what came before it to evolve: “the Egyptian could not exist without the Oriental; the Greek built upon them, the Roman lifted himself atop the back of the entire world— true progression” (31). In summary, Herder considers that each era has evolved from its predecessor, creating a chronological timeline of progression over randomness, all the way to Herder’s post-enlightenment, eighteenth-century Europe, which, Herder argues, would be “a wasteland” without “these prior barbaric times” (41). Herder’s emphasis on the “view” of such progression also shows his interest in a bird’s-eye view of history. He believes that this bird’s-eye view is necessary to understand history’s ultimate purpose: “When you keep your face close to the picture, fumbling with this splinter or groping at that speck of color, you will never see the entire image—you will see anything but an image!” (25). One must step back, Herder contends, to take in all these “disparate scenes” (32) from different eras and regions of the world and examine them as interconnected units, or perhaps building blocks, that rise above those before them. This progression is, to Herder, crucial in understanding all of history.

By assembling various historical scenes and memories into a coherent narrative, Sebald expands upon and shifts certain elements of Herder’s theory of history in The Rings of Saturn, particularly Herder’s notion of retreating to take in the “view” (Herder 32). Describing Thomas Browne’s intricate prose, Sebald writes, “[t]he greater the distance, the clearer the view: one sees the tiniest of details with the utmost clarity. It is as if one were looking through a reversed opera glass and through

a microscope at the same time” (Sebald 15). Modelled after Browne’s style, Sebald’s novel has an expansive scope that evokes the bird’s-eye view yet is written in meticulously detailed prose. An example of this scope are his descriptions of both the “subtlest nuances in the [mallard’s] plumage, and even the pores in the lid closed over its eyes” that appear to him “for the fraction of a second” (61) and the distinct items he traces across various regions and periods—the primary example of this focus being silk—to discuss large-scale historical and cultural memories, such as the brutality of colonization, China’s bloody Taiping rebellion, and the Nazi Party’s racial policies. He arrives at these topics obliquely through his initial discussion of Browne’s writings. Although Sebald separates his novel into ten distinct chapters that appear to begin and end abruptly, each chapter is linked to the other through various recurring details. In chapter I, Sebald mentions that Browne was the son of a silk merchant; in chapter X, the final chapter, Sebald reminds the reader of this detail once more, before writing that Browne described mourning silks in his work. As a result, Sebald’s juxtaposition of events and fleeting memories feel connected and coherent, and the significance placed on the everlasting recurrence of grief, decay, and destruction is purposefully highlighted. This formal structure of moments connected by, at first glance, minutia, progresses as a whole since each moment is somehow linked to the next.

Sebald’s formal structure thus echoes the purposeful, united yet separate nature of Herder’s theory of history.

To Sebald, however, the bird’s-eye view needed to fulfil Herder’s understanding of history does not achieve its role. Rather, Sebald argues that the great distance we have from history is not the best vantage point we can adopt, but our only one. Contemplating the Waterloo Panorama, Sebald writes, “[t]his then [...] is the representation of history. It requires a falsification of perspective. We, the survivors, see everything from above, see everything at once, and still we do not know how it was” (83). By reflecting on historians' use of the bird’s-eye view, Sebald questions the reasoning of many historical theorists, including Herder, who promotes a panoramic overview of history in order to see its “entire image” (Herder 25). To Sebald, the bird’s-eye view, a perspective that witnesses all eras at once as one coherent timeline, is a “falsification of perspective” (Sebald 83). Despite seeing history from above and all at once, “we still do not know how it was” and never truly will, as much as we might wish to (83).

His doubts about the truthfulness of the bird’s-eye view, while somewhat relying on this perspective

himself to portray past events in his novel, troubles Sebald. He realizes that like the “imaginary position some distance above the earth” Jacob van Ruisdael used to paint View of Haarlem with Bleaching Fields (56), Sebald, too, must take up an imaginary perspective in his writing. Unlike Herder, who maintains that a bird’s-eye view reveals the unseen, Sebald believes his expansive view to be far from accurate. This doubt is again exemplified when Sebald’s narrator looks down to Earth from an airplane and realizes he cannot see any people:“[i]f we view ourselves from a great height, it is frightening to realize how little we know about our species, our purpose and our end” (63). Looking at something from a great distance is, to Sebald, a reminder that the aims of humanity, and history, are far from clear.

Sebald further challenges Herder’s notion that the most elevated perspective is a sign of progression by depicting his elevated perspective to be reliant on death and destruction from the past. In his theory of historical progression, Herder imagines a great tree that “stands in view of all the preceding trees” as “the highest treetop” of all (Herder 58).

This great tree has “made use of [...] much fluid from the root, trunk, and branches” of previous generations, and we, the current generation “look out over the earth!” from our tree (58). In Herder’s extended metaphor, this single great tree not only gains nourishment from the “preceding trees” (58) but also rises far above them. Sebald’s narrator, appearing to directly question Herder’s rationale, addresses his own aim and those of the historians he succeeds: “Is that our ultimate vantage point?

Does one really have the much-vaunted historical overview from such a position?” (Sebald 83). As Sebald’s narrator observes the Waterloo Panorama, he asks himself and the reader: “Whatever became of the corpses and mortal remains? Are they buried under the memorial? Are we standing on a mountain of death?” (83). Sebald’s turn to a melancholic vision of history reverses the growth and development that Herder promotes. Instead, Sebald’s melancholic stance on history deems that destruction, rather than progression, has led to the world which the narrator sees from the peak of history’s “mountain of death” (83). The narrator’s despondency in front of the Waterloo Panorama is not the sole instance of such questions, which remain on Sebald’s mind throughout The Rings of Saturn. The visual height at which Sebald is does not hold, for him, the same triumph that Herder describes as he stands on his high treetop to look at all of history. To Sebald, this height, while allowing a certain comprehensive perspective of history, is fallible and can never truly grasp the transient and often brutal moments of the

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past.

Although Sebald and Herder both envision history as a struggle, Sebald reverses Herder’s struggle towards improvement and instead describes humanity’s history as a recurring pattern of destruction and a futile struggle. To Herder, “[h]uman nature is no deity self-sufficient in goodness: she needs to learn everything, to be formed* by progressions,** to stride ever onward in a gradual struggle” (Herder 26). In short, the struggle of humanity is necessary for it to evolve and better itself as each era builds upon those that came before it. Sebald, in contrast, discusses a vastly different struggle. In his description of the town of Dunwich’s slow decline from its peak importance in the Middle Ages, he writes, “[The people of Dunwich] abandoned their hopeless struggle [...] and [...] built to the westward in a protracted flight that went on for generations; the slowly dying town thus followed – by reflex, one might say – one of the fundamental patterns of human behaviour” (Sebald 106). Here, Sebald characterizes human behaviour as the abandonment of the hopeless struggle against slow decay. This melancholic depiction of human behaviour is one of many scenes that, to Sebald, represent “but a long account of calamities” in history (192). The narrator describes the sense of “paralysing horror” that comes over him “when confronted with the traces of destruction, reaching far back into the past” (5).

This visceral, physical response to destruction suggests we embody the past as we do the present and future—it is part of our nature.

The haunting quality of Sebald’s cyclical trage-

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dy of history in The Rings of Saturn does not come from Herder, who argues that we, the current generation, “should forgive [the previous eras] when we see them always wrestling with their faults, struggling for an improvement” (Herder 42). Although Herder defends this position by stating that “[n]othing could be further from [his] mind than to defend the endless mass-migrations and devastations, the vassals’ wars and feuds, the armies of monks, the pilgrimages and crusades” (42), his emphasis on forgiving past ills is a precarious position to hold. Though certainly aware and critical of the immense brutality that accompanied all trade in his days (64), the violence of past and present is not Herder’s focus. Sebald, who fixates relentlessly on destruction and death, might consider Herder’s insistence on forgiveness and progression to be simply impossible in a post-Holocaust world.

Sebald does, however, reflect without judgment, on the destruction of past decades and centuries.

Most importantly, The Rings of Saturn’s inclusive range, which incorporates vastly different perspectives and events, positions human beings as ever involved with and responsible to each other—a notion not so distant from Herder’s position.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Herder, J. G. Johann Gottfried Herder: Another Philosophy of History and Selected Political Writings, edited by Ioannis D. Evrigenis, and Daniel Pellerin.

Hackett Pub, 2004.

Sebald, W. G. The Rings of Saturn, translated by Michael Hulse. New Directions, 1998

A Picture of Language Foreigner’s Perspective

from the

by Ohrie Hasegawa

Y

oko Tawada’s short story ‘A Guest’ provides a raw, authentic depiction of the outsider’s experience in a foreign land. Throughout the narrative, one running theme is the multifaceted process of adjusting to an unfamiliar sociocultural and linguistic environment. Through explorations of physical and immaterial boundaries, the dichotomy of the auditory and semantic dimensions of speech and language, and the use of intersensory diction, the text identifies the experience of divulging in a foreign culture as one that is imperative, but often of an alienating nature.

Throughout the narrative, Tawada repeatedly depicts the auditory aspect of speech as a distinct entity from the actual meaning of the speech itself.

This is exemplified when the narrator, observing the guests in her apartment, compares the rhythm of their speech to that of “a computerized drum set, just like in disco music”.1 The choice to simply describe language in aural terms and refrain from even hinting at what the content of the conversation might be, simulates the situation for the reader by trapping them alongside the narrator in a limited world from which one must deduce meaning. This mirrors the experience of having a language divide separating one from a large group of people. The separation of sound from the rest of the components of language is further emphasized in the fact that the narrator herself cannot hear into the room and is left to deduce that “apparently, [the sound] was very loud” (Tawada 34) from visual cues in the room, such as “the wine glasses vibrating” (34).

This creation of the sensory perimeter mirrors the linguistic boundary separating the narrator from the native German-speakers in the room, further highlighting the alienating experience of the foreigner.

The comparisons of speech to music and dance also serves to address a paradoxical nature of language, and how it creates an additional barrier for the outsider. Music and dance both entail innovation within a structured frame. The evocation of these images in accordance with speech suggests that language, too, shares this complex nature of being both structured and fluid at the same time.

This image of language as a paradoxical phenom-

enon operating within a certain set of rules is further reinforced with the narrators’ later use of the words “computerized” (34) and “mechanical” (34) in her description of the guests’ speech mannerisms. Here, the juxtaposition of inanimacy and automation against something that is fundamentally human illustrates the paradoxical ‘structured unstructuredness’ of language. Additionally, the narrator’s observation that “no one was allowed to miss a beat” (34) furthers the idea of there existing a certain set of rules within language; her stark, direct diction suggesting that this simply makes a foreign language utterly impenetrable to the outsider. This exploration ties into other prominent images in the narrative such as clocks and the alphabet, pointing out the absurdity of assigning a discrete unit to an indefinite entity and the significance of these arbitrary constructs in linguistic culture. The narrative addresses the presence of such arbitrary structures within the linguistic world and how they further the rift between an outsider and a foreign culture.

The mechanical language in the passage also serves to give a first-hand depiction of the degree of perceived disparity that a language barrier can create between an individual and a group of people.

This can be seen in the structural choice to immediately follow the description of the guests as appearing “computerized” (34) and breathing “mechanically” (34) with a discussion of “[the narrator’s] heartbeat and [her] sighs” (34). The fundamentally human, respiratory images of the heartbeat and breath contrasts with the mechanical description of the guests, magnifying the rift between the two entities so far as to compare it to the difference between a human being and a machine. The choice to use the word “sighs” as opposed to “breaths” or “exhales” distances the act of respiration from a process that is automatic and biological to one of consciousness and will, furthering the portrayal of the narrator as fundamentally separate from the guests in the room. A more tangible juxtaposition concerning volume further emphasizes the discrepancy between the narrator and those around her, as she describes her heartbeat and breaths as being “ridiculously soft, no match for the powerful speakers ” (34). Additionally, in the same line, the

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narrative invokes the homograph “speakers” but refrains from specifying if the word is in reference to the speaker systems playing the music or to the conversing guests. This completes the perceived separation between the narrator and her guests, resulting in a powerful effect of alienation.

The theme of alienation and disconnect is also reflected in the disjointed narratological structure of the passage. The narrative voice is characterized by its abrupt jumps between intersensory borders, realism and surrealism, and even back and forth between a statement and a seeming contradiction.

This creates a feeling of sensory overload reminiscent of the experience of being surrounded by a foreign language for extended amounts of time.

An instance of this disjointed narration is when the characterization of the music and dancing ends abruptly after the two sentences describing the experience of the narrator. The sudden statement that “There weren’t any speakers in my apartment, and there wasn’t any music playing” (34) discombobulates the reader by jerking the narrative back into reality from what can be recognized, only in retrospect, as something akin to an alternate universe, as if the “black refrigerators” (34) were a wormhole connecting the two parallel realities.

This image of the “black refrigerators'' (34) also plays a role in addressing the experience of a new language and culture. In the household, a refrigerator preserves food and keeps it fresh. Therefore, the narrator’s being inside the refrigerator initially suggests that she, or at least something inside of her, is being preserved - kept protected from the surrounding environment. However, the use of the image in accordance with the color black — the absence of color and light — poses the price of preservation as the shutting out of the outside world.

This is further emphasized by the narrator’s ensuing description of “the mass of sounds [being] frozen” (34) in the black refrigerators, suggesting that in order to preserve the entity within, the container must suspend all sensory input from the world beyond. Refrigerator walls can also be interpreted as the barrier between sustenance and a human being.

Without what lies on the other side of the doors, the individual starves. These factors speak to the outsider’s experience in a foreign land, suggesting that while one can be “preserved” as the same person that they are by cutting off all interaction with the outside world, they must move beyond this metaphorical barrier to truly thrive in the new environment.

However, alongside this proposal, the narrative also appears to explore a contrary view of the experience of new language as being emotional-

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ly exhausting and highly consequential: “People were talking. I wanted to transform myself into a stone...” (34) The image of the stone combines with the earlier description of “the mass of sounds” (34) to invoke a sense of physical pressure and weighing down. These descriptions effectively portray the experience of being surrounded by a foreign linguistic culture as something that is overwhelming and draining, weighing one down until it feels as though they have been rendered small and immobile, like a stone. The narrative continues to develop this concept of the stone in the next line, comparing it to a “misplaced comma, to interrupt the clatter of conversation” (34). The word “misplaced” insinuates irregularity, while the comma typically marks a breath. This image directly ties back to the passage’s earlier description of the guests breathing “mechanically, rather than taking irregular breaths” (34). If the guests’ mannerisms previously appeared mechanized due to their “[fixed] breaths,” (34) the incorporation of the misplaced comma - the stone should help them resemble humans again.

Thus, ‘A Guest’ can be understood to follow the foreigner’s linguistic experience in a new country, highlighting how language - what normally is a means for free expression of oneself and their thoughts - can, in some cases, provide an alienating effect for the foreigner from their new environment. This is reflected in many narratological tools in Tawada’s piece, including the use of a disjointed narratological structure and the evocation of a number of contrasting metaphors serving to demonstrate the sense of perceived disparity between oneself and native speakers that can persist.

However, the text also acknowledges that separating oneself from the surroundings is not productive and that, while the process of adjusting to a foreign linguistic culture can be alienating and exhausting at first, it is imperative for one to first become a part of the new environment to truly understand it.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Tawada, Yōko, Susan Bernofsky, Yumi Selden, and Wim Wenders. Where Europe Begins. New Directions Publishing, 2007.

The Sublime Object and Desire’s Destabilization of Subjectivity in Kafka’s “A Country Doctor”

By Fion Zhen

T

he oppressive nightmarish veneer of Franz Kafka’s short story “A Country Doctor” deconstructs the illusion of self-mastery that subjectivity purports by using the limited narrator as a vehicle to weave together a hyperreal labyrinth of linkages from horses, Rose, Christianity and science. This chain of repetitive symbols culminates in the doctor’s state of despair and shame due to his irreparably fragmented subjectivity. From two divergent perspectives, science (embodied by the doctor) and Christianity are metonymies for the sublime object––a decentred construction that pervades and systematizes interaction (Žižek 192). Insofar as an inaccessible, self-sustaining desire that resides outside of the narrator’s control structures subjectivity, the horses’ metamorphosis parallels the narrator’s paralysis to reveal the hopeless instability inherent in subjectivity. The destabilized subjectivity of the embodied sublime object communicates that desire is not motivated by mastery but rather circles around a void in the signifier (Žižek 112). Furthermore, the nostalgic ghost of Rose and her presumably sealed fate haunts the narrator’s treatment of his incurable patient. Rose’s fatidic absence and the horses’ presence structures the fantasmatic vacuum wherein the narrator’s subjectivity is inextricably bound by self-sustaining desire, always outside of him, yet possessing the agency he does not. “A Country Doctor” explores this bridgeless gap between subjectivity and truth by destabilizing the coherent self as it is rather undergirded by evasive and fluctuating representations of desire.

Through the eyes of society and the country doctor, two metonymic forms of the sublime object emerge as placeholders for nothingness. The country doctor spitefully rejects the society’s expectation of the “doctor [who] is supposed to be omnipotent with his merciful surgeon’s hand,” by claiming: “This is what people are like in my district. Always expecting the impossible from the doctor” (Kafka 224; emphasis added). Since the people “have lost their ancient beliefs,” the substitution of the “om-

nipotent” doctor in place of God’s authority reveals the lack of any notional determination underlying the two metonymies for the sublime object, rendering both God and the doctor unable to actualize according to notional standards (Kafka 224; Žižek xix). The visibility of “[the doctor] busying himself ” brings the patient’s family “pleas[ure],” but obfuscates the surreal construction of an inhuman human doctor (Kafka 223-24).

The unavoidable “night bell” that connects the doctor to the district, while “ma[king] [his] life a torment” reinforces shame (Kafka 223). The night bell obliges him to the district, “to the point where it became almost too much” with no escape as “it cannot be made good, not ever” (Kafka 222, 225).

The doctor endures shame when he becomes aware of the contradiction of his simultaneous alienation from and inescapable relation to the district. Despite society’s idealized perception of the doctor’s mastery, even he “blasphemously” invokes the higher authority of God because “in cases like this the gods are helpful” (Kafka 222). Confounded by his despair, the doctor ironically requests divine intervention in order to retreat from his contradictory lack of agency and conceptually messianic occupation (Kafka 222). This invocation of God rather emphasizes the “horses [he] couldn’t control” and Rose’s fate––“only now did [he] remember Rose again; what was [he] to do, how could [he] rescue her”––both physically outside of the patient’s home yet imposing on his present duty (Kafka 222). The limited first-person narrator lacks control over the narrative’s linear progression. In light of his lack of control over the horses, the narrative, his patient and Rose’s fate, the doctor regresses to a defenceless object-like state. The doctor is caught in a double-bind: although he is “altogether composed and equal to the situation,” the illusion of mastery is actually “no help to [him], since they took [him] by the head and feet and carried [him] to the bed” (Kafka 224). This double-bind shatters the illusion of mastery over oneself as a given in subjectivity.

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Regardless of society’s perception of the doctor as a messianic “world reformer,” he suffers from a helpless loss of physical control over his own body which demonstrates that the sublime object cannot manifest materially due to the instability of subjectivity (Kafka 222).

Once the doctor brings the patient and his family to an indirect encounter with the sublime object, the constraint of mortality disappoints impossible expectations: “Strip his clothes off, then he’ll heal us, / If he doesn’t, kill him dead! / Only a doctor, only a doctor” (Kafka 224; emphasis added). Paradoxically, the first line of the song hopes to reveal the doctor’s human body to access his omnipotent power thereby undermining the material actualization of the sublime object. However, the second and third lines ultimately deconstruct the believability of medicine’s authority by (1) defaulting to escape an inherently notional concept through the material means of death, and (2) reducing the doctor to what he actually is: “only a doctor,” a mortal figure like the rest of the district (Kafka 224). Despite the revelation of the doctor's mortality, the disembodied ideal of the “omnipotent” doctor––which is never directly voiced––still governs the interaction between the patient’s family and the doctor (Kafka 222). Moreover, the authority of science is even unbelievable to proponents of scientific authority.

Ultimately, society does not require the belief of the object’s sublimity to act as if it were sublime.

Both sublime objects are revealed as contradictory, standing in place of nothingness to demonstrate the bridgeless gap between the self (insofar as the self is caught up with the simulacrum of ‘reality’) and truth outside of this simulacrum of ‘reality.’

On the other hand, the “unearthly horses” effectively metamorphosize and anthropomorphize into the dynamic progressors of the linear plot hence controlling the paralyzed narrator’s stream of consciousness (Kafka 224). The horses participate in the doctor’s examination by “eyeing the patient” as if “ordained by heaven to assist [his] examination of the patient” (Kafka 222). The horses are an overbearing, uncanny presence that act in defiance of normative horse behaviour (Kafka 222). “Standing faithfully in their places,” the “unearthly horses” that were perhaps “ordained by heaven,” overcome the doctor’s constraint of subjectivity as the truly omnipotent movers of the narrative’s progression in control of the doctor’s physical movement and intruding onto the narrator’s stream of consciousness from outside (Kafka 225, 222). On the contrary, normative behaviour circling around an unreachable desire for the sublime object and further representations of desire confine the narrator’s agency.

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Unlike the horses who have “somehow slipped the reins loose” and “pushed the windows open from outside,” the doctor loses out in the tug-a-war of subjectivity as his patient––in subversion of the doctor’s authority––condemns the doctor’s impotence: “you didn’t come on your own feet” rather, the doctor was carried in by the horses (Kafka 222, 224). Moreover, the narrator who lacks agency “[does] not know how” the horses possess agency; this remains elusive as the story ends with the perturbed narrator in submission to Rose’s fate and reliant on the horses for transportation (Kafka 222).

Both the horses’ and fate’s mysterious agency culminate in the doctor’s belated and assisted discovery of the patient’s “rose-red” wound (Kafka 223).

Rose is like a ghost, a half-presence that steps over the line from past to present to symbolically haunt the narrator in the absence of her physical presence: Rose kept “herself from being discovered,” she remains hidden from visuality, yet constantly takes control over the narrator’s stream of consciousness because of the “justified presentiment that [Rose’s] fate [is] inescapable” (Kafka 221). Moreover, Rose’s fate overpowers the narrator’s agency as she symbolically endures in the narrator’s mournful consciousness and his patient’s wound without ever physically reappearing. Rose’s narratorial redoubling permeates the simulacrum of ‘reality’ while the actual, physical Rose eludes the narrator’s grasp. Rather, the nostalgia enveloping Rose, “the pretty girl who had lived in my house for years almost without my noticing her,” suddenly transforms, once the groom rapaciously endangers Rose, into the object of the narrator’s elusive desire (Kafka 223). The nostalgia of Rose’s idealized ghost presses her absence onto the narrator, filling him with regret: “[he] had still to see that Rose was all right, and then the boy might have his way and [he] wanted to die too” (Kafka 222). Rose is indeed physically absent, but she is prioritized in the ordering of desire before the patient and the narrator’s doubled death drive. Moreover, the doctor’s desire to die is a futile attempt to control his mortality and overturn the inescapability of unstable subjectivity––always superseded by Rose and the uncontrollable outside of him. His death drive is an unsuccessful detour from desire, and rather a submission to the uncontrollable forces of the “endless winter” (Kafka 222).

The narrator’s initial opening of the “dilapidated door” ignites the development of a hopeless story and subjectivity that, like the door, is in a state of disrepair due not to witting neglect, but to inaccessibility because desire is an end in itself hence its persistent evasion from the narrator’s grasp (Kafka 222; emphasis added). In the background, snow

fatidically imparts a paralyzing finality on the ensuing hopelessness of subjectivity within an uncontrollable sequence of irresolute repetition, “it was hopeless, [he] knew it.” Paralyzed by this despair, “[he] stood there forlornly, with the snow gathering more and more thickly upon [him], more and more unable to move,” leaving an immobile self at the will of suffocating, unmediatable desire (Kafka 222).

Ultimately, the text’s conclusion leaves the narrator vulnerable, “naked, exposed,” unable to reach

for his fur coat as a blanket of protection from the harsh winter, thus continuing subjectivity’s endless cycle of submission to all-powerful desire outside of oneself (Kafka 225). By collapsing the coherence of “[the narrator’s] own house,” the rubble leaves an alien shell wherein “[he] never know[s] what [he is] going to find,” as it is control.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Kafka, Franz. “A Country Doctor.” Lulu Press, Inc, 2020. Žižek, Slavoj. The Sublime Object of Ideology. Verso, 1989.

Taken in Bremen, Deutschland by Jannis Dupuis

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The Synthesis of Bohemian and Bourgeois Values in Thomas Mann’s Tonio Kroger

By Blaise Brosnan

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homas Mann’s short story Tonio Kroger chronicles the upbringing and early adulthood of the artist Tonio. Tonio initially revels in the radical rejection of bourgeois society exemplified by the life of the artist, but misses the emotional comforts of ordinary life. Ultimately, Tonio decides that he can maintain his bohemian life while enjoying some of the joys of life in bourgeois society. This paper analyzes the complex relationship between bourgeois and bohemian values in Tonio Kroger, arguing that the story ultimately charts a middle path between the extremes of bohemian radicalism and middle class conservatism. Mann reveals that both depend on one another, with the bohemian ethic of artistic discipline implicitly mirroring the bourgeois work ethic.

In Thomas Mann’s novella Tonio Kroger, the protagonist struggles with the tension between the demands of bourgeois society and the moral, political, and spiritual obligations of the life of an artist.

Tonio Kroger initially appears to endorse a radically Nietzschean vision of the role of the artist, as a figure who transcends the constraints of the human condition. Paradoxically, however, this notion of art as the transcendence of the bourgeois ideal of humanity also requires the bourgeois social order to maintain itself. Thus, Kroger’s chief struggle is to exist as an artist on the outskirts of the bourgeois moral and aesthetic imagination while not succumbing to the sense of complacency, dullness, and mediocrity he sees as inherent to the bourgeois world. This task necessitates choosing ascetic restraint when the ordinary man would choose hedonism, and epicureanism when the bourgeois man would choose a more conservative course of action.

Thus, the ethos of the artist is revealed as a doubling of the bourgeois ethos, a parody of the Protestant ethic of ascetic self-restraint and hard work in pursuit of salvation. Correspondingly, Kroger eventually finds this ethic to be at least as much of a denial of the joys of life as the bourgeois ethos, as it robs of him of the ability to both participate in

quotidian pleasures as well as to appreciate the aesthetic beauty of art in an uncomplicated manner.

The conclusion of the novella points to a resolution of these contradictions, as Kroger renounces the constricting aspects of the identity of the artist and aims to participate in life and art as a human, unmoored from the rigid dichotomy between bourgeois life and bohemianism.

Unlike Kafka’s country doctor or Francis in Dr. Caligari’s Cabinet, Tonio Kroger’s opposition to the social order is aesthetic and not ideological.

He identifies with his warm, foreign mother and is alienated from his harsh, authoritarian father.

However, even as a child, he does not oppose his father’s authoritarianism on moral grounds so much as he simply regards his own nature as contrary to it: “Though at the same time he found his father’s annoyance a more dignified and respectable attitude and despite his scoldings understood him well. (Mann 3)” This apparently minor observation plays a significant role in framing the fundamental tensions that emerge later in life for Tonio. Tonio refuses to conform to his father’s bourgeois values, but at the same time appears to realise that his own position as a nonconformist cannot exist without the foil of the conservative social order. The same dynamic can be applied to his relationship with his classmate Hans Hansen, as he appears to realise that Hans is naturally more conventional and that attempts to convert him to his brand of adolescent bohemianism will be similarly futile. Thus, even at a very young age, Kroger almost appears to see that his place in society as a bohemian is on the outskirts of the bourgeois moral imagination, and that his rebellion is more part of the bourgeois moral drama rather than in opposition to it.

Thomas Mann’s deft use of tone and structure aids in developing Tonio’s simultaneous sense of alienation and contentment in his childhood.

Mann frames Tonio’s sense of identity through a series of contrasts not only between him and the world around him, but also within himself.

We learn that Tonio identifies with his mother and somewhat resents his father, but nevertheless thinks that his father’s actions are fundamentally justified. Tonio’s father is upset that he is an underachiever in school, but this tension neither escalates nor resolves. Mann’s use of contrasts at the level of sentence structure, as well as a poignant tone that conveys a synthesis of painful alienation and joy, introduces the defining conflicts of Kroger’s life during his childhood. Tonio is said to have “loved Hans Hansen… he who loves the more is the inferior and must suffer. (Mann 2)” Thus, Tonio’s adolescent love for Hans Hansen relates his own sense of otherness to an ideal of libidinal desire as an ontological state of self-sacrifice. It is not merely that Tonio loves Hans Hansen, but that this form of unrequited love is essential to his very being as a creative individual. In Mann’s metaphysics, artistic creation appears to entail constant self-sacrifice.

But paradoxically, this radically spiritualized bohemianism is but the obverse of the bourgeois ethos of self-sacrifice for material gain. Tonio’s bohemianism and corresponding alienation from characters such as Hans Hansen and Ingeborg is not so much a reflection of his own hedonism as it is a reflection of his distinct but nevertheless parallel calling. His vocation is built on passionate love without romance and marriage, frugality and self-discipline without wealth, and asceticism without traditional morality. His opposition to bourgeois society is inherent to his character, but he nevertheless has a latent desire to be reunited with it. Mann’s use of vivid contrasts between Kroger and the bourgeois other paired with a tone of regretful serenity captures these incipient conflicts of Kroger’s identity as an artist as early as his adolescence.

Tonio states his artistic philosophy most clearly during his conversations with Lizaveta Ivanovna.

Tonio argues that art rests on a deep hostility and alienation from the rest of society: “And because in their innocence they assume that beautiful and uplifting results have uplifting causes, they never dream that the ‘gift’ in question must have very sinister foundations. (Mann 15).” Tonio’s vocation as an artist thus means that he is forced to be perpetually at odds with the norms of civilized society.

But Tonio is already deeply aware of his own lack of comfort with his separation: “Literature is not a calling. It is a curse, believe me!... at a time when one ought by rights still to be living at peace with god and the world, it begins by your feeling yourself set apart...you realise you are alone; and from then on any rapprochement is hopeless.( Mann 14)” The artist emerges as an individual separated from society almost by divine will, for whom reunification

with the rest of the world can only be a fantasy. The invocations of God, destiny, and fate further consecrate the notion that the role of the artist is a unique burden within society rather than merely a rejection of it. Kroger may protest that the role of the artist is a curse and not a calling, but the sense of metaphysical destiny inherent to his statement confuses the distinction between the two, and expands the notion that Kroger’s art is somehow divinely ordained. Mann’s artist cannot be easily analogized to a Christ figure--his sense of hostility to ordinary society would appear to obviate this possibility. But his unique burden and ethos of artistic creation as a form of self-sacrifice makes him a strange sort of ascetic for the modern age.

It is also important to note here that Kroger’s self-articulated conception of the role of the artist is ultimately in some sense a defense of the traditional values of bourgeois society in a roundabout way. Kroger’s expositions on the role of the artist undermines the notion of art for art’s sake, while also more subtly deconstructing Nietzsche’s challenges to bourgeois morality. On a more transparent level, Kroger refutes the ideal of art for art’s sake, as his very discussion of the role of the artist in society would seem to contradict those who claim that art has no social role except as a source of beauty. But Kroger also parodies Nietzschean ethics as well. The notion of the artist as “extra-human” and as someone whose hopes, joys, and moral code are beyond the realm of ordinary mortals is reminiscent of Nietzsche’s notions of the Übermensch and of the “transvaluation of values. (Antichrist)” Correspondingly, Tonio’s notion of the artist as one who loves but cannot engage in romance and who creates but cannot partake in the joy of his creation more obliquely parallels Nietzsche’s notion of the Will to Power as a driving force behind all forms of creativity (Beyond Good and Evil). Yet Kroger’s ultimate frustration with the artistic ethos correspondingly suggests the futility of the Nietzschean challenge to the bourgeois moral order. Kroger’s attempt to go beyond the human through his art leaves him alienated from the rest of mankind and longing for normalcy. Moreover, his attempted transcendence is the result of an ethic that is not so much the consequence of a post-religious and posthumanist world, but rather ultimately originates from the very traditions the Nietzschean Übermensch would claim to spurn. As I have previously shown, Tonio’s bohemian asceticism is in many ways a spiritual doubling of the capitalistic ethic of production. Thus, Tonio’s orations to Lisabeta Ivanovna reveal that Tonio’s fundamental friction with bourgeois society is grounded in his position

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as an artist whose function within that society is apparently dependent on his alienation from it. The only potential solution to this challenge is not the wholesale rejection of bourgeois values, but rather the attempted reunification of the life of the artist and bourgeois existence.

Kroger’s trip to Denmark in the final part of the novel leads to the partial resolution of the tension between the artist and society. Tonio’s encounter with Hans and Ingeborg provides a fitting climax for the novella, one that is apt precisely because it invokes a principle of partial synthesis and return, both to Kroger’s native Northern Europe and to bourgeois society. At the resort in Denmark, he spies Hans and Ingeborg dancing in the ballroom through a glass window. He indulges in fantasy about how his life would have been had he been an ordinary member of bourgeois society: “To take you, Ingeborg Holm, as a wife, and have a son like you, Hans Hansen-to live free from the curse of knowledge and the torment of creation, live and praise god in blessed mediocrity. (31-32)” He does not find a partner to dance with, and although he encounters a woman with “black swimming” eyes who shows interest in him he spurns her (32). In a letter to Lisabeta Ivanovna penned afterwards, he finally attempts to reconcile his identity as an artist with bourgeois values: “For if anything is capable of making a poet a literary man, it is my bourgeois love of the human...the living and the usual.( 34)” He, however, also once more affirms the ethos of the artist: “I am looking into a world unborn and formless, that needs to be shaped. (34)” Thus, he accomplishes an uneasy synthesis between the identity of the artist and that of bourgeois society.

A critical analysis of Tonio Kroger would be remiss to neglect the cyclical motif of the conclusion to Tonio Kroger. The early formative events of Tonio Kroger’s life are repeated and reimagined. Tonio’s youthful infatuations with Ingeborg and Hans Hansen, as well as his initial embarrassment at the dance under the tutelage of Herr Knaak, apparently give Tonio a chance to repeat the formative events of his life and reflect upon his path as an artist. In conjunction with the more obvious examples of Nietzschean influence on Tonio Kroger, this device is vaguely reminiscent of Nietzsche’s notion of Eternal Recurrence, the question of whether one would happily repeat one’s life an infinite number of times if one was destined to (The Gay Science). In the case of Tonio Kroger, this question is heavily bound up with the spiritual valences of the lives of the bohemian and the bourgeois. Does Kroger resign himself to bourgeois ressentiment and reject his life as an artist? Or does he finally embrace himself as

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one of the “proud cold beings who adventure on the path of great and demonic beauty and despise ‘mankind” (34)? He ultimately chooses both, and neither. In the ballroom, Tonio is once again on the outside looking in, the odd man out in the dance of bourgeois life. But he finally embraces his personal dance with bourgeois society, one that embraces the humanism of the bourgeois world while maintaining a critical sense of aloofness so as to preserve the ability to create great art.

Tonio Kroger is thus a radical deconstruction of the role of the artist in relation to bourgeois society. Rather than the more common conception of the bohemian as a rebel against bourgeois society, Mann conceives of the artist as one who maintains a distance from bourgeois society but is ultimately dependent on it. Kroger ultimately appears to conclude that to attempt to truly transcend the values of bourgeois society would mean to live inauthentically. His respect for authority, as demonstrated by his acceptance of the authority of his father and that of the policeman, illustrates that he views such authority as just as fundamental to any society as great art. The artist emerges as a figure whose sense of monkish discipline at the task of transcending the values of his society is the mirror image of the sense of authority, conscientiousness, and humanism inherent to bourgeois life. The ideal of spiritual and creative transcendence characteristic of late nineteenth-century writers from the symbolist poets to Nietzsche is revealed as an unwitting exponent of the bourgeois-enlightenment values it seeks to transcend. Mann’s Tonio Kroger then emerges as a defense both of bourgeois society and of the role of the artist against the moral radicalism of the fin de siècle and the forces of bourgeois resentment.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Mann, Thomas. Tonio Kroger. Translated by Helen Tracy Lowe-Porter. New York: A.A. Knopf, 1936.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. Beyond Good and Evil. Translated by Walter Kaufmann. New York: A.A. Knopf, 1989.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Gay Science. Translated by Thomas Common. Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 2020.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Antichrist. Translated by H.L. Mencken. New York: A. A. Knopf, 1918.

The Depiction of Power in ‘A Cavalry Tale’ Through Objectivity and Subjectivity in Language

By Sonya Liu On the level of the narrative, Hugo von Hofmannsthal creates a precarious proximity with the dichotomy of ‘objective reporting’ and dreamscape. The dynamic of ‘fluttering between-opposites’ is expressed in the language of the short story.

Utilizing this closeness and duality of language as a means of evaluation, this essay argues for Hofmannsthal’s portrayal of power as a suppression of the individual. The portrayal of ‘objective reporting’ centralizes power within the martial institution and enacts a form of oppression by subsuming the solider into its greater structure. Conversely, the dreamscape represents power as an interchange between opposing parties, a relationship of dominance and submission between persons, where one must be oppressed for another to establish power.

In the unification of opposites and their respective means of distributing power, they mutually support each other in the oppression of the individual.

Proximity between the opposites is depicted in the structure of ‘A Cavalry Tale’. The text commences and concludes with ‘objective reporting’, which can be defined as the objective by its detached, distanced and realistic exposition, reminiscent of an army report. Yet, between start and end, the reader is led through a dreamscape – characterized by aestheticized descriptions in which Sergeant Anton Lerch – and what can be defined as the subjective.

The objective framing of the tale is a literal framing in that it bookends the short story, ‘containing’ the narrative of Lerch within the context of cavalry’s skirmishes. This structure can be read as the larger entity of the military assimilating the soldier, or understood as an example of the oppression enacted by the individual feeding into the oppression of the system. The reading of the former can be extended in the expository beginning of the story. Language, such as “The prisoners were handed over to a corporal and eight troopers and dispatched to the rear” (Hofmannsthal, 64), exemplifies the loss of individual power in the integration towards unifor-

mity. The indifference of the terms “handed over” and “dispatched” suggests an objectification of the prisoners, which is also reflected in “a corporal and eight troopers”. In denoting soldiers by rank within the military hierarchy, personal identity is erased by and replaced with these generic monikers. This erasure of selfhood in favor of to conformity is further shown in, “The squadron lost one man killed” (65).

The death of “one man” is demonstrated as a loss only in relation to “[t]he squadron”. He holds meaning within the squadron and not beyond, thus, his personal power exists solely within the military hierarchy. In such a manner, a cavalryman is suppressed and subsumed into the martial institution he serves.

Yet, juxtaposed with the individual assimilation into a greater whole, the dreamscape centres the individual – Anton Lerch – as the driving narrative force. Power shifts to position itself relationally.

We observe this in the aestheticized depiction of the squadron’s entrance into Milan from the citation: “could not deny […] the opportunity of riding into this large and beautiful city lying defenceless before them” (65). The adjective of “beautiful” personifies and feminizes the city, whilst the vulnerability in “defenceless” and the intimacy from “lying” articulates a form of voyeurism. From the phrase “could not deny”, there stands the implication of self-indulgence and a sense of the forbidden, reinforcing the notion of gratification, perhaps sexual, of “riding into” Milan. Through the gaze of the “splendid squadron” at “the height of their trotting chargers” (66), the sexualization of the city becomes intimately linked to its conquest. It is given to the cavalrymen as a possession for their victory. In being ridden through, the subjective strips power collectively from the conquered and gives to the conqueror.

The dominance of the cavalry over Milan is paralleled by Lerch’s dominance of Vuic and her household. Through Lerch, we become voyeurs

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from the illicit nature of the phrases“glimpsed”, “his keen eyes” and “sought to recapture” (66). The sense of the forbidden recurs in the voyeurism Lerch partakes in, as exhibited by the visual elements and the emphasis on his sight. Moreover, from his role as a voyeur, Lerch strips Vuic of her control and objectifies her to “the voluptuous figure” with “delicate white skin” (66-7) he lusts for. She is reduced to an aspect of his fantasy. Lerch’s fantasy further encompasses his longing to integrate and own the domesticity he invades as an “assertion of his power”. Yet, in said assertion of power, Lerch remains conscious of his hierarchy within the cavalry. His certainty in “this […] will be my billet” (67) holds a contradictory notion. The implications of “this'' represent his entitlement to a life beyond the military, however, “billet” is symbolic of his position as a solider and is temporary in its nature. His “this” is not a termination of his martial associations, despite his hopes for a “civilian atmosphere” (67). His sense of personal power, and hence, his agency, is inseparable from the military institution, which in turn, suppresses said agency.

The futility of Lerch’s “assertion of […] power” is embodied in the decay of Hofmannsthal’s dreamscape. Lerch’s indulgent “desires and cravings” (68) are intimately associated with the grotesque and death. We are shown this most prominently in his visitation to the “wretched” village (68) and his subsequent loss of power. This is depicted through his inability to fully control his movement, from “advanced with difficulty” (69) to “an indescribable heaviness” (70). Thus, we see Lerch’s inability to maintain his power due to his attachment to the larger structure of the cavalry, despite his oppression of Vuic and her domestic sphere. It is, therefore, the inevitable conclusion that Lerch is executed by Captain Baron Rofrano – an act to unify the objective with the subjective towards the individual’s oppression.

In his shooting of Lerch, we can interpret Rofrano’s embodiment of the subjective through his agency and the self-indulgence he exhibits. Such is indicated from his “nonchalant, almost affected manner” and his curling of the “upper lip contemptuously” (73) before the killing. The adverb “contemptuously” and the notion of “almost affected” imply a disdain for Lerch, hence, there is an inferred desire to subjugate and exert his will on the segreant. We additionally see a performative element to “nonchalant”, which is reinforced by the dramaticism in his count to ‘three’, perhaps alluding to a satisfaction in the public suppression of Lerch’s insubordination.

However, Rofrano is also firmly rooted in the

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objective. In executing Lech, Rofrano returns the story to the language of ‘objective reporting’, as indicated in, “once again able to lead the squadron” (73). There is a return to uniformity in “squadron” and lack of ambiguity in the phrase. Its concise and direct nature juxtaposes the prior aestheticized descriptions. This language is extended to the end of the story, exemplified by the detachment presented by “declined battle”. There is a clinical distance in “declined”, a contrast to the primality of the previous victory. From such, we observe Rofrano’s display of oppression towards Lerch as a means of providing him with temporary power and dominance. Ultimately, this reinstates the collective oppression, which would include Rofrano’s eventual loss of power as well. Again, this is a doubling of the situation Lerch enacted with Vuic. Hofmannsthal creates the paradox through the proximity of objectivity and subjectivity – in establishing personal power, the martial institution that exerts suppression is enforced.

By evaluating Hofmannsthal’s portrayal of power through the lens of language and its duality, we become privy to the intertwinement of the military hierarchy and the necessity in suppressing others for the gain of power. Within ‘A Cavalry Tale’, power is the common denominator. It interlinks war, sex, and death, as depicted by: the relationship between Milan’s conquest and sexual conquest; Lerch’s death as a means to signify dominance over the squadron

by Rofrano; and decay as a consequence of Lerch’s futile assertion of power over Vuic. If extrapolated further, it could interpret the doubling within the text as a result of oppression, a Freudian notion of manifestation from the subconscious due to repression, or reconcile Lerch’s desire for bourgeois comfort with his inability to relinquish his martial tendencies due to his integration of identity with the military. Yet, there is a limit to the reading of power within the tale. The complexity of Lerch’s psyche and his ambivalent relationship with his squadron is unlikely to neatly conform to the model of repression under a hierarchical structure. The role of the Doppelgänger could be read as similar to that of a Shakespearian double, or as a manifestation of the subconscious unrelated to the theory of repression. Nevertheless, the narrative of power can and should be explored; in its interweave through the text, we are delivered to the inevitable conclusion of ‘A Cavalry’s Tale’.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Hofmannsthal, von Hugo. ‘Selected Tales: The Tale of the 672nd Night, A Cavalry Tale, Marshal de Bassompierre's Adventure, Letter from Lord Chandos, and Other Narratives’, Angel Books, 2007, pp. 64-74

Taken in Berlin und der Schwarzwald, Deutschland by Eric Storrer

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