"Keine Ader griechisch Blut im Leibe": Goethe versus Wieland on Antiquity in 1773

JOHN P. HEINS The George Washington University

In the lively late eighteenth-century German discussion of the cultural legacy of ancient Greece, begun (according to most accounts) by the publication of Winckelmann's Gedancken iiber die Nachahmung der Griechischen Wercke in der Mahlerey undBildhauer-Kunst in 1755 and leading to Goethe and Schiller's Weimar Classicism ofthe 1790s, the particular character of that legacy is a contentious issue in great part because the character of the participants' historical moment, the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, is at stake. Although the term "classicism" in the case of Weimar might be said to be used normatively rather than in specific reference to ancient Greece, this study will not enter the terminological quagmire marked by the word Klassik, but rather speak of a fairly specific debate about the Greeks in order to illustrate stark differences in historical and cultural understanding between Wieland and the young Goethe in 1773. These differences, however, mask a commonality in motivation. Ultimately both writers' visions ofthe Greeks are driven by modem concerns, Wieland's vision by an interest in Enlightenment moral tenets and in literary methods for affecting a modem audience emotionally and Goethe's vision by an interest in a Sturm und Drang critique of the older generation's "scheele Ideale" (Goethe, Dramatische Dichtungen 214). Eighteenth-century arguments about what ancient Greece was clearly revolve around what modem eighteenth-century Europe is - more specifically, what the Enlightenment is, and what cultural progress entails. This dynamic is clear in the echoes ofthe earlier French quereile des anciens et des modernes and the English "Battle of the Books" detectable in Winckelmann's text, as he addresses the question of how studying the ancients might orient the modems in their quest to achieve something like ancient greatness in the arts, as the modems have surpassed the ancients in the sciences (Pfotenhauer et al. 368-92). Eighteenth-century Europe's cultural self-definition in reference to the ancients becomes particularly interesting at those moments when the discussion about Greece grows particularly noisy and volatile, since these strong disagreements tend to expose otherwise obscured levels of thought and conviction. One such moment in the German context, remarkable not only for the subsequent importseminar A\:\ (February 2005)

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ance of its participants but especially because ofthe differences exposed, is provided by Goethe's satirical attack on Wieland in 1773, in the form of his play Gotter, Helden und Wieland., a response to Wieland's Singspiel Alceste (based on the Aicestis of Euripides) and to Wieland's discussion of his own work in the first issue of his joumal Der teutsche Merkur in the same year. This constellation of three texts provides insights into the strong differences between the emerging Sturm und Drang movement and Wieland's more established Enlightenment view ofthe state of cultural progress in 1773, differences inextricably linked to fundamental issues in the self-understanding of the modem world from the eighteenth century to the present: the precise nature of historical difference and of progress. The Sturm und Drang generation's instinctive antagonism against the "old man" Wieland, whom they associated with the complacent, formally conventional culture of the rococo courts, cannot fully explain the severity of Goethe's attack on the writer who had introduced him to the world of the ancients in his university days. Nor can Goethe's satire be ignored on the grounds that he originally had no intention of publishing it (Goethe, Dramatische Dichtungen 535-38). Wieland's self-satisfied praise in the Teutscher Merkur article of what he had accomplished in Alceste impelled Goethe to this satirical "correction" of Wieland's attitude. But the vehemence ofthe correction suggests that not just one man's arrogance, even the arrogance of an admired model, nor the hostile energy of youth against the older generation, can explain the character of the text. Rather, we must assume that there are real differences of opinion in play. In this short piece, written (according to his Dichtung und Wahrheit) on a Sunday aftemoon in the autumn of 1773 over a bottle of Burgundy and published by Lenz in March 1774, Goethe expresses through satirical means a critique of Wieland's play that at certain points suggests a critique ofthe entire age, what one character calls "Euer ganzes aberweises Jahrhundert von Literatoren" {Dramatische Dichtungen 207). Euripides' original play tells the story of Aicestis, who sacrifices herself in order to save her husband Admetus, who has been condemned to death by the gods. Aicestis is retumed to life by the intervention ofthe demigod Hercules, a friend ofthe house of Admetus. Wieland had been encouraged by his patron, the Duchess Anna Amalia of Weimar, to write this Singspiel, which, when it was performed at the Weimar court on 29 May 1773, was apparently the first Singspiel ever staged by a German company with both a text written by a German (Wieland) in the German language and music composed by a German, Anton Schweitzer (Wieland, Werke 808). Wieland's verses, like his poetry in general in this period, were considered a resounding formal success, a contribution to his campaign to overcome the prejudice against the Gennan language as a medium for poetic and musical expression. Apparently unimpressed with this artistic breakthrough, Goethe criti-

Goethe versus Wieland 3 cizes Wieland for the liberties he has taken with Euripides' work as well as for Wieland's personal arrogance exhibited in the Teutscher Merkur piece, a text in which Wieland criticizes Euripides and praises his own "improvement" of the play. Subsequent critics have often downplayed this short-lived confiict between Goethe and Wieland, since Goethe shortly thereafter gladly accepted a call to Anna Amalia's court, where he developed a warm relationship with Wieland. Maria Erxleben, for instance, sees the episode as a minor discord in a forty-year "harmony" of two different voices, while Friedrich Sengle sees Goethe's antagonism as merely the ressentiment of a spirited young man, far from the mature Klassiker he would become, and presents a richness of detail about the two writers' close relationship. In the event, Wieland himself wrote a gracious and complimentary review of Goethe's satire, calling it "ein Meistersttick von Persifiage und sophistischem Witze," in response to which the embarrassed Goethe (as reported in a letter from Johanna Fahlmer to Friedrich Jacobi) acknowledged himself defeated: "Wieland gewinnt viel bei dem Publico, und ich verliere" (Erxleben 85-86). Apparently sealing the matter, by 1779 Goethe himself was writing an adaptation of a play by Euripides, his Iphigenie aufTauris, which he later rendered in strict formal verse (1787) in direct consultation with Wieland (Boyle 321-27; Sengle 64-65). Another natural tendency for the present-day reader would be to take one side or the other in the debate: either Goethe the young genius was right that Wieland got Greece all wrong, or history (and the older Goethe) proved Wieland right, in the sense that Wieland's mastery of form in Alceste overshadows any damage done by his modemization ofthe material, and this kind of formal mastery after all became the hallmark of the greatest works of Weimar Classicism between 1787 and 1805. Thus, we can explain the confiict in terms of Goethe's personal growth, as he quickly rejects his Sturm und Drang intemperance and comes to prefer the cool excellence of form towards which Wieland was working. Altematively, we can focus on the evolving personal relationship between Goethe and Wieland, perhaps (following Sengle) understanding Wieland as Goethe's "educator," just as Goethe will later "educate" the fiery Schiller (Sengle 71). Rather than pursuing any of these familiar and well-developed lines of reasoning any further, however, this article will explore what is at stake in the confiict itself, that is, what is the real difference between the attitudes towards the ancients expressed in these texts. Pursuing this line of inquiry might contribute to a better understanding of eighteenth-century Germany's confiicted self-understanding at one historical moment, the year 1773. Goethe's critique of Wieland's play voiced in Gotter, Helden und Wieland concentrates on Wieland's perceived inability to comprehend ancient Greece because of his blindness to basic historical difference and his inability to sympa-

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thize with a distant historical culture. He criticizes Wieland for having "keine Ader griechisch Blut im Leibe" {Dramatische Dichtungen 203). For Goethe, this inability is demonstrated in Wieland's injection of eighteenth-century moral ideals and affective preconceptions into the ancient material and in his corresponding narrowminded adherence to Christian prejudices. The text, as its commentators have suggested (Erxleben 81; Wolfgang Kayser in Goethe, Dramatische Dichtungen 536-37; Petzoldt 407, 413-14) and as the present article will attempt to demonstrate, fits easily into the pattem of Sturm und Drang protest against a tame, didactic form of sentimentalism, a pattem delineated by research on Empfmdsamkeit (Doktor 205-25; Jager 54-56; Sauder 154-69). The critique targets what it sees as a philistine adherence to an abstract concept of virtue in combination with the mannered tones of the court. In expressing this critique, Goethe's play both propounds the irreducible particularity of ancient Greece that is falsified in Wieland's version and betrays its own modem agenda in making the ancients into Sturm und Drang heroes. While none of the commentators appears to disagree with the point that both Goethe's and Wieland's versions of Greeee here are "interested" - that is, motivated by contemporary concems - none pursues the particular nature ofthe confiicting understandings of modernity's relationship to Greece to a satisfactory conclusion. Thus the present article will try to refocus interest on this question. Wieland's Singspiel and his explanation of it in the Teutscher Merkur article (the latter a text underexamined in the secondary literature) operate with a different conception of the ancient Greeee refiected in Euripides' play than does Goethe. Wieland sees Euripides' accomplishment as the creation ofa dramatically effective situation that he, Wieland, will simply give a sharper expression for a modem audience. Thus what Goethe will see as falsification Wieland will see as necessary modification for a modem and more culturally advanced audienee. Though that audience is no longer the "primitive" audience of Euripides' day, the ostensibly natural responsiveness of the imagined viewer is the target of Wieland's artistic endeavours. It is precisely the natural humanity (or divinity) ofthe Greek characters, though, that Goethe suggests has been falsified by Wieland's sentimental. Christianized version of Euripides. This 1773 confrontation ofthe cultural progressivist Wieland and the Sturm und Drang-inspired, Herder-informed cultural critic Goethe shows how understandings of the historical present are expressed in two competing conceptions of ancient Greece. Goethe's farce takes the form ofa confrontation in the underworld between the shades of the real Aicestis, her husband Admetus, the hero Hercules, and their "historian" Euripides on the one hand and Wieland's dream shade and the shades of his Singspiel characters on the other. Possible literary sources and models for this dramatic structure include Lucian's Dialogues of the Dead, Aristophanes' The Frogs, Hans Sachs's Der Charon, Johann E. Sehlegel's

Goethe versus Wieland 5 Demokritus, and the tradition ofthe Volkstheater (Petzoldt). Wieland is imagined as dreaming the scene, and thus his "shade" in this context is understood as his dream psyche. We see Euripides as well as the real Aicestis and Admetus in the underworld responding to the news about Wieland's version of the play with altemating horror and disbelief. As the discussion develops and the shade of Wieland listens to the critique from the real ancients, he responds, "Ihr redet wie Leute einer andem Welt, eine Sprache, deren Worte ich vemehme, deren Sinn ich nicht fasse," to which Admetus replies, "Wir reden griechisch. Ist Euch das so unbegreifiich?" (209). Goethe's suggestion is that to understand the Greek world requires a much greater suspension of one's own cultural preconceptions and a greater sympathy with a historically distant culture than Wieland has exhibited; "speaking Greek" expresses this potential for the cultural understanding that Wieland apparently lacks. Behind Goethe's fiippant critical claim about Wieland's ostensible foreigncultural illiteracy (a claim arguably belied by Wieland's life work) lies a distinctly Herderian concept of "sympathizing" with ancient Greece as a necessary step in the understanding of its character and difference. Taking Herder's Auch eine Philosophie der Geschichte zur Bildung der Menschheit of 1774 as an expression of ideas influencing the Sturm und Drang movement's conception of cultural and historical difference would corroborate the idea that Goethe's farce entails a larger historical argument about the necessity for each age to suspend its belief system in order to understand a different culture or era. In order to understand a culture. Herder writes, one must "sympathize" with its particular character, since each age is unique, "nur sich selbst gleich" (629): "Mattes halbes Schattenbild von Worte! [...] man muBte erst der Nation sympathisieren, um eine einzige ihrer Neigungen und Handlungen, alle zusammen zu fuhlen, Ein Wort finden, in seiner Fiille sich alles denken - oder man lieset - ein Wort" (612; emphasis in the original). Herder points out specifically that the self-understood European Enlightenment ofthe eighteenth century is particularly prone to judge distant nations and eras according to its own ideals, specifically because it understands its view to be benign: "der allgemeine Philosophische, Menschenfi-eundliche Ton unsres Jahrhunderts" is bound to skew our vision (620). As Robert Norton has made clear. Herder's critique should not be understood as an irrationalist protest against the ideals of the Enlightenment, but as a call for understanding historical periods on their own terms rather than always measuring them against values posited as ahistorical and absolute. As an Enlightenment thinker with a strong belief in the cultural progress attained by his civilization and perhaps with a tendency to make absolute the values of his own culture, Wieland certainly writes in the tone Herder criticizes here, and Goethe's farce takes him to task for it, even beyond what Herder himself might sanction. However, Goethe's own agenda also clearly muddles the accuracy of any historical

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claim about the ancients that his play might imply. Goethe criticizes Wieland for the weak, civilized emotionality of his characters and for their homogeneous nature caused by Wieland's subordinating them all to the vague and unrealistic moral ideals ofthe Enlightenment. In targeting both the moral character of Wieland's work and his emphasis on emotional response, Goethe implicitly assigns Wieland's text to the category of the sentimental, significantly a category targeted in other satirical texts of Goethe's within the same year. Pater Brey and Das Jahrmarktsfest zu Plundersweilern (Doktor 244). From the start of Goethe's play, the critique of Wieland's play as sentimental comes across. As Aicestis and Admetus in the underworld report their encounter with the playwright's dream versions of themselves, their responses exhibit Goethe's satirical strategy of diminution, a favourite strategy of sentimentalism's critics. Aicestis sees Wieland's characters as "zwei abgeschmackte, gezierte, hagre, blasse Piippchens, die sich einander Alceste! Admet! nannten, voreinander sterben wollten, ein Geklingele mit ihren Stimmen machten als die Vogel und zuletzt mit einem traurigen Gekrachz versehwanden" (204). The satirical diminution in the use ofthe suffix "chen" is echoed throughout the text, as for instance when Aicestis further comments, "Eure Alceste mag gut sein und Eure Weibchen und Mannchen amusiert, auch wohl gekitzelt haben, was Ihr Ruhrung nennt" (207). But Aicestis, in a passage ridiculing the musicality of Wieland's poetry as well as the actual music ofthe piece, reports that she fied these singing characters as she would fiee an untuned zither. The term "Ruhrung" is a cmcial concept in early German sentimentalism as a designation for the effeet of a well-made work of sentimental art, precisely the effect Wieland was hoping for, in keeping with his sentimental Wirkungsdsthetik (see below). By using this term in this satirical way Goethe invokes sentimentalism as the force that is falsifying the ancient Greek material. In keeping with Sturm und Drang opinion, Goethe casts Wieland as the exponent of a tame, sentimental impulse that is the literary expression of the overcivilized culture ofthe courts, a culture that is not only self-satisfied but furthermore incapable of understanding the difference of other cultures. As Wieland encounters the real Aleestis in the underworld, he cannot imagine it is really she: "Mit dieser Taille! Verzeiht! Ich weiB nicht, was ich sagen soil" (205). Wieland's amazement stems from the fact that Aicestis is not laced, that is, does not adhere to the norms of eighteenth-century courtly dress (539). The fact that Goethe's Wieland cannot imagine different sartorial norms from those currently in place suggests not only that he cannot see beyond his cultural prejudices, but also in this case that he lacks a concept of the natural. Goethe may be obliquely expressing a critique of "unnatural" courtly clothing that falsifies the human body by working against its natural form, a critique given a great impetus in the following year by Goethe's own Leiden des jungen Werthers (Purdy). Indeed,

Goethe versus Wieland 7 many of these generally "binding" fashions began to fade from the scene as more comfortable-fitting clothing came into style at the end ofthe century, and by the time of the "empire" fashion era fiowing, Greek-inspired gowns became common in Germany as well as in other European countries. In this small way, to be amplified later in the play, Goethe's text implies that with such falsification of Greece Wieland's expectations falsify nature itself. The idea that the ancients are giants rising above the petty, minuscule accomplishments of the present age is presented plastically in the confrontation that Goethe stages between Hercules and Wieland. Here, the satirical strategy of diminution reaches its high point in a low blow: as Hercules appears and sees Wieland, his first words are "Nun, der ist klein genug" (212), wherein Goethe disparages Wieland's actual small stature. Goethe's Wieland later comments that he never imagined Hercules to be quite so large, reinforcing the image of his own smallness. Hercules is clearly a character Wieland will be unable to portray, and, as Goethe's satire mns, Wieland has robbed Hercules of his natural vital power and made him a representative of eighteenth-century, virtue in altering the motivation for Hercules' intervention. In Euripides' play, Hercules is moved to intervene on behalf of Aicestis by his friendship for the house of Admetus and more specifically by his respect for Admetus's hospitality. Even though Aicestis has just died and the house is in mouming, Admetus refuses to let on to Hercules that anything is amiss and insists on hosting him. This act can be eonsidered a violation of mouming, but it is done to fulfill the sacred duties of hospitality. Euripides' chorus remarks: "The noble strain / comes out, in respect for others" (Euripides 35). When Hercules is told by the servant that the house is in mouming, he is ashamed of the way in which he has immediately begun drinking, and he resolves to save Aicestis in order to "pay Admetus all the kindness that I owe. [...] who did not drive me off but took me into his house / and, though he staggered under the stroke of circumstance, / hid it, for he was noble and respected me. / Who in all Thessaly is a tmer friend than this?" (44-45). Rather than keeping to this very specific ancient sense of Hercules' motivation, Wieland has changed the motivation to respect for Alcestis's virtue, proved precisely in her self-sacrifice. Wieland makes Hercules the champion of virtue, as becomes clear from the moment he appears and sings a song addressed to virtue, in an act comically out of keeping with at least Goethe's idea of the ancient hero: "O du, fur die ich weieher Ruh / Und Amors stlBem Scherz entsage, / Du, deren Namen ich an meiner Stime trage, / Fur die ich alles tu, / Fiir die ich alles wage, / O Tugend!" (Wieland, Werke 89). Fittingly, Hercules encourages virtue in others, addressing Admetus: "Dein Zustand jammert mich, Admet, / Ich fuhle deinen Schmerz. Doch zur Verzweifiung sinkt / Die Tugend nicht herab!" (89). Thus Wieland has moved virtue, the central category of eighteenth-century popular moral philosophy, into the centre of the antique material, altering the

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more culturally specific motivation for Hercules in Euripides' play. The association of Hercules with virtue is certainly not foreign to antiquity, having been established most markedly in the traditional image of "Hercules am Scheidewege" choosing between virtue and pleasure, a tradition drawing on Prodikos's legend (Panofsky). Goethe refers to this tradition disparagingly, as his Hercules (who should know) disavows this apparently inaccurate tradition while criticizing Wieland's protagonists more generally: "Aber des Prodikus Herkules, das ist dein Mann. Eines Sehulmeisters Herkules. Ein unbartiger Sylvio am Scheideweg" (214). The comparison of Wieland's Hercules to the sentimental, quixotic Don Sylvio of Wieland's first novel suggests that this image of Hercules, virtuous in precisely the most congenial way for Enlightenment morality, violates the character of Euripides' figure (Heins). In Goethe's satire, Hercules takes Wieland to task for this violation, objecting to Wieland's motivation for his character as virtue: "Fiir die Tugend! Was heil3t die Devise? Hast du die Tugend gesehen, Wieland? Ich bin doch auch in der Welt hemntergekommen, und ist mir nichts so begegnet" (212). Goethe's Hercules expresses a kind of empirical corrective to Wieland's wilful, idealistic abstraction. To intensify the sense of his distance from Wieland's ideal of virtue, Hercules goes on to brag of his virility in his description of the true nature of demigods and heroes like himself, whom he calls "brave Kerls": "Hatte einer denn OberfiuC an Saften, machte er den Weibem so viel Kinder, als sie begehrten, auch wohl ungebeten. Wie ich denn selbst in einer Nacht funfzig Buben ausgearbeitet habe" (213). The Kraftgenie Hercules objects further to the abstraction involved in Wieland's labelling this sexual bravado "vice": "Laster, das ist wieder ein sehones Wort. Dadurch wird eben alles so halb bei euch, dafi ihr euch Tugend und Laster als zwei Extrema vorstellt, zwischen denen ihr schwankt. Anstatt euem Mittelzustand als den positiven anzusehen und den besten wie's eure Bauem and Kneehte und Magde noch tun" (214). Here Goethe's valorization ofthe legends of Greek antiquity exhibits a typical Sturm und Drang glorification of the common people in their natural vitality and their healthy morality, as opposed to what Hercules calls Wieland's "scheele Ideale" (214). Ironically, this suggestion of an ideal Mittelzustand is entirely in keeping with the ideal propounded in Wieland's Musarion of 1768, precisely the text in which Goethe had first imagined himself to be encountering the world of Greek antiquity, as he recounts in Dichtung und Wahrheit: "Hier war es, wo ieh die Antike lebendig und neu wiederzusehen glaubte. Alles was in Wielands Genie plastisch ist, zeigte sich hier aufs vollkommenste" (Goethe, Autobiographische Schriften 271). It is interesting to note here that Goethe's implicit celebration of what his contemporaries would see as Hercules's moral laxity in sexual matters goes beyond Herder's explanation of the Greeks' "moral imperfections" to which the modems object (Herder 608). Herder grants that they are imper-

Goethe versus Wieland 9 fections and argues that a culture cannot be perfect in more than one way at a time, whereas Goethe appears to question polemically the application of contemporary morality to ancient culture at all. If Wieland's text denatures Greek characters, Goethe suggests, it furthermore homogenizes them in the name of eighteenth-century notions of virtue and dignity superimposed on the ancient material. His Euripides addresses Wieland's shade: "Eure Leute sind erstlich alle zusammen aus der grofien Familie, der ihr Wurde der Menschheit, ein Ding, das Gott weiB woher abstrahiert ist, zum Erbe gegeben habt, ihr Diehter auf unsem Trtlmmem! Sie sehn einander ahnlich wie die Eier, und Ihr habt sie zum unbedeutenden Breie zusammengeruhrt" (208). In calling the "dignity of humanity" an empty and levelling abstraction, Goethe's satirical voice calls into question the universality ofthe German Enlightenment's moral ideals. What is provocative here is not just the charge that Wieland homogenizes the literary eharacters (that is, a critique suggesting that Wieland is simply a bad artist), but the further charge that that levelling and dedifierentiation results from a distinctly modem concept of human dignity. A central moral tenet ofthe Enlightenment is blamed for erasing the rich variety of Greek nature ostensibly exhibited in Euripides' original. For Wieland in 1773, of course, "Wurde der Menschheit" is not an empty abstraction but a moral ideal rooted in the fundamental, natural humanity of his audience and refiected in his characters. In his article in Teutscher Merkur, Wieland spells out an aesthetics of effect or Wirkungsdsthetik that he strives for, founded on a belief in a universal human dignity to which all peoples and cultures, he imagines, would respond equally. In fact, Wieland explains almost all the changes he makes to Euripides in terms of this Wirkungsdsthetik, first in reference to a set of norms and expectations simply different from those of Euripedes and, second, in terms of the historical advancement he feels that modem Europe embodies over ancient Greece. Wieland's Wirkungsdsthetik foregrounds emotional effects on the viewing audience in contrast to what he marks as the rhetorical ideals of Euripides. These emotional effects form Wieland's explanation for the innovation of a Singspiel in German. He understands musical elements to address the viewer's affective stmcture directly, enhancing the inherent musieality he attempts to build into the verses. Though Italian is a more musical language, Wieland admits, the poets Hagedom, Uz, Rammler, Gerstenberg, and Jacobi have demonstrated that German is no longer the language that Charles the Fifth would speak only with his horse {Teutscher Merkur 35). The article is fiill of praise for Schweitzer's music, which has effectively amplified the music of the poetry and achieved the desired effect: Erstaunen werden Sie, wie ich, wenn Sie einst mit eignem Ohre horen, tief in Ihrer eignen Seele fuhlen, und durch die mit woUustigem Schmerz uber Ihre Wangen

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rollenden Thranen bekennen werden, wie groB die Gewalt dieses Tonkunstlers uber unser Herz ist! Wie sehr er Maler und Diehter ist! (36) This praise for Schweitzer's music illustrates the principles Wieland suggests guided his own work: aiming at deep-seated emotions in the soul or the heart and attempting to conjure up "wollustiger Schmerz" in a way that all the arts might do equally. Though the ideal of "wollustiger Schmerz" might remind us ofa general principle of tragedy, as explored for instance in Lessing's Hamburgische Dramaturgic, Wieland's postulation of an ultimate equivalence of effect in music, painting, and poetry disagrees with Lessing's fine-tuned exploration of the differenees among the arts in his Laokoon. Rather, Wieland's aesthetic here suggests that the differences among the arts are simply different routes to the same centre, the heart and soul of the recipient. In contrast to this focus on the emotional effects of artworks, Wieland suggests that the rhetorical norms of Euripides' art produce a Iong-windedness that is bound to fail Wieland's postulated goal. Long speeches, Wieland maintains, simply have a bad effect: [...] nirgends sind lange Reden weniger zu dulden, als im Singspiel. Hier, wo die Sprache der Musen allein geredet wird, muB alles warme Empfmdung oder gluhender Affect seyn. Ein Liebhaber, der in schmelzenden Tonen seine Gefuhle ausathmet, ruhrt uns; ein Sophist, der uns Vemunftschitisse vorsingen wollte, wurde uns ungehalten maehen, oder einschlafem. (40) This suggests that the change in genre from drama to musical drama might account for the changes Wieland feels the need to make. But although Wieland grants that Euripides was working with a different ideal of language, he asserts that his own ideal is more in keeping with the potential ofthe legendary material for an emotionally effective theatre experience. Furthermore, he expands this point later to suggest that general ideals for literary language are involved: Die meisten meiner Briider in Melpomene glauben alles gewonnen zu haben, wenn sie wie Euripides sehon reden konnen. Ich glaube, dal3, zumal in einem Iyrischen Schauspiel, die Kunst wenig Worte zu maehen, ungleieh grosser ist. Wie unendlich ist die Sprache der Empfmdung von der Sprache der Rednerschulen verschieden! Was fur unaussprechliche Dinge kan sie mit Einem Blick, Einer Gebehrde, Einem Tone sagen! (238) Here, echoing sentimentalism's Unsagbarkeitstopos, its focus on emotion so powerful as to be inexpressible, Wieland clearly subordinates any consideration of Euripides' intentions or achievements to Wieland's own criteria for a lyrical

Goethe versus Wieland 11 play (Wegmann 46-50). This is not simply a case of asserting the difference between two art forms, but rather of insisting that the one presents human experienee better than the other. More specifically, Wieland directs his writing towards the creation of "wollustiger Schmerz" as the appropriate response to the predicament of Admetus's gaining his life at the cost of his wife's and to the spectacle of her selfsacrifice. To create this effect, Wieland asserts, one must alternate scenes working in different emotional directions. In einem jeden Schauspiele, aber im Singspiele mehr als in jedem andem, ist Mancbfaltigkeit und Abwechslung ein Grundgesetz; denn sie ist ein Gesetz der Natur. Nach den heftigen Erschutterungen, die wir im zweyten Aet ausgestanden haben, bedtirfen wir sehlechterdings einer Erholung, einer Reyhe santter, angenehmer Empfindungen, weiche, ohne mit dem Ton des Ganzen einen unsehicklichen Contrast zu maehen, uns einige Minuten von der Seene des Jammers entfemen. Unsre Diehter vergessen nur gar zu oft, daB der Schmerz, den sie uns verursachen, wolitistiger Schmerz seyn muB; sobald es wtirklicher physischer Schmerz wird, ist alles Verdienst des Dichters weg; er ist kein Ktinstler mehr, er wird ein Peiniger (56) Here Wieland clearly goes beyond the desire for something different from Euripides for his different audience by claiming that mimicking the common pattem of altemating emotional states in his work is adhering to "ein Gesetz der Natur." The idea that an audienee would potentially experienee "wtirklicher physischer Schmerz" as an effect of a theatre experience attests to the seriousness of Wieland's conception of the emotional effects of drama, the strong "natural" connection he imagines between aesthetic experience or emotional/cognitive experience on the one hand and direct physical or somatic experience on the other. While the fact that Wieland has eamestly thought through the theoretical suppositions in his dramatic method might not convince or satisfy Goethe, this particular Wirkungsdsthetik does help explain one of the most significant ehanges Wieland makes to Euripides' material. Wieland suggests that whereas Euripides has the chambermaid report "eine der ruhrendsten Situationen - den Augenblick der fi^eywilligen Aufopferung der Alceste," Wieland presents this departure directly, so that the audience might feel the emotional impact of that act (42). Euripides' use ofthe chambermaid, Wieland argues, ersetzt uns lange nicbt die starken Erschtitterungen der Seele, die wir erfahren, wenn wir sie selbst vor unsem Augen zwisehen Angst und zwiscben Hoffen schweben, bemach, da der Gott ibr Urtbeil ausgesproehen hat, niederknien und den Todesgottem ihr Leben fur ibren Gemabl zum Opfer weyben seben. Um diese

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Scene zu erhalten (und ohne sie batte icb keine Alceste macben mogen) muBte ich in dem Plan des Griechiscben Dicbters starke Veranderungen vomebmen. (42) Again, Wieland's reworking seeks to maximize the strong movements of the soul that can be achieved by the direct presentation of emotional situations, but here he goes further in placing this particular emotional scene at the centre of his enterprise ("ohne sie hatte ich keine Alceste maehen mogen"). Here it becomes abundantly clear that Wieland's literary aetivity is not intended to preserve or present any tme picture of the Greeks, nor to translate Euripides into a modem German idiom, but rather to use the legendary material for its human-dramatic potential - and in fact, Wieland suggests, this potential is what makes the material valuable for the modem world. According to this principle (apparent only in varying degrees in Wieland's use of characters borrowed from classical antiquity in his other literary work), the historical and cultural content of literary material is of little significance when compared with the universal human drama it ostensibly clothes. Goethe, in his tum, will insist upon the implied irreducible specificity ofthe Greek historical content, though today's reader can easily see his Greeks as exponents of Sturm und Drang. Equally natural and universal for Wieland, it seems, is the criterion of "illusion of reality" that he attempts to create in his work, and for the lack of which he faults Euripides. There are several related criteria in the Teutscher Merkur article that blend into one another in this regard: the criteria of Tduschung, psychologische Wahrheit, and innere Wahrheit. Wieland suggests that the result of the intended emotional effects will be a convincing illusion, catching up the viewers and impelling them to suspend disbelief This ideal of illusionistic theatre differs greatly from the Greeks' ritualistic theatrical presentation of well-known legendary material, and hence it probably does not correspond to Euripides' intentions. Wieland wants to create psychologically realistic characters who will momentarily convince the viewers of their reality. For instance, when Alceste retums from the dead, Wieland understands her to have been in Elysium and thus feels the need to insert lines in which she refiects on the perfect beauty she has just left behind and dismisses the idea that it was merely a dream. Wieland writes: "Die psychologische Wahrheit dieser Rede, von der Magie der Musik und von einer lebhaften Action unterstutzt, muB, (wie mir dSueht) ganz nothwendig den Grad von Tauschung wurken, dessen der Diehter zu seiner Absicht vonnothen hat [...]" (52). The unexamined assumption is that Euripides would agree with this ideal of psychological tmth and that his intention is indeed (or should be) to create the kind of illusion that allows the viewer to forget the fictionality or legendary nature of the scene. Going on to quote the lines in which Aicestis says she has found a better Elysium in retuming to Admetus's arms, Wieland comments that "die ganze Entwicklung erhalt

Goethe versus Wieland 13 dadurch einen Grad von innerlicher Wahrheit, der den Zuhorer nie bis zu dem Gedanken, daB sie nur ein Mahrchen ist, erkalten laBt" (54). This particular distinction between a Mdhrchen and the real may or may not correspond with Euripides' view, but Wieland simply universalizes his own distinction and marks Euripides' failure to adhere to it as a fiaw. His criterion of realism becomes most pedantic when he defends his omission of the buming of Aleestis's body by saying that, without a body, the audience cannot be convinced that her soul actually retums to life in the same form (241). As in these points about the goal ofa convincing illusion, Wieland displays the historically bound nature of his objections to Euripides and his claim of cultural superiority for the modems when he attempts to justify his partieular characterization of Admetus and Aicestis. For instance, Wieland accuses Euripides' Admetus of cowardice in emphasizing that the character "accepts" his wife's self-sacrifice and rejoices at his own survival: "Mitten unter den Wehklagen, die ihm der Verlust einer schonen jungen Frau auspreBt, verrath er wider seinen Willen sein Behagen daruber, dal3 Er da ist [...]" (70). The implication that Admetus might somehow prevent Alcestis's departure after she has committed herself to it before the gods contrasts not only with the finality ofthe gods' decrees in Euripides, but even with the sense in his own play that the events are unstoppable after Aleestis proclaims her willingness to sacrifice herself (79-80). For Wieland, the depth of Admetus's love could be proved perhaps only by his complete and permanent misery afier the death of his wife. To exhibit any joy at having survived, to embrace life, is to demonstrate a low character. Finally, this character fiaw is tied to the question of realism: "Wir werden immer nur eine sehr mittelmaBige Meynung von einem Manne haben, der, in dem Augenblicke, wo er eine Gattin, wie Alceste, verliehrt, eine wohlgesetzte Rede in vierzig schonen Versen zu halten fahig ist" (70). If the forty pretty verses are meant as an accurate illusionistic reaction of a human character to the death of his wife, then he is a particularly selfish character. This insistence on blaming the Greeks for violating the norms of the kind of psychological realism emerging in eighteenth-century Gennan literature might be traced to Gottsched's notoriously pedantic critique ofthe way Homer's heroes deliver long, eloquent speeches in the midst of heated battles (Gottsched 261). Wieland's moral objections to the way Euripides' characters cling to the joys of life appears as well in the case of Aicestis herself, partieularly in the moment when she weeps as she bids farewell to the marital bed (compare Euripides 18):
Wir sind zu weit von der Einfalt der unverfalscbten Natur entfemt, als daB wir einige dieser Ztige, - wiewobl sie in einem scbon zweytausend Jabre alten Gemablde einer Scene aus den beroiscben Zeiten unsem ekeln Gesehmack vielleicht weniger beleidigen - einer modemen Hand sollten verzeyben konnen.

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Verdorben wie wir sind, fmden wir in den Tbranen, womit Aleeste ibr Ebebette uberscbwemmt, in der Mube, die sie bat, sich davon loszureissen, ich weifi nicbt was eigenntitziges, das dem Werth ibrer Zartlicbkeit Abbrucb tbut. Vergebens wtirde man uns sagen: es ist Natur, scbone, keuscbe, unentheiligte Natur! Unsre Sitten sind nicbt rein, unsre Begriffe selbst nicbt acbt genug, uns die moralische Schonheit in diesem Zug empfinden zu lassen. Sie versteben mich also scbon, wenn icb sage, daB icb genothiget gewesen sey, die Alceste (auf Unkosten der Natur und Wahrbeit) zu verschonern. Es ist kein Verdienst, sondem ein unfreywilliges Opfer, das jeder Dicbter dem Genius seiner Zeit darzubringen gezwungen ist. {Teutscher Merkur 65-66; empbasis in tbe original) In this particular argument for beautification against nature and tmth lies the gist of Wieland's view of the differences between the ancients and the modems. On the one hand the ancients can be said to represent pristine nature, but on the other they exhibit aspects that we must perceive as coarse, ugly, and primitive. The expression "verdorben wie wir sind" is meant sarcastically here, to imply that the culture Rousseau would see as morally corrupt has at least enough sense of "moral beauty" to be offended by Alcestis's grief over the loss of her sexual partner. One can see through Wieland's irony a preference for the moral refinement and delicacy of the modem age over the primitive tmth of nature. This preference he ascribes to the necessary obeisance he must pay to the genius of his own age, at the cost of the tme, natural image of humanity presented by the ancients. Whereas ideally Wieland would see nature, tmth, and beauty all agree, here he must sacrifice nature and tmth to beauty, specifically a beauty that he imagines his contemporary audienee will recognize as such. If for Wieland the aesthetics of effect explains the changes he undertook in adapting Euripides, what happens to this carefully elaborated Wirkungsdsthetik in Goethe's satirical response? It becomes merely the courtly artist's pandering to the overly delicate taste ofthe courtiers, those pale weaklings with their handkerchiefs ("Eure Weibchen und Mannchen"). In his play Goethe proposes not a better way to reach this audience through the antique Greek material, but rather a way to use the incommensurable alterity of the "accurately" perceived Greece as a critique of that audience. This we might see as an early point in what becomes an extensive German intellectual tradition of criticizing modemity by bemoaning its failure to be ancient Greece. Some ofthe high points in this tradition (as varying in historical accuracy and intellectual direction as they may be) would be in Holderlin's melancholic nostalgia for a lost Heimat of ancient Greece {Hyperion), in Nietzsche's eulogy for the form of tragedy before the rise of Socratic thought {Geburt der Tragodie aus dem Geiste der Musik), later in Lukacs's postulation of modemity's "transzendentale Obdaehlosigkeit" in contrast to the comfortably closed and rounded world of the epic {Die Theorie des

Goethe versus Wieland 15 Romans), and in the critical gaze of Rilke's "Archaischer Torso Apolios," the statue whose every perfection is an eye seeing the reader's imperfection. Though Goethe generally avoids nostalgia for antiquity, his use of a postulated Sturm und Drang-inspired Greece as a foil for what he portrays as Wieland's placid, unnatural civilization in Gotter, Helden und Wieland might be the exception to the mle. Though the German fascination with ancient Greece that began in the second half of the eighteenth century provided not only a tool for an ardent critique of European society, but also a set of impulses for constmcting a new national cultural identity over the course ofthe next century, the young Goethe's tendency in this early play emphasizes the critique side of the equation (Marehand 37). That critique directly addresses the relationship between the legaey of the ancients and the Christian religion: where Goethe's farce assigns Wieland's play to the tradition of forcibly reconciling the ideas of the aneients with the precepts of Christianity, Goethe clearly uses the ancients critically against certain Christian beliefs and tendencies. Specifically, Goethe presents the Christian religion as a school for narrowmindedness and as an unnatural ideology glorifying death. Confronted with the idea that he owes some respect to Euripides, Wieland's shade responds, "Unsre Religion verbietet uns, irgendeine Wahrheit, GroBe, Gtite, Schonheit anzuerkennen und anzubeten auBer ihr," by which Goethe suggests that the exclusive tmth claims of Christianity obscure not just other religions, but entire other realms of human experience (205-06). In an almost proto-Nietzschean critique of Christianity as an expression of disgust with life, Goethe suggests that Wieland's Christian prejudices skew his treatment of death in particular. In his Alceste, Wieland significantly reworks the discussion between Aicestis and Admetus before her death. In this discussion in Euripides' original play, the weeping Admetus promises Aicestis that out of respect for her sacrifice he will not remarry and that he will loathe his mother and father, neither of whom offered to die in his place, in effect forcing Aicestis to do so (Euripides 23-24). But in Wieland's version, Aicestis and Admetus both profess that they cannot live without each other, and they each offer to die first, each outdoing the other in self-sacrifice. This alteration Goethe sees as a minimization of the disagreeable nature of death, and hence a minimization of Alcestis's sacrifice, and he suggests that this falsification ofthe issue proceeds from Christianify's glorification of death. In Goethe's scene, the real Admetus in the underworld protests that, as much as he is upset that Aicestis has to die for him, he would find it absurd to want to die himself as well. Euripides tries to make Admetus understand the handieap under which Wieland is working: "Ihr bedenkt nicht, dal3 er zu einer Sekte gehort, die alien Wassersuchtigen, Auszehrenden, an Hals und Bein todlich Verwundeten einreden will, tot wurden ihre Herzen voller, ihre Geister machtiger, ihre Knochen markiger sein. Das

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glaubt er" (209). Implicitly, then, the suggestion is that the Greeks have a healthy distaste for suffering and death that is more in keeping with humanity's physical nature than is the Christian fascination with death (masking itself as a desire for wholeness in the afterlife). Today's reader can see this point in Goethe's critique as proceeding more fi'om Sturm und Drang vitalism and from its tendency to probe the most sacred and tender points in eighteenth-century German culture than from a necessarily clearer vision of the Greeks. In terms of the argument against Wieland's sentimentalism, his Christian prejudices, and his lack of attention to historical difference in this piece, Goethe does illustrate some of what still strikes modem readers as comical in Wieland's Singspiel as an adaptation of Euripides, and he does exhibit a greater sensitivify to the particularity of ancient Greece. However, the distinctly Sturm und Drang manner in which Goethe does this suggests that his critique does not adhere to any pure objective interest in historical difference, as perhaps no appropriation of Greece can, but rather that every modem appropriation of the legacy of Greece operates with its own particular interests. Of course the desire to explore Greek antiquity in a disinterested way was emerging strongly in the 1770s and 1780s, particularly in Friedrich August Wolf's establishment of classical scholarship as an independent discipline pursuing historieal knowledge for its own sake (Marehand 19). Many similar modes of thought were, like Goethe's, inspired by Herder's careflil attention to cultural and historical difference. Furthermore, Goethe overshoots the mark insofar as he attempts to paint Wieland's work in general with the broad bmsh of "bad" Enlightenment universalism, blind to the complexity and nuance of ancient Greek culture. The breadth and detail of Wieland's knowledge ofthe Greeks, demonstrated (among many other places) in his essay "Gedanken tiber die Ideale der Alten" of 1777, illustrates that, while Wieland may indeed be working with aesthetic notions he considers universal (and drawing conclusions about the artistic practice of the ancients accordingly), this universalism is hardly of the blind and prejudiced fype presented in Goethe's caricature. This one moment of literary confrontation reveals more about the confiict between the Sturm und Drang on the one hand and Wieland's sometimes confiicting and inconsistent ideas about the ancients on the other than it does about the Greeks. Specifically, it presents two distinct ideas of historical difference. The idea expressed in these two Wieland texts, the Alceste and its explication in Teutscher Merkur, is one that can see the category "virtue," ostensibly transhistorical and transcultural but actually strongly marked by eighteenth-century European cultural assumptions, as the key to Euripides' drama. By virtue of his position in history, Wieland feels that he can justly refine the excellent but primitive Greek, in keeping with a view of history as progressive. In this way, he exhibits a tendency to combine humanist universalism with Enlightenment pro-

Goethe versus Wieland 17 gressivism, a pattem characteristic of many "modems" (JauB 15). In contrast, Goethe's protohistoricist idea insists that Euripides must be understood within his own specific historical context. Today's reader understands that Goethe's "corrective" functions effectively in part because Wieland's alterations are so clear. If Wieland reads the classics for their modelling of universal humanistic ideals, then Goethe's farce tries to point out the extent to which those ideals in Wieland's Singspiel are not transhistorical universals, but rather moral ideals of the German Enlightenment superimposed over the ancient material. Goethe then regards the aneients as objects of disinterested knowledge, which would try to understand them in terms of their fundamentally different value system. Indeed, Goethe's farce effectively reminds us of this difference, even as (in trying to "sympathize" with the distant culture) it violates the same rule, as he enlists Euripides' help for his own stmggle for cultural identity in 1773. In doing so, he can be said to set a pattem for Germans' attempts to demonstrate their own "Greek blood" over the next century and a half.

Works Cited
Boyle, Nicholas. Goethe. The Poet artd the Age. Volume 1. The Poetry of Desire (1749-1790). Oxford: Oxford UP, 1991. Doktor, Wolfgang. Die Kritik der Empfmdsamkeit. Frankturt/M.: Lang, 1975. Erxleben, Maria. "Goethes Farce 'Gotter, Helden und Wieland.'" Christoph Martin Wieland und die Antike. Stendal: Winckeimann-Gesellschaft, 1986. 77-87. Euripides. The Complete Greek Tragedies. Volume III. Ed. David Grene and Richmond Lattimore. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1992. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. Autobiographische Schriften. Erster Band. Ed. Liselotte Blumenthal, notes by Erich Trunz. Vol. 9 of Werke. Hamburger Ausgabe. Hamburg: Wegner, 195Iff. 14 Vols. . Dramatische Dichtungen. Zweiter Band. Ed. with notes by Wolfgang Kayser. Vol. 4 of Werke. Hamburger Ausgabe. Hamburg: Wegner, 1951ff. 14 Vols. Gottsched, Johann Christoph. Ausgewdhlte Werke. Volume VI, Part 1. Ed. Joachim Birke and Brigitte Birke. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1973. 12 Vols. 1984. Heins, John P. "Quixotism and the Aesthetic Constitution ofthe Individual in Wieland's Don Sylvio von Rosalva." Journal of English and Germanic Philology 102.4 (2003): 530-48. Herder, Johann Gottfried. Werke. Band 1. Herder und der Sturm und Drang 1764-1774. Ed. Wolfgang Pross. Munich: Hanser, 1984. Jager, Georg. Empfindsamkeit und Roman. Wortgeschichte, Theorie und Kritik im 18. undfriihen 19. Jahrhundert. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1969. JauB, Hans Robert. "Asthetische Normen und geschichtliche Reflexion in der

18 JOHN p. HEINS 'Quereile des Anciens et des Modemes.'" Introduction. Parallele des anciens et des modernes en ce qui regarde les arts et les sciences. By Charles Perrault. Munich: Eidos, 1964. 8-81. Marehand, Suzanne. Down from Olympus. Archaeology and Philhellenism in Germany, 1750-1970. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1996. Norton, Robert E. Herder s Aesthetics and the European Enlightenment. Ithaca: Comell UP, 1991. Panofsky, Erwin. Hercules am Scheidewege. Leipzig: Teubner, 1930. Petzoldt, Ruth. "Literaturkritik im Totenreich. Das literarische Totengesprach als Literatursatire am Beispiel von Goethes Farce Gotten Helden und Wieland." Wirkendes Wort 3 (1995): 406-17. Pfotenhauer, Helmut, Markus Bemauer, and Norbert Miller, eds. Fruhklassizismus. Position und Opposition: Winckelmann, Mengs, Heinse. Frankfurt/M.: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1995. Purdy, Daniel L. The Tyranny of Elegance. Consumer Cosmopolitanism in the Era of Goethe. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1998. Sauder, Gerhard. Empfindsamkeit. Vo\. 1. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1974. 3 Vols. Sengle, Friedrich. "Wieland und Goethe." Wieland. Vier Biberacher Vortrage. Wiesbaden: Insel, 1954. 55-79. Wegmann, Nikolaus. Diskurse der Empfindsamkeit. Zur Geschichte eines Gefuhls in der Literatur des 18. Jahrhunderts. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1988. Wieland, Christoph Martin. "Briefe an einen Freund tiber das deutsche Singspiel, Alceste." Der Teutsche Merkur 1 (1773): 34-72, 2 2 3 ^ 3 . . Werke. Dritter Band. Ed. and with notes by Fritz Martini and Reinhard Dohl. Munich: Hanser, 1967. 5 Vols. 1964-67.