Weimar Classicism and Intellectual Exile: Schiller, Goethe, and Die Horen (original) (raw)

The Modern Language Review

This article asks how Goethe and Schiller's works in Die Horen, in the shadow of the French Revolution and the 'émigré question', prefigured the concerns of later exile writing. It asks how far they established principles of 'intellectual exile' that have gained currency in the writings of Edward Said and Vilém Flusser. It compares Schiller's Ästhetische Briefe with Adorno's reception of them; it examines concepts of exile in Goethe's 'Erste Epistel' and Unterhaltungen deutscher Ausgewanderten. Finally, it asks how elegy fits into a poetics of exile. The article suggests a fresh perspective on Weimar Classicism, and widened scope for Exilforschung. 2 Weimar Classicism and Intellectual Exile: Schiller, Goethe, and Die Horen * Exile literature seems out of place in Weimar Classicism. In retrospect the 1790s, after all, mark the point at which German literature found canonical stability, notably in the uniquely productive partnership of Schiller and Goethe, sealed in 1794 after previous false starts. Goethe, as T. J. Reed points out, 'was a "behauster Mensch" if anyone ever was'. 1 In the twentieth century, classical literature appealed to exiles from Nazism because of this fixity: it was comfortingly familiar and articulated the culture they had borne with them out of * Parts of this article were presented at seminars at the universities of Kiel, Sheffield, and St Andrews, and at conferences of the Gesellschaft für Exilforschung and the Association for German Studies in Great Britain and Ireland. I am very grateful to the audiences on those occasions for comments that have shaped the argument, and in particular to Ceri Davies, Kevin Hilliard, Robert Vilain, and MLR's two readers for their engaged reading of the complete text. It is also a pleasure to acknowledge the support of the Leverhulme Trust, whose award of a Major Research Fellowship, on the topic of 'A long history of German exile literature, 1790-1955', has enabled the article's timely completion.