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Abstract
Scholars have long argued that the rhetorical concept of aemulatio best describes the tie between Milton's Paradise Lost and Klopstock's Messias. Against the backdrop of an emerging German national literature, Klopstock's intention was not to merely imitate but to surpass his English predecessor. This view certainly has some merit, particularly since Klopstock himself alluded to this intention. However, crucial differences in aesthetics are obscured if the Messias is read in this sense. In order to challenge this common notion of the relationship between Milton and Klopstock, I analyze concepts of space and divine presence in both epic poems. I show how both Milton and Klopstock presented specific poetic solutions to problems in aesthetics and theology posed by their respective historical ‘situation’ (P. Tillich).
Acknowledgement
I would like to extend my gratitude for comments and suggestions to Matt Erlin (Washington University in St. Louis), Frauke Berndt (Universität Zürich), Jennifer L. Jenkins (Pacific Lutheran University), and my wife Anne Jost-Fritz.
Notes on Contributor
Jan Oliver Jost-Fritz is Assistant Professor of German at East Tennessee State University. His research focuses on lyric poetry from 1750 to 1830, aesthetics, and the influence of theology and spirituality on literature. His book Geordnete Spontaneität. Lyrische Subjektivität bei Achim von Arnim was published by Universitätsverlag Winter in Heidelberg (2014).
Notes
1 Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, 3 vols. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951), vol. 1, p. 3.
2 Ibid., vol. 3, pp. 3–4.
3 See Jonathan Sheehan, The Enlightenment Bible: Translation, Scholarship, Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), particularly pp. 93–117.
4 On the influence of religion and theology on the formation of the modern university in Germany, see for instance Thomas Albert Howard, Protestant Theology and the Making of the Modern German University (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), and Kelly Joan Whitmer, The Halle Orphanage as Scientific Community: Observation, Eclecticism, and Pietism in the Early Enlightenment (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015), or on the emergence of modern standards of textual criticism as the methodological foundation of the humanities see James Turner, Philology: The Forgotten Origins of the Modern Humanities (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014), particularly pp. 91–122 and 210–30.
5 Stephen B. Dobranski, Milton's Visual Imagination: Imagery in Paradise Lost (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), p. 37.
6 Unless noted otherwise, I cite Paradise Lost after the edition John Milton, Paradise Lost, ed. by Alastair Fowler. 2nd edn (London: Pearson Longmans, 1997), hereafter cited as PL, by book and verse number.
7 See Matthew Stallard's annotations for biblical reference, Paradise Lost: The Biblically Annotated Edition (Macon: Mercer University Press, 2011), here pp. 89–90.
8 John Milton, The Complete Works. Vol. 8, De Doctrina Christiana, ed. by John K. Hale, J. Donald Cullington, Gordon Campbell, and Thomas N. Corns (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 29.
9 Ibid., vol. 8, p. 28.
10 Neil Graves, ‘Milton and the Theory of Accommodation’, Studies in Philology, 98 (2001), 251–72, here 252 and 258. In contrast to Protestant tradition, Milton sees the ‘accommodated image itself’ as the ‘the locus of comprehension’, and he consequently emphasises the ‘image instead of reality’ in the knowledge of God (ibid., p. 258). Ultimately, Graves argues that Milton's God is not anthropomorphic. This holds certainly true to the argumentation in De Doctrina Christiana; however, Paradise Lost adheres to implied theology and the epic tradition, which tends to view the divine in an anthropomorphic fashion, at least when epic space is considered.
11 Rudolf Bultmann, Kerygma and Myth: A Theological Debate, ed. by Hans Werner Bartsch (New York: Harper & Row, 1961), p. 3.
12 Ibid., pp. 1–2.
13 Rudolf Bultmann, Theology of the New Testament, trans. by Kendrick Grobel (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1955), vol. 2, pp. 144–54.
14 On the role of aesthetic genius see Von der heiligen Poesie, in Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock, Ausgewählte Werke, ed. by Karl August Schleiden (Munich: Hanser, 1962), 997–1009, here p. 999. Quotations from this edition are hereafter referenced with the abbreviation AW and page number.
15 Rudolf Otto, Das Heilige: Über das Irrationale in der Idee des Göttlichen und sein Verhältnis zum Rationalen (Munich: Beck, 2014), p. 7.
16 See Klopstock's essay Von dem Range der schönen Künste und der schönen Wissenschaften, AW 981–97, particularly pp. 986–87. See also Martin Fritz, Vom Erhabenen: Der Traktat Peri Hypsous und seine ästhetisch-religiöse Renaissance im 18. Jahrhundert (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011), p. 474.
17 See Kaiser, Klopstock: Religion und Dichtung (Gütersloh: Mohn, 1963), pp. 63–86 and 209.
18 See for instance the dialogue between the Messiah and God in the first canto: Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock, Der Messias, in Werke und Briefe. Historische-kritische Ausgabe, ed. by Horst Gronemeyer et al. (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1974), vol. 4.1 and 4.2. Hereafter cited in the text as ‘M’, by number of canto and verse. Here 1.71–192. Other volumes of this edition are cited as HKA.
19 Anselm Haverkamp, Klopstock als Paradigma der Rezeptionsästhetik (Konstanz: 1982, unpublished Habilitationsschrift), p. 76.
20 See on the topic of Enlightenment anthropology Der ganze Mensch. Anthropologie und Literatur im 18. Jahrhundert. DFG- Symposion 1992, ed. by Hans-Jürgen Schings (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1994).
21 See Milton's analysis of ‘God's names and attributes’ in De Doctrina Christiana (Milton, The Complete Works, vol. 8, pp. 32–47).
22 Kaiser draws a connection between Klopstock and Bultmann's concept of demythologizing. However, he emphasizes the differences rather than attempting to utilize conceptual parallels. See Gerhard Kaiser, Klopstock, p. 207.
23 For a thorough analysis of Klopstock's essay see Joachim Jacobs, Heilige Poesie: Zu einem literarischen Modell bei Pyra, Klopstock und Wieland (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1997), pp. 135–51.
24 See Kevin Hilliard, Philosophy, Letters, and Fine Arts in Klopstock's Thought (London: Institute of Germanic Studies, 1987), 19–38.
25 This aspect requires a closer consideration of the conjunction of spirituality and cultures of emotion in the 18th century, which falls outside the scope of this paper; see for instance Katja Battenfeld, Göttliches Empfinden: Sanfte Melancholie in der englischen und deutschen Literatur der Aufklärung (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2013).
26 Catherine Gimelli Martin, Ruins of Allegory: Paradise Lost and the Metamorphosis of Epic Convention (Durham, NC: Duke University Press 1998), p. 42.
27 Bernadette Malinowski suggests a proximity between the concepts of typology and aemulatio, see ‘Das Heilige sei mein Wort’. Paradigmen prophetischer Dichtung von Klopstock bis Whitman (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2002), p. 61; see also Christian Senkel, ‘Klopstock und Milton – epischer Agon in konfessioneller Perspektive’, in Wort und Schrift. Das Werk Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstocks, ed. by Kevin Hilliard and Katrin Kohl (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2008), pp. 7–20. See also [Klopstock, Gottlieb Friedrich]: ‘Abschiedsrede von F.G. Klopstock, gehalten zu Pforte am 21. September 1745’, in Albert Freybe, Klopstocks Abschiedsrede über die epische Poesie (Halle: Verlag der Buchhandlung des Waisenhauses, 1868), 93–144. His later accounts of his relationship to Milton, however, are rather contradictory, see Kaiser, Klopstock, p. 139.
28 Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, vol. 1, p. 3.
29 Hilliard, Philosophy, Letters, and Fine Arts, p. 94.
30 See Axel Gellhaus, Enthusiasmos und Kalkül. Reflexionen über den Ursprung der Dichtung (Munich: Fink 1995), pp. 204–20, and Lothar van Laak, Hermeneutik literarischer Sinnlichkeit: Historisch-systematische Studien zur Literatur des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2003), pp. 149–72. Focussing on Klopstock's idea of ‘fastwirkliche Dinge’ (Von der Darstellung, in AW 1032), Inka Müller-Bach emphasises the epistemological aspect, and suggests understanding Klopstock's theory of ‘Darstellung’ as the attempt to grasp ‘eine symbolische Realität sui generis, die weder auf “wirkliche Dinge”, noch auf die “Vorstellung, die wir uns davon machen” reduziert werden kann.’ See Inka Müller-Bach, Im Zeichen Pygmalions. Das Modell der Statue und die Entdeckung der ‘Darstellung’ im 18. Jahrhundert (Munich: Fink, 1998), pp. 149–202, here p. 201. Recently, Frauke Berndt – following Winfried Menninghaus – warned against understanding Klopstock's theory of ‘Darstellung’ in terms of concepts of allegory and the symbol of the later eighteenth century (Frauke Berndt, Poema/Gedicht: Die epistemische Konfiguration der Literatur um 1750 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2011), p. 128–29).
31 Hilliard, Philosophy, Letters, and Fine Arts, p. 96.
32 Ibid., pp. 92–93.
33 On Klopstock's notion of ‘Handlung’ see his reflexions in the Gelehrtenrepublik (HKA, vol. 7.1., pp. 170–71).
34 See Niklas Luhmann, Die Religion der Gesellschaft, ed. by André Kieserling (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp 2002), p. 20: ‘Sinn ist danach […] die Einheit der Differenz von Wirklichkeit und Möglichkeit.’
35 Ibid., p. 267.
36 On this discussion, see particularly the works of Catherine Gimelli Martin, referenced below, and Stephen M. Fallon, Milton among the Philosophers: Poetry and Materialism in Seventeenth-Century England (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991).
37 For a nuanced interpretation of Milton's ‘machinery’ see Anne Mindele Treip, Allegorical Poetics and the Epic: The Renaissance Tradition to Paradise Lost (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1994), pp. 126–37.
38 Martin, Ruins of Allegory, p. 4.
39 See Catherine Gimelli Martin, ‘“What If the Sun Be Centre to the World?” Milton's Epistemology, Cosmology, and Paradise of Fools Reconsidered’, Modern Philology, 99 (2001), 231–65, and Martin, ‘“Boundless the Deep”: Milton, Pascal, and the Theology of Relative Space’, Journal of English Literary History, 63 (1996), 45–78. More critical of the Baconian influence on Milton is Dennis Danielson, ‘Paradise Lost’ and the Cosmological Revolution (New York: Cambridge UP, 2014).
40 With respect to Klopstock see particularly Kaiser, Klopstock, pp. 215–234, and Klaus Hurlebusch, ‘Augenblicke der Weltalldichtung Klopstocks’, in id., So viel Anfang war selten. Klopstock-Studien (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2013), pp. 103–206.
41 See Lothar van Laak, ‘Die Bildmacht des erhabenen Gefühls. Ästhetische Theorie und literarische Praxis des Erhabenen im 18. Jahrhundert’, in Ästhetische und religiöse Erfahrung der Jahrhundertwenden, ed. by Wolfgang Braungart et al., vol. 1, Um 1800 (Paderborn: Schöningh, 1997), pp. 35–60, on Klopstock particularly pp. 46–51.
42 See Lorraine Daston, ‘Die Lust an der Neugier in der frühneuzeitlichen Wissenschaft’, in Curiositas. Welterfahrung und ästhetische Neugierde in Mittelalter und früher Neuzeit (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2002), pp. 147–75.
43 Jonathan Richardson (Sen. and Jun.), Explanatory Notes and Remarks on Milton's Paradise Lost (London: Knapton, 1734), pp. 350–51.
44 At least, Derham, who favours the Ptolemaic system, leaves it open as a matter of opinion whether or not his arguments would convince somebody ‘wedded to the Aristotelian Principles’; see William Derham, Astro-Theology. Or, a Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God, from a Survey of the Heavens: Illustrated with Copper Plates, 7th edn (London: Innys and Manby, 1738), pp. xli–xlii.
45 Martin, The Ruins of Allegory, p. 82.
46 These other ‘worlds’ would become an important trope in early Enlightenment discourses on cosmology and metaphysics (see Hans Blumenberg, Die Legitimität der Neuzeit (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1997), p. 178); Klopstock repeatedly alludes to extra-terrestrial life in the Messias (see for instance 1.644–46, 1.707, 11.151, 13.549, 16.544, 20.51, 20.836), and was familiar with Fontenelle's Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes (Arbeitstagebuch, HKA, Addenda, vol. 2, pp. 384–85; see also Joachim Jacob, ‘Die Vielzahl der Welten oder die Fülle der Welt. Ästhetische Pluralisierung am Beginn der Moderne (Fontenelle, Baumgarten, Klopstock)’, in Gleichzeitigkeit des Ungleichzeitigen. Formen und Funktionen von Pluralität in der ästhetischen Moderne, ed. by Heinz Brüggemann and Sabine Schneider (Munich: Fink, 2011), pp. 37–57.
47 Maura Brady, ‘Space and the Persistence of Place in Paradise Lost’, Milton Quarterly, 41 (2007), 167–82 (p. 168).
48 Martin, ‘Boundless the Deep’, p. 47.
49 John Gillies, ‘Space and Place in Paradise Lost’, Journal of English Literary History, 74 (2007), 27–57 (p. 33).
50 Martin, Ruins of Allegory, p. 81.
51 Ibid, p. 33 and 81. See also Haverkamp, Klopstock als Paradigma, p. 70.
52 See Ulrich Beuttler, Gott und Raum: Theologie der Weltgegenwart Gottes (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2010), particularly pp. 165–91.
53 Quintus Horatius Flaccus, De Arte Poetica / The Art of Poetry, in Satires, Epistles, Ars Poetica, With an English translation by H. Hurston Fairclough (London: Heinemann, 1926), pp. 450–51.
54 Charles Oscar Brink, Horace on Poetry: The Ars Poetica (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), pp. 85–88.
55 Horace, De Arte Poetica, p. 451.
56 See Isabel Rivers, Reason, Grace, and Sentiment: A Study of the Language of Religion and Ethics in England: 1660–1780 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), vol. 2, pp. 85–152.
57 See particularly Addison's analyses in the Spectator, no. 357, 19th April 1712 (Joseph Addison, Criticisms on Paradise Lost, ed. with Introduction and Notes by Albert S. Cook (Boston: Ginn and Comp., 1892), pp. 126–37); see also Theresa M. Kelley, Reinventing Allegory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 73.
58 Addison, Criticisms on Paradise Lost, p. 10.
59 Addison, Criticisms on Paradise Lost, p. 72.
60 Kelley, Reinventing Allegory, pp. 70–71
61 Hans Dieter Kreuder, Milton in Deutschland: Seine Rezeption in latein- und deutschsprachigem Schrifttum zwischen 1651 und 1732 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1970).
62 See Carsten Zelle, Die doppelte Ästhetik der Moderne: Revisionen des Schönen von Boileau bis Nietzsche (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1995).
63 Johann Jacob Bodmer, Critische Abhandlung von dem Wunderbaren in der Poesie (Zurich: Orell, 1740), reprint ed. by Wolfgang Bender (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1966), p. 41.
64 See Frederick Beiser, Diotima's Children: German Aesthetic Rationalism from Leibniz to Lessing (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 45–71.
65 Horst-Michael Schmidt, Sinnlichkeit und Verstand zur philosophischen und poetologischen Begründung von Erfahrung und Urteil in der deutschen Aufklärung (Munich: Fink, 1982), p. 127 and 139.
66 See the instructive overview in Robert J. Richards, ‘Christian Wolff's Prolegomena to Empirical and Rational Psychology: Translation and Commentary’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 124 (1980), 227–39, here pp. 234–35.
67 See the commentary in Arbeitstagebuch in HKA, Addenda, vol. 2, pp. 298–302, and the analysis in Berndt, Poema/Gedicht, pp. 135–42.
68 Ibid., p. 142.
69 Hilliard, Philosophy, Letters, and Fine Arts, p. 162.
70 To move the audience is, certainly, poetry's purpose as described in the tradition of rhetoric, see Winfried Menninghaus, ‘Klopstocks Poetik der schnellen “Bewegung”’, in Klopstock, Gedanken über die Natur der Poesie. Dichtungstheoretische Schriften, ed. by Winfried Menninghaus (Frankfurt a.M.: Insel, 1989), pp. 259–361, particularly pp. 306–18. However, the rhetorical movere in Klopstock's poetics is quite literal a movement in corporeal, cognitive, and emotional terms; Klopstock's poetics, as Charlotte Lee recently put it, ‘could be described as embodied cognition avant la letter’ (Charlotte Lee, ‘Movement and Embodiment in Klopstock and Goethe’, German Life and Letters, 70 (2017), 506–15, here p. 514).
71 In the case of Geistliche Lieder (1758), which were intended more as popular songs for everyday religious practice, Klopstock emphasizes their ‘moralische Absicht’ over any sublime effect (AW 1010). In Von der besten Art Gott zu denken, he develops an epistemological approach to the divine more in line with the aesthetics of the Messias. See Katrin Kohl, ‘Die “beste Art über Gott zu denken”? Auseinandersetzungen um das religiöse Potential der Dichtung im 18. Jahrhundert’, in Literatur und Theologie im 18. Jahrhundert. Konfrontationen – Kontroversen – Konkurrenzen, ed. by Hans Edwin Friedrich, Christian Soboth, and Wilhelm Haefs (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2011), pp. 225–42. Generally, intensified and intensifying language became a medium that compensated for the deficiencies of articulation over the course of the eighteenth century (see Erich Kleinschmidt, Die Entdeckung der Intensität: Geschichte einer Denkfigur im 18. Jahrhundert (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2004), particularly pp. 73–98).
72 In Von der Darstellung, Klopstock explains the positive and the negative side of the ‘Mitausdruck’: ‘Der Dichter kann diejenigen Empfindungen, für welche die Sprache keine Worte hat […], durch die Stärke und Stellung der völlig ausgedrückten ähnlichen, mit ausdrücken.’ (AW 1036) Benning refers to these semantic complexities as ‘Nebenbegriffe’, see Hildegard Benning, ‘Ut Pictura Poesis – Ut Musica Poesis. Paradigmenwechsel im poetologischen Denken Klopstocks’, in Klopstock an der Grenze der Epoche, ed. by Kevin Hilliard and Katrin Kohl (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1995), pp. 80–96, here pp. 87–88.
73 M 1.143. See above, p. 27.
74 See Jacob und Wilhelm Deutsches Wörterbuch. Vol. 1, article ‘Antlitz’ (online edition <http://www.woerterbuchnetz.de/DWB?lemma=antlitz [accessed 16 August 2017]).
75 On the significance of prepositions in Klopstock's language in general see August Langen, Der Wortschatz des deutschen Pietismus, 2nd edn (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1968); see also id., ‘Verbale Dynamik in der Landschaftsschilderung des 18. Jahrhunderts’, in Gesammelte Studien (Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 1978), pp. 21–86.
76 Langen speaks of a ‘riesenhafte[] Vertikaldynamik’, and a ‘gewaltige Bewegung hin und her’ that characterises the language and the spatial design of the Messias (Langen, Der Wortschatz des deutschen Pietismus, p. 441).
77 Ibid., p. 83.
78 Ibid., p. XVII and 440.
79 See Hermann Schmitz's phenomenological analyses of divine presence, based on Rudolf Otto's Das Heilige. Hermann Schmitz, System der Philosophie, vol. 3.4, pp. 74–133.
80 Ibid., vol. 3.4, p. 98.
81 Bodmer also maintained that the conveyance of knowledge is an important aspect in epic poetry, see Dieter Martin, Das deutsche Versepos im 18: Jahrhundert. Studien und kommentierte Gattungsbibliographie (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1993), p. 91.
82 See the introduction in Berndt, Poema/Gedicht, pp. 1–11.
83 Tillich, Systematic Theology, vol. 3, p. 3.
84 Niklas Luhmann, Die Religion der Gesellschaft, p. 127.
85 Niklas Luhmann, Funktion der Religion (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1982), p. 227.
86 Ibid., pp. 80–81.
87 Ibid., p. 78.
88 See Bernd Auerochs, Die Entstehung der Kunstreligion (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2006), p. 171.