THE SELF AS A BECOMING WORK OF ART

IN EARLY ROMANTIC THOUGHT

Gerard Kuperus

Abstract: For the Jena Romantics the idea of a self is always in a process,
never fully completed. It develops itself as an acting I that interacts with
the world, an ongoing interchange between what I am and what I am
not. In order to grasp how the self develops and is educated, this paper
compares this idea of the self to Schlegel’s account of irony. Both irony
and the I exist as an ongoing process. In this comparison the self is found
to be a work of art, which is never what it is since its identity always
still has to become completed.

To Dave Anderson

Introduction
Philosophy is for the Early Romantics a process that one engages in with
others.1 Their respective works can be seen as a unity following their own
idea of “symphilosophy”: to write, think, and live together. Ideally their
philosophies constitute a unity. While this might indicate a system of phi-
losophy, the form of their writings indicates the opposite. Instead of the
all-encompassing systems written by their contemporaries, the Romantics
write in fragments. Figures such as Novalis and Friedrich Schlegel do not
have ambitions to create all-encompassing systems, and in fact they criticize
the grand narratives of their time by writing short pieces—sometimes merely
a couple of lines long. The meaning of these short pieces is enclosed in the
fragment itself, i.e., the fragments are not part of a larger system. On account
of this style of writing the early Romantics could, perhaps, be regarded as
the postmodernists of their time.2
Yet, do the Jena Romantics, indeed, write in a completely fragmentary
manner? Are the different pieces nothing but little “snippets” that by them-
selves—outside any larger system—constitute and create a meaning? While
the Romantics are often regarded as anti-systematic philosophers who are
living and writing in the spur of the moment, I argue for a reading that takes
their ideas as more systematic and I emphasize the continuity in the ideas
regarding irony and the self. These individual fragments are, first of all,

© 2017. Idealistic Studies, Volume 46, Issue 1. ISSN 0046-8541. pp. 65–77
DOI: 10.5840/idstudies201751957
 IDEALISTIC STUDIES

situated in a context that provides a meaning. More importantly, one finds

certain motives and correlations that constitute not quite a grand narrative,
but certainly a systematic approach, as I argue below.
Rather than reading the writings of the early Romantics as merely
fragments, I will follow the narrative—albeit small—that describes the con-
struction of the self. I argue that the Romantics’ thoughts on irony inspire
the construction of the self. Irony institutes an endless process of becoming.
This notion of becoming lies at the basis of the romantic notion of the self.
The early Romantics provide an interesting idea that does not use a split
personality, nor an absolute ground or a system that could potentially be
marked as “totalitarian.” Instead, the early romantics conceive the self as an
artistic or aesthetic self. This is a self that is a continuous becoming, never
complete yet providing a unity.
This reading is particularly important for grasping the educational aspect
of the philosophy of the early Romantics, who argue that we have to (trans)
form ourselves, or become. Irony, I argue, functions as a model of an endless
becoming, first of all in art, and secondly in the self. The Romantics, thus,
show through this analogy how to create or form a self. This is not a model
that tells us concretely what we should become, but rather shows us how we
can engage in an aesthetic creation of ourselves.
The first part of this paper focuses on irony, which for Schlegel is a way to
approximate the infinite since it creates a feeling of indissoluble antagonism
between two conflicting thoughts, or between the absolute and the relative.3
For Schlegel, irony is not simply “saying one thing and meaning the other.”
The meaning is not the opposite of what one says, but is a mediation or play
between what one says and what one means. What one actually says is never
overcome, but always remains at play in the ongoing process of determin-
ing the meaning. This meaning is therefore always paradoxical and elusive.
The second part of this paper is focused on the self. Concerning this point,
Early Romanticism is obviously influenced by Fichte, for whom the I is a
synthesis of “I” and “Non-I.” Other than Fichte, for whom the I is something
static, the Romantics think of the I as an ongoing process. Since the I is a
creation and always a becoming it can therefore be called a work of art.
In the third part the work of art is discussed in more detail in order to
show how both irony and the self can be understood as a work of art, i.e., as
something becoming. The meaning of the work of art is never completely
determined, but is always developing. This becoming of the ironic work is—as
I will argue—for Schlegel and Novalis not something that merely happens in
the interpretation of the work, but something that comes out of the work itself.
The ironic work itself is in a process of becoming. It judges and prepares or
re-presents itself; it has—as Walter Benjamin claims in his dissertation The
Concept of Criticism in German Romanticism—a reflexive nature in itself.

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In this paper, I attempt to make this mystical claim a little less mystifying
with a comparison between the self and irony. I argue that the ironic work and
the I are works of art in similar ways: both are becoming in a self-creative
process. Similar to the I, irony, or the work of art in general, is self-reflexive
and involved in a process of mirroring. Both the work of art and the self are
continuously becoming in an aesthetic way.

Irony
For Friedrich Schlegel irony first of all has to be understood as a way to ap-
proximate the infinite. The infinite is the general name the Jena Romantics
give to the unconditioned, that which in fact cannot be expressed in language.
The infinite therefore has to be understood as an idea rather than as a concept.
It escapes language because it “cannot be grasped in a concept in its usual
meaning, and is inconceivable.”4 For Schlegel, this inconceivable or incom-
prehensible (unbegreiflich) idea of the infinite forms one of the two elements
of philosophy, the other element being consciousness. The importance of the
infinite for Schlegel is that the so-called longing or yearning (Sehnsucht) for
the infinite involves a reflection that forms or educates (bilden). This educa-
tion consists in becoming whole, to move toward the absolute, or to yearn
for the infinite.
The yearning for the infinite is characterized by the impossibility of its
satisfaction: this yearning always remains a yearning. The infinite can never
be reached; the search for it always remains a striving or approximating. In
the introduction to his Transcendental Philosophy Schlegel discusses the
feeling of the sublime in which “we find an analogy to the consciousness of
the infinite.”5 The sublime constitutes a feeling in which we do not reach the
infinite, while we do approach it by way of an analogy.
Schlegel is here influenced by Kant for whom the sublime is a feeling
that awakens the ideas of totality and infinity, ideas which cannot be known.
Schlegel explains the sublime in a similar way: he calls it “the ultimate, the
originary that cannot be explained . . . the originary of mankind.”6 Whereas
the sublime proceeds from nature striving toward the ideal, the search for
the highest originates in culture. The sublime can thus be understood as a
natural feeling, whereas the striving for the ideal is part of education. The
feeling of the sublime is necessary for this striving, but the striving does not
necessarily arise out of the sublime.
In the fragments Schlegel discusses irony as an analogy or approxima-
tion of the infinite. Irony can be understood as a mode of the sublime, as
it “arouses a feeling of indissoluble antagonism between the absolute and
the relative.”7 In the (Kantian) sublime a feeling of indissoluble antagonism
arises between the absolute (in the form of an evoked idea) and the relative
(as representation) because the imagination is unable to represent the idea.
This is an antagonism between the imagination, which feels pain as it is

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unable to represent the idea, and reason which feels pleasure because of the
evoked idea. Irony and the sublime are, then, similar in the sense that both
consist of an antagonism between the relative and the absolute.
The Kantian idea of the absolute is, for Schlegel, “a concept perfected
to the point of irony, an absolute synthesis of absolute antithesis, the con-
tinual self-creating interchange of two conflicting thoughts,” as he states in
Athenäum Fragment 121.8 The idea, or the unconditioned, cannot be grasped
in a concept but can somehow be “reached” through irony. This “reaching”
is not a final attainment; rather, it is “reaching” in the sense of “an absolute
synthesis of absolute antithesis, the continual self-creating interchange of
two conflicting thoughts.”9 As Schlegel states in this fragment, the concept
is perfected to the point of irony, which means that it does not actually reach
a point of perfection, but is rather in continual fluctuation or self-creating
interchange between two conflicting thoughts. Therefore, irony never reaches
a finite point; rather, it is an ongoing process, a “non-reaching,” and precisely
in this non-reaching can it resemble or be analogous to the infinite.
In the definition of irony given by Schlegel in Lyceum Fragment 48, the
idea of conflicting thoughts plays an important role: “Irony is the form of
paradox.”10 Its paradoxical character, resulting from two conflicting thoughts,
renders irony a potentially endless creation. This creation is analogous to the
consciousness of the infinite, the yearning that always remains a yearning. It
never reaches its goal, nor can it be exhausted.
In his essay On Incomprehensibility, Schlegel shares that in his journal,
Das Athenäum, irony “expresses itself more or less everywhere.”11 As ex-
amples of ironic works, he mentions Socratic irony and irony in the works
of Shakespeare. Though Schlegel does not explicitly say this, it seems that
for him, irony can be at work in every form of art. In every work of art we
can find a discrepancy between what is expressed and how it is expressed.
This does, however, not make the work ironic if we understand irony in the
traditional sense, i.e., saying one thing and meaning the other. Irony should
rather be understood, first of all, as an antagonism between the relative and
the absolute (similar to the Kantian sublime). Secondly, irony can be grasped
in terms of his definition of irony as paradox. Irony as a paradox of thoughts
is not limited to language. Conflicting thoughts can be expressed through
colors, forms, sounds, movements, and so forth. Magritte’s paintings, for
example, often express a conflict between our ideas of space. For Schlegel
paradox can be at work in every form of art that can express two conflicting
thoughts or ideas; irony can exist when a paradox can emerge.
The analogy between the infinite and the ironic work consists in the idea
that the meaning of both the infinite and the ironic work are indeterminable.
Concerning the indeterminacy of the infinite, Schlegel writes: “Whoever
desires the infinite doesn’t know what he desires. But one can’t turn this
sentence around.”12 In this fragment we can find at least two levels of irony

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at work. The first sentence is already ironic in itself: one desires something
one does not know. The fragment becomes especially ironic (in the sense of
paradoxical) in the second sentence, which tells us that “one can’t turn this
sentence around.” Thus, we cannot say that when one does not know what
(s)he is desiring, (s)he is desiring the infinite.13
While it is not easy to bring Schlegel’s irony into a model, since Schle-
gel’s ironic fragments (because of their irony) cannot be pinned down to
one meaning,14 this fragment can be seen as a rough model for Schlegel’s
irony. His model of irony resembles Socratic irony, which is mentioned in
Lyceum Fragment 108: In Socratic irony “everything should be playful
and serious, guilelessly open and deeply hidden.”15 He, furthermore, calls
it a continuous self-parody and an endless fluctuation between belief and
disbelief. The words “continuous” and “endless” point here to the ongoing
process of creation. Schlegel characterizes irony by way of irony: he defines
irony in a set of paradoxes; irony is defined through irony. In his essay On
Incomprehensibility he gives a more systematic explanation of irony and
quotes some of his own Lyceum fragments such as fragment 108 on Socratic
irony. This fragment defines irony—as discussed above—through a set of
paradoxes. He then reiterates fragment 48, which states that irony is the
form of paradox. By repeating his own fragments Schlegel emphasizes that
irony can only be explained by irony, or more precisely, it always involves
irony. He takes this a step further in his discussion of the irony of irony that
occurs for example “if one speaks about irony without irony.”16 The fact that
one talks about irony without using irony, is ironic in itself. Irony can, thus,
only be discussed through irony. A result of this, he remarks, is the incom-
prehensibility of his journal Das Athenäum (in which irony expresses itself
more or less everywhere).
From the idea of the irony of irony, Schlegel develops the idea that irony
works against one’s will. Even if one does not want to use irony it still can
present itself, run wild, “and simply won’t let itself be governed at all.”17
The author loses control over irony: it becomes something uncontrollable,
something that governs itself.
A similar kind of autonomy of the work (accompanied by the loss of con-
trol of the author) can be found in Lyceum fragment 20, in which he states that
“[a] classical text must never be able to be understood completely. But those
who are cultivated [gebildet] and cultivate [bilden] themselves must always
want to learn more from it.”18 It is precisely in this sense, for Schlegel, that
the work of art leads its own life, governs itself. Irony does this by a play or
interchange between two conflicting thoughts. Romantic poetry works in the
same way by a multiplication of reflection “in an endless succession of mir-
rors.”19 The real essence of Romantic poetry is that it is “never perfected,” but
always in a state of becoming, in which an endless self-creation takes place.

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Since irony is self-governing and self-creating, it seems to be an autono-

mous entity. It appears as if the work exists as an individual, an acting self.
In order to support the claim that the work can be seen as a self-creating and
self-acting individuality, I will discuss in the following the conception of the
self in Early Romanticism.

The Self
An important influence for the Jena Romantics, especially for their conception
of a subject, was Fichte. Fichte understands the subject as an agent that acts
upon objects. These objects are experienced as what is not me, the “Non-I,”
as opposed to the I that is acting upon these objects. For Fichte, the experi-
ence of a Non-I is essential for the becoming of the I. The I recognizes its
selfness through a recognition of otherness; through the experience of objects
(i.e., Non-I’s), it knows that it is an I or a self that experiences these objects.
Fichte brings the I and Non-I together into one structure by the idea of an
absolute I. This absolute I lies beyond the acting subject and provides the
possibility of consciousness to the I. The absolute I provides a consciousness
of the fact that it is me who is conscious of this Non-I.
The Romantics adopt and slightly (yet essentially) change his tripartite
structure of “I,” “Non-I” and “absolute I.” The most significant Romantic
alteration of this model is that a first principle in the form of an unalterable
absolute I is lacking. Like Fichte’s notion, the Romantic I is an acting I, but
is above all a becoming I. The self is not, then, as for Fichte, an established
entity that remains the same. Instead, it finds itself in the world as an act-
ing subject and as this acting subject it is always involved in a process of
becoming. The notion of the absolute I is still used, yet it itself changes, as
opposed to being a static entity. Thus, as an acting subject it is a subject in
which all the different poles change.
The most extensive discussion of the I in Early Romanticism can be
found in the works of Novalis, especially in his Fichte-Studies, but also in
other more fragmentary pieces. In The Universal Brouillon, for example, he
discusses the relation between I and Non-I as a symmetrical relationship. The
non-I is a symbol and a representation of the I while the I is also a symbol
and representation of the Non-I. This reciprocity—a key difference with
Fichte—between I and Non-I can be stated as follows: no subject without
an object; no object without a subject. The I needs an object to recognize
itself as a self that is aware of this external object. The object, on the other
hand, can only be known by a subject if there is already a consciousness
that can be aware of this object. “[O]ne understands the I only insofar as it
is represented by the Non-I. . . . One understands the Non-I similarly, that
is, only insofar as it is represented by the I.”20 This representation of object
by subject and subject by object is what Novalis understood as a process of
becoming, in which the beginning is “merely ideal. . . . The beginning is a

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concept that comes later. The beginning originates later than the I; therefore
the I cannot have begun.”21 Whereas for Fichte the beginning lies in the ab-
solute I, for Schlegel the self is grasped as a product or construction that is
always involved in a process of becoming, without having an absolute point
of beginning. The beginning or origin is itself becoming.
Although this may sound rather obscure, this becoming of the beginning
can be understood in terms of our own development. We often make decisions
in our life that are not necessarily well informed. We often do not know what
exactly we get ourselves into. Yet in retrospect we do know what we did get
ourselves into, and this knowledge is then often used to justify (or question)
our decision. I might, for example, say that I took up surfing because I like
being in the water and while it is relaxing it can also be thrilling. It is also
something people do in the area where I live and in addition it provides a good
exercise. Yet, the fact of the matter is that I did not know most of this when I
decided to go surfing after the invitation of a friend. The character that made
this decision to go surfing, in other words, is in retrospect changed. I see the
self of the past, through the self that I am now. Ethical decisions change a
self in a similar way. We often do act spontaneous, after which we determine
ourselves through the results of our actions. The decision to help another hu-
man being, for example, is full with uncertainties about the consequences of
that decision. We are often uncertain about how helpful we can be, or whether
our help is even needed. In retrospect, these questions are answered and we
use it as a reason for why we helped the person: s/he really needed my help.
This is, thus, a construction of a self in time, through the actions that we do.
Going back to the Romantics, the I is a construction of consciousness and
since the I is also to be understood as an acting I (as in Fichte), the I becomes
in acting. The self is then grasped as a giving form to one’s existence. Novalis
is focused on the idea of a self that somehow, in its exposure to several Non-
I’s, keeps on creating itself. This self-creation can be grasped as an art, an
artistic creation, a work of art. The self as a work of art is, for him, first of all a
production of the I through a continuous process of recognizing self and other.
In his Fichte-Studies Novalis describes the I as a set of drives. The drives of
reflection and feeling are brought together by the drive to become I, Fichte’s
absolute I. The drive to become I synthesizes the different instances of the
I. This is not a synthesis into an absolute I, but one in which the absolute I
becomes an empirical I, i.e., an acting subject. Here, again, we can see an
interdependency between the different drives of the I and the absolute I. The
latter unites the two drives and at the same time would not be able to exist
without the separate drives. The I is divided “precisely insofar as it is whole,
and it is whole precisely insofar as it is divided.”22 The I is simultaneously
identity and difference. The identity of the I is, as a whole, constituted in
its division. Its division is possible because it is a whole, for if it were not a
whole in the first place, it could not be divided.

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For Novalis then, the I is, on the one hand, a move from the absolute I (the
whole) to the empirical subject; from the infinite to the finite; from synthesis
to thesis. On the other hand, it is a move from the empirical I to the absolute I;
from the finite to the infinite; from thesis to synthesis.23 Hence, the I has to be
understood as a movement in two opposite directions. One movement proceeds:
thesis (Empirical I)—antithesis (non-I)—synthesis (Absolute I). The other move-
ment recedes: synthesis (absolute I)—antithesis (Non-I)—thesis (Empirical I).24
Novalis explains the movement between the absolute and the empirical
I as a “hovering” between the two extremes of thesis and synthesis. The I
is never fixed, or static, but always hovers between these two points. This
hovering is “the mother of all reality, it is the source, it is reality itself.”25 The
word “mother” implies a birth of the I: the hovering is the condition out of
which the I is made possible. The possibility of experience, consciousness,
and self-consciousness lies precisely in the fact that the I is not situated or
fixed in one particular place. In order “to be I,” the I has to be something in
motion. This is, however, not a motion between two static points: the points
themselves are changing as they are part of the process. As mentioned above,
the absolute I is for that reason not really absolute: the absolute I, as part of
the process of becoming, is itself becoming. As we have seen above, it is an
origin that still has to be originated, or is re-originated. Novalis explains this
process of becoming as having a beginning that is “merely ideal. . . . The
beginning is a concept that comes later. The beginning originates later than the
I; therefore the I cannot have begun.”26 The self is a product or construction
that is always involved in a process of becoming, without having an absolute
point of beginning. The beginning or origin is itself becoming. In this way, as
a becoming in a hovering between the absolute and the empirical I, Novalis
describes the I as a creative activity, as a work of art.
What does Novalis exactly mean with the statement that the self is a
work of art? First of all, the Jena Romantics emphasize an ideal of Bildung,
of education, or formation, in which art plays a pivotal role. “Every human
being should be an artist,”27 Novalis writes in Faith and Love. This prescrip-
tive sentence should, though, be distinguished from the descriptive claim that
the self, as always involved in a process of becoming, is a work of art. The
aesthetic creation of the self should be regarded as a reaction against Kant
and most of all Fichte, whose Critical philosophies were regarded as “stiff,”
“fearful” and “not at all poetic.”28 An example of Fichte’s stiff and fearful phi-
losophy is the representation of the I by an absolute I, a pure identity that does
not lead to any kind of creation or creativity. Novalis criticizes this absolute
representation by describing the self as a work of art: a work of art represents,
but never creates an absolute identity between itself and what it represents.
Instead, the self is a free representation, a hovering between I and non-I, or
between being and non-being.29 In his Fichte Studies, Novalis connects this
model of hovering to life, which is where philosophy stops, “for life consists

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precisely in the fact that it cannot be comprehended.”30 This final station of

philosophy is a model of opposition, a hovering between positivity and nega-
tivity that cannot be fully comprehended, but is a mysterious representation.
Summarizing, we can establish that Novalis discusses the I in a set of
paradoxes. The first one is the paradox that there is no subject without an
object and no object without a subject. The I and the Non-I represent each
other, they both point to one another; I is Non-I, Non-I is I. The second
paradox is that the I is divided insofar as it is whole and whole insofar as it
is divided. The last paradox that constitutes the I is that the empirical I is not
possible without the idea of an absolute I, while the absolute I cannot exist
without an acting subject (i.e., an empirical I). The three paradoxes—I and
Non-I, wholeness and division, and the absolute and empirical—each state
two conflicting ideas that are interdependent. The subject creates itself in a
hovering between these conflicting ideas. The I as a work of art is an I that
moves in paradoxes.
In the following I link this thought to the ironic work of art, which is
becoming in exactly the same way, as it becomes in a hovering between
two conflicting thoughts. By connecting irony and the self, I will attempt to
clarify the Romantic demand to be an artist as well as what it means for the
self to be a work of art.

The Work of Art as Individuality

For the early Romantics, both the ironic work of art and the self are al-
ways involved in change, forever in a process of becoming. They are both
conceived as works of art. The self is a work of art as a hovering in three
paradoxes: I and Non-I, wholeness and division, and absolute and empirical
I. The three concepts of the I, the Non-I and the absolute I are found in a
set of creative relationships, in which the conflicting ideas are situated in a
reciprocal relationship. The sets of conflicting ideas are necessary to form
the self continuously.
Similarly, irony is described as a “continual self-creating interchange
of two conflicting thoughts.”31 Here, I would like to emphasize the concept
“self-creating,” which points to the activity of the work itself. As I briefly
discussed in the first half of this paper, irony can for Schlegel be seen as a
work that can become uncontrollable. It can, in Schlegel’s words, run wild
and will not let itself be governed at all.32 Irony, then, can be understood as
an autonomous entity, quite similar to the self. Both consciousness and irony
constitute an endless process of becoming.
One of the similarities between the Romantic understanding of the self
and that of irony is that the creativity is structured in the forms of thesis-
antithesis-synthesis and synthesis-antithesis-thesis. As I have shown above,
the self is a hovering between the two extremes of this structure in which no
absolute synthesis takes place. The lack of an absolute synthesis can also be

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found in irony, which is defined as absolute synthesis of absolute antithesis.33

This means that the antagonism between the two conflicting thoughts, which
constitute irony, can never be resolved. Similar to the self, the ironic work of
art can therefore be understood as a hovering between thesis and synthesis.
Along these lines one could also understand the creation of the self as an
act of irony. Like the ironic work, the self is, namely, a conflict between two
opposing thoughts: I and Non-I, wholeness and division, and absolute and
empirical I. This antagonism cannot be resolved, and its irresolvability—one
could suggest—is precisely the force or drive that creates the self.
The Fichtean idea of consciousness of consciousness—the idea of an
absolute I that is conscious of the consciousness of the empirical I—which is
taken up by the Romantics, can be retrieved in the ideas of poetry and irony,
in particular in concepts such as “poetry of poetry” and “irony of irony.”
These concepts suggests that the (literary) work can prepare or re-present
itself. This preparation of the work is the nucleus of Walter Benjamin’s dis-
sertation, The Concept of Criticism in German Romanticism. He attempts
to define the concept of aesthetic criticism as “a necessary function of the
classical work,”34 a function that for the Jena Romantics lies in the work of art
itself. Similar to the reflexive nature of the self—the capacity to reflect upon
its ability to reflect (or to have consciousness of consciousness)—poetry of
poetry is, as Benjamin states: “the comprehensible expression for the reflexive
nature of the absolute. It is poetry conscious of itself.”35 Poetry itself, thus,
has a reflexive nature. In Athenäum fragment 238 (also cited by Benjamin)
Schlegel describes this phenomenon by discussing poetry as a relationship
between the ideal and the real, which we can also recognize in the creating
self, as a hovering between the absolute and empirical I.
Schlegel writes about Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister: “[t]he work not only
judges itself—it also prepares itself.”36 Benjamin understands this concept
of preparation or re-presentation (Darstellung) in the chemical sense, “as the
generation of a substance through a determinate process to which others are
submitted.”37 The work of art is then a fluid consisting of different substances
that react when they touch each other. It is an ongoing creation in which activi-
ties such as criticism can be generated—as in a natural process—by the work
itself. The model used here reminds us of life and nature or a prosaic spirit.
For Schlegel, the creation of the work of art is thus first of all a creation of
the artist, but it also has to be seen as a creation that goes beyond the intentions
of the artist. The ironic work is, as the self, a work of art, and an autonomous
free creation that cannot be controlled by any external power. This idea of
the work of art as self-creation is brought to its extreme by Novalis. For him
the artist already loses control in the artistic process:
With every move in perfecting it the work leaps away from the master
into more than special distances—and thus with the last move the master
sees the work that is ostensibly his separated from himself by a gulf of

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thought—whose breadth he himself can scarcely grasp—and which only

the power of the imagination can cross. At the moment when it was to
become wholly his it became more than himself, its creator—and he be-
came the unknowing instrument and property of a higher power. The artist
belongs to the work and not the work to the artist.
Since Novalis writes that “the artist belongs to the work” I interpret this higher
power, which controls the artist and therefore creates the work of art, not
primarily as a power of God, but rather as a power of the work of art itself.
For him the work of literature is then “a living individual.”38 It is the poet
who “orders, combines, chooses, invents” but it is incomprehensible to this
poet “why it is just so and not otherwise.”39 The work of art, in this case the
poem as a living individual, orders, combines, chooses and invents itself. For
Novalis, then, individuality is not something found only in human beings,
but also in art and further in all of nature. Individuality is a creation of God,
who could become man, and also “stone, plant, animal, and element.”40 This
means for Novalis that an infinity of individuals can be found in nature. In
this way he can think of the artist, instead of the work of art, as a medium.
The work of art as a self-creating individuality uses the artist as a medium,
through which the work of art not only creates but also invents itself.

Conclusion
A striking relationship can be found between irony and the self in Early
Romantic thought. Both irony and the self are conceived as works of art, as
continual creative processes. In both of these processes we find a hovering
between two conflicting thoughts, and this hovering forms the condition of
the possibility of self-creation.
Based upon these similarities we can draw the conclusion that the ironic
work of art is self-creative; it creates itself through antagonism between two
conflicting thoughts. This creation is potentially endless. Because the self is
also understood as a work of art, as a creation in a hovering between differ-
ent thoughts, the ironic work of art can be regarded as an individuality. In
Schlegel this is supported by his use of terms such as self-creation, poetry of
poetry, irony of irony and self-government. The work of art is understood—as
Benjamin shows in his dissertation—as having a consciousness itself. Poetry
of poetry is like a consciousness of consciousness. The work of art is then a
creation of the artist while exceeding the artist’s intentions in its self-creativity.
Novalis takes this a step further as he sees the work of art as an author-
ity that can invent itself. The artist is marginalized to a mere medium that
is used by the work of art. It has to be conceived as something living, as
Novalis describes all objects in nature as living individuals. This is not easy
to understand, and maybe cannot be understood at all. Perhaps we should
understand this as mysticism, or an act of intended incomprehensibility, that
transforms the writings of the Jena Romantics into works of art that can never

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be exhausted and that keep on creating themselves. In this way their works
can be seen as a source through which we can (still) cultivate ourselves. For,
it is this cultivation of ourselves that Novalis describes as the very definition
of Romanticism: “To make Romantic is nothing but a qualitative raising to a
higher power. In this operation the lower self will become one with a better
self.”41 We have seen that one of the aims of art should be the cultivation of
the self. It is precisely ironic art that can keep doing this ad infinitum. Ironic
art and the self are, thus, in early Romanticism infinite processes of becoming.
Irony can be seen as an inspiration for the self to continually engage itself in
a process of becoming. In addition, it can prescribe to us that we should all
become artists, or aesthetic selves, i.e., to be a medium through which the
infinite can express itself.
The Romantics emphasize the dynamic character or the work of art,
not as determined through the artist, but as independent and unpredictable.
Likewise, we, as works of art, are free to determine ourselves. The unity of
this self-shaping self is determined as a constantly re-determining hovering.
In our actions we give shape to who we are by re-evaluating who we are as
well as who we were. Nothing is fixed in this regard, which makes it possible
for us to become and to give shape to who we are.

University of San Francisco

Notes
1. While their movement is arguably one of the most influential of German romanti-
cism, the Early Romantics flourished only a short period, from 1796 to 1800. Based in
Jena (and, thus, also known as the Jena Romantics) the core of this group consisted of
the brothers Friedrich and August Wilhelm Schlegel, their wives Dorothea and Caroline
Schlegel, Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg), and later on also Friedrich Schelling. Al-
though I focus in this paper on the works of Friedrich Schlegel and Novalis, it is important
to note here that they did work as a group.
2. It is Jean-François Lyotard who suggests that every time period has its own
postmodern thinkers. Besides some major figures every era has its “smaller” figures who
think against the major philosophical systems in a much more fragmented way.
3. Lyceum, fragment 108, in Philosophical Fragments (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1991).
4. J. Schulte-Sasse, ed., Theory as Practice: A Critical Anthology of Early German
Romantic Writings (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 242.
5. Ibid, 245.
6. Ibid.
7. Lyceum, fragment 108, in Philosophical Fragments.
8. Athenäum, fragment 121, in Philosophical Fragments.

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9. Ibid.
10. Lyceum, fragment 48, in Philosophical Fragments.
11. Schulte-Sasse, Theory as Practice, 123.
12. Lyceum, fragment 47, in Philosophical Fragments.
13. Saying that which one cannot say, which I just did as every other reader (something
intended by Schlegel, I suppose), brings in another irony.
14. Also for this reason we can understand irony as an analogy of the infinite.
15. Lyceum, fragment 108, in Philosophical Fragments.
16. Schulte-Sasse, Theory as Practice, 125.
17. Ibid.
18. Lyceum, fragment 20, in Philosophical Fragments.
19. Athenäum, fragment 116, in Philosophical Fragments.
20. The Universal Brouillon 49, in Schulte-Sasse, Theory as Practice, 226.
21. Ibid.
22. Fichte Studies 32, in Schulte-Sasse, Theory as Practice, 102.
23. The underlying idea here seems to be that nothing can exist without its opposite
(its antithesis).
24. Fichte Studies 38, in Schulte-Sasse, Theory as Practice, 103.
25. Fichte Studies 555, in Schulte-Sasse, Theory as Practice, 105.
26. The Universal Brouillon 49, in Schulte-Sasse, Theory as Practice, 226.
27. Faith and Love 39, In Schulte-Sasse, Theory as Practice, 140.
28. The Universal Brouillon 924, in Schulte-Sasse, Theory as Practice p. 239.
29. Schulte-Sasse, Theory as Practice, pp. 91–92, 109–110.
30. Ibid., 92.
31. Athenäum, fragment 121, in Philosophical Fragments.
32. Schulte-Sasse, Theory as Practice, 125.
33. Athenäum, fragment 121, in Philosophical Fragments.
34. Walter Benjamin, “The Concept of Criticism in German Romanticism,” in Selected
Writings, Volume 1: 1913–1926 (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1996), 170–171.
35. Ibid.
36. Ibid., 178.
37. Ibid.
38. Logological Fragments I 30, in Philosophical Writings, 55.
39. Last Fragments 40, in Philosophical Writings, 162.
40. Last Fragments 38, in Philosophical Writings, 162.
41. Logological Fragments I 66, in Philosophical Writings, 60.

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