Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht. Phoenix From The Ashes or From Canon To Classic

"Phoenix from the Ashes" or: From Canon to Classic
Author(s): Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht and Roger C. Norton

Source: New Literary History , Autumn, 1988, Vol. 20, No. 1, Critical Reconsiderations
(Autumn, 1988), pp. 141-163
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/469325
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"Phoenix from the Ashes"
or:
From Canon to Classic
Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht
To Bernard Cerquiglini,
Ancien Directeur des Ecoles,
Supporter of the Classics,
and yet friend of theory
ATTEMPTS TO DEFINE the fundamental opposing concepts

canon/classic' have revealed an important reason for the diffi
culties-aporias?- of drafting a metahistorical concept of
canon as a basic category for a historical typology of culture. If it i
indeed true that communication via the media of "art" and "litera-
ture" has, in the last two centuries, been subjected to a univers
premise of temporalization (Verzeitlichung) and to a general postulate
innovation, it follows then that "canon" in the traditional sense of t
term has long since disappeared, and this deductive conclusion co
responds entirely to a tendency to disqualify as "untimely" all a
tempts to establish an "aesthetic canon," in whatever form it migh
take.
That is why, in order to make "classic" acceptable, everything de-

pends on the ability of the recipients to employ productively the sta
of tension between it and the premises of temporalization and inno
vation. If one tries, however, to define the concept "classic" as t
concretization of the canon phenomenon in our time, the desir
precision cannot be achieved, since the historical conditions delineat
ed by "temporalization and innovation" exclude per se the possibilit
of the origination and perpetuation of a real canon. Stated more pr
cisely: Since in our present day, no "aesthetic canon" exists or c
exist, theoretical preconsiderations for the historical and typologica
investigation of the canon phenomenon must first disregard our ow
nontheoretical experiences with the contemporary phenomenon
the classic.
Despite all the nostalgia and rationale by which the thought of a
return to the "aesthetic canon" is made to seem palatable to us, we

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142 NEW LITERARY HISTORY
spontaneously assign to the hor

any idea of a canon that norma
the first of the following sectio
respect the Enlightenment in
This will put us on a course of
the contrasting concepts canon/
process.2 At the beginning of t
thetic canon of the Enlightenm
enthusiasm for new modes of a
second section), there arose like
texts and works of art of the p
that has long since been institu
Yet the origin of the concept
nied by an awareness that the r
possible only at the price of a c
poralization and the postulate
least in France-a tendency si
and texts the place in the social
by the authors and texts of t
ment. Today it is becoming clea
those goals of educational policy
ing the circle. Even in France, w
times made an initial effort to revise the structure of the educational
system,4 which had relied on the effect of readings in Corneille, Ra-
cine, Moliere, and La Fontaine, the impossibility of replacing "canon"
by "classic" long ago led to a progressive weakening in the official
justification for the reception of the "classics." This process had
somehow arrived at its endpoint when Roland Barthes identified the
tautology "Racine is Racine" as the secret maxim of the national re-
ception of the classics and interpreted it as one of the "myths of ev-
eryday French life."5 Certainly it is no accident that it was the student
generation of the Nouvelle Critique that finally prompted a new con-
ception of literary education, even in the ministries of government.
But what is the significance of the fact (true, of course, not only in
France) that a repertory of names of literary figures and works con-
tinues to be a part of even the most modest educational knowledge,
and that considerable financial resources and astonishingly large
portions of the broadcast time of the media are still reserved, with
practically no objection, to the "nurturing of the classics" (Klassiker-
pflege)? How can such matter of fact acceptance be reconciled with
the "lack of function of the classics" (at least for any primary con-
cern), a lack that seems to be objectified in tautologies of the type
"Racine is Racine"? We can only begin to address such questions

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FROM CANON TO CLASSIC 143
here- not least because it would tak

lematics of the canon. But I wish at
that possible later studies on the fu
sics" definitely will not lead to the
their traditional social function.
I. The Persistence of the Canon
For some time now a useful convention of cultural history has bee
to have the epoch of the Enlightenment begin with the thresh
event, the Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes-a debate which wa
carried on in the Acadimie Frangaise and its intellectual milieu durin
the latter years of the reign of Louis XIV, and which questioned f
the first time since the end of the Middle Ages the normative sta
granted exclusively to the art and literature of the ancients. Here
find the development of the earliest horizon of forms of historica
thought, already remarkably well differentiated and extending fr
the schema of teleological progression to the consequence of histor
cal relativization.6 Although it has been correctly claimed that pro
lems of literary evaluation were the original context of histori
thought, this new intellectual climate had, in comparison with oth
aspects of the French Enlightenment, very little effect on literary p
duction and reception, and the poetology (Poetologie) that accompa
nied them.7 Of course we can note even here, from the retrospect
of a "history of historical thought," symptoms of a first questioning
the normative effect of ancient culture and of its modern canon. But
it would be a sign of "historiographical impatience" if one should
attempt for that reason to push into the background the epoch-mak-
ing fact that literature and art were seen by the French Enlighten-
ment against the horizon of the traditional canon structure.
The most impressive and diverse documentation of this is Vol-
taire's Temple du gofst, first published in 1733 and reprinted in 1784
with minor modifications. This is a bagatelle of scarcely a thousand
lines, written in varying verse forms with prose insertions, originat-
ing, as the author himself explains in the foreword of 1784, from a
plaisanterie de socitet.8 Now the recollection of such a situation in itself
scarcely suits the seriousness of the temple metaphor. One can there-
fore ask whether it is not true that this connection with the connota-
tion of earlier literary and artistic canon horizons (far removed from
all the significant questions associated in the preceding centuries with
the images of such temples of fame as well as with scenes of "other-
worldly literary criticism")9 gives the title of the little work the prag-

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matic status of an oxymoron

traditional question concernin
in the allegory as a question
However, he no longer answer
and values, but rather with aje
His actual words are: "Il est p
pas, que de faire connaitre ce
temple is not than to explain w
This feigned perplexity art
and England since the late seve
art be sought in the suppressio
hand, art in which the artist's
cial" and rejected in the name
cation, comes much closer to
than to accenting sentimentalit
warning against the "God o
Taste" dismisses the visitors to
II prend mon nom, mon 6

Mais on voit assez l'impost
Car il n'est que le fils de l'
Moi, je le suis de la Nature
(144)
[He takes my name, my st
But his deceit is clear to all:
For he is but the son of Art,
While I ... I am the son of Nature.]
This Nature was nothing but the viewpoint of a particular audience

well-known to the French authors of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries. The "court and the city"'1 and "Bon gofit" demanded of the
recipient nothing more than the readiness to "submit circumspectly"
to the dominance of the viewpoint of Nature. 11 Both Nature and go2at
were norms, specific competencies of social behavior mediated by lit-
erature and constituted by literary communication. Their existence
and continued validity required adherence to norms of literary pro-
duction and reception in the narrow sense. Yet, in poetological dis-
course, confronted by the demand to suppress all signs of the "artifi-
ciality of art," the canon of social behavior norms replaced aesthetic
norms.
Voltaire's desire is to exclude systematically from

the Temple all types of behavior he considers "
those that parade or even subtly show pretension
narrow, bookish knowledge. Among them are

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l'hotel de Rambouillet," "le t

etourdis," "Le precieux, le p da
and "'Tair fou de l'emportemen
de Rambouillet," "the tumult p
"Preciosity, pedantry, / The st
pretense of passion"). How stri
a norm-was observed is show
the concepts opposed to prec
ture and goAt-bon sens and es
Se deguise en plaisanterie" (136
bore, / Disguises itself as pleas
bolic value of the obligatory
into "tastelessness" as soon as these standards are determined as es-
tablished principles regardless of expectation.12
Even literature in which Nature, goit, esprit, and bon sens are sup
posed to be concretized must not become so fascinating that it goes
beyond the expectable or is experienced as something of indepe
dent value. Therefore, in Voltaire's allegorical narration, the scholar
hold themselves aloof from the realm of "taste," and at first do not
want to take part at all in the pilgrimage to the Temple:
Ce n'est pas 1, grace au Ciel, notre etude:

Le goat n'est rien; nous avons l'habitude
De r~diger au long de point en point
Ce qu'on pensa; mais nous ne pensons point.
(114)
[It is, thank God, not our concern:
For taste is nothing; our habit is
To edit long, from point to point,
Another's thoughts, for we have none.]
The knowledge relevant to the praxis of literary production and liter

ary reception should not become poetology or even philosophical aes
thetics, but should rather remain as close as possible to social expec
tations, so that literature as a catalyst of socialization can stabilize an
perpetuate these expectations.
Was it still possible for such requirements to be represented by an
equated with the names of certain authors? Could there still be wor
worthy of being established as timeless models of bon sens? Or was t
Temple du goait supposed to be a canon metaphor without a canon?
his text Voltaire preserved the structure of the canon, but he
longer dared to represent the works of the great figures of Lat
antiquity as concretizations of his own (historically specific) guidin

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principles. In the Temple we m

of Voltaire's recent past, includ
is clear that he at least sensed
connection of the traditional
norms of social behavior and
was obliged to attribute to the p
Louis XIV an impact that trans
in contrast with it "the spirit o
onized authors of the sevent
n'avaient guere que l'esprit de l
a la derni"re post6rite" (130 f.)
but the spirit of their time, an
the latest generations). The abil
through their works is the att
of the old canon did not have this characteristic because the canon as
an institution did not concern itself with temporalization.
We should of course, emphasize that Voltaire did not go the entire
way from "canon" to "classic." The Temple, inhabited by the authors
of his recent past, remains a thoroughly ambivalent structure. For
although Voltaire speaks of the "timelessness" of the great authors
and works, he is very critical of individual aspects of their writing-
and his criticism does not follow any criteria of taste that are subject
to historical relativization. The way in which he treats the great au-
thors of the age of Louis XIV partly as classics, partly still as authors
of the canon can probably not be reduced to a unified formula. Actu-
ally, the article "Classique" in the Encyclopidie of Diderot and d'Alem-
bert certainly seems much stranger to us and much more paradigma-
tic for the concept of literature in the epoch of the Enlightenment in
France than the Temple du goat. This confirms, by the way, a new
perspective of cultural historians, namely, that the documentary
value of the Encyclopedie is greatest for those who read it as a summa-
tion of the knowledge that was constitutive for the society of the An-
cien Regime-and not as a vast reexamination and questioning of this
knowledge:
CLASSIQUE, adj. (Gramm.) Ce mot ne se dit que des auteurs que l'on expli-
que dans les colleges; les mots & les fagons de parler de ces auteurs servent de
modele auxjeunes gens. On donne particulierement ce nom aux auteurs qui
ont vecu du tem[p]s de la republique, & ceux qui ont 6te contemporains ou
presque contemporains d'Auguste; tels sont Terence, Cesar, Cornelius
N6pos, Cic6ron, Salluste, Virgile, Horace, Phedre, Tite-Live, Ovide, Valere
Maxime, Velleius-Paterculus, Quinte-Curce, Juv6nal, Martial, & Frontin;
auxquels on ajofite Tacite, qui vivoit dans le second siecle, aussi bien que
Pline le jeune, Florus, Suitone, & Justin. ...

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On peut ... donner le nom d'auteur

du siecle de Louis XIV & de celui-ci;
pliquer le nom de classiques aux aut
ment & correctement, tels que Desp
comme le remarque M. de Voltair
edition correcte des auteurs classiqu
[CLASSICAL, adj. (Gram.) This word

the collages; the words and expressi
young people. The name is given in
time of the Republic and those w
Augustus, for example, Terence, C
Virgil, Horace, Phaedrus, Titus Livi
terculus, Quintus Curtius, Juven
added Cornelius Tacitus, who lived
Younger, Florus, Suetonius, & Justi
The name "classical" can be given t
Louis XIV and of the present centur
apply the name "classical" to authors
such as Despr6aux, Racine, etc. It w
the French Academy would make a
with grammatical notes.]
This is an almost ideal illustrati

restructuring under the pressur
tion." As in antiquity (and later,
counter names of authors rather
constitution of the canon as a series of authors' names can be asso-
ciated with the fact that the imitation of exemplary action, objectified in
texts and constantly being reproduced in new texts, created the per
spective of relevance that made the canon an element of educati
and socialization, for competencies of action are bound to people. Th
author could only be left out of consideration (permitting a concen
tration on the works alone) when, after the early nineteenth century
reception and interpretation-instead of writing-as educative valu
moved into the foreground of attention. In the Encyclop&die, howeve
the function of the canon in the mediation of competencies of acti
dominates even more clearly than in Voltaire. More precisely, it is
question of competencies of action typical for the upper strata of so
ety. The place of mediation was the college, and what was taught the
could not be relegated to the uncertainty of a je ne sais quoi. On th
contrary, it was considered desirable to establish the "words an
manner of speech" of the canonical authors in philological editio
and to emphasize them by means of grammatical commentaries. Th
orientation to the "elegant and correct" style of upper class commun

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cation determined the ranking

Louis XIV and of the eighteen
die. Although they are mentio
tion less as "classics" than the
in the canon remains precar
which determines the selection of the canonical from the mass of suc-
cessful "concretizations of the obligatory." The article "Ancien (vieux,
antique)" in the Encyclopidie states: "L'antiquit6 affoiblit les t6moig-
nages, & donne du prix aux monumens" (Antiquity weakens the tes-
timonies and awards value to the monuments).
The elements that could refine the "elegant and correct" language
of the upper classes into "literature" were to be found under the ru-
brics art, poesie, and genre; and the label litterature still designated,
around the middle of the eighteenth century, all objectifications of
elaborated erudition.'4 We read that art is unthinkable without "spec-
ulation," and "speculation" is defined as the induction and comprehen-
sion of the characteristic styles of authors of the canon. Insights
gained through induction can be elevated to the status of rules for
the praxis of literature. The rules, for their part, should function as
prescriptive guides, with the help of which the simple imitation of
nature can progress into the sublime belle nature, as realized in poesie.
Because the canon, with poetic rules as its intermediary, governs only
the constitution of the content (matiere) of the work of art, the authors
must, according to Voltaire in the article "Genre," have recourse to a
second body of rules, namely, the conventions governing the attribu-
tion of stylistic levels to thematics. Yet, as he had already done in the
Temple du goit, Voltaire permitted the elements of a new, evolving
comprehension of literature to interfere with his representation of
the traditional, artistically sanctioned, procedure: "La perfection con-
sisteroit a savoir assortir toujours son style a la matiere qu'on traite;
mais qui peut etre le maitre de son habitude, et ployer a son gre son
g6nie?" (Perfection would consist in knowing how to adapt each style
to the content of the work; but who can be the master of one's habits
and bend genius to will?)
It is precisely this juxtaposition of antique stylistics with the concept
of genius, as well as the lack of desire (manifested by no less a figure
than Voltaire) to "depragmatize" definitively the obligations imposed
by canonical rules, that give evidence of the continued validity of the
canon in the Age of Enlightenment. The reproduction of the lan-
guage and world view of the authors of the canon remained for the
time being, despite all strictures against "artificiality," a requirement for
the reproduction of the behavior and hierarchies of the social classes. From
this perspective it becomes clear that retaining the rule-governed

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dramas of Corneille, Racine, and

midiens du Roi (the former name
initiate their rise to the status o
and intensified the goal of soci
colleges. Whoever considers this
belief in the timelessly superior "
be convinced by the Comidie's pe
how the canon first represented
surely lost importance in the rep
eighteenth century and how, mo
op between the rule-governed re
cally received tragedies from t
continued until, in the early nine
astonishing speed the proportion
have been maintained to the pres
midie Fran(aise. It was only this la
and Moliere classical status.
Such a clarification does not, however, have to contradict the ob-
servation that the presence of the later "classics" in the century of the
Enlightenment, remarkable as it first may seem, also signaled the be-
ginning of the dissolution of the canon of the authors of antiquity.
And there is still one more reason for this presence, which I would at
least like to mention. Voltaire presents in the Temple du gout a short
history of literature and the fine arts that conforms completely to the
schema of the translatio studii, and he ends it with their entrance into
the kingdom of the "Great Louis" and his temple of the Muses. How-
ever, when he immediately makes the anxious remark, "Mais je ne
sais s'il durera" (118) (But I do not know if it will last), he is not
reacting, as one might first assume, to an open, undetermined hori-
zon of the future. Rather, he is "writing himself into" a laudatio tem-
poris acti, which was characteristic of the Enlightenment and entirely
customary whenever the philosophes took a position toward the art of
their time. An implication similar to that of Voltaire's "rhetorical"
fear that the authors of the "age of Louis XIV" might be forgotten
can be seen in the following words from the Encyclopidie article "Lit-
tMrature, " which depict (too pessimistically, we now know) the collapse
of a scholarship oriented on antiquity: "... plusieurs beaux-esprits
pr6tendus ou v6ritables, ont introduit la coutume de condamner,
comme une science de coll ge, les citations de passages grecs & latins,
& toutes les remarques d'6rudition" (... various beaux-esprits,
whether pretended or real, have introduced the custom of condemn-
ing, as an affectation of the collUge, the quoting of Greek and Latin
passages, and all marks of erudition).

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A history of literature and the

was for the philosophes, consciou
terbalance for the teleology of
ticulated in the history of tech
"strategic counterbalance" in
characteristic of the Enlightenm
hand, spread confidence by mea
on the other, felt compelled to
a menacing decadence, a motiv
present-a criticism that, for its
directed toward change in the f
II. Canonical Ashes and Classical Phoenix
In the year 1810, Madame de Stael sent the voluminous m

script of her book De l'Allemagne to her French publisher. Later
before delivery, the entire printing was confiscated by the Minist
Police of the Empire, and the author received the order to leave
country within twenty-four hours. The letter in which this dea
was then extended to "seven or eight days at the most" reach
climax in the sentence: "Il m'a paru que l'air de ce pays-ci ne
convenait point, et nous n'en sommes pas encore reduits a cherch
des moddles dans les peuples que vous admirez"'6 (It was apparent
me that you did not find the atmosphere of this country agreea
and we do not yet feel ourselves reduced to searching for m
among the peoples that you admire). A comment on this repr
offers us an excellent opportunity to illustrate the actual mome
transition from a still feudal understanding of literature to a bo
geois concept. Napoleon's Minister of Police was in error whe
accused Mme. de Stael of wanting to populate the literary can
the French nation with German language authors as "models
imitation. Her book is interesting not because it wished to negat
replace a traditional canon with a new one, but rather becaus
l'Allemagne belongs among those writings of the early nineteenth
tury that are situated between normative poetology and philosop
aesthetics, and concern themselves with, among other things, the
lution of basic structures of the canon as a social institution. All those
cepts which, in the Temple du goft or in the Encyclopidie, had b
used to justify a mode of artistic and literary praxis based essen
upon the reproduction and stabilization of certain modes of b
ior, appeared in De l'Allemagne as concepts counter to the new ide
a literary education of the individual. Gofit is contrasted with the

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of genie and the intimacy of s

dreamy contemplation, power
nesse with truth; imitation with
tion; et l'on pourrait applique
ces ouvrages imit6s ... I'dloge
jument qu'il traine apres lui:
imaginables; mais elle a pourt
(97) (There is no ... life at all
general, to all these esprits .
spoke in praise of his mare, w
combines within her all imagin
one fault-she is dead").
The value of literature is now being measured less by the functions
it performs for society than by its effect on individual readers. Such an
effect is produced through the reception of singular literary works by
individual readers; the reading of texts is no longer- or at least no
longer primarily-seen in reference to the imitation and perpetua-
tion of competence in writing.'8 At the same time, the first begin-
nings of a philosophical aesthetic are taking the place of normative
poetology, an aesthetic which from the start gives primacy to the phe-
nomenological aspect of the reader's experience. The liberation of
the author from the hitherto obligatory orientation to social stan-
dards of behavior (gotii), and from the reproduction of traditional
norms (imitation) is paralleled by the transition of the work from the
status of "exemplarity" to the aura of its "singularity" and to a free-
dom of reception in which the "solitary reader" can find his individu-
al relationship with the work and so form his personality. Against the
horizon of this threefold individualization (author/work/reader),
there was no place left for a canon predicated on normativeness and
on the reproduction of communicative behavior. But without a
canon, without an institutionalized frame of reference for selection
and negation, judgments of literature (together with their formerly
so significant conceptual armament) also lost their gesture of authori-
ty, and even in those cases where a belief in their necessity persisted,
they had to be justified on the basis of an idea (more or less meaning-
ful) or "consensus by free agreement."
Let us return to De l'Allemagne (specifically to the chapter on
Goethe's Faust) for a documentation of this relativization of literary
criticism as we proceed to examine the various aspects of the new
understanding of literature which dissolved the canon as an institu-
tion:
Les critiques dont un tel ouvrage doit etre l'objet sont faciles i pr6voir

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d'avance, ou plut6t c'est le genre

censure plus encore que la manier
tion doit tre jugee comme un r
porte d'ivoire des songes pour les
ment ils frapperaient l'imaginati
pas un bon modele. Soit qu'elle
ddlire de l'esprit ou de la satiete
productions ne se renouvellent
Goethe s'affranchit de toutes l
grande, que de toutes parts elles d
367).
[The criticisms of such a work are easy to foresee. Or rather, it is the genre
itself of this work that may incur censure more than the manner in which it is
written. For such writing should be judged as a dream, and if good taste were
always guarding the ivory gate of dreams, to force them to take the accepted
form, they would rarely capture the imagination. However, the Faust play is
certainly not a good model for others. Whether it be considered as the prod-
uct of the delirium of the spirit or the satiety of reason, such a work should
not be repeated. But when a genius such as that of Goethe frees itself from all
fetters, it has such a multitude of thoughts that they pass and overturn the
boundaries of art in all directions.]
Mme. de Stael deserves our admiration for the accuracy of her ob-
servations and the ability to understand highly complex interdepen-
dencies. It is therefore all the more significant that she sees the con-
trasting concepts of literature in France and Germany (appearing like
leitmotifs in her book) as a concretization of a difference in "genies
nationaux." She traces these "genies" back to different original states
of the national cultures, oriented on France's reception of antiquity
and Germany's closeness to the spiritual world of the Christian Mid-
dle Ages. To be sure, we may assume that she was able, with a very
good conscience, to reject the Police Minister's accusation that her
cultural comparison (which clearly did not reflect an urge to evaluate
or prejudge) had the ultimate intent of suggesting that French litera-
ture should imitate the German. But her outlook did not include
what is self-evident to us as an explanation of the contrasting liter
concepts-the linking of these different approaches to literatur
the "before" and "after" of a profound historical change.
Why this change took place later in France than in Germany is
rather baffling question, since German culture of that time was
backward, both politically and sociologically. I shall content my
here with mentioning a conceivable solution to this self-posed pro
lem. The tendency toward individualization or, better, toward
isolation and self-direction of the individual, seems to have develo

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in many cases as the reverse side

reforms, or, more simply, as a c
individual had been promised sin
this "isolation of the individual,"
covery was made, in France, for
forms of interaction that had been effective in the small circles of
followers of the Enlightenment was not operable on the overall soci
level (and such "enlargement" was exactly what the sociality of th
new states and societies proposed).'9 However, the "retreat from soc
ety" had long since become a mode of self-characterization in those
places-Germany, for example, where the rulers refused to yield
the demands of the Enlightenment. Formulated as a paradox thi
could be stated as follows: In Germany literature became "bourgeois"
earlier than in France for the very reason that the "bourgeois" politi-
cal forms in Germany were slower in coming.
But even the educated contemporaries of Mme. de Stael first ex
pected from art and literature a return to normativeness and th
canon rather than to a gesture toward new liberties. Nor did the cor
onation of Napoleon Bonaparte, staged with such elaborate splendor,
encourage those who were impatiently looking toward a new order:
"Les modes qui, depuis plusieurs annees, avaient l'inconvenient de se
croiser sans cesse, d'etre aussit6t remplac6es que connues, et souvent
de rester imparfaites, vont treis probablement [i.e., after the Emper
or's coronation] prendre une marche r6guliere et redevenir belles et
majestueuses"20 (The fashions which for several years had the disad-
vantage of constant change, of being replaced as soon as they becam
well known, are very probably going to assume [i.e., after the Emper
or's coronation] a regular progression and become once more beauti-
ful and majestic). On the other hand, someone who violated now and
again the norms and the hierarchies of genres (as did the popula
author Mme. de Genlis in her prolific authorship over a period
several decades) did not by any means resort, for justification, to any
premise of temporalization or historical consciousness, or even to ar
guments concerning the history of philosophy, but might, rather,
point out with equanimity how effective such transgressions we
with the audience: ". .. il est a desirer que les auteurs dramatique
en cherchant des sujets, ou en traitant ceux qu'ils ont choisis, n
soient pas domindes par la crainte d'entendre comparees leur piec
B des mdlodrames; car cette crainte gateroit leur talent, et bient
nous n'aurions plus que des tragedies sans effets et sans imagination
Tichons de bien 6crire, de n'etre ni communs ni emphatiques, d
tracer de grands caractares, de bien peindre les passions; mais ti
chons aussi d'inventer des fictions th6itrales, et d'offrir un bea

79.112.38.177 on Thu, 20 May 2021 09:26:40 UTC
spectacle"21 (It is desirable t

themes or in dealing with tho
by the fear of having their p
fear would harm or even d
would be left but tragedies w
Let us try to write well, to b
draw grand characters, to dep
invent fictions that are theat
III. The Persistence of the Classics
What had happened between 1790 and 1810? Or to state the ques-
tion with less artificial innocence: Do the sociohistorical change
the revolutionary years and the Empire explain the shift in this pe
ods' relationship to literature?22 Michel Foucault identifies this as t
period in which the "classical ?pisteme" was replaced by the 6pisteme
the nineteenth and twentieth century (the "Science de l'homme"), an
he mentions as the prerequisites of this process "the temporalizati
of experience" and the "crisis of representation." To be sure, both
the factors cited by Foucault help us to understand the dissolution
the canon that had been part of the old ?pistem`; but on the ot
hand it is clear that referring to the framework requirements for
dissolution of the canon cannot of itself solve the question of the
quirements for elevation of the "classic."
This brings us to a discussion of the self-image of the French Rev
lution, an image which is usually taken much too seriously as a "pi
ture of historical reality." The Revolution had sought to present its
as the fulfillment of the promises and desires of the Enlightenme
This characterization was-and still is- of considerable value for
purposes of legitimation, but at the same time it exposed-and s
exposes-the modern state to a very specific burden of expectat
and a potential for criticism on the part of its citizens. Thus, after
occurrences of only the first year of the Revolution, there was alre
a tension developing between the self-image of the state and the c
zens' everyday experience of its shortcomings, between the sens vo
and the sens vecu,23 between the level of official perception and t
contents of very divergent experiences corresponding to a multit
of new social situations and modes of existence. Instead of the ideolo-
gies of differing social classes, there was now one image of a "new
society" that determined the locus of social self-reference. To be sure,
this shift was by no means the result of a process of reduced differen-
tiation. On the contrary, even the transformation of the society's self-

79.112.38.177 on Thu, 20 May 2021 09:26:40 UTC
reference was part of a comple

led to a situation in which sy
specific in their functions, each
all other systems. This differen
between the one social self-imag
experience in a multiplicity of
promised "freedom of the ind
terms largely as a lack of orien
feudal power and repression wa
rection (and accordingly as an
their delegated power over the
the law was experienced as the
sion in ever new forms.
Since that time-and here will be found our answer to the question
posed at the beginning of this section-forms of literary communica-
tion have no longer corresponded to different social classes or
groups, but rather, they have constituted a particular social subsystem
("state of autonomy"), whose identity developed in connection with
the performance of a new function for the total society. This function
was to mediate between official perceptions (self-representations of
the state) and forms of everyday experience (the citizen's specific ex-
perience of deficiencies). We certainly do not need to go into the
different modes of these mediations and the compensations in the
new "bourgeois" genres of literature that grew out of them. On the
other hand, in order to understand the "classic," which was now rap-
idly becoming institutionalized, it is essential to note the otherwise
trivial circumstance that such mediation and compensation between
levels of social perception could only become effective when the me-
diation was not disclosed to the reader of literature.
At this point in the argument I must emphasize that my intention is
not, in any all-inclusive way, to disparage literature and literary com-
munication or to express suspicions of ideological bias in them-if
only because it would be absurd to attribute "freedom from ideology"
solely to my own perspective (as all "ideological criticism" must of
necessity do). In proposing a thesis concerning the systematically
concealed mediative (or conciliatory) function of literature, I by no
means wish to exclude the possibility that individual processes of re-
ception may produce completely different effects. My concern is
nothing more than a necessarily general typological attribution of a
function to a social subsystem, and for such an attribution I wish to
call once more upon Mme. de Stail as a witness for her time who was
as innocent of scorn for literature as she was of opportunism in re-
gard to the new nation. De l'Allemagne ends with a very remarkable

79.112.38.177 on Thu, 20 May 2021 09:26:40 UTC
chapter entitled "Influence d

fluence of Enthusiasm on Hap
intellectuals of the late twent
tive. The "enthusiasm" that pr
the French nation as an altern
lightenment, "raisonnement"
in the final sentence of the w
world, but would, in the end,
ert" for mankind.
"Enthousiasme"-a concept opposed to the cult of reason and con-
cretized above all as the acceptance of and familiarity with literature
and art-is of course not bound to a prognosis of "human happi-
ness" in the style of the philosophy of the Enlightenment. Individual
happiness, for example the happiness of the solitary reader, is seen
here as the only positive counterbalance to the fate of human exis-
tence. This existence, according to Mme. de Stadl, can be experi-
enced in no other way than in suffering: "L'enthousiasme est de tous
les sentiments celui qui donne le plus de bonheur, le seul qui en
donne veritablement, le seul qui sache nous faire supporter la destin-
ee humaine dans toutes les situations oiu le sort peut nous placer" (Of
all emotions, enthusiasm is the one that gives the most happiness, the
only one that truly gives it, the only one that permits us to endure
human destiny in all the situations where fate has placed us) (II, 309).
This new attitude toward literature and art makes possible a happi-
ness that seems lost in everyday life; it is experienced by Mme. de
Stael (and this confirms our functionalist thesis) as the possibility of
mediation between individual expectation of happiness and a social life
spent in suffering.
Naturally she does not go beyond such descriptions of the experi-
ence of art and literature to pose, for example, any ideological or
critical questions. On the contrary, Mme de Stael very rigorously sep-
arates "reconciliation" (with human and cosmic nature) from any in-
tentionality or reflection. But, through her very adherence to a taboo
that had been imposed since the beginning of the nineteenth century
against questions concerning the function of literature, she indeed
contributed to the securing of a compensatory effect (which was cer-
tainly not an exceptional case): "La nature peut-elle etre sentie par
des hommes sans enthousiasme? Ont-ils pu lui parler de leurs froids
interets, de leurs miserable desirs? Que repondrait la mer et les
6toiles aux vanites 6troites de chaque homme pour chaque jour?"
(Can nature be felt by human beings without enthusiasm? Have they
been able to speak to her of their cold interests, their wretched de-
sires? How would the sea and the stars respond to the narrow vanities
of every human being every day?) (II, 312). Through enthousiasme,

79.112.38.177 on Thu, 20 May 2021 09:26:40 UTC
readers open themselves to the p

art and literature; they are ready to
instead of "enjoying" them. As t
submersion in the Other, they ar
heart" (cf. II, 314). This is precise
tion and formation of the indivi
We could now ask whether, a few decades later, "national con-
sciousness" as a referential horizon for literary communication in
various European societies was not already replacing education of the
individual, which for its part had replaced explicitly class-oriented
norms of behavior after about 1800. If this question were pertinent
to the consideration of canon and classic, we would have to continue
our historical account of the function of literary communication on a
sociohistorical level. But I would rather emphasize that, since Ro-
manticism, literature has been taken by its recipients as an appeal to
their "unalienated individuality"-completely independent of the
functions and results of this attitude in the social sphere. I regard the
constituting of national consciousness as one of the many possible
functions of individual reading in the social sphere.
The development, on the one hand, of the ideal of educating the
individual (so staunchly defended to the present day), and the ap-
pearance, on the other hand, of the new mode of reception, the
"worship of the classics" (which declares as persistently of the "clas-
sics" as of "literature" that "they always have something immediate to
say to us"), do not coincide, although their chronological proximity
alone suggests a functional relationship. In the search for such a con-
nection one is first struck by the fact that the number of French au-
thors whose works appeared in the curriculum of the educational in-
stitutions founded during the Revolution was considerably reduced
after Thermidor, 1794. Writings committed to the cause of the En-
lightenment (regardless of partisan purpose or faction) were no
longer compatible with a concept of literature that was rapidly being
narrowed to the dimensions it has since maintained.24
The cultural bureaucrats of the Empire made a strong effort to
maintain continuity in the theatrical repertories, but a French feuille-
ton critic or foreign visitor could scarcely overlook the fact that the
contents of Corneille's and Racine's tragedies were less and less able
to capture the interest of the audience. The performances degener-
ated into competitive clashes between prominent actors and their re-
spective groups of followers. An especially impressive report of the
situation is that by Ernst Moritz Arndt in Pariser Sommer 1799:
Usually comedies and dramas were given, rarely tragedies, and the benches
were usually empty for the tragedies, either because the taste for them has
dulled as much as in Germany, or because they contain nothing new, and

79.112.38.177 on Thu, 20 May 2021 09:26:40 UTC
most people, after all, make the

tailor, so that "old" in regard to w
as "out of fashion" when they visi
seen only every three or four week
thing was performed almost every
Cid, Mahomet, and Berenice. To ju
confess that most of the artists, w
shallow conception of their roles an
On the other hand, textbook

pedagogical goals endowed the n
past with an aura of radiance s
nent canonical poets of antiquit
at a distance untouched by crit
country been so uninterruptedl
present day. One question, to
pressed, and the recommende
replete with answers to it, furn
question of the specific value, t
preserved in safety from the b
time. They were, and still are,
elegance of speech like the auth
them; as precious vessels for a
add, always reflects those valu
"national character" of which n
themselves as the promoters
bounded genius; and (as if thi
good taste. Among the truly
potpourri of values, recomme
only one example, which has be
tory of French education, from
edited by Noel and Laplace-"an
constituted the standard work
secondary school system":26 "
frant un exercice de lecture s
d'analyse, de d6veloppement or
d'humanit6 et dejustice, de reli
ment ou d'amour du bien public
du g6nie, du talent, de la vertu;
et la morale la plus pure""27 (
exercise in select reading, in m
atorical development. At the sam
ity and justice, in religion, phil
public good, etc. Everything in

79.112.38.177 on Thu, 20 May 2021 09:26:40 UTC
talent, of virtue; everything in

and the purest morality).
Almost all of the many differe
to "canon" or to "classic" are f
ment of particular competen
(whether individual or collectiv
ing out of context Odo Marqu
today's academic philosophers
thors" of the early nineteenth
of general pedagogy."
The profession of "stuntman"
tion-not only for filmmakin
mini universali, especially the d
eration of values, roles, and functions attributed to the "classic
authors" is the expression of an embarrassment for which rationalizations
must be found. The most ponderous of these rationalizations is
marked by discussion of the "eternal and immediate expressiveness"
of the classics, while the most sympathetic refers to their "fruitful
inherent tensions." What condition would French society be in if the
majority of the French- or even only their elite-living today had
actually molded their speech and writing, their thoughts and actions,
after the classics by hearkening to their words or engaging in "fruit-
ful interchange" with them? One can, however, quite easily observe
the socializing effects of the "nurturing of the classics" in a secondary
area: the reading of the classics makes available to the educated a
common repertory of conversational topics and thereby assures for
them the possibility of quick rapport with each other on the referen-
tial level of communication: "Racine does remain Racine."
Concerning the function of the "classics" I shall now present a last
thesis against the rationalizations that go still further and have been
represented and cherished above all by teachers of literature, univer-
sity professors, and theater directors (whose own predecessors, not
accidentally, had invented the rationalizations). This thesis is: Only by
means of the "classics" has literature, now transformed into an autonomous
social subsystem, been able to demonstrate, since the nineteenth century, an
identity noted beyond and within the boundaries of its system.
I hope to have shown that literature can only realize its primary
function of mediation and compensation under the condition that
this function is concealed from society. Thus "literature," having be-
come an autonomous social subsystem, will in fact not gain a percepti-
ble identity by virtue of its function. Likewise, an identity-configura-
tion cannot be derived from recurrent contextual combinations and
patterns, because the social subsystem "literature"-unlike preceding

79.112.38.177 on Thu, 20 May 2021 09:26:40 UTC
literary forms that were spec

the expectations, needs, and d
ents, and, moreover (for re
been subject in the last two c
sure of temporalization, w
change of forms and content
From the fact that "literat
sics," it does not follow conv
long as there are "classics."28
theless to ask why, among all
sics have been left over, fro
ourselves because we have pro
astonishing circumspection, f
tion. A West German publish
difficulty finding a market f
while subsists very well from
ment?) a "Deutscher Klassiker
Parallels here with the unani
the part of the decision-mak
ciation (DFG) cannot, in any c
of self-replacement continue
siker-Verlag" and the edition
man government? When will
their astonishing fear of the
the functions and opportunit
with the phenomenon "lite
which, for one reason or ano
The above reflections are, o
emotional plea for a long ov
of literary studies to "nonlit
process of such a reorientatio
"literature as a part of the p
the horizon of scholarly interes
is as legitimate and interestin
amids, which, after all, has p
for the restitution of the Egy
literary communication wou
sional "nurturing of the class
ary education" perpetuated b
UNIVERSITAT GESAMTHOCHSCHULE SIEGEN
(Translated by Roger C. Norton)

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NOTES
1 See, e.g., Aleida and Jan Assmann, "Kanon und Zensur," in Kanon und Z
Aleida and Jan Assmann (Munich, 1987), pp. 7-27.
2 Special aspects of this extremely complex process are traced in my essa
einer Literaturgeschichte der Franzosischen Revolution," in Die europdische A
III, ed. Jiurgen Stackelberg, Vol. 13 of Neues Handbuch der Literaturwissenschaft
den, 1980), pp. 269-328; "Chants r6volutionnaires, maitrise de l'avenir et
sens collectif," Revue d'histoire moderne et contemporaine, 30 (1983), 235-56;
6toil6 d'or.' Empire als Stilepoche / Epochenstil / Stil / Epoche?" in Zum Pro
Geschichtlichkeit iisthetischer Normen. Die Antike im Wandel des Urteils des 19. Jahr
(Berlin, 1987), pp. 296-94; and (with special attention to the classic/canon
" 'Klassik ist Klassik, eine bewundernswerte Sicherheit des Nichts'? oder: Funktionen
der franz6sischen Literatur des siebsehnten Jahrhunderts nach Siebzehnhundert," in
Franzisische Klassik: Theorie, Literatur, Malerei, ed. Fritz Nies and Karlheinz Stierle (Mu-
nich, 1985), pp. 441-94. The following pages refer to these studies, even when not
specifically indicated.
3 Relevant symptoms of this historical situation are the neologisms "classicisme" and
the German equivalent "Klassik" ("Klassizismus"). See M. Fontius, "'Classique' im 18.
Jahrhundert," in Beitrage zur franzosischen Aufkldrung und zur spanischen Literatur. Fest-
gabe fiur Werner Krauss zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. Werner Bahner (Berlin, 1971), pp.
87-120.
4 Cf. Ministere de l'Education Nationale, Ecole elementaire. Programmes et instruct

(Paris, 1985), p. 37, where reception of the "Classics" and instruction in poetic comp
sition are no longer connected: "Usage pogtique de la langue: M6morisation de poe
emprunt6s a l'ensemble de la poesie frangaise. / Creation po6tique, apres adopti
libre de contraintes" (Poetic usage of language: Memorization of poems taken from
entire body of French poetry. / Poetic creation, after an adoption free of constrain
The text comes from Bernard Cerquiglini, former Directeur des EIcoles in the Fren
Ministry of Education.
5 Roland Barthes, "Racine est Racine," in his Mythologies (Paris, 1957), pp. 109-1
6 Concerning the Querelle as the starting point of historical thought, see Hans Rob
Jauss's study which has long since been deservedly canonized, "Asthetische Norm
und geschichtliche Reflexion in der 'Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes,' " in
edition of M. Perrault, Parallkle des Anciens et des Modernes en ce qui regarde les Arts et
Sciences (Munich, 1964), pp. 8-64.
7 This hiatus in the history of the reception and institutionalization of "histor
thought" is documented in the sources noted by Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, "Mode
Modernitit, Moderne," in Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe. Historisches Lexikon zur politis
sozialen Sprache in Deutschland, ed. Otto Brunner, Werner Conze, and Reinhart Kos
leck (Stuttgart, 1978), IV, 93-131.
8 Franrois-Marie Aronet Voltaire, Le Temple du gotit, ed. E. Carcassonne (Genev
1938), p. 105; hereafter cited in text. All translations are my own, unless otherw
noted.
9 See, e.g., the Chaucer documentation in Aleida and Jan Assmann's "Leitdifferen-
zen." Karl Maurer provides profound typological and historical insights into this the-
matic horizon in "Jenseitige Literaturkritik in Dantes Divina Commedia und anderweit,"
in Literatur in der Gesellschaft des Sptitmittelalters, ed. Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, Vol. 1 of
Begleitreihe zum Grundriss der romanischen Literaturen des Mittelalters (Heidelberg,
1980), pp. 205-52.

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10 Concerning the origin, social stru

theater public in the century of classic
(1951), tr. by Ralph Manheim, in Erich
Literature (1959; rpt. Gloucester, Mass
in the sociology of literature and histoire
11 Cf. Niklas Luhmann, "Das Kunstw
Delfin, 3 (1984), 53.
12 See historical examples for the impe
tions in Niklas Luhmann, "Interaktion in Oberschichten: zur Transformation ihrer
Semantik im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert," in Gesellschaftsstruktur und Semantik. Studien zur
Wissenssoziologie der modernen Gesellschaft, ed. Niklas Luhmann (Frankfurt, 1980), I,
72-161, and Roland Galle, Gestiindnis und Subjektivitiit: Untersuchungen zumfranziisischen
Roman zwischen Klassik und Romantik (Munich, 1986).
13 Denis Diderot, "Classique," in Encyclopidie, ou Dictionnaire raisonne des sciences, des
arts et des mitiers (Paris, 1753), III, 507.
14 See Burkhart Steinwachs, "Epistemologie und Kunsthistorie. Zum Verhiltnis von
'arts et sciences' im aufklairerischen und positivistischen Enzyklopdidismus," in Der Dis-
kurs der Literatur- und Sprachhistorie. Wissenschaftsgeschichte als Innovationsvorgabe, ed.
Bernard Cerquiglini and Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht (Frankfurt, 1983), pp. 73-110.
15 See Gumbrecht, " 'Klassik ist Klassik.' "
16 Anne Louis Germaine de Staeil, De l'Allemagne, ed. Simone Balay6 (Paris, 1968), I,
39; hereafter cited in text. The full text of the Minister's letter was reproduced by
Mme. de Stail in her preface to the first edition of De l'Allemagne (printed in London,
1813). It is well known that Mme. de Stail's understanding of literature, with which we
are concerned, profited greatly from the aesthetics of the early Romantic movement in
Germany, despite a few significant distortions.
17 Individual documentation of the pairs of opposed concepts are found in volume I
of De l'Allemagne: pp. 160, 247 f. (gouat vs. genie and lecteur solitaire); pp. 106, 108, 110,
159 (raison and esprit vs. imagination and songe); p. 95 (finesse vs virite); p. 97 (imitation vs.
vie).
18 Cf. Niklas Luhmann, "Das Kunstwerk und die Selbstreproduktion der Kunst," p.
60: "Only now can the work of art lay full claim to its own singularity, since the unique-
ness of each work of art is the surest guarantee that art will always produce something
new. Only now will there be a theoretical aesthetic that employs specifically focused
conceptualizations."
19 Concerning this "enlargement" (and its failure after the "bourgeois revolutions")
see Niklas Luhmann, "Interaktion in Oberschichten," and his "Friihneuzeitliche
Anthropologie: theoretische L6sungen ffir ein Evolutionsproblem der Gesellschaft," in
Gesellschaftsstruktur und Semantik, pp. 162-234, and Gumbrecht, "Skizze einer Litera-
turgeschichte."
20 Cited from the documentation in Paris sous le Premier Empire. Recueil de documents
pour l'histoire de l'espirt public & Paris, ed. Frangois-Alphonse Aulard (Paris, 1912; rpt.
New York, 1974), I, 326.
21 Stephanie Fdlicite de Genlis, La Feuille des gens du monde, ou, Journal imaginaire
(Paris, 1813), pp. 51 ff.
22 For more details on the following, see Gumbrecht, "Chants revolutionnaires" and
"'Klassik ist Klassik.' "
23 Cf. Mona Ozouf, "La fate-sous la Revolution frangaise," in Faire de l'historie, ed
Jacques Le Goff and Pierre Nora (Paris, 1974), III, 266.
24 Concerning the structural changes in the normative canon after 1794 and the
early history of the literary and educational "nurturing of the classics," see Hei

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Thoma, Aufklirung und nachrevolutioniires

zeption in der franzisischen Literaturgesc
berg, 1976) and Hans-Jiirgen Lfisebrink
tionale.' Zur Genese und Konzeption
wissenschaft in Institutionen der Spatau
der napoleonischen Ara," in Der Diskurs d
25 Ernst Mortiz Arndt, in Pariser Som
199.
26 Liisebrink, " 'Cours de Litterature,'

27 Franrois Nodil and Guislain de Laplace,
as quoted in Liisebrink, p. 127.
28 I discuss this problem in more det
Theorie als Passion. Niklas Luhmann zum 60
1987), pp. 137-80.

79.112.38.177 on Thu, 20 May 2021 09:26:40 UTC

Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht. Phoenix From The Ashes or From Canon To Classic

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