This view, illuminated by the creator in sturdy characterful tones, comprises the philosophical coronary heart of the story, a robust and passionate examine of the Sturmundranghian era thought-about within the framework of “Goethe’s age”, that’s, of that of Central Germany. The interval of European tradition, proven between 1770 and 1830, by which the strain between absurdity, romanticism, classicism and humanism discovered a terrifying synthesis in that author, who, to make use of the phrases of Nietzsche, “was not a German however a European occasion: the grandiose. making an attempt to overcome the 18th century”.
Sturm und Drang is primarily interpreted by Korff as an irrational response to the enlightenment. But past this type of hermeneutic dualism, which scientific literature in the present day typically reads in very completely different phrases, there are a lot of particulars that make Korff’s work nonetheless essential in its deep and complete interpretation: in literary works, each poetic and narrative, the motion of many-sided worldviews that enters the scene within the elementary intersection of contemporary artwork and mental development Europeans are caught, torn between rational and irrational concepts, sensual and non secular, immanent and transcendent, progressive and reactionary concepts. The technique is “Geistgeschichte”, “historical past of the spirit”, which goals to acknowledge the forces driving the era of excessive literature in dialectically conflicting very important forces. A technique that might be mixed with the precept of “Humanity”, to ascertain a renewed relationship between one thing and the universe with the intention to rebuild a necessary humanism. Here, the determine of Faust appears to be a logo of a coaching journey that’s virtually the start, the place the “finite” and the “infinite” appear to be the essential beliefs.
A painful Titanism
Crossing the primary expressions of irrationality, reviewing its manifestations within the discipline of artwork, philosophy, faith and poetry, Korff involves reveal the issue of life, realizing throughout the Sturm und Drang and its tragic titanism a essential instinct of abysmal issues, the scope of which might be totally realized solely within the century the 20th, with the mediation of Nietzschean Dionysism and the vitality of Wilhelm Dilthey, however which might already discover a doable answer within the spirit of German classicism. The theme might be explored in depth within the second quantity of the quadrilogy, entitled “Classics”, to be launched quickly.
In a method marked by continuity and distinction, the important circumstances of early Romanticism are embodied in a specific historic second, rising uniformly within the chains of common symbolic references. Here the Korffian want – even for this strict pupil of Goethe – reminds the tradition of the time of the significance and urgency of the “historical past of concepts” based mostly on hermeneutics, versus notional and easy anecdotal historical past. With all of the dangers related to any such motion.
Hermann August Korff, The spirit of Goethe’s age, edited by Giampiero Moretti, vol. I: Sturm und Drang, Marsilio, Venice 2023