Sterne's Úber-Humor in the work of Jean Paul Richter and Theodor Gottlieb von Hippel
Klaus Vieweg
Humour follows the lex inversa: ‘seine Höllenfahrt bahnet ihm die Himmelfahrt. Er gleicht dem Vogel Merops, welcher zwar dem Himmel den Schwanz zukehrt, aber doch in dieser Richtung in den Himmel auffliegt. Dieser Gaukler trinkt, auf dem Kopfe tanzend, den Nektar hinaufwärts’ [its descent to hell paves its way for an ascent to heaven. It is like the bird Merops, which indeed turns its tail towards heaven but still flies in this position up to heaven. This juggler, while dancing on his head, drinks his nectar upwards].1 Jean Paul, who regarded philosophy, coffee, and chess2 as the basis for his intellectual vitality, thus aptly described the figure of lex inversa, inversion, turning round. It is no accident that the poet often uses the term ‘castling’, which constitutes a favourite move in his literary chess games. It’s well known that in the royal game, castling consists of the one-time, simultaneous repositioning of two pieces — a move that breaches all the rules that otherwise apply: it involves the inversion of the placement of the king and the rook in the form of short or long castling, either to the kingside or to the queenside.3
Jean Paul likewise uses the topos of hysteron proteron, the reversal of the usual order: the later (chronologically or logically) is suddenly the earlier, ‘Hinterst-Zuvörderst’ [the last and foremost] (Goethe). World and consciousness are thus reversed, turned upside down. The descent into hell as the requirement for the ascent to heaven, Merops’s backwards flight to heaven, dancing on its head, and drinking the nectar upwards; castling, or hysteron proteron: the inversion of given relations is expressed in various ways. This is inversion thoroughly in the spirit of Aristophanes, the Olympian of comedy and humour: in radical contrast to Euripides, who lets the noble Bellerophon float away elegantly on proud Pegasus to the gods, the ingenious playwright sends the farmer Trygaeus off to heaven with an enormous dung beetle.
Before going any further, it’s necessary to mention some connotations of the German word ‘umkehren’ (to invert), which may aid our understanding of this thought. The following reflections were developed in the context of Hegel’s treatment of inversion in The Phenomenology of Spirit:4
We may pursue the question of how to understand the figure of inversion in the context of the relationship between poetry and philosophy, between logic and fantasy; or, as Sterne puts it, in the area of creative tension between ‘the wit and the judgment’.5 In self-consciousness, in the knowledge of oneself as a result, we have according to Hegel the identity of certainty and truth: ‘consciousness is itself the truth’.6 Self-consciousness is thus the truth of the preceding modes of consciousness. Now there follows, in the form of scepticism, utter inversion, the radical transformation of the object, and so the appearance completely loses the status of being in the sense of the other, something external, ‘standing-against’ (Gegen-Stehend). The object is exclusively now my representation, and so precisely what Sextus Empiricus means by ‘the appearing’. In Hegel’s words: ‘das Kriterium des Skeptizismus ist das Erscheinende (phainomenon), worunter wir in der Tat seine Erscheinung (phantasias auton), also das Subjektive verstehen’ [the criterion of skepticism [...] is what appears (phainomenon), by which we, in fact, understand its appearance (phantasian autou), hence the subjective].7 The object has become completely my own, in the object I have only knowledge about myself. Following the spirit of Sterne, all stories are true because they are about me. The measure is the appearing, the phainomenon, by which is meant the representation in consciousness, that which is subjective in my representation, phantasia, representation as the involuntarily experienced or suffered, appearance (‘das Scheinen’) as subjective belief that something is true.8 Here, we may note the affinity with the ancient view of phainomenon as way from the sensual, objective appearance (as thing) to the appearing as subjective representation, as fantasy.
The first turning point is the one point along the way at which a particular inversion, a radical transformation, occurs through all forms of the relations of con sciousness to the object. At this point, appearance loses the status of being in the sense of external objecthood; the object is now my representation as the product of imagi nation. The constitutive element of the consciousness, the appearance of the spirit, ‘I’ as absolute negativity, emerges itself as its own gestalt. At one point along this path, at one station, there occurs the ‘Befreiung von dem Gegensatze des Bewußtseins’ [liberation from the opposition of consciousness],9 an ‘inversion’, an about-turn of the consciousness itself. A basic condition of consciousness is indeed its necessary inversion into self-consciousness. Sterne expresses this inversion with the motto of Epictetus that serves as an epigraph on the cover page of Tristram Shandy: ‘We are tormented with the opinions we have of things, and not by things themselves.’
In what follows I will provide some evidence for the relevance of the figures of inversion and reversal, both of which touch upon poetic imagination, for Sternean humour as a form of literary scepticism in the work of the great German Shandeans Jean Paul and Theodor Gottlieb von Hippel.10 The focus is on an essential moment in Shandean humour as ‘Über-Humor’, as Friedrich Nietzsche aptly described this literary form of expression of the ‘freiesten Schriftstellers aller Zeiten’ [freest writer of all time].11 Characteristically, Sterne, Jean Paul, and Hegel name the same heroes of early modern romantic humour: Shakespeare and Cervantes, whose representations of the thought of negativity are poetic, imaginative, and ingenious. The relevant archetype is the fool in King Lear and Falstaff,12 as well as the incomparable knight from Don Quijote de la Mancha — a ‘crazy misfit’ in a topsy-turvy world, a constant adventurer who is at the same time fully confident in his mission and exudes a pyrrhonian peace of mind: ‘Ohne diese reflexionslose Ruhe wär er nicht echt romantisch’ [without this peaceful lack of reflection in regard to the object and outcome of his actions, he would not be genuinely romantic].13 With his ‘Zwillingsgestirn der Torheit’ [twin stars of folly] Cervantes is ‘über dem ganzen Menschengeschlecht’ [above the entire human race].14
The literary form of inversion proves to be an essential facet of Romantic subjectivity. It is this subjectivity which ‘mit ihrer Empfindung und Ansicht, mit dem Recht und der Macht ihres Witzes sich zum Meister der gesamten Wirklichkeit zu erheben weiß, nichts in seinem gewohnten Zusammenhang und seiner Geltung läßt’ [with its feeling and insight, with the right and power of its wit, can rise to mastery of the whole of reality; it leaves nothing in its usual context and in the validity which it has for our usual way of looking at things].15 Humour as ‘comic world spirit’ (‘komische Weltgeist’) represents the inversion of the world, the reversal of life.16 Shandean humour involves the inversion of the sublime; a fascinating, poetic game is played with the seemingly small and insignificant — a game that makes us joyful and free (‘heiter und frei’).17 According to Hegel, fleeting appearance is made stationary; appearance as such is inverted and becomes the actual content. Art itself is now marked by this inversion; it becomes free art (culminating in objective humour) and thus adequate to its concept. Art constitutes freely an unfamiliar, ‘inverted’ order,18 the world of fantasy. In poetry we have ‘eine Gegenfüßlerin des Lebens’ [antipodes of life], a more human-like ascent to heaven; ‘heaven itself descends to us’ (‘fährt der Himmel selbst zu uns herunter’).19 Humour is similar to a glance into a curved mirror; it resembles Hogarth’s travelling comedian, who dries his stockings on the clouds.20 What is aesthetically engaging is the — as far as the object is concerned — disinterested ‘appearance’ (‘Scheinen’):
Vom Schönen wird gleichsam das Scheinen als solches für sich fixiert [...]. Besonders besteht die Kunst darin, der vorhandenen Welt in ihrer partikulären und doch mit den allgemeinen Gesetzen des Scheinens zusammenstimmenden Lebendigkeit mit einem feinen Sinn die momentanen, durchaus wandelbaren Züge ihres Daseins abzulauschen und das Flüchtige treu und wahr festzu-halten.
[The one thing certain about beauty is, as it were, appearance for its own sake, and art is mastery in the portrayal of all the secrets of this ever profounder pure appearance of external realities. Especially does art consist in heeding with a sharp eye the momentary and ever changing traits of the present world in the details of its life, which yet harmonize with the universal laws of aesthetic appearance, and always faithfully and truly keeping hold of what is most fleeting].21
Romantic-modern art involves a double inversion; it is a kind of double check:22 with true humour, art triumphs over transience (vanitas); it is primarily capable of repre sent ing the substantial in the momentary and transitory, in supposed insignificance.
Goethe seizes upon Sterne’s phrase ‘trifle upon the road’ and speaks of ‘ungestörten Hinschlendern’ [meandering along undisturbed], of singularities (‘Eigenheiten’) that are erroneous on the outside, but true on the inside. And as long as they actively express themselves, they are called ruling passions: ‘das Allgemeine wird dadurch spezifiziert, und in dem Allerwunderlichsten blickt immer noch etwas Verstand, Vernunft und Wohlwollen hindurch, das uns anzieht und fesselt’ [through them the general is particularized and in the most peculiar there is still perceptible some understanding, reason, and good will that attracts and fascinates us].23 The merely subjective appearance is promoted to the actual content: a deeper coherence can be illustrated through the supposedly disordered detail; the spiritual can be imaged in the detached; the highest concept appears in its sensual realisation. Second, this substance is deprived of its power over coincidence and transitoriness, so to speak — Vive la Bagatelle!24
All reflections call continually for a Sternean virtue: for representation should be digressive and progressive — that is, both at the same time.25 Or, as Sterne puts it in his peerless metaphor of a long castling: ‘when my aunt Dinah and the coachman came across us, and led us a vagary some millions of miles into the very heart of the planetary system [...]’.26
‘But heavens!’ — thus proclaims the chessplayer Jean Paul — ‘Welche Spiele könnten wir gewinnen, wenn wir mit unsern einsiedlerischen Ideen rochieren könnten!’ [what games we might win if we could only castle with our monastic ideas!].27 The ‘Rochieren der Sätze’ [castling of the clauses] allows for the lightening to come after the thunder and is capable of overturning the usual world order.28 Shandean world-humour provides this chance; it is, for Jean Paul, the greatest antithesis to life itself. As an anagram of nature, it is by nature a ‘Geister- und Götterläugner’ [denier of spirits and gods], an inverter, a rebel: ‘Er achtet und verachtet nichts; alles ist ihm gleich’ [It reveres and scorns nothing; everything is the same to it].29 It is situated between poesie and philosophy and ‘will nichts als sich und spielt ums Spiel’ [desires nothing but itself and plays for the sake of play].30 It emerges as a liberator — the laugher is endlessly great,31 as ‘echte Dichtkunst’ [true poetic art], humour grants mankind ‘Freilassung’ [emancipation].32
The Richterian lex inversa contains precisely these dimensions: Jean Paul describes the adventures of fantasy and language as a ‘free hysteron proteron’ — free in the sense of the desired inversion of the familiar and usual, free in the sense of the ‘Narrensprung der Fantasie’ [fool’s leap of fantasy];33 in volume three of Tristram Shandy, the author announces to the puzzled reader that the introduction to the novel now follows. In this way everything has to be romantic, in the sense of upended. The lyrical spirit ‘wirft sie immer auf das eigne Ich als den Hohlspiegel der Welt zurück’ [always throws the humorists back at themselves as the concave mirror of the world].34 Humour is fundamentally self-referential; it has no other goal but its own existence; it does not engage in dialogues with the world, but rather — just like Strepsiades in the Aristophenian clouds — only in conversation with itself. As Richter says, ‘Wer sollte daher nicht, wie Montaigne oder Sterne schreiben zu dürfen wünschen? Witz ist allemal unstät; er bleibt nie auf einer Fährte; [...] weil er, gleichgültig gegen die wahren Verhältnisse der Dinge, blos scheinbaren nachläuft und sich durch die Verfolgung seines Fangs in alle krummen Umgänge desselben verirrt’ [who should not wish to be allowed to write like Montaigne and Sterne? Humour is always in flux; it never remains on one track; for, indifferent to the true relationships of things, it seems to lag behind and lose its way through the pursuit of its catch in all of its devious dealings].35 According to Hegel, everything that strives to gain a concrete form in reality or in the outer world ‘durch die Macht subjektiver Einfälle, Gedankenblitze, frappanter Auffassungsweisen in sich zerfallen lassen und aufgelöst [wird]’ [destroys and dissolves itself by the power of subjective notions, flashes of thought, striking modes of interpretation].36 The presentation becomes a ‘Spiel mit den Gegenständen, ein Verrücken und Verkehren des Stoffs sowie ein Herüber-und-Hinüberschwingen, ein Kreuz-und-Querfahren subjektiver Äußerungen und Benehmungen, durch welche der Autor sich selbst wie seine Gegenstände preisgibt’ [sporting with the topics, a derangement and per version of the material, and a rambling to and fro, a criss-cross movement of sub jective expressions, views, and attitudes whereby the author sacrifices himself and his topics alike].37 This self-relinquishing, self-reversing humorist appears in Richterian imagery as a self-parodist, his own court jester or quartet of masked Italian comedians.38 Therein lies the now decisive role of the literary ‘I’, the subjectivity of the poet, and the related inversion of the dominance of tragedy over comedy: the soccus, the lowly shoe of comedy, now stands higher than the cothurnus, the high shoe of tragedy. In terms of the development of subjectivity, Aristophanes is above Euripides, Trygaeus above Bellerophontes, and the dung beetle above Pegasus. At the same time, Sterne is able to change Shakespeare’s ‘bloße Sukzession des Pathetischen und Komischen gar in Simultaneum beider’ [simple succession of the pathetic and the comic into a simultaneum of the two].39 Now, too, folly — folly’s freedom, and the fool’s wisdom — are understood as necessarily intrinsic; negativity is immanent. The humorist posits himself as self-parodist and his own court jester; he carries on conversations with himself and represents only himself.
En passant,40 a further kind of inversion related to chess playing, should be mentioned. The two pieces that start beside the king and the queen (one moving diagonally on the white squares, the other diagonally on the black squares)41 have contrasting names in French and in English: in French, fou, the fool; in English, bishop. Jean Paul’s comments on this contrast are spot on: first, the fool is the ‘umgekehrte Hofprediger’ [court preacher reversed]; second, the ‘ernste geistliche Stand’ [serious clerical estate] has produced the greatest comic writers — Rabelais, Swift, and Sterne.42
Even language tries to sublate itself: things should be thrown back into some kind of anonymity in which they had slept through the naming process.43 Jean Paul reminds us of the ‘reine grammatische Inversion’ [pure grammatical inversion], which is absent from French and English, but characteristic of German. This ‘grammatische[r] Selbstmord des Ich’ [grammatical suicide of the first person pronoun] expresses itself in the fact that monarchs, princes, or university principals can ‘humbly’ use the pluralis majestatis ‘we’ instead of ‘I’; and the addresses ‘he’ or ‘she’ may be used to exclude the reference to the self which ‘thou’ and ‘you’ imply. ‘Es gab Zeiten, wo vielleicht in ganz Deutschland kein Brief mit einem Ich auf die Post kam’ [There have been times when perhaps in all of Germany no letter passed through the mails containing the word ‘I’].44 Out of this peculiarity, advantages grew for Romantic humour.45 First, because Romantic humour cannot abstain from using the first-person pronoun — ‘I’ must play first violin (the masters of humour must both poetically posit themselves as fools and refer to themselves) — the linguistic omission of the first-person pronoun sets up the comic punchline. Second, to refrain from using ‘I’ generates the humoristic ‘parody of parody’ [Parodie der Parodie]: much like the ‘köstlichen Musäus in seinen physiognomischen Reisen als wahren pittoresken Lustreisen des Komus und des Lesers’ [delightful Musäus, whose Physiognomic Journeys are true picturesque excursions of Comus and the reader].46 A grandiose, comical resurrection of the ‘displaced first-person pronoun’ can be found in the work of Johann Gottlieb von Hippel: Lebensläufe begins provocatively and effectively with the single word ‘Ich’ [I], which should convey the exclusive content of the novel.
Ice provides — in a reversal — warmth, if it’s used as a magnifying glass.47 Sterne reasons long and deliberately about all kinds of matters, until he finally decides that there is not one word of truth in it anyway. Jean Paul sees an extreme example of the constant whirl of upturning and reverse polarity in one of Ludwig Tieck’s representations of inversion: a piece in which the ‘handelnden Personen sich zuletzt nur für geschriebene und für Non-sense halten’ [the dramatis personae finally believe themselves to be merely fictive non-entities].48 In inversion, the true condition of art itself is articulated. In the following section, castling shall be more thoroughly explained and illustrated by looking at some characteristic examples and variations of the concept.
One of the ur-fathers of comedy, Lucian, had suggested writing from the standpoint of Hades. Sterne explicitly references this forerunner.49 As I mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, Jean Paul imagines Merops flying backwards to heaven and drinking nectar upside down, i.e. towards heaven. Instead of the noble, winged steed in Euripides, a stinking dung beetle flies to heaven in Aristophanes’ Peace. In Tristram Shandy we find lengthy depictions of scholastic sophistry about Luther’s descent to hell (Slawkenbergius’s tale in Vol. IV). Jean Paul, probably also thinking of Sterne’s references to the reformer, mentions Luther’s calling our will a lex inversa in a bad sense — on which basis Luther scornfully hurled at Erasmus’s Praise of Folly the comment ‘spiritus sanctus non est scepticus’ [the Holy Spirit is not a sceptic].50 It is well known that the devil is a decisive literary figure for Jean Paul. Satan is, according to Friedrich Schlegel, a ‘favourite of German culture’, for he embodies the ‘unbedingte Willkürlichkeit und Absichtlichkeit’ [unconditioned willfulness and purposefulness] that is evil and symbolises ‘Liebhaberei am Vernichten, Verwirren und Verführen’ [enthusiasm for destruction, confusion and temptation].51 Jean Paul sees the devil as ‘die wahre verkehrte Welt der göttlichen Welt, als den großen Welt-Schatten [...], den größten Humorist und whimsical man’ [the true reversed world of the divine world, the great world shadow, as the greatest humorist and whimsical man].52 But he has a double identity: as the fallen Angel of God and bringer of light, the devil shows (already in Milton) strength of character, a free self-assertiveness, agility, acumen, and ingenuity — in a way he is indispensable, a court jester who speaks truth, the ‘court preacher reversed’ in the Kingdom of God.53 Richter sees devils in this superlative form à la Milton as ‘umgekehrte Götter’ [inverted gods].54 Satan’s seductive power grows out of this brilliance of the negative, similar to the case of the naked and highly erotic ironist as she-devil.55 But at the same time, Satan is marked by his absolute vanity, total complacency, pure arbitrariness, indifference, and boredom with the merely negative. As just this figure, reduced to himself, as pure negativity without the positive, he remains an isolani56 for both Jean Paul and Hegel: an unaesthetic, boring person, ‘denn sein Lachen hätte zu viel Pein; es gliche dem bunten Gewande der — Guillotinierten’ [for his laugh would have too much pain; it would be like the colorful flowery garment of the — guillotined].57 For ‘[d]as nur Negative ist überhaupt in sich matt und platt und läßt uns leer oder stößt uns zurück’ [the purely negative is in itself dull and flat and therefore leaves us empty or else repels us]; like the Furies of hatred, evil is ‘im allgemeinen in sich kahl und gehaltlos, weil aus demselben nichts als selber nur Negatives, Zerstörung und Unglück herauskommt’ [in general inherently cold and worthless, because nothing comes of it except what is purely negative, just destruction and misfortune], ‘ohne affirmative Selbständigkeit und Halt’ [without affirmative independence and stability].58 The only thing that remains, as in the case of the guillotine, is la mort. This ‘Einförmigkeit ist höchst langweilig’ [uniformity is highly tedious],59 in Hegel’s words: ‘das Böse als solches aber, Neid, Feigheit und Niederträchtigkeit sind und bleiben nur widrig. Der Teufel für sich ist deshalb eine schlechte, ästhetisch unbrauchbare Figur; denn er ist nichts als die Lüge in sich selbst und deshalb eine höchst prosaische Person’ [evil as such, envy, cowardice, and baseness are and remain purely repugnant. Thus the devil in himself is a bad figure, aesthetically impracticable; for he is nothing but the father of lies and therefore an extremely prosaic person].60 The devil can only play his role as the greatest humorist as the personification of the death of God, as the declaration of the indispensability of negativity, of the evil in life. ‘Was ihr das Böse nennt, das Negative, ist zwar sein eigentlich Element, aber die Täuschung, den Irrtum, das Böse wurden dem Guten und Wahren “zur Gefährtin” mitgegeben, als Momente des freien Willens, welcher das Gute und Böse in sich begreift’ [What you call evil, the negative, is indeed its own element, but the delusion, the misapprehension, evil are given to the good and the true as partners, as an instance of free will in which good and evil conceive of each other].61 The ‘great world shadow’, the prince of darkness, the ‘shadow kingdom’ can only be taken as the second moment (talk of the devil already signifies the second) and refers necessarily to the light of the first.62
In the concave mirror of humour, reversal makes no exception for the devil. Jean Paul describes this self-inversion aptly in the following passage: ‘Ungefähr vor drei Wochen hab’ ich, der Teufel, auf der Redoute einige Zweifel gegen meine eigne Existenz [...] an den Tag gelegt’ [About three weeks ago I, the devil, revealed on the parapet a few doubts about my own existence]. The grandmaster of doubt is compelled to apply this doubt to himself, humour applied to the greatest humorist. And the poet caps it off with yet another inversion: that which he calls the return [Gegenschritt] or antidote [Gegengift]. It is the notorious turning of the tables, the humoresque of the humoresque, or the irony of irony: ‘gegen den neuesten Anti-Egoismus des Satans, oder die Gründe, womit der Teufel in eigner Person an einem öffentlichen Orte seine Existenz abzuläugnen sich erfrecht hat’ [against the newest anti-egotism of Satan, or the reasons why the devil in his own person had the audacity to deny his own existence in a public place]. The devil possessed, similar to irony as ‘göttliche Frechheit’ [divine impudence], the unbelievable impertinence to question his own being — which ought to be revealed in inverse as the anti-egoism of the absolute egoist.63
We can find parallels in the work of Theodor von Hippel: ‘wer gen Himmel fahren will, muß erst Höllenfahrt halten. Wer Gott erkennen will, erkenne sich erst selbst’ [whoever wants to go to heaven must first set a course for hell. Whoever wants to recognize God must first recognize himself].64 This sounds at least ambiguous, for we could also read: Self-awareness is the descent to hell. The nosce te ipsum, the gnothi seauton, the inscription from the Temple of Apollo in Delphi, remains equally polyvalent itself — precisely through the use of the word ‘I’ [Ich], that begins von Hippel’s Lebensläufe. In any case, heaven and hell are inverted, and the journey begins first in the opposite direction; only at the first destination, in the Kingdom of Lucifer, does the second inversion occur.
Von Hippel’s novel, which was highly esteemed by Jean Paul, as well as Hölderlin and Hegel, carries the title Lebensläufe nach aufsteigender Linie. On the first page, the author characterizes himself as a ‘Schriftsteller in aufsteigender Linie’ [writer from bottom up]. However, this statement is turned on its head just a few lines later: he wants to tell the lives ‘Berg ab’ [downhill], for ‘wir jetzo nur Berg auf zu gehen gewohnt sind’ [we are now only used to climbing upwards]. This habit should be upended, the course of life should be told from the grave to the cradle, from death to life. The grandfather should rather die as he is born. A noteworthy comparison suggests itself here to Deleuze’s concept of the rhizome: roots, branches, and leaves, his plants all have the same structure: ‘Begrabe die Zweige in die Erde, und lass die Wurzel in die frei Luft gen Himmel sehen’ [bury the branches in the earth and let the roots look up to heaven in the free air].65 Here, we are clearly going against the grain: the roots grow towards heaven, not into the earth. Similar ideas may be found in the work of Jean Paul: in the crossings and traversals of nature, it is not possible to differentiate between river and shore.
The similarities to Sterne are of course readily noticeable, in the central topic of birth and the course of life in Tristram Shandy. After the death of Tristram in Vol. 1, Ch. 12, after the famous black page and the graveside speech ‘Alas, poor YORICK!’, Chapter 13 introduces an inversion with the midwife: ‘It is so long since the reader of this rhapsodical work has been parted from the midwife, that it is high time to mention her again to him’. With this, we are cast back into the birth of Tristram Shandy, laden with problems, through the crux in which the name is inverted, right up to the actual act of procreation. The latter necessarily requires attention and caution, for in addition to the choice of name and the nature of the birth, it determines the abilities of the born child. In all three respects, there were considerable difficulties: first, babies are usually born head-first, that is, in reverse into the world. They are pulled out into the world by the upper halves of their bodies, which has the dangerous potential for causing bodily injury. In the case of Tristram Shandy, instead of a head-first birth, the appropriately inverse feet-first birth is recommended. The whole thing must be turned from its head to feet for the salvation of the soul. Second, the essential naming of the newest Shandy is based on a fatal error, a misunderstanding that not least of all brings with it a trail of theological problems. Third, the act of procreation was burdened in a bizarre manner: as we read right at the start in Vol. I, Ch. 1, ‘Pray, my dear, quoth my mother, have you not forgot to wind up the clock?––––Good G––! cried my father, making an exclamation, but taking care to moderate his voice at the same time,––––Did ever woman, since the creation of the world, interrupt a man with such a silly question?’. In any case, the three named ‘mortgages’ must have had dire effects on the life of Tristram, so that not even a bishop’s cap could fit his misshapen head — this is what the dying hero tells us in his final sentence.
The clock in the Shandy household plays an important role, that is to say, a reversing one: through fantasy, proclaims Tristram, through ‘an unhappy association of ideas which have no connection in nature, it so fell out at length, that my poor mother could never hear the said clock wound up,––but the thoughts of some other things unavoidably popped into her head––& vice versâ’.66 The clock was an example for the most meticulous punctuality and pedantry of Walter Shandy, who in fact became a ‘slave’ to the clock in the end.67
It is to this general pedantry that von Hippel’s comedy Der Mann nach der Uhr oder der ordentliche Mann refers. This piece alludes to various matters of fact, as well as people: Sterne, and Kant and his English friend Joseph Green. The erotic, sexual dimension of Sterne’s work is difficult to miss. Indeed, Sterne opened many doors and broke many taboos in this area — a fact that was, however, clearly registered neither in the work of Jean Paul, nor in von Hippel’s comedy. The representative of this radical pedantry is Orbil, who stands for the English merchant and Kant’s friend, Green: a true whimsical man, as von Hippel notes in the introduction. The English clock is a symbol of pedantry. With this symbol, von Hippel also takes aim at Kant, who appears in the comedy as Magister Blasius and is presented as a character similar to Green. According to von Hippel, Kantian philosophy has taken a too studious approach to life. A reference to the young Kant would also be possible, however — one who knew Tristram Shandy and would have quite clearly understood the allusion to the clock in a letter he received from Maria Charlotta Jacobi: ‘nun gut wir erwarten sie, dan wird auch meine Uhr aufgezogen’ [good, then, I will expect you, and then my clock will be wound as well].68 The Kant biographer Manfred Kühn recognizes the sexual references, but he considers them to be only a playful, literary comment.69 However, despite the absence of absolutely certain evidence, this interpretation seems implausible. As Kühn’s own biography shows, the young author from Königsberg might very well have written a Critica della donna pura next to his Kritik der reinen Vernunft.
In terms of travel, von Hippel plays with another form of inversion that derides the new style of travel literature: the travels are no longer those of Gulliver and Yorick; journeys are also imagined through one’s own room, or during midday in the provinces of France. Since Laurence Sterne ‘eine empfindsame Reise angestellt, so läßt halb Deutschland anspannen, und ein guter Teil ist schon unterwegs [...]. Der Reisekoffer wird zu- und aufgeschlossen. Man erzählt sich seinen Lebenslauf’ [engaged in a sentimental journey, half of Germany braces itself, and a good part is already on its way [...]. [T]he suitcase is closed and opened. People tell their own life story].70 Sterne pulled — as Jean Paul wrote acerbically about some German writers — ‘hinter sich einen langen wässerigen Kometenschweif damals sogenannter (jetzt ungen annter) Humoristen’ [a long, watery comet tail of then famous (and now anony mous) humorists].71 The author from Königsberg lapidarily counter-checks (also perhaps an allusion to the stay-at-home friend, Kant) this general obsession with travelling and stylised adventuring with a reference to the Romantic, pyrr-honian calm and composure: ‘ich bin beständig zu Hause — seitdem die Welt entdeckt ist, ist sie ein Theil von unserem Geburtsorte’ [I am invariably at home; since the world has been discovered, it has been a part of our birthplace].72
For Jean Paul, certain forms of music and carnival, the humorous festivals of fools, are examples of the cheekiness of inverting, annihilating humour as the expression of ‘Welt-Verachtung’ [contempt for the world] — that is, right next to scepticism, as represented by the Leipzig pedagogue Ernst Platner. Jean Paul recognizes a fundamental law of humour in the idea of negativity: the ‘vernichtende oder unendliche Idee des Humors’ [annihilating or infinite idea of humour],73 humour stands for a form of aesthetic-poetic scepticism,74 for the advocatus diaboli that belongs inextricably to modern art.75 In the constitution of antithetics, Richter sees an essential instance of humour, and the resulting indecision reveals itself to be a basic concept of real scepticism: in the language of chess, the draw.76 Jean Paul characterizes hell by the name of negativity as ‘Brandstätte der Endlichkeit’ [cinders of the finite]:77 everything finite is sacrificed, a kind of metaphysical gambit.78 (By the way: the sceptic who appears in Goethe’s Faust confirms the affinity of scepticism with the devil in a surprising manner: ‘Auf Teufel reimt der Zweifel nur’ [Devil and doubt both start with D]).79 Music, like that of Haydn, ‘ganze Tonreihen durch fremde vernichtet und zwischen Pianissimo und Fortissimo, Presto und Andante wechselnd gestürmt’ [destroys entire tonal sequences by introducing an extraneous key and storms alternately between pianissimo and fortissimo, presto and andante].80 Musical terminology includes the humouresque and the scherzo, as well as counterpoint. Medieval festivals of fools also enter into this context, which involved a temporary, carnevelesque eversion and inversion of all existing order. With an ‘inner spiritual masquerade’, the idea was to reverse ‘the worldly and the spiritual’ and to invert ‘social ranks and moral values’, to reduce all to ‘one great equality and freedom of joy’ (‘mit einer inneren geistigen Maskerade [...] Weltliches und Geistliches, Stände und Sitte umzukehren, in der großen Gleichheit und Freiheit der Freude’.81 Hegel clearly articulates the critical, upsetting dimension of comedy and humour, the ‘Kehren gegen den bisher allein gültigen Gehalt’ [turn against the content that was alone valid hitherto], against all political and cultural hardenings and ossifications: Aristophanes turned against his own present, Lucian against the whole of the Greek past, Ariosto and Cervantes against medieval chivalry.82 Sterne himself had more political force and clarity in this respect than his German successors Jean Paul and von Hippel, for example when he directly and humorously attacks the inversion of politics: ‘in the foreground of this picture, a statesman turning the political wheel, like a brute, the wrong way round — against the stream of corruption, — by heaven! — instead of with it.’83 Humour, with its free hystera protera, proves itself to be a decisive component of Romanticism, as the free dimension of modern art, which is characterized by the inclusion of true humour. Modern subjectivity requires free humour, felicitous humour as an intrinsic moment — without this there can be no genuine representation of frankness and intellectual ‘robust goodness’ [Sauwohlsei n].84 ‘Yorick-Sterne war der schönste Geist, der je gewirkt hat, wer ihn liest, fühlt sich sogleich frei und schön, sein Humor ist unnachahmlich, und nicht jeder Humor befreit die Seele’ [Yorick-Sterne was the most beautiful spirit that ever lived; who reads him immediately feels free and beautiful; his humour is inimitable, and not all humour frees the soul].85
In twentieth-century literature, there is one author who explicitly draws a connection between Hegel and Sterne in terms of the motive of inversion: Robert Menasse, who like Hegel has a favourite book in Tristram Shandy. Menasse’s character Judith Katz lectures on Tristram’s narrative, which attempts to move towards his own birth, towards the cradle. For the Hegelian philosopher Leo Singer, in love with Judith, this is the opportunity to write a Phänomenologie der Entgeisterung [Phenomenology of Despiritualization], in other words, to invert Hegel’s Phänomenologie, to read backwards.86 Menasse entitles one of his novels with the terminology of modern aviation, in the truest sense of lex inversa: Schubumkehr [Thrust Reversal]. Hegel might very well have read Menasse’s instructive and sentimental expeditions to the world of Sterne with pleasure — with Be-Geisterung [in-spiration] the trilogy of Ent-Geisterung [De-Spiritualization]: the novels Selige Zeiten, brüchige Welt [Blessed Times, Brittle World], Sinnliche Gewißheit [Sensuous Certainty] and Schubumkehr [Thrust Reversal]. It is well known that Hegel favoured the imagery of the circle, ascent as descent into the ground, the return to the cradle.
In a dialogue with Leo Singer, Judith cries out, incredulously, ‘Leo, heute nicht über Meister Hegel?’ [Leo, today it’s not about master Hegel?]. Leo answers, ‘Ausgangspunkt und Ziel sind identisch geworden, wir sind zum Anfang zurück-gekehrt, das heißt, wir sind am Ende’ [The starting point and the destination have become identical. We have returned to the beginning. This means that we are at the end].87 Or, in other words: we are in the middle of the singer’s club in faraway Brazil with the ambiguous name ‘Bar jeder Hoffnung’ [Bar of Every Hope], a kind of Mecca for checkmated negativists. There, we might find Leo Singer at any given time, and he would point at us with his finger and yell, ‘To hell with you, to hell with all Kantians, analytical philosophers and all other false prophets! Turn round! Mount Rosinante and ride to the humorous world flights of fantasy, to the new Don Quixoteries! March onto the ship of fools! Follow William of Baskerville! Read the second book of Aristotle’s Poetics that he found, the one about comedy! Find your way at last to Shandean humour and enjoy laughing! Read Hegel and Laurence Sterne!’
1. Jean Paul Richter, Vorschule der Ästhetik, ed. by Norbert Miller (Munich: Carl Hanser, 1963), p. 129. Cited hereafter as Vorschule. Translation: Jean Paul Richter, Horn of Oberon: John Paul Richter’s School for Aesthetics, trans. by Margaret R. Hale (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, [1804], 1973), pp. 91–92. Cited hereafter as School.
2. With regard to the royal game, too, Jean Paul works with reversal: ‘Das Feld der Wirklichkeit ist eben ein in Felder geschachtes Brett’ [The field of reality is a game board divided into squares.] (Vorschule, p. 37; School, p. 20).
3. Jean Paul would have felt like he was in heaven in many cafes in Seattle, where the man of letters and the philosopher can enjoy a game of chess over a cup of good coffee. The author of this essay wishes to thank these cafes, where the logic-laden loneliness of life writing at a desk was ‘inverted’ to the conviviality of intellectual play.
4. For further discussion, see: Klaus Vieweg, ‘Hegels lange Rochade — Die “Umkehrung des Bewußtseins selbst” ’, in Skepsis und Freiheit (Munich: Fink, 2007), pp. 85–108.
5. Tristram Shandy, Vol. III, Ch. 20, p. 174: The Author’s Preface. In this chapter, all quotations from the novel are taken from The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, ed. by Melyvn New and Joan New (London: Penguin, 2003).
6. Cf. G. W. F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, in the online translation by Terry Pinkard: <http://www.terrypinkard.weebly.com/phenomenology-of-spirit-page.html> [accessed 2 November 2012].
7. See ibid., and G. W. F. Hegel, ‘Relationship of Skepticism to Philosophy, Exposition of its Different Modifications and Comparison to the Latest Form with the Ancient One’, in Between Kant and Hegel. Texts in the Development of Post-Kantian Idealism, trans. by H. S. Harris (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1985), p. 321. Original: ‘Verhältnis des Skeptizismus zur Philosophie. Darstellung seiner verschiedenen Modifikationen und Vergleichung des neuesten mit dem alten’, in Werke in zwanzig Bänden, ed. by Eva Moldenhauer and Karl Markus Michel (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1969–71), II, 224. This edition is known as the ‘Theoriewerkausgabe’, hereafter cited using the abbreviation TWA.
8. Klaus Vieweg, ‘Die “Umkehrung des Bewußtseins selbst” ’; cf. Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Scepticism, trans. by Julia Annas and Jonathan Barnes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), Book I, § 19, 22 (pp. 46–47, 49).
9. Hegel, Wissenschaft der Logik, in TWA V, 45; Hegel, The Science of Logic, ed. and trans. by George di Giovanni (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 29.
10. See also Klaus Vieweg, ‘Entdeckungsreisen und humoristischer Roman — Hegel und Laurence Sterne’, in Klaus Vieweg, Skepsis und Freiheit. Hegel über den Skeptizismus zwischen Philosophie und Literatur (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 2007), pp. 215–34; Klaus Vieweg, ‘Humor als ver-sinnlichte Skepsis — Hegel und Jean Paul’, in Das Geistige und das Sinnliche in der Kunst, ed. by Dieter Wandschneider (Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 2005), pp. 113–22.
11. Friedrich Nietzsche, Menschliches, Allzumenschliches, in Werke in drei Bänden, ed. by Karl Schlechta (Munich: Carl Hanser, 1977), I, p. 780.
12. Wie groß steht der edle Geist Shakespeare da, wenn er den humoristischen Falstaff zum Korreferenten seines tollen Sündenlebens anstellt! (Vorschule, p. 135) [How great does the noble spirit of Shakespeare appear when he uses the humorous Falstaff as commentator of his wild life of sin!] (School, p. 96).
13. G. W. F. Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Ästhetik [1835–38], TWA 14, 218; hereafter cited as Ästhetik. Translation: Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art, trans. by T. M. Knox (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), pp. 591–92. Hereafter cited as Aesthetics.
14. Vorschule, p. 126; School, p. 89.
15. Ästhetik, p. 222; Aesthetics, p. 595.
16. Vorschule, p. 161 (and cf. pp. 128f.); School, p. 117.
17. Vorschule, p. 115; cf. School, p. 29 (translation altered).
18. Ästhetik, p. 227; Aesthetics, p. 600.
19. Jean Paul, Kleine Nachschule zur ästhetischen Vorschule, in Vorschule, pp. 512f.
20. Vorschule, p. 125 (cf. p. 111); School, pp. 77–78.
21. Ästhetik, p. 227; Aesthetics, pp. 598–99.
22. Two pieces attack the king with one move at the same time. Such a move is particularly effective because the attacking pieces are then ‘safe’. (If one of the two were taken, the king would be in check, which is against the rules. The only option open to the attacked monarch is escape.)
23. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, ‘Lorenz Sterne’ (1826), Goethes Werke (Hamburger Ausgabe in 14 Bänden), ed. by Erich Trunz (Munich: Beck, 1978), XII, p. 346. Translation from Sterne: The Critical Heritage, ed. by Alan B. Howes (London: Routledge, 1974), pp. 432–33. ‘To trifle upon the road’: Tristram Shandy, Vol. I, Ch. 6.
24. ‘Onkel Tobys Feldzüge machen nicht etwa den Onkel lächerlich oder Ludwig XIV. allein, — sondern sie sind die Allegorie aller menschlichen Liebhaberei und des in jedem Menschenkopfe wie in einem Hutfutteral aufbewahrten Kindskopfes’ [Uncle Toby’s campaigns do not make Toby himself or Louis XIV alone ridiculous; they are the allegory of human hobbyhorses. There is a child’s head kept in every man’s head as in a hatbox] (Vorschule, p. 126; School, p. 89).
25. Sterne, Tristram Shandy, Vol. I, Ch. 22, p. 64.
26. Sterne, Tristram Shandy, Vol. I, Ch. 22, p. 63.
27. Vorschule, p. 200; School, p. 142.
28. Vorschule, p. 180; School, p. 128.
29. Vorschule, p. 201; School, p. 143.
30. Ibid.
31. Vorschule, p. 116; School, p. 81.
32. Kleine Nachschule, p. 469.
33. Friedrich Theodor Vischer, Ueber das Erhabene und Komische: ein Beitrag zu der Philosophie des Schönen (Stuttgart: Imle & Krauß, 1837), p. 204.
34. Kleine Nachschule, p. 470.
35. Jean Paul Richter, ‘Ueber Mich’ (1782), in Jean Pauls Sämmtliche Werke, LXII, Dreizehnte Lieferung, Zweiter Band (Berlin: G. Reimer, 1837): Bemerkungen über uns närrische Menschen. 1782. 1792., p. 1.
36. Ästhetik, p. 229; Aesthetics, p. 601.
37. Ibid.
38. Klaus Vieweg, ‘Humor als ver-sinnlichte Skepsis — Hegel und Jean Paul’, p. 121; cf. Vorschule, p. 133; School, p. 94.
39. Vorschule, p. 105; School, p. 73.
40. Taking an opponent’s pawn en passant is a special possibility in chess: a pawn standing on its fifth rank can capture a pawn that has just ‘passed by’ it by moving two squares forward (from the second to fourth row) — that is, as if this latter pawn had only moved forward one square! Another exception consists of the fact that the opposing piece (the pawn that moved two squares forward) can only be taken from its present position directly on the next turn.
41. The fianchetto: Uncle Toby surely would have liked the effective positioning of the bishop or fou at the flank in his military game exercises.
42. School, pp. 116, 82; Vorschule, pp. 160, 117.
43. Vorschule, p. 135; School, p. 96.
44. Vorschule, pp. 135f.; School, pp. 96–97.
45. Referring to the translation of Tristram Shandy: ‘Bis in kleine Sprachteilchen hinein wirkte diese Humoristik des Ich [...] Bode übersetzte das myself, himself oft mit Ich oder Er selber’ [The humor of the self extends even to small parts of speech [...] Bode often therefore translates ‘myself’ and ‘himself’ into German by ‘Ich selber’ or ‘er selber’.] (Vorschule, p. 136; School, p. 97).
46. Vorschule, p. 135; School, p. 96.
47. Cf. Jean Paul Richter, Dr. Katzenbergers Badegeschichte, in Jean Pauls Sämmtliche Werke, LI, Erste Lieferung, Erster Band (Berlin: G. Reimer, 1828), p. 37.
48. Vorschule, p. 131; School, p. 93.
49. ‘By the tomb stone of Lucian—’: Tristram Shandy, Vol. III, Ch. 19, p. 173.
50. Cf. Vorschule, p. 129; School, p. 91. Richter says the following about Erasmus: ‘Ebenso verwerf lich ist Erasmus’ Selbstrezensentin, die Narrheit, erstlich als ein leeres abstraktes Ich, d. h. als Nicht-Ich, und dann weil statt lyrischen Humors oder strenger Ironie die Narrheit nur Kollegienhefte der Weisheit aufsagt, die aus dem Souffleurloch noch lauter vorschreiet als jene Kolumbine selber’: Vorschule, p. 135. [Just as reprehensible as the pseudo-humorist is Erasmus’s self-critic, Folly: first, she is an empty, abstract self, i.e., a non-self; and second, instead of lyric humor or strict irony she recites only from the primers of Wisdom, who shouts even louder from the prompter’s box than Columbine herself]: School, p. 96.
51. Kritische-Friedrich-Schlegel-Ausgabe, gen. ed. Ernst Behler, 35 vols to date (Paderborn: Schöningh, 1958-), vol 2, p. 235.
52. Vorschule, p. 130; School, p. 92, my emphasis.
53. Vorschule, p. 160; School, p. 116.
54. Vorschule, p. 80; School, p. 53.
55. See Klaus Vieweg, ‘Moralität, Ironie, Skeptizismus’, in Skeptizismus und Philosophie. Kant, Fichte, Hegel, ed by Elena Ficara (Fichte-Studien vol. 39) (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2012), pp. 149–168.
56. In chess, an entirely isolated pawn that does not have any more partner-pawns in the neighboring files and therefore often becomes a weakness. But even such a pawn has the baton of a marshall in its knapsack: on the last row of the board, it can undergo an ‘inversion’ to become the strongest figure: a queen.
57. School, p. 92; Vorschule, p. 130).
58. Ästhetik, pp. 288f.; Aesthetics, p. 222.
59. Hegel, Wastebook: TWA II, 547.
60. Ästhetik, pp. 288f.; Aesthetics, p. 222.
61. Hegel, Wastebook: TWA II, p. 556.
62. Verification by any means requires the acceptance of the possibility of at least a second case, a second variation, an otherness; it is therefore twofold, a duality — this is how Hegel initially uses the word ‘doubt’ (‘Zwei-fel’). The Italian verb ‘dubitare’ [to doubt] can arguably also be traced back to two: duo, diversi generis; diversitas expresses variety, difference. ‘Zweifel’ [doubt] thus includes the possibility of otherness, the differentiation, and implies the negation of the first.
63. Jean Paul, Unpartheiische Beleuchtung und Abfertigung der vorzüglichsten Einwürfe womit Ihre Hochwürden meine auf der neulichen Maskerade geäusserte Meinung von der Unwahrscheinlichkeit meiner Existenz schon zum zweitenmale haben umstossen wollen; auf Verlangen meiner Freunde abgefasset und zum Druck befördert vom Teufel, Jean Paul, Sämtliche Werke, Abt. II, Erster Band, p. 927.
64. Theodor Gottlieb von Hippel, Lebensläufe nach Aufsteigender Linie nebst Beylagen A, B, C [1778– 81], 3 vols, in Th. G. v. Hippel’s Sämtliche Werke, Erster Band (Berlin: G. Reimer, 1828), p. 1.
65. Ibid.
66. Tristram Shandy, Vol. I, Ch. 4.
67. Tristram Shandy, Vol. I, Ch. 3.
68. Cited in Manfred Kuehn, Kant. Eine Biographie (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2004), p. 199. English: Kant: A Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 166. 9. Ibid.
70. Theodor Gottlieb von Hippel, Über die Ehe, ed. by Günter de Bruyn (Berlin: Der Morgen, 1979).
71. Vorschule, p. 127; School, p. 90.
72. Von Hippel, Lebensläufe, p. 8.
73. School, p. 91; Vorschule, p. 129.
74. Cf. Klaus Vieweg, ‘Heiterer Leichtsinn und fröhlicher Scharfsinn — Zu Hegels Verständnis von Komik und Humor als Formen ästhetisch-poetischer Skepsis’, in Die geschichtliche Bedeutung der Kunst und die Bestimmung der Künste, ed. by Annemarie Gethmann-Siefert (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2002), pp. 297–310.
75. Friedrich Theodor Vischer recognizes in comedy ‘die in die Sprache des Zwerchfells übersetzte negative Seite der Hegel’schen Methode’ [the negative side of Hegelian method translated into the language of side-splitting humor]. Ueber das Erhabene und Komische, ein Beitrag zur Philosophie des Schönen (Stuttgart: Imle & Krauß, 1837), p. 188.
76. See Klaus Vieweg, Philosophie des Remis. Der junge Hegel und das ‘Gespenst des Skepticismus’ (Munich: Fink, 1999).
77. Vorschule, p. 93; School, p. 64.
78. Gambit in chess: the sacrifice of material for an advantageous position. This word probably first appeared in a book by the Spanish chessmaster Ruy Lopez (1561). Pascal’s Gambit is well known in the field of philosophy.
79. Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Faust. 1. Teil, in: J. W. Goethe. Werke (Berliner Ausgabe), VIII, Berlin 1978, p. 290. Faust: Part One, trans. by David Luke (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998 [1987]), p. 138 (line 4360).
80. Vorschule, p. 132; School, p. 93.
81. Vorschule, p. 132; School, p. 94.
82. Ästhetik, p. 234; Aesthetics, p. 605.
83. Tristram Shandy, Vol III, Ch. 20, p. 178.
84. Cf. Klaus Vieweg, ‘Laurence Sterne und Hegel’.
85. Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Aus Makariens Archiv, Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre (1828); translation from Sterne: The Critical Heritage, ed. by Alan B. Howes (London: Routledge, 1974), p. 433.
86. Robert Menasse, Phänomenologie der Entgeisterung (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1994).
87. Robert Menasse, Sinnliche Gewiβheit (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1996), p. 165.