Digressions for Future Instalments: Some Reflections on Jean Paul's Epic Outlook

Author(s): Timothy J. Casey

Source: The Modern Language Review, Vol. 85, No. 4 (Oct., 1990), pp. 866-878
Published by: Modern Humanities Research Association
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3732645
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 DIGRESSIONS FOR FUTURE INSTALMENTS: SOME

REFLECTIONS ON JEAN PAUL'S EPIC OUTLOOK

It is a fair assumption that most Germanists have, at one time or another, read a
little Jean Paul and that most of those have concluded that life is too short to devote
the time necessary for a study in depth, let alone to assign the study ofJean Paul to
students. His extravagant mannerism is a barrier. He knew himself that he was
writing, as he said, not so much for a minority as for a minimity.1 There is, for
example, his metaphor mania. The claim he wished to have inscribed on his
tombstone was that he had invented a record number of metaphors. To a large
extent the difficulty is the sheer amount of material. In spite of Germany's
reputation for cultural expenditure, one can safely say that the complete Jean Paul
material will never be published, although so much has been done since the first
comprehensive edition in sixty-five volumes and although the volumes of the
Historical-Critical Edition, begun in 1927, still continue to appear. Jean Paul
himself said his ambition was to do what no writer had done before: to set down in
writing every thought that ever came into his head.2
As far as his novels are concerned one has to follow not only the rambling narrator
but the course of the narrative as well. He learned the art of digression from Sterne,
but Sterne is all digression, whereas the Jean Paul novel, that compound of
sentiment and intrigue, mongrel mixture of the baroque and the gothic, 'oh dear
yes', the Jean Paul novel tells a story - beginning with Die unsichtbare Loge, the
'geborene Ruine' as he called it, where one still does not know at the end what the
invisible lodge is (HkA I, I, I3). Right at the beginning of his novel-writing career
Jean Paul notes in his diary the need to confuse the reader (HkA i, II, xxii).
Sometimes the reader does not know who is who or who is whose child, but then the
characters, including the narrator in the case of Hesperus, often do not know
themselves. Even in the case of a more straightforward novel like SiebenkdsJean Paul
has so contrived that in speaking of it we have to refer to the main characters by their
wrong names; giving them their true names would muddle us hopelessly.
Jean Paul claimed to hate all story telling that was not an occasion for a thousand
notions. What is narrated, he says, is only an opportunity to talk about everything
else (HkA 3, I, 375; II, 177). Yet he also insists on story telling as the beginning of
education, on history as the sum of innumerable stories, approving, for example, of
DrJohnson's preference for biographies.3 The universal is present in the particular
rather than vice versa. He quotes Plotinus to the effect that the lower in station
understand the higher better than the other way around, or quotes the theologians
who claim that man comprehends the angel, but the angel does not comprehend
man (W, vII, 465). His point of departure is the individual, concrete case and he
regularly defends the particular, which is one reason why he comes into conflict with

1 Letter to Christian Otto, Historisch-kritische Ausgabe, edited by E. Berend, Dritte Abteilung, Erster
Band: Briefe I78o-93 (Berlin, 1956), p. 397. This three-section edition is hereafter referred to as HkA,
followed by section number, volume number, and page reference.
2 Wahrheit ausJean Pauls Leben, 8 vols, edited by Christian Otto and Ernst Forster (I826/33), II, . See also
Berend's foreword to the first volume of HkA, Zweite Abteilung (NachlaB) (Weimar, 1928).
3 Werkausgabe (= Werke in zwolfiBanden, edited by Norbert Miller (Munich, 1975) ), I, I25; vII, 778-83.
This edition is hereafter referred to as W, followed by volume number and page reference.

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 TIMOTHY J. CASEY 867

all the orthodoxies: aesthetic, theological, and philosophical. In the medieval

Universalienstreit Jean Paul would certainly be on the side of the nominalists.
Dorothee S6lle rightly points out that the hundreds of footnotes and analogies and
asides in Jean Paul regularly document facts and figures that are ammunition
against the political or some other establishment order.4 There is often subversive
method behind the apparently random particulars, but of course he details largely
for the fun of it, often taking his material from the theological area; the sort of
material, for example, that Catholic Italy provides. Thus among his most frequent
references are to the liquefaction of the blood of San Gennaro, the patron saint of
Naples, or to the house of the Blessed Virgin, now in Loreto, having been
miraculously transported there from Nazareth. His footnotes give learned references
to such a comparatively well-known fact as that the entrance to purgatory is in
Ireland or to the less well-known fact that the entrance to hell is in the north of
Scotland. With his anglophile sympathies he recalls approvingly the case of the
Englishman who left all his money to his friends for an annual anniversary dinner on
condition that each time they should first come to his grave, address him by name,
and call out 'How do you do?'. From learned sources like the nine-volume Loci
communes theologici of the Jena professor Johannes Gerhardus he likes to extract
teaching of the Church Fathers such as that women on the Last Day will rise again as
men (W, III, 472-73; HkA 2, IV, 528-29).
There is no need to labour the satirical sociological point of details like this. In
general the asides and footnotes of Jean Paul, the byways and by-the-ways of his
discourse, are acutely pointed, often startlingly modern. One might illustrate this
with two examples, one each from the two areas that have been the most prominent
areas of concern in recent years: the threat to the environment and the role of
women. The end of Schmelzle provides one example (W, xi, 65-66). Des Feldpredigers
Schmelzle Reise nach Flitz is Attila Schmelzle's endearingly elaborate self-defence
against the accusation of cowardice, for Schmelzle has a fearful imagination,
anticipates trouble at every turn, and lives in a constant state of worry. However, in
the story, he does reach home safely and might well have spent a contented evening
had he not happened to open a volume of Lichtenberg:
So gelangten wir beide liebend nach Hause; und ich hatte vielleicht zum sch6nen Tage noch
den Nachsommer einer herrlichen Nachmitternacht erlebt, hatte mich nicht der Teufel iiber
Lichtenbergs neunten Band, und zwar auf die 2o6te Seite gefiihret, wo dieses steht: 'Es ware
doch m6glich, daB einmal unsere Chemiker aufein Mittel gerieten, unsere Luft plotzlich zu
zersetzen durch eine Art von Ferment. So konnte die Welt untergehen.'

Schmelzle continues:

Ach, ja wahrlich! Da die Erdkugel in der groBern Luftkugel eingekapselt steckt: so erfind
bloB ein chemischer Spitzbube aufirgendeiner fernsten Spitzbubeninsel oder in Neuhollan
ein Zersetz-Mittel fuir die Luft, dem ahnlich, was etwa ein Feuerfunke fuir einen Pulverkarre
ist: in wenig Stunden packt mich und uns in Flatz der ungeheuere herschnaubende
Weltsturm bei der Gurgel, mein Atemholen und dergleichen ist ein groBer Rabenstein m
Galgen geworden, wo sogar das Vieh krepieret - Wurm- und Wanzenmittel, Bradleysch
Ameisenpfluige und Rattenpulver und Wolfstreiben und Viehsterbekassen sind im Wel
Schwaden, im Welt-Sterb dann nicht sonderlich mehr vonnoten, und der Teufel hat all
geholt in der Bartholomaus-Nacht, wo man das verfluchte 'Ferment' zufallig erfunden.

4 Dorothee S6lle, Realisation (Darmstadt, 1973), p. 217.

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868 Jean Paul's Epic Outlook

The other example is from a work which is itself a digression, t

Vorrede zur zweiten Auflage des Quintus Fixlein, a rambling acc
which he came not to write the preface to the second edition of
Fixlein. He intended to write it on a walk from Hofto Bayreuth,
various ways, among others by the lady he espies in a car
Eventually he catches up with her and she turns out to be one of
from a preface to another of his works, on her way to the ma
opposite her in the vis a vis the narrator contemplates her beam
inwardly: 'O sei nicht so fr6hlich, armes Opfer! ...' (W, VII, 33-

- Du bist zu etwas Besserem geschaffen, aber du wirst es nicht werd

Weyermann nichts kann, dem es der Staat selber nicht besser mach
deine von denJahren entblatterte Seele voll eingedorrter Knospen antre
sie unter einen giinstigern Himmelstrich verpflanzen. - Warum
betriiben? Seh' ichs nichtjede Woche, wie man Seelen opfert, sobald s
Korper umhaben? Wenn dann nun die reichste beste Seele unter der
mit dem unerwiderten Herzen, mit versagten Wiinschen, mit de
schmihten Anlagen eingesenket wird ins iibermauerte Burgverlie
freilich besonders von Gliick zu sagen hat, wenn das Verlies ke
Oubliette oder wenn gar der Mann ein sanfter Kanker ist, den die Ba
kann -: so fuihlt sich die Arme ungemein wohl dabei - die goldn
schlosser der friihern Jahre erblassen bald und zerfallen unvermerk
ungesehen iber ihren bew6lkten und unterirdischen Lebenstag
andern, und unter Schmerzen und Pflichten k6mmt die Dunkle an de
Daseins an - und sie hat es nie erfahren, wessen sie wiirdig war, und
vergessen, was sie sonst in der Morgenr6te etwan haben wollte: nur z
wo ein ausgegrabenes altes G6tterbild eines sonst angebeteten Herzen
Musik oder ein Buch auf den Winterschlaf des Herzens einigen w
werfen, da regt sie sich und blickt beklommen und schlaftrunken umh
esja anders um mich her - es ist aber wohl schon lange, und ich glau
damals geirrt.' Und dann schlaft sie ruhig wieder ein ....
Wahrlich, ihr Eltern und Manner, ich stelle dieses qualende Gemald
der wunden Seele, der es gleicht, eine Trane mehr abpresse, sond
gemalten Wunden, damit ihr die wahren heilt und euere Marterinstr

ForJean Paul, as for D6blin, the first duty of the novelist is the
to the point of superfluity and pretended surfeit. In Titan
narrator. There Jean Paul, the fictive narrator, has in his emp
spies at every court and centre in Germany, whose daily dis
with the all-too-detailed material for his novel (W, v, 61-62). B
of the essence. The spice of his work is the variety of life as it
roaming imagination. His last novel, Der Komet, is a novel abou
hero, Nikolaus, has a special gift, the 'gift of being many', some
from his Catholic mother, for Catholics, in Jean Paul's view
lively imagination. Jean Paul himself, or the fictive Jean Paul
many roles and refers to the fact that he is sometimes the Hol
sometimes Cain or the Governor of the Bastille or a negro
wandering Jew. This is obviously comedy, but comedy with a m
role-playing narrator learns from what he calls his higher com
'Gerechtigkeit und Demut', the lesson of similarity, so reluctan
the chrysalis, the caterpillar, the butterfly, were they to consid
as little admit their relationship as do the three estates (W, vII

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 TIMOTHY J. CASEY 869

Even apart from the play-acting role-play, Jean Paul narrates at length and,
judged by Schiller's criterion of epic lingering (letter to Goethe 21.4. I 797), is the
most epic of writers. In Flegeljahre he gives advance notice of his lectures at the next
Leipzig Fair on the topic of the epic's endlessness and why the epic day is like a
Reichstag (W, IV, 924-25). He professes to despise what he calls the French manner
of narration and says, a la Thomas Mann, that only the elaborate is interesting (W, I,
29, 56I). Inevitably he quotes Cicero who, when asked which speech of
Demosthenes was the best, replied 'the longest' (HkA 3, I, 147). 'The more the
better' is Jean Paul's motto. In Die unsichtbare Loge he gives the tutor of his future
children the advice 'Reden Sie mit meinen Lieben nie kurz, nie allgemein, sondern
sinnlich und erzahlen Sie so ausfiihrlich wie VoB seine Idyllen' (W,, I, 27).
Of course, he also means 'the more, the merrier'. The prolixity is an element of the
comedy. Sometimes he purports to be annoyed over so many characters who appear
only to disappear, or he reminds us in footnotes who is who, or complains that his
German readers are unable to retain anything. 'Ist aufLeser zu bauen?' Where he is
more optimistic he says in his perverse fashion: 'Man wird sich vielleicht erinnern
oder hat es wenigstens vergessen, daB' (W, I, 153, 164, 607-08; xn, 981). At times he
admits defeat himself. In Dr Katzenberger he quotes a remark he read somewhere in
his own work, he does not know where. He cannot be expected to remember
everything and besides he reads his work rarely, though he has, he says, read
Hesperus three times, twice in the eighteenth century and once in the nineteenth. Also
in Katzenberger he divides his readers into two distinct parties (W, xi, 104-05,
2I4-15). The first he calls 'Kehraus-Leser' ...
welche an Geschichten wie an Fr6schen, nur den Hinterteil verspeisen .... Personen, die nur
so lange bei philosophierenden und scherzenden Autoren bleiben, als das Erzahlen dauert,
wie die Nordamerikaner nur so lange dem Predigen der Heidenbekehrer zuhorchen, als sie
Branntwein bekommen. Sie m6gen denn reisen, diese Epilogiker. Was hier bei mir bleibt -
die zweite Partei -, dies sind eben meine Leute, Personen von einer gewissen Denkart, die ich
am langen Seile der Liebe hinter mir nachziehe.

The Jean Paul narrative is in general loosely constructed, its elements often held
together by little more than the dashes with which his work is punctuated and which
are the most striking feature on the printed page. The narrative composition of the
chapter headed Das Leben in Flegeljahre is a sequence of paratactic paragraphs: 'er
kam ... er sah ... er ging ... er h6rte ... er traf...' (W, IV, 874-75). The motto that
headed the first novel was the aphorism: 'Der Mensch ist der groBe Gedankenstrich
im Buche der Natur.' This gnomic observation is typically typographical. Jean
Paul's element is the world of books and the 'I' that he constantly parades in his
work is above all a bookman and bookmaker. The printer in Der Jubelsenior carries
around in his pocket half a pound of punctuation dashes as well as a large supply of
capital R's - for Richter, among other reasons. The subject-matter of the foreword
to Levana is errata and the many characters who are responsible for them: the author,
the transcriber, the lector, the printer, the reader, the several patron saints of the
book-trade, the Aegyptian God of the Alphabet (W, vii, 528-29; x, I285-86). The
joyful, sorrowful, and glorious mysteries of the writing passion are Jean Paul's
central theme. When death comes, he says in DerJubelsenior, he will beg for time for a
last appendix. By the time death comes he may be 'lebenssatt', but he will not be
'schreibenssatt' and his writing finger will retain its motus vitales, like the little finger
that was all of Atys that Jupiter could breathe life into. One of his latest and best

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870 Jean Paul's Epic Outlook

works is Das Leben Fibels, the mock-heroic biography of the author of the Fibel or
ABC primer with whichJean Paul had learned to read. Here he describes thejoys of
writing and remarks how difficult it is to convey the thrill of authorship to readers
who have not had at least a mortuary card printed (W, VII, 458; XI, 461).
The digressions, the appendices, and the prefaces are central in this eccentric
work, above all perhaps the prefaces, which he writes last: a happy dispensation, as
he remarks, for the reader, rushing to the end, will surely run into the author as he
writes his foreword (W, xi, 656-57). In the same bizarre way, in Biographische
Belustigungen, he begins the 'Vorrede': 'Ich schreibe sie bloB, damit man nicht das
erste Kapitel fiir eine nimmt und nicht dieses iiberhiipft sondern diese Vorrede.' In
the same work Jean Paul is taken to court by his readers for the offence of never
narrating in a straightforward manner. The case against him is lost, which is not
surprising as the litigating readers are represented in court byJean Paul himself, as
in the case he cites of the thrifty Swiss farmer, who, when an action was taken against
him by a neighbour and it happened to be harvest time, asked the neighbour to
represent him in court. With appropriate elaboration Jean Paul here defends his
narrative mixture, which is no different from life itself, or is like the narrative
mixture of the Koran, which was due, he says, to the angel dictating too quickly. In
this court case Jean Paul simultaneously plays all roles: the litigating parties, the
advocates, theJudge, defending his work as a Simultaneum and himself as a collective
College of Cardinals. He claims to behave no less legally than the German Emperor,
who as Hungarian King waged war against himself as Austrian Duke while
preserving his neutrality as Emperor (W, VII, 265, 347-62). There are many similar
examples ofJean Paul's self-defence. His manner of narration is like the river Seine
in Paris, which meanders for fifteen miles to cover a distance of a quarter of a mile, to
the benefit of the local inhabitants. Or it is like the physician Dr Radcliffe, who
evaded the pursuing hypochondriac so long that the patient was cured by the time
he caught up with him (W, viii, 895). One is not surprised to learn that the very last
work of Jean Paul, the last work that he handed in to the printer, bore the title
Ausschweifefuir kinftige Fortsetzungen (HkA I, xvIII, xxxviii).
This method of endless continuation is stubbornly practised and preached by
Jean Paul, if necessary at the cost of cohesion. In Hesperus the hero, Viktor, in his
funeral oration over himself, says of himself: 'Wer suchte weniger als er strengen
Zusammenhang der Gedanken, der den Deutschen verleitet, gute durch schlechte
zu verkitten und mehr Mortel als Quader zu brauchen.' The particularizing
pointillistic method reflects life as Siebenkas defines it: 'unser aus farbigen Minuten,
Staubchen, Tropfen, Diinsten und Punkten zusammengekoppeltes Mosaikgemalde
des Lebens' (W, II, 937-38; III, 107).
This manner of looking on life, insisting on entirety if necessary at the expense of
unity, involves a certain openness, a provisional and interim quality that is an aspect
ofJean Paul's modernity. Georg Lukacs defines the novel thus: 'Der Roman ist die
Epopoe eines Zeitalters, fir das die extensive Totalitat des Lebens nicht mehr
sinnfallig gegeben ist, f'ir das die Lebensimmanenz des Sinnes zum Problem
geworden ist und das dennoch die Gesinnung zur Totalitit hat.'5 Both the problem-
atic starting-point and the abiding 'Gesinnung zur Totalitit' aptly apply to Jean
Paul. He insists on all-inclusiveness but the elements cannot be assembled on a story

5 Georg Lukacs, 'Die Theorie des Romans', in Schriften zur Literatursoziologie (Neuwied, 1968), p. 44.

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 TIMOTHY J. CASEY 871

line. Even with respect to his own characteristics he does not normally attempt to
contain them all within a single character. One of the most obvious features of his
characterizations is the way in which he distributes different tendencies within
himself among the characters of his novels. In all his work the nearest approach to a
comprehensive self-portrait is in Viktor, whose funeral oration on his lack of
'Zusammenhang' was quoted above. This is the aspect of Viktor most emphasized.
He is simultaneously a sentimental, a satirical, and a philosophical soul. He is both
'launisch' and 'besonnen'. He is, indeed, inconsistent, made up of heterogenous
faculties, and, in line withJean Paul's republican sympathies resembles, we are told,
a republic as contrasted with despotism, in being restless by nature (W, I, 583, 590).
In one of his early aphorisms Jean Paul had said: 'Keiner denkt mehr frei, der ein
System hat' (HkA 2, v, 64). This remained his conviction and is one of the most
persistent themes. In Hesperus Viktor writes to his mentor Emanuel, as it might be
Jean Paul writing to his closest friend, the Jewish business man Emanuel Osmond:
'Ware nicht der Mensch sogar in seinen Begierden und Wiinschen so systematisch
- ging er nicht uberall aufZuriindungen sowohl seiner Arkadien als des Reichs der
Wahrheit aus: so konnt er gliicklich sein und mutig genug zur Weisheit' (W, ii, 982).
Learning to live with approximation is the gist of that letter. We are fractions, not
units, and the best we can do is to bring denominator and numerator as close
together as may be.
This anti-system strain inJean Paul is so strong that it is easy, I think, to misread
him at times as if he were an opponent rather than a proponent of the Enlighten-
ment. He remains hostile, indeed downright intolerant, towards any kind of
romantic irrationalism. If, in matters of politics, education, or religion, he so much
stresses faith and feeling and imagination, if, for example, in the education of
children he warns against too great an appeal to reason, it is because forJean Paul
reasons too easily become dogmas and dogmas are deadly. One of the most
interesting documents in this connexion is the Brief iiber die Philosophie. An meinen
erstgeborenen Sohn Hans Paul, den er aufder Universitit zu lesen hat, written before he had
any children and ironic in view of the tragic story of his son Max (W, vIII, IO14-24).
The starting-point of the letter is the need to distrust 'konsequente Systeme' and the
danger of deducing their truth from their harmony. 'Der logische Zusammenhang
eines Systems und die Leichtigkeit womit es recht viele Erscheinungen beantwortet,
sei dir kein Zeichen seiner Richtigkeit.' It becomes obvious that he is thinking of
systems like Catholic scholasticism or Lutheran orthodoxy, but he widens it into an
attack on the prevailing philosophy of German idealism, which he calls negative
philosophy. The negative philosophers have taken over pure reason, although
without his learning, from their Holy Father in K6nigsberg, hoping, by excluding
everything else, to keep their critical ark afloat, as Franklin advises buoying up a
sinking ship with the help of empty, well-stoppered bottles. They abhor the positive
and concrete, having an aesthetic horror pleni. Like the lemmings of Norway they
regard objects as hindrances on their direct route and they prefer to think up a
spacious word, open at both ends, into which to cram everything. In countering all
this the upshot ofJean Paul's advice to his son is: 'Learn, attempt, experience all, or
at least all sorts, and above all never enter into the company of philosophers without
a bodyguard of physicists, historians and poets around you.'
In the Vorschule der Asthetik, in his discussion of the distinctions between talent and
geniusJean Paul says:

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872 Jean Paul's Epic Outlook

In der Philosophie ist das bloBe Talent ausschlieBlich-dogmatisch ... es numeriert die
Lehrgebiude und sagt, es wohne in Nr. I oder 99 oder so, indes sich der groBe Philosoph im
Wunder der Welt, im Labyrinthe voll unzihliger Zimmer halb fiber, halb unter der Erde
aufhiilt. Von Natur hasset der talentvolle Philosoph, sobald er seine Philosophie hat, alles
Philosophieren; denn nur der Freie liebt Freie. (W, IX, 50)

With his aversion to systems and fixed positions, with his emphasis on all-
inclusiveness and on flux, his championing of the particular and of material content
over the abstract and formal, Jean Paul is, as I suggested at the outset, brought into
conflict with the established orthodoxies around him, with the aesthetics of Weimar,
with Lutheran orthodoxy, and with critical philosophy. The areas are, of course,
interdependent, with related grounds of opposition and targets of attack. One
common denominator is that emphasis on feeling and on faith which eventually
brings him to embraceJacobi's so-called 'Gefuihlsphilosophie' or 'Glaubensphiloso-
phie'. He knew it to be a peculiarly modern emphasis: 'Die Alten suchten ihr Gliick
in Grundsitzen, wir in Empfindungen, jene geben ein kleines, diese ein unstetes: es
bleibt nichts fibrig als ihre Vereinigung, die der Dauer mit der GrBfe' (HkA 3, II,
275-76). ThroughoutJean Paul there is an emphasis on the sense of sensibility and
the ratio of emotion. He is well aware of emotionalism as a weakness in himself and
he is always on the defensive about it, but he defends it well, in acute remarks such as
'O wer nicht zuweilen zu viel und zu weich empfindet, der empfindet gewif3 immer zu
wenig' (W, vIII, 917). His religious faith is in the end ensured only by feeling, but by
the same token the eternal presence of doubt is also ensured. He is, after all, the
virtuoso of nihilistic visions, not only in the famous Speech of the Dead Christ but in a
score of similar dreams and visions, interpolated lectures and letters on annihilation
and a godless universe. Such black hours, he says in a footnote in Hesperus, befall
'jedes Herz von Empfindung' (W, I, 604). He faced this problem early on, putting
forward both the primacy and the mutability of feeling in, for example, a letter in
1790 to his friend Wernlein (HkA 3, I, 305). Speaking of their shared scepticism, he
says:
Ein Hauptgrund meines Skept(izismus) war der: es giebt fir jedes Subjekt keine andre
Wahrheit als die gefiihlte. Die Satze, bei denen ich das Gefihl ihrer Wahrheit habe sind meine
wahren und es giebt kein andres Kriterium. Da aber dieses namliche Gefiuhl auch die
Irrthiimer, die es wiederruft, einmal unterschrieb -da es Ausspriiche andert nach Stunde
und Alter und Zustinden und Seelen und Landern und Welttheilen, woher kann ich denn
gewis wissen, daB dieses charial (eontische) Gefiihl morgen oder in 3 Jahren das nicht
zuriicknehme, was es heute beschw6rt?

The laterJean Paul would no longer refer to his scepticism as such, but the appeal to
feeling remains, and the antagonism towards any system that could be regarded as
unfeeling. In the Vorschule he attacks both the nihilistic and the materialistic artists,
the nihilists who have no material clod of earth and the materialists who have
nothing else. He derides them with equal verve, but his greater dislike is reserved fo
the nihilists, the unfeeling formalists of aesthetic play and disinterested pleasure. O
course, this is an oversimplifying summary. His thinking is nothing if not 'differen
ziert' and on the question of art and emotion he anticipates the exchange between
Tonio Kr6ger and Lisaweta Ivanovna in the conversation between the brothers
Flegeljahre in which Vult says warningly: 'Darfst du Tranen und Stimmungen in d
Musik einmengen: so ist sie nur die Dienerin derselben, nicht ihre Schopferin
(W, Iv, 773). In general, however, Jean Paul's sympathies are on the side of conten
and concern.

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 TIMOTHY J. CASEY 873

In theology, leaving aside the Catholic Church, which for him was not so much
questionable as indiskutabel, he was bound to conflict with Lutheran Orthodoxy, if
only for its exclusiveness. But more specifically, his own theology, indeterminate
though it might be, was certainly not Luther's theology of the Cross. His greatest
aversion was towards the emphasis on sin and punishment and for all practical
purposes he comes in the end to reject doctrines of Fall and Redemption and to reject
the exclusive claims of Christianity as a whole and its positive Revelation. With
Herder, whose latitudinarianism he praises, and with Lessing, he shares ideas of
development and continuing revelation, of respect for peoples and beliefs in their
time and place; indeed the late Jean Paul would seem to come ever closer on most
matters to the position of Lessing, who said of his own theology and philosophy that
en kai pan was their essence.6Jean Paul never ceased to fight against godlessness, but
one can at the same time imagine his sympathy for the feelings of Lessing as reported
byJacobi: 'Mit der Idee eines personlichen schlechterdings unendlichen Wesens, in
dem unveranderlichen Genusse seiner allerhochsten Vollkommenheit, konnte sich
Lessing nicht vertragen. Er verkniipfte mit derselben eine solche Vorstellung von
unendlicher Langeweile, daB ihm angst und weh dabey wurde.'7 One is reminded of
Jean Paul's remark that one's idea of heaven comes from the Orient, where to walk
around is a penance. 'Die 2te Welt (kann) kein grines Sumpfwasser einer fixen
Ewigkeit sein sondern ein unabsehlicher Wechsel', he says in one letter, and in
another: 'selbst im 2ten Leben werden wir nach aller Moglichkeit unserer Natur
nicht anders selig werden als durch die Perspektive einer 3ten.' If Jean Paul's
theology is Christian it is in the sense of a much later Christian theology, with the
emphasis on Christ as advocate of the oppressed, on God as the Ground of Being, on
Eternity Now and the Beyond Within. One should speak, he suggests, not like
Lavater of 'Aussichten in die Ewigkeit' but of 'Aussichten aus der Ewigkeit' (HkA 2,
iv, 136, I68; 3, II, I73-74, 280). Naturally it is the characteristically quirky
theological propositions that are most memorable: they are also the most revealing.
'Christ presupposes Kant', says Jean Paul, for example, or again he observes that it
is better to read Herder on the Bible than to read the Bible. In both cases he is
placing his faith in the innate and ongoing, in an earlier 'angeborene Offenbarung',
rather than in the one and once-for-all Revelation (HkA 2, IV, 38, 61-62, 65).
For Jean Paul the prevailing philosophy, too, was unfeeling, unconcerned with
content, indeed empty of content. Enlightenment in this sense he likes to compare to
the new houses in Potsdam which Frederick II commanded should be lit up at night
so that they might seem to be inhabited (W, I, 685). Philosophy, he says on another
occasion, unlike the poor sinner pretending her pregnancy is dropsy, pretends the
latter is the former (HkA 3, II, 329). 'Der vernichtende Idealismus der Philosophie'
is one of the themes of the Vorschule, and in the Kleine Nachschule zur Vorschule, quotin
Cicero's observation that there was nothing so foolish some philosopher had no
maintained it, he derides 'jene philosophische Auflosung alles Stoffs durc
fortgesetztes Abstrahieren in durchsichtige Form, wiewohl fur den tiefen Philoso-
phen schon der Form als Grenze der Unterschiede zu viel Stoffanklebt; weshalb er
sogar das Sein in das Nichts aufl6sen muB.' (W, Ix, 40I, 498). Every idealism, he

6 HkA 3, n, 356. See, for example, 'Uber die Religionen in der Welt', from the early Ubungen im Denken
(1780), in HkA 2, I, 55-6I.
7 See Die Hauptschriften zum Pantheismusstreit zwischen Jacobi und Mendelssohn, edited by Heinrich Schol
(Berlin, I 96), pp. 95-96, I02.

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874 Jean Paul's Epic Outlook

suggests in a letter to Herder, must, carried to its logical conclusion,

(HkA 3, III, I20). His own main work in the area was, then, his parod
'I'-philosophy, the Clavis Fichtiana. Fichte commented drily that t
appear to fit, at least the owner did not gain entry. That is not to say
not appreciate the parody or Jean Paul. In fact the two got on increa
sparring partners: partly, it must be admitted, because Jean Paul bel
under the influence ofJacobi's arguments, was slowly coming around
objectivity. Jean Paul reads Fichte, as he says in his letters, with
unbelief (HkA I, vIII, ciii; 3, III, 247; Iv, 63). In private (and also in pu
was on Fichte's side in matters such as the 'Atheismusstreit' that cost Fichte his
Chair. They would in any case have the same republican sympathies. In general,
Jean Paul's standing was high among the philosophers. Hegel, after all, was
instrumental in having the Heidelberg doctorate conferred on Jean Paul, agains
stiff opposition from the Dean of the Faculty on grounds that may have been
unreasonable but were well enough founded: that Jean Paul's Christianity was
doubtful and that he drank too much. Hegel and Jean Paul even considered
collaborating on an introduction to philosophy for female readers, an intriguin
'might-have-been' of philosophical literature. Kant, too, had the highest regard for
Jean Paul, although his own philosophy is so abused in Das Kampaner Tal.8 (It is
regular feature ofJean Paul that the narrow believers carry the least conviction and
earn the least sympathy. In Das Kampaner Tal this is the chaplain who, from within
the walls of his critical philosophy, whose windows are so high he cannot see th
world outside, expounds the Kantian arguments for immortality.) Needless to say
the admiration was none the less mutual. In spite of all his misgivings about system
Jean Paul speaks glowingly in his letters of Kant's radiant solar system. In his
characteristic fashion he says in one letter of Kant: 'Ihm fehlt zu einem Sokrates nur
der Giftbecher und zum 2ten Xtus nur das Kreuz' (HkA 3, I, 225; II, I28). But hi
opposition to the Kantian system is serious and consistent. He sees it as all too
formalistic and in a sense unfeeling, both in its ethics and in its epistemology. The
Kantians do not do good works, he complains, they only write them. They are
'GegenfiiBler der Gliickseligkeit'. He objects to Kant's rigorism, to the over-
emphasis on duty and the battle against immorality. Morality is no more a question
of vanquishing immorality, he says in a letter to Emanuel, than health can be
defined as the defeat of sickness (HkA 3, II, 36-37, 52; W, VIII, 735-37, 8 2-14). But
fundamentally his quarrel is with critical philosophy as such, which to him could
lead only to a subjectivity locked in on itself and which is linked in his mind with
atheism, defined byJean Paul as denying the image its original. The older he grows,
he writes in 800o to Jacobi, the more he believes in 'objectivity'. To be sure,
Fichteanism will not last, 'aber was hilft der Tod des Teufels, wenn seine
GroBmutter fortlebt, die kritische Philosophie' (HkA 3, II, 315-I6; W, VIII, 6 I1).
For his parodistic material, however, Jean Paul turns mainly to Fichte, who, as
the logical consequence of Kant, finally gets rid of all lumpish reality, whereas Kant,
as Jean Paul puts it, at least left things-in-themselves lying around the place (W, vI,
I021-22, 1040). It is ironic that Fichte's 'I'-philosophy should be parodied byJean
Paul of all people, the virtuoso of'I'-narration. 'Beijedem Humoristen spielt das Ich
die erste Rolle', says Jean Paul in the Vorschule. There he envies the sensible British
8 W, vII, 581, 591-92. See also Wolfgang Harich, Jean Pauls Kritik des philosophischen Idealismus,
Suhrkamp (Frankfurt a.M., n.d.), especially pp. 8-Io.

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 TIMOTHY J. CASEY 875

who coolly capitalize their 'I's' and can even say 'I myself' wi
as indeed the French can say 'moi meme'. The Germans, how
relationship to the 'I', either hiding it in shame or going
idealistic aseitas (deriving everything a se) and ending in
(W, IX, 132-36). Jean Paul rings the changes on this 'Selbstla
work, but particularly in Clavis Fichtiana, where Leibgeb
meditates on his universal self as he takes his foot-bath, cul
passage of the Clavis, the passionate lament of the lone
Gottes im Gethsemane-Garten' (W, vi, esp. I037-39,
parody is only one vehicle for all those anxieties and nightm
the horror vacui that beset all feeling figures in Jean Paul.
starting-point for Walter Rehm's study of the literature of u
back to what St Augustine calls the experimentum suae mediae
promethean self-centring and which Rehm sees as necessaril
self-disgust.9 Certainly nobody experiments more in this se
but the context also serves to point up the difference, for th
spirit in Jean Paul. His 'moi' is not hateful but likable, not l
personifications. It is often suggested that Jean Paul mi
solipsist sense, but it is clear from the letters that he w
preaching solipsism, though he may well have felt that logic
Besides, the distorted form of Fichteanism put forward in Je
as coming from Fichte, or even from the fictive Jean P
Leibgeber- admittedly driven crazy by reading Fichte, just a
figure in Titan, fears he himself will be. If he goes on readi
General Schelling, Schoppe says, he will end up deriving eve
like the drunkard who, under cover of darkness, urinated int
and remained there all night since he did not know he had s
To some extentJean Paul's reaction to Fichte is rather like
Berkeley, when Johnson kicked the stone saying: 'I dispr
explanations are more obscure than what he explains, Je
letter toJacobi, in which he reports a conversation with Go
said of Fichte: 'He is the greatest of the scholastics, but tha
light, or the eye, as the object itself.' As so often the letter co
Jacobi himself for having given him the 'Gegengift der gan
guterJacobi! wie leicht rette ich mich durch alle kritische un
Ihrem Ruder' (HkA 3, III, I29-30).
'Nur allein das Studium Jacobis kan sie vom Jahrhund
writes in I800 to his friend Thieriot, for Jean Paul, in s
systems, chose his own in the end (HkA 3, III, 294). But then
Paul should be systematically unsystematic is perhaps r
proposition that all Cretans are liars. In any caseJean Paul ta
realism, takes comfort not only in the proposition that the e
independent of the subject but in the proposition that this is

9 Walther Rehm, Jean Paul-Dostojewski. Zur dichterischen Gestaltung des U

especially p. 5.
10 Most critics, including Walther Harich and even Berend, seem to sugg
solipsism to Fichte. A notable exception is Kommerell. See Wolfgang
pp.99-102.

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876 Jean Paul's Epic Outlook

be proved but something that must be believed, and that this is the ca
ultimate certainties, including the certainties of religious belief. 'Ich
es vor mir noch kein Mensch gewesen ist', saidJacobi in a letter to J
Paul takes over from Jacobi not only the realism but the equation of
nihilism. To Fichte himselfJacobi wrote: 'Wahrlich mein lieber Ficht
nicht verdrieBen, wenn Sie oder wer es sei, Chimirismus nennen wol
dem Idealismus, den ich Nihilismus schelte, entgegensetze.'12 InJacob
Allwill, Clirchen is the realist who refuses to be blinded by rea
indignation is aroused by idealism. She speaks in a letter of an editio
Three Dialogues with an engraving depicting a child reaching out for i
the amusement of a philosopher sitting nearby. Clarchen reacts angr
... ich kann nun einmal die Augen, die Nichts sehen, die Ohren, die Nichts h6r
lauter Nichts in alle Ewigkeit geschaftige Vernunft nicht dulden. Warum will
was mir hier gegeben ist, fuir echt und gut annehme, der Natur auf ihr e
glaube, und mich f;ir dort auf etwas ganz neues freue, nicht bloB auf ein
Nichts. (Allwill, p. 67)

It is Jean Paul's realism in a less technical sense, his concern with th

with the realities of life, that gives such force to his work. In the Kantat
Vorschule, in which he attacks the Kant-Schiller 'Spielkunst' ('um Ern
Spiel wird gespielt', he says) he also speaks of the realities in a more
For in the end, the heart knows the heaven of presence and the grief a
Everywhere there is a preponderance of the real: 'Und doch kenn
Himmel der Gegenwart und den Schmerz am Grabe. Uberall ble
gewicht des Realen' (W, Ix, 446). And of course Jean Paul's contri
philosophy but to literature. His quarrels in the various areas of
theology and philosophy matter because they are the material for m
able scene. An example is the encounter with Kunstrat Fraischd6rfer
view an impending battle, an outrageous parody on Weimar Class
and on Schiller in particular (W, VII, 20-32). Another is the scen
narrator takes an imaginative leap and lands on the moon. Ambling t
landscape he comes across a loving couple, fresh and innocent S
healthy Swiss complexions from the mountain air. The moon man is
who has just published his 'Aussichten in die Ewigkeit' and is expoun
to his companion as they gaze up enraptured at the earth until they
by the narrator, who tells them some home truths about the e
inhabitants ofpersonae turpaes and Yahoos (W, vIII, 672-75). A final e
the scene in which the narrator recalls the night when, sitting peacef
and secure in his Kantian category, he is interrupted by the entry o
selling a different system:
Ich erinnere mich deutlich, daB ich als Stubengelehrter in meiner Studier
Kantische Lehrgebaude fur mich wie eine gute Loge zum hohen Licht im Ko
Teufel von Buchhandler mir einen Biicherballen von Anesidemus und Fich
Haus schickte, wovon ich schon vorher durch andere erfahren, daB der Ba
biude erschiittere. 'Jetzo um i Uhr bist du noch', sagt' ich auf- und abgehen
kantisch und sitzest fest und froh auf deinem kritischen DreifuB; nun kom

11 See Friedrich HeinrichJacobis 'Allwill', edited byJ. V. Terpstra (Groningen, I957), p.

12Jacobi, Werke, 6 vols (Leipzig, I816), II, 44; Dieter Arendt, 'Der Nihilismus..
bericht', in DVjs, 43 (I969), 346-69 (p. 355); 544-66.

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 TIMOTHY J. CASEY 877

wann du das noch eingepackte System annimmst, das dem Dreifu

entschloB mich aus Vorliebe, noch die ganze Nacht zu den Kantia
am Morgen den Ballen aufzuschniuren, um spater zu renegieren. E
wenn ich meine Empfindung vom Lebewohl der Kritik, und wie
einmal glaubend uiberliefunter dem Aufschnfiren, malen wollte. W
wieder ein gutes Lehrgebaude am Fichtischen Universitatgebaud
bekam und darin mich als Mietmann setzte, als gar zu bald ein Sch
- Ich sagte aber trotzig: 'Dieses neue System will ich noch anneh
hernach das, welches wiederjenes umwirft; aber dann soil mich d
- bei meinem Ordinariat philosophischer Fakultiten - es nicht
mach' es auchjetzo anders: ich lasse gewohnlich sechs oder acht Sy
und lese das widerlegende friiher als das widerlegte und wei
Riickwirts-Lesen- wie die Hexen mit dem Riickwarts-Beten des Vaterunsers bezaubern
so gliicklich zu entzaubern, daB ich jetzo, wenn ich mir nicht zuviel zutraue, vielleicht der
Mann bin, der gar kein System hat. Heimliches Mitleid heg' ich daher, wenn ich nach der
Ostermesse neben einem systematischen Kopfe in einem Buchladen stehe und ihn iiberall
von neuen Lehrgebauden umstellt finde, welchejede Minute, sobald er eines aufschlagt, ihn
ummunzen k6nnen und zum Selber-Wechselbalge umtauschen. 'O Sie Unschuldiger!' sag'
ich dann. (W, x, I 175-76)

The openness is reflected in the work. A wavering, a postponing and temporizing,

seem to be for Jean Paul attributes of literature as of life. In Das Kampaner Tal the
narrator says 'Im ganzen find' ich viel weniger Menschen als man denkt, welche das
zweite Leben entschieden entweder glauben oder leugnen ... die meisten schwan-
ken dichterisch nach dem StoBe alternierender Gefuihle im Zwischenraum beider
Meinungen auf und ab' (W, vIII, 608). Neither in Das Kampaner Tal nor in Selina is
there any resolution other than the resolution of friendship in the framework. All
such arguments can only end in a truce, says Jean Paul, and they should be
presented only, Plato and Lessing-fashion, in dramatic form, with no auctorial
authority (W, xi, I67).
One of the best-known Jean Paul passages is in the preface of Quintus Fixlein, on
the three ways of being not happy but happier:
Ich konnte nie mehr als drei Wege, gliicklicher (nicht gliicklich) zu werden, auskundschaften.
Der erste, der in die Hohe geht, ist: so weit iiber das Gew6lke des Lebens hinauszudringen,
daB man die ganze auBere Welt mit ihren Wolfsgruben, Beinhausern und Gewitterableitern
von weitem unter seinen FiiBen nur wie ein eingeschrumpftes Kindergartchen liegen sieht.
Der zweite ist: - gerade herabzufallen ins Gartchen und da sich so einheimisch in eine
Furche einzunisten, daB, wenn man aus seinem warmen Lerchennest heraussieht, man
ebenfalls keine Wolfsgruben, Beinhauser und Stangen, sondern nur Ahren erblickt, deren
jede fir den Nestvogel ein Baum und ein Sonnen- und Regenschirm ist. - Der dritte endlich
- den ich fuir den schwersten und kliigsten halte - ist der, mit den beiden andern zu
wechseln. (W, vnI, Io)

The most striking word here is the comparative 'happier', which nowadays puts us
most in mind of Kafka's world. In Kafka's work the comparatives play a major role,
ostensibly heightening and improving but in reality relativizing, and in a sense
devaluing. In the world of Jean Paul the effect is quite different, even where the
similarity is greatest. In Siebenkas we read of the advocates who, by a perpetual
proliferation of files and petitions, ensure thatjudgement will be postponed sine die, a
truly Kafkaesque state of affairs, except that inJean Paul there is implied approval.
The advocates are behaving no differently from Simonides who, when the tyrant
Hieron of Syrakus demanded he should say who God is, asked for a day in order to
think it over, and then for another, and another and another. Everywhere in his work
Jean Paul seems to prefer epic lingering to any dramatic conclusiveness. We should

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878 Jean Paul's Epic Outlook

expect no dramatic reversal from our philosophy, he says in Siebenkis. It is enough if

we can say of our philosophy that without it the pain would be greater (W, III, 199,
215). Jean Paul is an optimistic writer; certainly he wishes to be so understood. But
he does not come to rest except in the sense of a principle of hope. 'Hoffnungen sind
gleichsam die menschlichen Besitzungen', he says in Palingenesien, and of his political
works he says that hope, the advocate and guarantor of providence, was the element
common to them all (W, vIII, 771; x, 0I72). The character with whom he most
closely identifies, Viktor, the hero of Hesperus, says at the end of the novel: 'Ruhe!
dich geben weder die Freude noch der Schmerz, sondern nur die Hoffnung' (W, VII,
1235). One of the best examples of this restlessness and the missing happy end is, of
all things, DerJubelsenior. 'Ofall things' because DerJubelsenioris, in the conventional
not in the eccentricJean Paul sense of the word, his most idyllic work. 'Nun sitzt der
Leser vor dem vollendeten Sonntagsstiick', says the narrator at the end, aware that
really he should now get up and take his leave. But he cannot bring himself to do so
and remains sitting on in the story as a guest, while at the same time worried that if
he remains sitting there long enough he will end up with a lot of corpses on his hands.
Eventually he takes refuge, as so often happens inJean Paul, in an appendix, so that
we end not with a conclusion in the fictive present but with Jean Paul's customary
twin eternities of past and future, with memories and hopes (W, VII, 540-59). It is, of
course, a very inwardizing and bookish ending. Jean Paul's last novel Der Komet is
unfinished, and how it would have ended is much debated. I am fairly sure that it
would have ended in much the same way: the hero and his companions, after further
picaresque adventures in various locations, would finally have arrived at the place
where Jean Paul was writing the story, finding a lodging at last in the Rollwenzelei,
the inn on the outskirts of Bayreuth where Frau Rollwenzel suppliedJean Paul with
food and drink and a room of his own to write in.13 'Warum ist ein Mensch zuweilen
so gliicklich?', asks Jean Paul in Hesperus, and replies: 'Darum: well er zuweilen ein
Literatus ist' (W, I, 512). A bookish conclusion, indeed, and one does not suppose
that Jean Paul would wish to leave it at that. 'Um Ernst, nicht um Spiel, wird
gespielt' is his reaction to Weimar's 'Spielisthetik' as he saw it, and he clings to the
belief, or the hope, that what the imagination bodies forth betokens a real presence.
But it is a very oblique conviction, and the conclusion he comes to, in his work as in
his life, is by definition interim, to be continued in his next.

UNIVERSITY COLLEGE GALWAY TIMOTHYJ. CASEY

13 Compare Berend's speculations in HkA i, xv, liii-lvii.

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