Ezekiel Anna C. - Poetic Fragments

SUNY series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy

Dennis J. Schmidt, editor

Poetic Fragments

Karoline von Gnderrode

(Tian)

Translated and with Introductory Essays by

Anna C. Ezekiel

Published by State University of New York Press, Albany

2016 State University of New York

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Gnderrode, Karoline von, 1780-1806, author.

Title: Poetic fragments / Karoline von Gnderrode ; translated and with introductory essays by Anna C. Ezekiel.

Description: Albany : State University of New York Press, 2016. | Series: SUNY series in contemporary Continental philosophy | Tian. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016000440 (print) | LCCN 2016007299 (ebook) | ISBN 9781438461977 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438461984 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438461991 (e-book)

Classification: LCC PT2281.G8 A25 2016 (print) | LCC PT2281.G8 (ebook) | DDC 831/.6dc23

LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2016000440

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

I would like to express my gratitude to my partner, Zachariah Ezekiel, for his financial support and unwavering enthusiasm for this project. Thank you for always seeing our undertakings as team efforts; your labor was as important as mine in producing this book.

A research trip for revisions to the manuscript was partly funded by an milie du Chtelet Award granted by the American Society for Eighteenth Century Studies.

Many thanks to Dr. Katerina Mihaylova, without whose support this book could not have been completed. Dr. Mihaylovas help included advice on translation and assistance obtaining documents for research. Somehow, she managed to fit this in while working full time, teaching, and finishing a PhD thesis.

Other helpful individuals have also contributed to this volume. In particular, Enoch Guimond and Dr. Oran Magal were crucial in helping obtain texts for my research, and Sabrina Zaman provided comments on an early draft.

Finally, I would like to thank Dr. George di Giovanni, whose faith in my work continues to motivate me to try to live up to his expectations.

T his volume aims to make Karoline von Gnderrodes work accessible to an English-speaking audience, and to allow Gnderrodes contributions to philosophy to be recognized. With these goals in mind I have focused on capturing the meanings of the original German text with as much nuance as possible, rather than attempting to reflect meter or rhyme. The original German is presented beside the English, which I hope will enable even non-German speakers to gain an idea of the rhythm and rhyme of the original, as well as facilitate checking of the translations. Nonetheless, I have tried to avoid introducing awkwardness even for the sake of accuracy. I hope that the English translations will communicate something of the pleasure of reading Gnderrode while functioning as useful texts for English-speaking students and scholars.

The German text used in this volume is based on Leopold Hirschbergs edition of Gnderrodes collected works (192022; reprint 1970), but has been checked against the historical-critical edition edited by Walther Morgenthaler and published by Stroemfeld/Roter Stern (199091), which is the most accurate available. The differences between the Hirschberg and Morgenthaler editions are minor, but where they affect meaning the text follows the Hirschberg version, as does the translation unless otherwise indicated, and the alternative Morgenthaler version is noted in a footnote to the English text. Very minor differences in spelling and punctuation are not indicated. I have not amended errors in Hirschbergs transcription or idiosyncrasies in spelling or punctuation by Gnderrode.

The translation of Muhammad, the Prophet of Mecca uses common English transliterations for Arabic names instead of the German transliterations used by Gnderrode. Most characters and places in the text are based on historical individuals and places, and I hope this approach will help English-speaking readers find out more about these, if they should so desire.

The Work of Karoline von Gnderrode

T he poet, dramatist, and philosopher Karoline von Gnderrode (17801806) published several collections and individual pieces of writing, including Poetic Fragments , at the start of the nineteenth century. Gnderrode was a nuanced and original thinker whose varied writings include philosophical fragments, dialogues, erotic, mystical, and religious poetry, ballads, epic, tragic and comic dramas, and fictional and semi-fictional fragments that consider political, historical, religious, and philosophical questions. Her work was known to many of the leading intellectual lights of her day, including Bettina Brentano/von Arnim, Clemens Brentano, Georg Friedrich Creuzer, Friedrich Carl von Savigny, and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. She was a major influence on the modern German writers Anna Seghers and Christa Wolf, and has inspired works of fiction, music, film, and poetry. However, despite a steady cult following, Gnderrodes writing is generally little known even to German speakers, and is practically unknown in the English-speaking world. This gap should be addressed, since Gnderrodes work is not only often beautiful and powerful, but also reflects her original, at times radical, philosophical thought.

Gnderrodes work reveals a thoughtful and innovative engagement with philosophical questions and literary themes of her age, but there has been little attention to her contributions to these fields. In part, this is because Gnderrode wrote at a time when women were As a result, the disciplines of German literature and philosophy have yet to explore Gnderrodes treatment of literary themes or her approach to philosophical questions about metaphysics, subjectivity, death, free will, ethics, politics, and gender roles. Gnderrode was also one of the first interpreters of Asian and Middle Eastern philosophy, religion, and culture in Germany and Europe, and studying her appropriation of these sources can provide information on the modern European adoption of ideas from the East.

Gnderrodes work will certainly be of interest to fans and scholars of German literature. But my interest in Gnderrode is primarily a philosophical one, and this book aims to promote the interpretation of her work as a contribution to the philosophical, as well as literary, culture of her time. Thus, this book has two goals. First, the translations of Gnderrodes writings make these pieces available to an English-speaking audience, allowing them to be enjoyed by more readers and more readily included in courses on German literature and philosophy. Second, the critical material included in this volume indicates some of the ways in which Gnderrodes writing reveals a rich and innovative philosophy, justifying the inclusion of Gnderrodes work in the academic study of philosophy. In particular, this book points out Gnderrodes unique contributions to the German Romantic and Idealist projects of reimagining metaphysics, personhood, freedom, gender roles, and possibilities for social and political arrangements. These areas of Gnderrodes thought all require closer study, and it is my hope that this book will invite more readers and scholars to embark on this rewarding investigative task.