Fables of the Sublime: Kant, Schiller, KleistAuthor(s): Eric BakerReviewed work(s):Source: MLN, Vol. 113, No. 3, German Issue (Apr., 1998), pp. 524-536Published by: The Johns Hopkins University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3251157 .Accessed: 03/06/2012 00:12

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Fables of the Sublime: Kant, Schiller, Kleist

Eric Baker

Ob Mensch, ob Pferd ist nicht mehr so

wichtig, wenn nur die Last vom Rucken

genommen ist.

- Walter Benjamin

I.

Can there be a fable of the sublime? The question leads directly to another: What, if any, is the relationship between sublimity and

"Bildung," or "Erziehung"? What, if anything at all, would the moral of such a fable be? With regard to Kant's third Critique, we can, at least at this level of generality, give an unambiguous response to both

questions: no, and nothing, respectively. And yet: yes, and everything. There can be no fable of the sublime, because the essence of

sublimity lies in the necessary failure of any attempt at its positive objectification or representation. And where there is no possibility of formal representation, where there is no "Bild," there can be little

hope of "Bildung." Everything depends on this failure of the sym- bolic: the very possibility of human community (of a very peculiar, anticipatory temporal structure) beyond the reign and reins of natural law, based on the principle of freedom.

This seemingly contradictory economy of gain through loss is

anticipated in the concluding section of the second Critique, which, due to its general familiarity, may serve to introduce the problematic of aesthetic judgment. "Zwei Dinge," writes Kant,

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erfullen das Gemut mit immer neuer und zunehmender Bewunderung und Ehrfurcht, je ofter und anhaltender sich das Nachdenken damit

beschiftigt: Der bestirnte Himmel uber mir, und das moralische Gesetz in mir.1

Two "things" a somewhat disturbing choice of words to characterize the "starry heavens" and the "moral law," neither of which can be taken as objects in any unqualified sense. But is Kant really talking about objects here at all? It seems clear that these two "things" are, in

fact, two different relations, one "in," the other "iuber," related in turn to one another by a common point of reference, "mir." Nor is it

simply a matter of two relations, awe-inspiring each in its own right. What counts is rather the peculiar economy constituted by the combination of both:

Der erstere Anblick einer zahllosen Weltenmenge vernichtet gleichsam meine Wichtigkeit, als eines tierischen Geschopfs, [...]. Der zweite erhebt dagegen meinen Wert, als einer Intelligenz, unendlich, durch meine Pers6nlichkeit, in welcher das moralische Gesetz mir ein von der Tierheit und selbst von der ganzen Sinnenwelt unabhingiges Leben offenbart, [...]. (KpV, ibid.)

It is precisely the utter lack of adequation between what is infinitely "fiber mir" and the innermost interiority of the moral law "in mir" that destroys the value of the finite, bodily self, leading to an

"unabhangiges Leben," in which the value of the intelligible person is

infinitely heightened. Human being is thus situated at a boundary, an absolute divergence and discontinuity between what is inside-the moral law-and what is outside-the starry heavens-of "mir." The Kritik der Urteilskraft is, in many repects, nothing but an extended

commentary on the structure of this passage from "Vernichtung" to

"Offenbarung," from nothing to Being. It should therefore come as no surprise when the example returns

in the third Critique, in the final section of the "Dynamic-Sublime of Nature":

Wenn man also den Anblick des bestirnten Himmels erhaben nennt, so muB man der Beurteilung desselben nicht Begriffe von Welten, von vernunftigen Wesen bewohnt, und nun die hellen Punkte, womit wir den Raum fiber uns erffillt sehen, als ihre Sonnen, in sehr zweckmSBig ffir sie

Immanuel Kant, Kritik der praktischen Vernunft. Werkausgabe, vol. 7. Edited by Wilhelm Weischedel (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1993), A 289. Hereafter cited in the text by KpV

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ERIC BAKER

gestellten Kreisen bewegt, zum Grunde legen, sondern bloB, wie man ihn

sieht, als ein weites Gewolbe, was alles befaBt; [...].2

There is much to say about this passage, but for our purposes here, it will suffice to point towards something not to be found in the starry heavens of the second Critique. The passage features one "Anblick," but two ways of orienting oneself toward it: we can lend to it a

purpose ("zweckmaBig [...] zum Grunde legen") as its underlying structure, or we can see it as sheer spectacle, as an all-encompassing vault, "bloB, wie man ihn sieht, [...] wie die Dichter es tun" (KrV ?29,

ibid.).3 This possibility of turning one's gaze away from an object's teleo-

logical structure is first introduced not with regard to the sublime; it

appears for the first time in ?16 of the "Analytik des Schonen,"

dealing with the necessary a-conceptuality of the beautiful. The key distinction here is that of "free" or "errant" beauty without end

("pulchritudo vaga; freie Sch6nheit") as opposed to "mere adherent"

beauty ("pulchritudo adhaerens; bloB anhangende Sch6nheit"). Kant

illustrates the distinction with the example of the flower:

Blumen sind freie Natursch6nheiten. Was eine Blume fuir ein Ding sein

soil, weiB, auBer dem Botaniker, schwerlich sonst jemand; und selbst

dieser, der daran das Befruchtungsorgan der Pflanze erkennt, nimmt, wenn er dariber durch Geschmack urteilt, auf diesen Naturzweck keine

Riicksicht. Es wird also keine Vollkommenheit von irgend einer Art, keine innere Zweckmaifigkeit, auf welche sich die Zusammensetzung des

Mannigfaltigen beziehe, diesem Urteile zum Grunde gelegt. (KdU, ?16, B 49. Italics mine, E.B.)

Even the "Botaniker," the one who "knows" all about flowers, will shy

away from this knowledge of the flower's purpose as the plant's sexual

organ ("Befruchtungsorgan")4 when he makes an aesthetic judg- ment. The examples that follow-the bird's song, the ornaments on

2 Immanuel Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft. Werkausgabe, vol. 10. Edited by Wilhelm Weischedel (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1987), ?29, "Allgemeine Anmerkung," B 119. Further citations from this edition appear in the text as KdU, with paragraph and

page number. 3 See Paul de Man, "Kant's Materialism," in: Aesthetic Ideology. Edited and with an

Introduction by Andrzej Warminski. Theory and History of Literatue, vol. 65 (Minne- apolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), pp. 126-28.

4 The "reproductive organ" is a particularly striking example of how examples in Kant tend to go beyond the generality of their illustrative function. In addition to

providing an illustration of what distinguishes an object of "Erkenntnis" from an object of aesthetic judgment, it also exemplifies two different principles of economic

regulation. The economy of natural reproduction is one of closed exchange, illustrated

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frames, musical "Phantasien" without theme or text-all are meant to illustrate the absence of a determined end or purpose.

While it is, in each case, impossible to ignore the presence of some

meaningful organization, it is equally impossible to locate with any certainty the end in view of which the form is organized. And it is this

inability to locate the purpose of aesthetic objects, "the view of an end which is never in view,"5 that distinguishes them from objects of

knowledge, since what makes possible the recognition of form is,

precisely, its purpose. This is not to say that objects of aesthetic

judgment are entirely without form, but only that their form is strictly limited to the pure appearance of form: natural beauty, as errant

beauty, must be wild beauty, untamed and untainted by the hand of human intention, and therefore deaf to the question "what for."6

But there are some objects that, while admittedly capable of a certain beauty, evince too strongly the presence of a determined end,

contaminating the purity of aesthetic judgment with "Reiz" and

"Rfihrung":

Allein die Schonheit eines Menschen [...], die Schonheit eines Pferdes, eines Gebaudes [...], setzt einen Begriff vom Zwecke voraus, welcher bestimmt, was das Ding sein soil, [...]; und ist also bloB adharierende Sch6nheit. (KdU, B 50)

In view of these objects we are, according to Kant, not at liberty to close our eyes to the purpose in light of which the object is organized. Their beauty depends upon and adheres to their purpose. As regards the building, the utilitarian aspect would indeed be difficult to

in a parenthesis excluded from the opening citation of the second Critique: The human being, as "eines tierischen Gesch6pfs," must give back "die Materie, daraus es ward," to "dem Planeten (einem bloB3en Punkt im Weltall) [...], nachdem es eine kurze Zeit (man weifl nicht wie) mit Lebenskraft versehen gewesen." (KpV, A 289) The economy of the sublime, by contrast, is based on the sacrifice of the reproductive economy of nature, yielding an infinite source of ever-new "Bewunderung" and "Achtung."Jacques Derrida discusses the analogical relationship of these two forms of regulated economy in "Economimesis," Diacritics 11 (1981): pp. 3-25.

5Jacques Derrida, The Truth in Painting, translated by Geoff Bennington and Ian McLeod (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1996), p. 86. The "Anblick" is one of a long series of determinations sharing the prefix "an-," such as "ansinnen" or "annehmen," indicating the anticipatory structure of aesthetic judg- ment. It is in this sense of a "view never in view," of a prospect that ends in a moment of blindness, that the "Anblick" of aesthetic judgment needs to be taken.

6 See Einleitung, IV, "Von der Urteilskraft als einem a priori gesetzgebenden Verm6gen," B XXVIII, where Kant defines the concept of "Gegenstand" as an a priori positing of form in reflective judgment.

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ERIC BAKER

ignore. But what is it that distinguishes the "Pferd" from, say, a

"Vogel"? Why, and by what criteria, is it possible to ignore the purpose of only some natural objects, such as the flower, or the starry heavens above, but not others, such as the horse? In whose name is the distinction between errant and adherent, free and limited, vague and determined, beauty made?

The exclusion of the horse signals a moment in which the exclusion of even the appearance of teleological determination from the beautiful is exposed as itself teleologically motivated. What is common to all three examples is not only the possibility of recogniz- ing their purpose, but also the anthropological orientation of that

purpose: the horse is for man like the building is for man like man is

for man.7 Not only the building, the product of human labor and

design, but also the horse, as the product of nature, is-as if-for man, because the end of all nature, including man, is-as if- determined by and for man. Unlike the other examples, the end which determines man is one posited by man alone. Humanity cannot itself become an object of the beautiful, nor of the sublime, for humamity represents the end of both. It is in the human subject that the wound, the "ohne" of the "without-end" is closed. But this closure is achieved only at the price of making another incision: the beautiful is situated beyond the reach of humanity, the subject of aesthetic judgment. The human form, while capable of attaining the

perfection of the "Ideal," capable of expressing the end and purpose of nature, will for that very reason never itself attain the status of errant beauty.

II.

Can there be a fable of the sublime? Schiller's response will differ

significantly from that of his mentor, particularly with regard to the formal representability of the sublime. And nowhere is the tension between mentor and eeve more evident than in those instances where Schiller takes on the pose of the pupil and faithful commenta- tor.

"Vom Erhabenen," begun in 1793 (but never completed) is accom-

panied by the innocuous-sounding subtitle, "Zur weiteren Ausfiihrung

7See Jacques Derrida's discussion of the example in The Truth in Painting, pp. 91- 118.

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einiger Kantischen Ideen."8 "Ausffihrung" is intended to be taken here in the sense of clarification and commentary, the moving of

meaning out of the enclosed space of obscurity into the open. But the word's martial connotations-the execution of a command-"eine

Forderung ausfihren"-should not be ignored. For the tension of these two meanings-the tension between clarifying and implement- ing, between speech and act, between possibility and existence-can be seen at every step of the argument's development, most notably wherever Schiller insists on the corroboration and adequation of Kant's, or rather his, theoretical statements with the realm of the

empirical. What is more, the transition from the transcendental to the empirical seems to appear at precisely those moments where his stance as a faithful follower of Kant's third Critique is most stridently avowed.

One such instance arises with regard to Schiller's discussion of the role of fear, or terror:

Zum Gefiihl des Erhabenen wird also schlechterdings erfordert, daB wir uns von jedem physischen Widerstehungsmittel v6llig verlassen sehen und in unserm nichtphysischen Selbst dagegen Huilfe suchen. Furchtbar muB also ein solcher Gegenstand ffir unsere Sinnlichkeit sein, und das ist er nicht mehr, sobald wir uns ihm durch natiirliche Krafte gewachsen fihlen. (vol. XX, ibid.)

The incommensurability of the noumenal with the physical, de- scribed here with reference to "Geffihl des Erhabenen," seems to be a fairly accurate paraphrase of the Kantian sublime: the feeling of sublimity is dependent on the absence of any ('jedem") possibility of gaining control, through physical means, over natural force.

But while he is so urgently insisting that we recognize the necessity of this "Kantian" idea, we are, in fact, being led in a direction quite different from that of the third Critique. For already at this point, we can make out the beginning steps toward a highly significant depar- ture: the move away from the transcendental toward the empirical can be seen in the transition from "Geffihl" and "erfordern," from feeling and speech-act, to "Gegenstand," a transition made explicit as the passage continues:

8 Friedrich Schiller, Werke. Nationalausgabe, vol. XX. Edited by Benno von Wiese and Helmut Koopmann (Weimar: Hermann B6hlaus Nachfolger, 1963), pp. 171-95. Further citations from this edition will be noted in the text by volume and page number.

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ERIC BAKER

Auch wird dieses von der Erfahrung bestatigt. Die machtigste Naturkraft ist in eben dem Grad weniger erhaben, als sie von dem Menschen

gebandigt erscheint, und sie wird wieder schnell erhaben, sobald sie die Kunst des Menschen zuschanden macht. (ibid.)

The reference to "Erfahrung" should suffice to point out that Schiller has deflected the entire discussion away from the transcendental, toward the realm of the empirical. What is of greater consequence than the mere mention of the word "Erfahrung," however, is the introduction of degrees of sublimity: the greater the presence of

"Kunst," the lesser the degree of sublimity. "Kunst des Menschen" and

sublimity, technology and natural force, would now seem to be no

longer mutually exclusive in the strict sense, as in Kant. Sublimity and "Kunst" are now relative values: the more you have of the one, the less

you have of the other. But the following "Ausfiihrung" gives an indication that something else is at stake:

Ein Pferd, das noch frei und ungebindigt in den Waldern herumlauft, ist uns als eine uns uberlegene Naturkraft furchtbar und kann einen

Gegenstand fur eine erhabene Schilderung abgeben. Eben dieses Pferd, gezahmt, an das Joch oder vor den Wagen gespannt, verliert seine Furchtbarkeit und mit ihr auch alles Erhabene. ZerreiBt aber dieses

gebandigte Pferd seine Zfigel, baumt es sich entriistet unter seinem Reiter, gibt es sich seine Freiheit gewaltsam wieder, so ist seine Furchtbarkeit wieder da, und es wird aufs neue erhaben. (ibid. Italics mine, E.B.)

Of all the examples one might cite to illustrate the sublime-one thinks of the abyss, the starry heavens, or the raging seas in Kant, all of which indeed reduce the subject, "als eines tierischen Geschdpfs," to

nothingness-the horse seems an unlikely candidate. Nor is it ever a

question, in the third Critique, of gaining, then losing, control over

nature, for the very possibility of taming, harnessing, or otherwise

controlling natural force would put an end to any experience of the sublime. If the example illustrates nothing found in the third Critique, then what is its purpose? What end does the horse serve?

The example organizes these so-called "degrees" of sublimity into a

temporal, narrative pattern of presence, loss, and recuperation: first in a state of wilderness ("ungebindigt in den Waldern"), then in a state of domestic servitude ("gebandigt, gezahmt, gespannt"), culmi-

nating in a violent overthrow of "Kunst" and return to a state of nature and therefore, "aufs neue," of sublimity. By articulating the sublime as a temporal process-for this is, contrary to all pretense of

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disinterested commentary, the point of the "example,"9-Schiller opens up a possibility that would have indeed been unthinkable for Kant, a possibility whose implications are far from over. And while this

possibility can be brought to light in the fragmentary Vom Erhabenen

only with considerable interpretive effort, it is explicitly stated in the later Uber das Erhabene: "[D]ie Weltgeschichte [ist mir] ein erhabenes Objekt."'? Schiller refers once, and once only, as though furtively, to this synthesis as "das Idealsch6ne,"" in which the gap that separated the two Kantian principles of the "Ideal," as the end proper to man, and of errant beauty, as beauty without end, is forcibly brought to a closure.

The three stages of the horse, as it moves from a state of pristine nature, to domestication, coming to rest in the violent overthrow of servitude, can be read as an allegory of the succesive stages through which the human-both the individual as well as culture as a whole- moves on its way to the freedom of the aesthetic state: from a pre- symbolic, paradisaical unity, to the fall into consciousness of self, to the unity of being and consciousness, nature and culture, form and content, spirit and matter.12 Even a cursory glance at the theoretical, as well as lyrical and dramatic, works of the 90's, would suffice to show that the literal terms out of which the example is constructed-

9The emphasis with which Schiller repeats the necessity of recognizing this "Kantian" idea reaches a crescendo toward the latter half of the essay: "[...] und ich mufi einmalfiir allemal bemerken, daB bei allem, was einen erhabenen Eindruck machen soll, die Sinnlichkeit mit ihren Foderungen schlechterdings abgewiesen worden sein und aller Beruhigungsgrund nur in der Vernunft zu suchen sein mfisse" (Nationalausgabe, XX, p. 181. Italics mine, E.B.). Schiller's insistence on this point is, I believe, a skillfully executed rhetorical strategy of distracting his reader's attention from the tranformative appropriation that is taking place.

10 "Uber das Erhabene," (Nationalausgabe, vol. XXI), p. 49: "Die Welt, als historischer Gegenstand, ist im Grunde nichts anders als der Konflikt der Naturkrafte unter einander selbst und mit der Freyheit des Menschen und den Erfolg dieses Kampfs berichtet uns die Geschichte." For Schiller's position within the general movement, in the wake of Kant, from poetics to "Geschichtsphilosophie," see Peter Szondi, Poetik und Geschichtsphilosophie. Studienausgabe der Vorlesungen, vol. 2. Edited by Jean Bollack, et. al. (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1996), pp. 149-83.

" "Uber das Erhabene," (Nationalausgabe, vol. XXI), p. 43. 12 See "Etwas fiber die erste Menschengesellschaft nach dem Leitfaden der mosaischen

Urkunde," (Nationalausgabe, vol. XVII), p. 399: "Er ('der Mensch,' E.B.) sollte den Stand der Unschuld, den er jetzt verlohr, wieder aufsuchen lernen durch seine Vernunft, und als ein freier verniinftiger Geist dahin zurfick kommen, wovon er als Pflanze und als eine Kreatur des Instinkts ausgegangen war; aus einem Paradies der Unwissenheit und der Knechtschaft sollte er sich, ware es auch nach spaten Jahrtausenden, zu einem Paradies der Erkenntnis und der Freiheit hinaufarbeiten."

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bindigen, zahmen, spannen; Ziigel, Joch, Wagen-serve to figure the

political destiny of man.13 This is by no means characteristic exclusively of Schiller's rhetoric;

a similar usage of this metaphorical complex-of the Bahn, Wagen, and Joch-can be found throughout the historico-philosophical writ-

ings of Herder, Lessing, Kant, Fichte, and Hegel.'4 What is less common among Schiller's predecessors, however, is the usage of the

metaphor of the horse as a metaphor of metaphor and of poetic language in general.

In the concluding passage of the Kalliasbriefe, written during the same period as Vom Erhabenen, and likewise left in fragmentary form and excluded from later publication, the appearance of beauty in

linguistic representation is represented in a metaphorics of struggle and domination strikingly similar to the figure of the horse. The nature of language, its quasi-mechanical tendency toward the general and abstract, must be overcome:

Soil also eine poetische Darstellung frei sein, so muB der Dichter 'die Tendenz der Sprache zum Allgemeinen durch die GroiJe seiner Kunst iiberwinden und den Stoff (Worte und Ihre Flexions- und Konstruktionsgesetze) durch die Form (namlich die Anwendung derselben) besiegen.' Die Natur der

Sprache (eben diese ist ihre Tendenz zum Allgemeinen) muB in der ihr

gegebenen Form v6llig untergehen, der Korper muB sich in der Idee, das Zeichen in dem Bezeichneten, die Wirklichkeit in der Erscheinung verlieren. Frei und siegend muB das Darzustellende aus dem Darstellenden hervorscheinen und trotz allen Fesseln der Sprache in seiner ganzen Wahrheit, Lebendigkeit und Pers6nlichkeit vor der Einbildungskraft dastehen. Mit einem Wort: Die Sch6nheit der poetischen Darstellung ist

'freie Selbsthandlung der Natur in den Fesseln der Sprache.'is

13 The concluding letter of the isthetische Erziehung des Menschen relies, for example, on the related metaphor of the "Fesseln": "Mitten in dem furchtbaren Reich der Krafte und mitten in dem heiligen Reich der Gesetze baut der asthetische Bildungstrieb unvermerkt an einem dritten fr6hlichen Reiche des Spiels und des Scheins, worin er dem Menschen die Fesseln aller Verhaltnisse abnimmt, und ihn von allem, was Zwang heiBt, sowohl im physischen als im moralischen entbindet" (Nationalausgabe, XX, p. 410). This cutting loose from all restraint is Schiller's response to the cutting loose of

political revolution: "In den niedern und zahlreichern Klassen stellen sich uns rohe und gesetzlose Triebe dar, die sich nach aufgelostem Band der biirgerlichen Ordnung entfesseln, und mit unlenksamer Wuth zu ihrer thierischen Befriedigung eilen. [...] Die losgebundene Gesellschaft, anstatt aufwarts in das organische Leben zu eilen, fallt in das Elementarreich zuriick" (Nationalausgabe, XX, p. 319).

14 For a useful overview of the role of metaphor in historical discourse, see Alexander Demandt, Metaphern fur Geschichte: Sprachbilder und Gleichnisse im historisch-politischen Denken (Mfinchen: C.H. Beck, 1978).

15 Friedrich Schiller, Uber das Sch6ne und die Kunst. Schriften zur Asthetik. Edited by Gerhard Fricke and Herbert G. G6pfert (Miinchen: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1984), p. 43.

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The "Fesseln der Sprache" are a variant of the metaphor of the yoke and cart to which the domesticated horse is bound. But the ripping free from domestic bondage, the "Untergang" of language in its given form, does not imply its complete destruction (this would be closer to

Kant), but only the destruction of what has the form of the yoke, as an

imposition from without, like the conventional, general language into which we are thrown at birth.

The throwing off of the yoke is thus not the destruction of

language and human institutions tout court, but rather a humanizing transformation through figuration.'6 The movement toward freedom is to take place "trotz allen Fesseln der Sprache," that is, the chains of

language remain, like the yoke and wagon, but they are dialectically transformed into the language of poetry and metaphor. The model of historical progress and the model of metaphor, the beauty of the moral act and the beauty of its representation, are essentially one and the same.17

The postlapsarian horse, the horse after its successful rebellion and return to nature, signifies a different kind of man, a "Mensch" whose "Kunst" has become a second nature. By representing the sublime as the loss and recuperation of nature, Schiller transforms the absolute, Kantian break into a contingent, historical stage on the way to the realization of an ideal harmony between nature and man. What was in Kant the total exclusion from the sublime of objects only tinged by a trace of anthropological interest becomes in Schiller a total humanization of the sublime, a total reappropriation of the alterity of material nature within the human spirit. The revolution of the horse, the violent insurrection of nature, is the political revolution of man, and its mode of realization is the aesthetic: the figural language of

poetry. The transformation of man in the humanizing of nature, like the

criss-crossing exchange that takes place in analogy, implies the closure and totality of a chiasm:18 through man, nature becomes

16 On Schiller's critique of Rousseau and the notion of a return to nature, see Peter Szondi, Poetik und Geschichtsphilosophie I, pp. 157-64.

17 For an insightful reading of Schiller's "unechte Dialektik," see Kate Hamburger, "Schillers Fragment 'Der Menschenfeind' und die Idee einer Kalokagathie." In: Philosophie der Dichter. Novalis Schiller Rilke (Stuttgart/Berlin: W. Kohlhammer Verlag, 1966), pp. 83-128.

18 For a general discussion of the rhetorical structure of chiasm, see Rodolphe Gasch6, "Reading Chiasms. An Introduction." In: Andrzej Warminski, Hegel, Holderlin, Heidegger Readings in Interpretation (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993). For a closely argued discussion of the role of chiasm with regard to Schiller's reading of Kant, see Paul de Man, "Schiller and Kant," in Aesthetic Ideology, pp. 135-38.

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human and humanity becomes natural. Each side of the opposition is maintained, purified and elevated in the synthesis. The two moves are identical or co-implicating operations, and only to this extent is the

negotiation of a dialectical passage between "Geffihl" and "Gegen- stand" possible. The mode of achieving this passage from subjective feeling and speech, "Gefiihl" and "fordern," to objective existence, or

"Gegenstand einer erhabenen Schilderung," is metaphor.

III.

Can there, finally, be a fable of the sublime? What, finally, would the moral of such a fable be? The didactic force of the fable (from the Latin, fari, to speak, say, tell, from which the English "fame" as well as "fate" derive) rests on the possibility of negotiating the passage from the specific, figural form, to the general proposition or meaning. A fable of the sublime would therefore be the saying of the sublime, or a sublime saying. If, as in Kant (but not in Schiller), the sublime can be represented only in the failure of its representation, then the moral of such a fable would have to reside in the failure of fable, a fable

emptied of all content, communicating nothing but its own failure to communicate any content other than the pure form of the fable, a fable without finality. It would, in other words, have to be a Fabel ohne Moral:

Wenn ich dich nur hatte, sagte der Mensch zu einem Pferde, das mit Sattel und GebiB vor ihm stand, und ihn nicht aufsitzen lassen wollte; wenn ich dich nur hatte, wie du zuerst, das unerzogene Kind der Natur, aus den Waldern kamst! Ich wollte dich schon ffihren, leicht, wie ein Vogel, dahin, uber Berg und Tal, wie es mich gut diinkte; und dir und mir sollte dabei wohl sein. Aber da haben sie dir Kfinste gelehrt, Kfinste, von welchen ich, nackt, wie ich vor dir stehe, nichts weiB; und ich muBte zu dir in die Reitbahn hinein (wovor mich doch Gott bewahre) wenn wir uns verstandigen wollten.19

The entirety of Kleist's text, as announced in the title, stands under the sign of loss, of "ohne." Not only is there no moral; one would have to list an entire catalogue of things Kleist's Fabel does without. Kleist's horse figures no resolution of the opposed principles of matter and

form, of the sensual and the spiritual, of determination and freedom.

19 Heinrich von Kleist, Sdmtliche Werke und Briefe, vol. 2. Edited by Helmut Sembner (Miinchen: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1984), p. 325.

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It still stands, "mit Sattel und GebiB," mute before "der Mensch," as a reminder of a promise not kept20: the promise of a flight, "leicht, wie ein Vogel," in which mastery gives way to harmony between man and nature, "und mir und dir sollte dabei wohl sein."

There is no synthesis, "frei und siegend," of human intention and determined form, of "Reit-" and "-bahn," no synthesis of the "Zeichen in dem Bezeichnetem," or of "Wirklichkeit in der Erscheinung." The revolt has transpired, but to no end. It fails to ground a community of "mir und dir," based on freedom, and fails to bring forth a communi- cation, or "Verstandigung." Negation here is not a moment of

temporary alienation in a utopian narrative of progressive, dialectical re-integration. For what is lost here is the possibility of making loss profitable. What remains in the wake of the loss of turning a profit is the pure form of the turning, a trope without aim, a wandering speech with no determinate content.

What we stand to gain from our reading of Kleist's fable is, if not a moral, then at least an appreciation of the necessity of its consider- able difficulty. This is partly the result of thinking the logic of Schiller's aesthetic education through to its end, and partly the result of certain tensions inherent to the Kantian Critique. The exclusion of the fable's moral amounts to the raising up of the utilitarian genre, the genre aimed at the edification of man, to the status of the beautiful, and constitutes, as such, the cornerstone of Schiller's project. And if, in this beautiful fable, it is "der Mensch" who speaks and not, as one would expect from a fable, the animal, it is because he speaks with a voice that is no longer human.21 It is not, as in Schiller, the "Kunst des Menschen" that bars access to the fulfillment of the

20 See the fourteenth letter from the Briefe iiber die dsthetische Erziehung des Menschen, where Schiller formulates this promise in the subjunctive, only to resolve the opposed principles of the sensual and the spiritual, form and meaning, determination and freedom, in the "Spieltrieb": "Gabe es aber Falle, wo er diese doppelte Erfahrung zugleich machte, wo er sich zugleich seiner Freyheit bewuBt wuirde, und sein Daseyn empfande, wo er sich zugleich als Materie ffihlte, und als Geist kennen lernte, [...]" (Nationalausgabe, XX, p. 353).

21 The horse in Psalm 32 figures those who are unable to heed the word of god: "Seid nicht wie Rosse und Maultiere, die ohne Verstand sind, denen man Zaum und GebiB anlegen muB; sie werden sonst nicht zu dir kommen." The significance of the possible allusion would lie not only on the level of theme, but on the level of poetic form. Hegel sees the notion of metaphor as mere ornament, "nur ein auBeres Gewand, ein Wagen oder Bote zu Gottes Dienst," as exemplified by the poetry of the Old Testament Psalms. In: G. W. F. Hegel, Werke in zwanzig Bdnden. Vorlesungen iiber die Asthetik I, vol. 13 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1979), p. 484. My thanks to Professor Rochelle Tobias for bringing the possible allusion to my attention.

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desired union, but rather the reverse: here it is "der Mensch" who stands naked before the "Pferd," of whose "Kfinste" the man under- stands nothing. This inversion is but the logical consequence of

harnessing the human, as the end of all nature, to the beautiful, defined as the absence of end, as play and pure form.22 Once this is

accomplished, call it what you may-freedom, totality, "die ausgefuhrte Bestimmung des Menschen"23- the inevitable outcome is a monstrosity.

The Johns Hopkins University

22 See the very suggestive, but undeveloped, remarks on the role of inversion in the fable in Peter Szondi, Poetik und Geschichtsphilosophie I, pp. 394-395: "[D]ie Inversion, die Umkehrung von Menschen wie Tiere in Tiere wie Menschen, bildet jenen Punkt, an dem-nach Hegel-der Inhalt in Form umschlagt, [...] die allgemeine Aussage zum

Formprinzip wird." 23 Schiller, Nationalausgabe XX, p. 353.

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