Abstract
This paper examines the nature of symphilosophy as articulated and performed in Bettina Brentano von Arnim’s 1840 Günderode. In contrast to Schlegel’s understanding of symphilosophy as a form of “communion” among authors, I argue that Brentano von Arnim’s symphilosophy is propelled by discord, openness to difference and to transformation. This is most evident in the work’s discussion of history and historical knowledge. The interlocutors disagree on crucial points; however, Brentano von Arnim does not simply exhibit difference or seek to arrive at a higher standpoint. Rather, she takes seriously the perspective of her interlocutor and seeks to assess its viability by writing a historical work focused on a historical person. In other words, by reanimating a historical figure, and engaging seriously with her ideas, Brentano von Arnim’s book stages the questions under discussion and performatively offers an answer to them. In so doing, the work offers a new understanding of symphilosophy and its significance.
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Notes
- 1.
References to Brentano von Arnim’s works will be made to Bettina Brentano von Arnim, Werke und Briefe, ed. Walter Schmitz and Sibylle von Steinsdorff (Frankfurt: Deutscher Klassiker Verag, 1986), and will appear in the body as WB, followed by a volume and a page number. When available in English, I will quote from Bettina Brentano von Arnim, “Selections from Günderode,” in Women Philosophers in the Long Nineteenth Century: The German Tradition, ed. Dalia Nassar and Kristin Gjesdal, trans. Anna Ezekiel (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021). This too will appear in the body as SG.
- 2.
Brentano von Arnim’s activism includes her politically focused salon, as well as her authorship of two books. The first, titled, This Book Belongs to the King [Dies Buch gehört dem König] (1842), provocatively describes a king who would be susceptible to the plights of his people. It received an anonymous glowing review, most likely by Friedrich Engels. The book was banned in Bavaria and led to a prison sentence for Brentano von Arnim in 1847. This event crystalized the growing tensions between Brentano von Arnim and the Prussian state, convincing her not to publish a second book, in which she describes the situation of the working poor. Titled, The Book of the Poor [Das Armenbuch], it was only published in 1962. On Brentano von Arnim’s political activity, see Julie Koehler, “When the Inexhaustible Purse Runs Dry: Bettina von Arnim’s ‘Tale of the Lucky Purse’,” Marvels & Tales 33, no. 1 (2019): 64–81.
- 3.
For instance, in Günderode (1840), Brentano von Arnim speaks of the “hocus pocus of [the philosopher’s] superlative machine” (GS 97), and describes a philosopher who, having landed on a beautiful island, is disappointed in this beauty because “there were no creatures there out of which the philosopher could make anything wise” (GS 90). As Brentano von Arnim repeatedly argues, philosophers—and philosophy more generally—have difficulty appreciating and making sense of precisely those aspects that make us human, those things that speak to our whole selves, rather than to our intellect alone.
- 4.
See for instance, Anne Pollock, “On Self-formation: The Role of Writing and Sociability for the Establishment of a Persona (Henriette Herz, Rahel Levin Varnhagen, and Bettina von Arnim),” in Women and Philosophy in Eighteenth-Century Germany, ed. Corey Dyck (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), 195–212.
- 5.
On Schlegel and Novalis’ conception of symphilosophy and its relation to romantic sociability, see Jane Kneller, “Sociability and the Conduct of Philosophy: What We Can Learn from Early German Romanticism,” in The Relevance of Romanticism: Essays on German Romantic Philosophy, ed. Dalia Nassar (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 110–124.
- 6.
In the letter to his brother, Schlegel explains that it is only if August Wilhelm contributes additional fragments that “the concept of the symphony [will] be completely carried out” (KFSA 24, 102). Similarly, in justifying his desire for more fragments from Novalis, Schlegel explains that if Novalis contributes, then “everything [would] join in the great symphony” (KFSA 24, 103).
- 7.
It is worthwhile noting, however, that after 1800, Schlegel ceased to publish collections of fragments. His other significant symphilosophical work is Dialogue on Poetry (1800), which enacts on the page the kind of intimate and open conversation that takes place in a salon. The characters in the dialogue represent opposing philosophical positions, and the aim is to arrive at a higher perspective. Beyond the fragment collections and this work, however, Schlegel published little that can be counted as symphilosophy. Accordingly, while Schlegel gave us the name “symphilosophy,” and his work has therefore been most often associated with this ideal, the majority of his later (i.e., post-1800) works are not symphilosophical.
- 8.
However, despite Schlegel’s apparent insistence that the letter is merely prosaic, and thus lacking in poetic potential, he did contemplate editing and publishing his letters—although he never actually did it (KFSA 24, 135). In turn, Schlegel and Novalis’ own letter exchange might itself be regarded as another realization of the ideal of symphilosophy. Still, the point remains that they did not publish their letters, and this might be for philosophical reasons: letters are simply not on par with other forms of symphilosophy.
- 9.
In contrast to Schlegel, Novalis writes (in an Athenäums-Fragment), “the true letter is, according to its nature, poetic [der wahre Brief ist seiner Natur nach poetisch].” Novalis Schriften: Die Werke von Friedrich von Hardenberg, ed. Richard Samuel, H.-J. Mähl, P. Kluckhorn, and G. Schulz (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1960–1988), vol. 2, 24.
- 10.
Barbara Becker-Cantarino, “Zur Brieftheorie der Romantik,” in Bettina von Arnim Handbuch, ed. Barbara Becker-Cantarino (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2019), 335.
- 11.
On Brentano von Arnim’s relationship to Goethe—whom she met in 1807—their letter exchange, the ways in which she helped him with his autobiography, and their falling out and eventual reconciliation, see Miriam C. Seidler, “Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,” in Bettina von Arnim Handbuch, ed. Barbara Becker-Cantarino (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2019), 178–187.
- 12.
Accordingly, when references are made to the authors of the letters that appear in Günderode, their names will be spelled according to Brentano von Arnim’s spelling, rather than their historical spelling. Thus, instead of Günderrode, reference will be made to Günderode, and instead of Bettina or Brentano von Arnim, reference will be made to Bettine.
- 13.
As Lorely French notes, in her version of “The Manes,” Brentano von Arnim eliminates expressions of time, making the pupil’s experience timeless—an alteration that could carry philosophical significance. Other editorial changes include Brentano von Arnim’s elimination of Günderrode’s use of and and but, with the result that the 1840 text is largely composed of long, uninterrupted sentences broken only by the slight pauses of commas or semicolons. Lorely French, German Women as Letter Writers: 1750–1850 (London: Associated University Presses, 1996), 229–231.
- 14.
The German author Christa Wolf, whose interest in Günderrode led her to Brentano von Arnim, puts the matter as follows: “The fact that Bettine treated her material freely, shortened letters, included letters from other correspondences, and invented some things has been held against her. This book is nonetheless authentic, in a poetic sense: as a witness of a friendship between two women, but also as a document of an era’s social forms and customs and a powerful criticism of these customs.” Christa Wolf, Karoline von Günderrode. Der Schatten eines Traumes (Darmstadt: Luchterhand, 1979), 25.
- 15.
As a writer for the American magazine The Atlantic Monthly put it in 1873: Günderode “had great popularity, and the young German ‘girls of the period,’ the young and sentimental wives, the flaxen-haired, blue-eyed ‘femmes incomprises,’ of all Germany, wept over it as their grandmothers had wept sixty years before over the ‘Sorrows of Werther.’” M. E. W. S., “A Curiosity of Literature,” The Atlantic Monthly 31 (1873): 210–217, 211.
- 16.
In addition to Fuller, the abolitionist philosopher Lydia Maria Child was also deeply influenced by Günderode. As Lydia Moland puts it, “Child especially loved Günderode, reporting that it was among the possessions she seized when fleeing a fire that had broken out in her neighbourhood.” Moland goes on to consider the ways in which Günderode appeared throughout Child’s crucial anti-slavery publication, “Letters from New York.” See Lydia Moland, “Lydia Maria Child on German Philosophy and American Slavery,” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 29 (2021): 259–274, 263.
- 17.
On Günderrodes philosophy of plants see also the chapter by Elaine Miller in this volume.
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Nassar, D. (2022). Staging History: Bettina Brentano von Arnim’s Günderode and the Ideal of Symphilosophy. In: Lettow, S., Pulkkinen, T. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of German Idealism and Feminist Philosophy. Palgrave Handbooks in German Idealism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13123-3_20
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