Abstract
The article presents a close reading of Hebel’s “Kannitverstan” with specific attention to the topic of cosmopolitanism. Locating the text’s interpretational dilemma by means of the traditional topos of the wanderer at a crossroads, the article argues that Hebel’s text stages an encounter between two different perspectives towards language, and that this distinction reflects a new cosmopolitan situation which demands both ethical and hermeneutic responses.
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Notes
“Was nie geschrieben wurde, lesen”, is a quotation from Hofmannsthal’s Der Tor und der Tod. On the importance of this phrase for Benjamin’s works, see various articles in the anthology edited by Jäger and Regehly (1992).
The calendar stories were short narratives, anecdotes, and modified fairy tales, often not more than 2 or 3 pages long, which Hebel wrote in his role as editor of the Badische Landkalender from 1807 onwards. They were meant both to entertain and to provide moral instruction for the readers of the calendars, who were mostly villagers and peasants. Because of their enormous popularity, he decided to publish a collection of the most popular of these in 1811: Schatzkästlein des rheinischen Hausfreundes. (For an elaboration of the concept of “Hausfreund” in Hebel, see the classic article by Heidegger 2002).
The text’s hermeneutic and ethical puzzles have invited several interpretations from a host of different perspectives and theoretical camps. For modern contributions, see for instance (Geisenhanslüke 2001); see also Schestag’s deconstructive approach (1991, 207–215); readings based on the learnings of system theory are pursued by Winthrop-Young (2002) and Buschmeier (2007). For the connection between ethics and hermeneutics, see Braungart (2007). See also Fleming (2011) and Pietzcker (2010). A short critical comment by Ernst Bloch can be found in Bevilacqua (2001, 11f). —As for Benjamin, who wrote several smaller pieces on Hebel, he seems to have planned to write about this story: “‘Kannitverstan’ lesen und hier ironisch auf die moderne Theorie des ‘Verstehens’ eingehen. Verstehen, Beschreiben, Erklären. Dilthey,” says an undated note left by him (Benjamin 1991, 1448). On Benjamin’s take on Hebel, see the informative articles by Regehly (1992) and Wizisla (2011), also Fleming (2011). Regehly’s article also includes some hypotheses concerning how Benjamin would have interpreted “Kannitverstan”. Yet he does not take into account the questions launched by Lehre vom Ähnlichen.
The topos of Hercules on the crossroads was highly popular for artists from the 15th century onwards, and can be found in Dürer, Raffael and Annibale Carracci alike; even Johann Sebastian Bach has a lively secular cantata subtitled “Herkules auf dem Scheidewege” (BWV 213). Panofsky quotes a famous poem earlier ascribed to Virgil (now ascribed to Maximinus, or Pseudo-Virgil), with the title (in Hans Sachs’ translation): “Der buchstab Pitagore Y, baiderley strasz, der tugent und untugend” (Pythagoras was believed to be the letter’s inventor). The right “strasz” is ardurous, yet implies virtuous life; the left, which is, “gar senfft und weit,/Zeigt uns an die wollustbarkeit”, and eventually leads to man’s perdition. (quoted from Panofsky 1997, 66). Since the letter Y manifested the moment of choice, it was often called the liberum arbitrium, or the Free Will.
In this, the apprentice seems to respond to the sermon in a way which would be held up by Heidegger as the right response to Hebel’s writings in general. For Heidegger, without referring to “Kannitverstan”, sees Hebel’s writing as based on the idea of “Predigt”: “Predigen ist das lateinische praedicare. Das heiβt: etwas vorsagen, dadurch kundtun, dadurch rühmen und so das zu-Sagende in seinem Glanz erscheinen lassen. Dieses ‘predigen’ ist das Wesen des dichterischen Sagens.” (Heidegger 2002, 143).
In a text concerned neither with Hebel nor German etymology, but with the ontologic status of the image, Maurice Blanchot speaks about the corpse in terms of similarity. As he puts it, changed into a corpse “le défunt regretté commence à ressembler à lui-même. (…) Il est le semblable à un degré absolu, bouleversant et merveilleux. Mais à quoi ressemble-t-il? A rien.” (Blanchot 1999, 346f).
On the topic of “Vergänglichkeit” and the city’s “Todverfallenheit”, see Geisenhanslüke (2001).
De Staël found in translations “des tournures nouvelles et des expressions plus originales”, exotic elements specifically fruitful for enriching the vocabulary of a given language: “les traductions des poètes étrangers peuvent, plus efficacement que tout autre moyen, préserver la littérature d’un pays de ces tournures banales qui sont les signes les plus certains de sa décadence” (de Staël 1838, 294).
Published in 1782, Peysonnel’s story was soon translated into German under the title “Fragment vom Nationalstolze in Sprachen” (1783). Hebel first translated it into an abreviated Latin version before reworking, extending and refining it into the German version. For more on the genetic history of Hebel’s text, see Franz (1985).
This is not belied by the fact that Rivarol held his famous speech Discours sur l’Universalité de la langue française claiming French as the only acceptable universal language for culture and politics in 1784. Rivarol begins his speech thus: “Le temps semble être venu de dire le monde français, comme autrefois le monde romain, et la philosophie, lasse de voir les hommes toujours divisés par les interêts divers de la politique, se réjouit maintenant de les voir, d’un bout de la terre à l’autre, se former en république sous la domination d’une même langue” (Rivarol 1784, 2). For Rivarol, a world without a universal language is tantamount to political anarchy. However as, among others, Joseph Texte notes in his valuable classic (1909, 413), Rivarol’s speech was already belated and responding to what he saw as the increasing problem of French losing its inherited universal supremacy. Rivarol, the enlightenment writer, reacted at what he saw as the emergence at the latter part of the 18th century of the “incommunicable” and the downfall of viable international communication.
For, among others, the political reasons (France’s loss of America to Britain) behind this “agony” of the French language, see the illuminating points made in Dennis Hollier's article on Chateaubriand (1989).
“salveni” is a Latin abbreviation of salva venia, ‘if I may’.
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Valeur, P.S. The Cosmopolitanism of a Passing Sound: Johann Peter Hebel’s “Kannitverstan”. Neophilologus 100, 275–287 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11061-015-9463-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11061-015-9463-3