Romantic Phantasy

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Symbolism and Mediation in Arnim's View of Romantic PhantasyAuthor(s): Roland HoermannSource: Monatshefte, Vol. 54, No. 4, Robert Musil Number (Apr. - May, 1962), pp. 201-215Published by: University of Wisconsin PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30160725 .

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SYMBOLISM AND MEDIATION IN ARNIM'S VIEW

OF ROMANTIC PHANTASY

ROLAND HOERMANN

University of California, Davis

I. Structural Aspects

The role of phantasy in Achim von Arnim's view of reality wasconditioned by two characteristically Romantic beliefs. The first ofthese asserts hat religious or existential reality is composed of a rationaldimension and of an imaginative dimension. Arnim (1781-1831) asso-ciated the rational actor with the physical world of sensory phenomena,

while identifying the imaginative dimension with man's aesthetic, innerlife. Although careful to specify that isolated phantasy is a meaninglessvirtue, he clearly felt that aesthetic reality represents the higher planeof being. 1 Indeed, for a typical Romanticist ike Arnim, phantasy wasnothing less than the power to perceive the supreme evel of truth - aview which coincides essentially with Wackenroder's earlier discoveryof a religious element as the common denominator of all great imagina-tive art. The tension implicit between reality's physical axis and itsimaginative dimension represents Arnim's particular concern within the

larger, idealistic complex of Romantic dualism.The second fundamental belief that gave shape to Arnim's view of

Romantic phantasy asserts the importance of a mediator figure as thesynthesizing reconciler between the material and the ideological polesof reality. As might be expected, the mythology of Christian dealismreappears n German Romanticism s an aesthetic pattern, with the medie-val Holy Mother's role of the personal intercessor mirrored n Arnim'sfeminine characterization f Romantic Phantasy, and with the Christian

Saviour's ethically reforming mediation reflected in the messianic, cul-tural role of the fanciful poet. Hence Arnim's veiled embodiments ofRomantic Phantasy usually accomplish their mediation between thesearching artist-to-be and the sought-after imaginative reality by meansof personal, womanly inspiration. His gaining of the imaginative per-ception of physical reality manifests itself in turn when the fancifulpoet enters into the sacrifice of becoming a mediator between the in-habitants of the prosaic world, on the one hand, and the poetical mys-teries of his mistress' realm, on the other.

Like the qualifying premise of a syllogistic triad, the Christianaffirmation here of a harmonizing mediation originates in the classicalfirst statement of reality's dissonance. The pre-Hegelian resolution ofthese divergent premises then asserts a newly synthesized reality, basedon Romanticism's ew way of seeing the entire natural world as a con-

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tinuous mythological revelation of interrelated ife-forces. A passage nthe phantastic ale of Die Majoratsherren 1820) demonstrates n a par-ticularly fruitful way how Arnim - acting as a poetic mediator himself- reconciles his belief in a split reality withl his .concept of a reunifying

mediator. The climactic setting for this characterization s the poeticalhero's vision experienced from his prophetic garret vantage. In thecourse of this split-level perceptual experience, which simultaneously n-volves the realities of phantasy and of the material world, the hero wit-nesses his beloved Esther's death struggle and watches her purified spiritascending to the higher sphere of being: "Throughout the structure ofthis world, a higher realm became visible which the senses can per-ceive only through the imagination: through that phantasy which - bymaterializing hese higher ideas - stands between the two realms as a

mediator and always ideates anew the dead shell of matter into livingform." 2 In this key passage Arnim asserts he existence of a higher realmof ideas (to which Esther's liberated spirit is returning) and of a ma-terial world of objects (in which the title hero is still enmeshed). Themediating spirit of phantasy has afforded both unhappy protagonists avision of that pure realm in which their thwarted union may occur.This prophetic view, perceived by a hero and heroine still inhabitingthe material world, exists on the level of symbolical reality which phan-tasy creates by rendering the spiritual idea visible within the material

object. In such a manner, Romantic phantasy sublimates man's schizoidperception of 'total reality by affirming a symbolical world of art forms,in which ideated matter and materialized dea are reunified as a singleexistential entity. 3 Clearly, then, this passage forms a crucial part ofArnim's concept of the poetic symbol, the aesthetic or "living" formu-lation of total, religious reality.

The twin relationship between matter and idea in Arnim's view ofpoetic phantasy s also illustrated by Klelie's experience of "Waldeinsam-keit" in the novelette Die Kirchenordnung 1822). While watching the

motion of the lofty Atree ops, she sees every branch above her outlinedby its ethereal double, clearly in the relationship of symbolizing objectto symbolized idea. The nebulous aura which Klelie sees surroundingeach forest shape carries on, we are told, a secret life with the sun andclouds in the higher sphere of existence (IX, 191).

Leaving external considerations momentarily n favor of structuralaspects in the previously cited key passage of Arnim's Die Majoratsher-ren, we find further indications hat the symbolical device itself atteststo Phantasy's perceptual resynthesis of our world's split reality. Withthe author's reference here to a figure standing as a mediator betweenthe two domains of material and ideological reality, he has in effectcreated an image of Poetic Phantasy to symbolize this very symbolizingactivity. In so doing, Arnim acts in the role of mediator himself andis employing essentially those same principles of mediation or symbolcreationr which he is defining. This uniquely Romantic circularity is il-



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lustrated narratively n the same story, where the hero's second pair ofeyes symbolize poetic phantasy as they mediate for him the spiritualiza-tion of rational, everyday objects (II, 204, 208). By perceiving, forexample, the maid-servant's eadcloth throughout as a halo, the hero's

second set of eyes enables him to discern the true, essential goodnessbeneath Beatrice's gruff exterior. Hence these symbolic and, at thesame time, symbolizing eyes reinterpret the surface reality of the ser-vant's prosaic headcloth by creating from it the poetic symbol of ahalo to express Beatrice's nner character. Indeed, the Majoratherr him-self represents the epitome of the Romantic artist as an emblematizingformulator of ideas.

The organic and perhaps unconscious unity of the key passage wehave been examining n such detail suggests that the creating of sym-bolic images was for Arnim the primary, if not exclusive, role of thecreative imagination and hence became also the very basis of his ownpoetic style. The examples selected, showing different degrees of con-cretization in the author's treatment of the phantasy concept, rangethrough reality's spectrum from the explanatory, deological pole (keypassage above) to the opposite, material zone (the Majoratherr's econdset of eyes) and into the reconciling area of aesthetic values with thesymbolic figure of Phantasy itself as an intercessor. In illustrating Ar-nim's formulation of the phantasy idea, we have been concerned pri-marily and necessarily with that force in the symbolical process whichcan be termed materialization. The complementary but opposite forceof ideation can be demonstrated as a simultaneous phenomenon in Ar-nim's most unified and unifying emblem for the poet, namely in hisplowman-sower figure. Because this cumulative image also reveals theembryonic point in Arnim's elaboration of the aesthetic myth of theartist's salvation, for which phantasy's mediation is crucial, referencehere to the plowman-sower mage will be especially instructive.

The nature of this image is most evident in the author's preface tohis most important novel, Die Kronenwachter (I8I7 ff.). Here Arnimvisualizes he poet as a worker in the intellectual fields whose unwillingplowshare (the poet's quill) scratches and labors across the white ex-panse to be sown (III, 5, 8). Describing his research for Des KnabenWunderhorn (8o05 ff.) in various libraries, Arnim writes to ClemensBrentano that for two days he has been plowing the white field fromdawn till dusk (Steig, I, 149), and four years later, in a letter to Bet-tina, he speaks of driving his plowshare over a burned-out city of firstdrafts (Steig, II, 247). In this way Arnim literally and overtly em-bodies the idea of the poet's struggle for imaginative fulfillment intothe concrete activity of the plowman-sower, who prepares the earthfor acceptance of the seed he is to sow for the enrichment of mankind.

The reciprocal and simultaneous aspect of ideation in this totalemblem predominates n the appearance of the title hero in Juvenis(18I8) as a plowman-sower, whose meals are brought to the fields by



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a Tyrolean maiden (Phantasy). The context suggests that these repastsrepresent pictorial illustrations, . e. images, for the poet's works. Fur-thermore, the springtime climax to Juvenis' labors on the land and tohis love reveals the importance of this season as a Romantic motif rep-resenting the artist's winning of the imaginative perception as well assignifying the coming golden age of poetry." Thus Arnim ideatesJuvenis' plowman-sower activity and his love for a Tyrolienne by for-mulating them in the light of the poet's creative deeds and their acti-vation by an inspiring phantasy. By means of this two-fold, conscioustechnique, Arnim is - perhaps unconsciously also contributing o the

generalized plowman myth, in which he was preceded most directlyby William Langland (The Visions of Piers the Plowman, 1362) and byJohann von Saaz (Der Ackermann aZts Bohmen, 1400).

From this demonstration f the literary phenomenon of simultaneousembodiment and ideation, it is apparent that the universal "idea" ofpoetic creativeness and the finite "body" of the plowman image notonly become inseparable spects but undergo progressive nterpenetrationof meaning, as Arnim's symbolic equation in any particular work be-comes increasingly clear to the reader. It is just as impossible to iso-late these two reciprocal orces that together generate symbolical realityas it is to separate hat "phantastic" econd eyesight from the person ofthe Majoratherr or indeed to divorce the mediating spirit of phantasyfrom the poet-mediator figure. To be sure, the clearest separation nthe purely narrative unction of the latter two figures occurs in thoseworks that most explicitly demonstrate he Romantic myth of the ar-tist's salvation. This myth's entire ethos turns on the dualistic but nar-rowing gulf between inspiring Phantasy and the aspiring novice and onthat eventual union which represents his gaining of the imaginative vi-sion. Therefore, during the poet-novice's transition from the bourgeoisworld to the aesthetic, both the materializing orce and - to the extentthat Phantasy's activities further inform her own individuation - the

ideational force are personified n her single figure and character role. 6Viewed, however, from the broader philosophic premise of the com-pleted, symbolical work of art (i. e. aesthetic reality), the mortal poet'sachievement necessarily proceeds from his world of material reality,which he transforms chiefly via the principle of ideation. For the poetis ultimately concerned with injecting universal, ntellectual content intothe chaos of finite forms or "pictorial illustrations" urrounding him.The spirit of phantasy, on the other hand, must proceed from its owninfinite world of spiritual or ideological reality, which it translates via

the materializing principle into that disconnected reality of humanlydiscernible forms. Phantasy's protean climax to these revelationary n-dividuations s the successive personifying of its own, goddess-like self,one moment in the embodiment of Arnim's Tyrolienne and the nextmoment as the gypsy princess in his Isabella von Agypten (18

In this way, the creative process as well as the symbolical work of



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art may be viewed as a double phenomenon, with the ideating poet ina reciprocal relationship to that materializing power of phantasy whichexerts itself through him. Both component tensions - the ideating andthe embodying force - are as essential for the imaginative work of art

as are centrifugal and centripetal motion for the dynamic serenity oftheir common center. As a result, it is not surprising o find Arnim alsoemploying the image of the perfect work of art (IV, 383) or the irre-ducible emblem of the paradisiacal child c to represent the union ofPhantasy and poet as an absolute state of harmonious equilibrium. Thuseven the ultimate mechanics of the Romantic poet's symbolical styledemonstrate the same initially assumed polarity between physical andideological reality, together with the reconciling, aesthetic principle ofmediation.

II. Narrative AspectsBecause the mediating concept of phantasy is crucial to Romanti-

cism's idealist concern for the artist's salvation within a dual reality aswell as being decisive in the very mode of Romantic thinking and writ-ing, as just demonstrated, t actually assumes the significance of ananthropomorphic "Ursymbol" n the Romantic existential posture. Thepowerful center of diffusion for the Phantasy image was Novalis'"Klingsohr's Tale" in Heinrich von Ofterdingen (1802), where Phantasy

(Ginnistan) mediates Eros' rejuvenation and acts as nurse to the para-disiacal child Fabel, whose activation of a springtime golden age of"Universalpoesie" refigures he artist's destiny. During his early period,however, when Arnim had strong doubts regarding Novalis' "magicidealism" Steig I, 41), he was more impressed by the dualist formula-tions of Schelling, his former teacher in Jena, whose nature philosophystressed a primal masculine-feminine dichotomy. Thus, in a noveletteconceived about I803, Die Ehenschmiede (publ. posth. 1839), Arnim'sportrayal of Aura Luft can be interpreted as a generalized personifica-

tion of the feminine principle n terms of the fig-ure f Romantic Phantasy.Here, mediating Phantasy nspires mere inartistic citizens, ultimately

unifying life's feminine and masculine polarity in the form of a quadruplewedding. Significantly, this gay daughter of a German professor is anearly orphan - one of Romanticism's mblems for the outsider whosedestiny transcends he rationale of bourgeois normalcy. From the inter-nal narrator's ccount of her, it is evident that Arnim subordinates herethe one rational and masculine principle of the ideating organization ofmatter o the other materializing, eminine principle of protean ndividua-

tion, for Aura is characterized s "the fleeting, nimble, and irresponsiblemaiden, who check-mated me with all my philosophy" (II, 18). Theraconteur, who is also the butt of Aura's humor, is thankful for hissound constitution, since "an abundance of insolent strength and healthpermitted he pretty girl to engage in all sorts of amusement hat wouldhave driven a person of weak nerves to despair" II, 25). In the artisan



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Rennwagen's analysis of this goddess-like creature the reader discernsAmrnim he poet, celebrating and yet lamenting the elusive, quicksilveryforce of phantasy:

Whenever I look completely objectively at Aura's form, if I -as a sculptor - compare her to the finest statues, if I compare thecolor of her skin with the best of Correggio's pictures - shetriumphs over all; I could almost believe that she is not mortal,that perhaps tomorrow she will no longer be what she was today,that neither with a brush, nor with chisel, in words, nor in tendertones can I hold fast her image, can I unite my feelings togetherwith her in a work that would survive. (II, 29)

The Romanticist Arnim is insisting here on the distinction between the

mere "feelings" that echo a subjective inspiration and the more activeand rare power of creative phantasy.

When the German narrator attempts to excuse Aura's extravagantbehavior to their Scottish host by asserting t to be the general fashionamong German maidens, Aura significantly protests by claiming that"she is unique, wishes to remain so, and he who cares to understandher must raise himself up to her; she cannot lower herself without de-generating into dissonance" II, 50). By emphasizing he universal butexclusive quality of the poetic imagination, Arnim reasserts he elementalconflict between the worlds of idea and matter. Accordingly, in thepreface to his first volume of Novellen, the author observes that onlythose writers can be called true poets who give absolutely free rein tothe Pegasus which deigns to carry them (I, xix). For' the unimaginative,unpoetical person who is unable to accept Aura's significance on her ownethereal level, she represents an insulting, superficial, and discordantforce in human relations. The imaginative, non-possessive ndividual,however, gratefully enjoys Aura's presence whenever she sees fit toappear and participate. For example, Aura reveals herself to a groupof people, who are not acquainted with each other, at the marriage millin Gretna-Green. Only she [i. e. the mediating patron goddess of phan-tasy] could thus unite strangers on the bizarre evel of a mass marriage,Arnim assures us. But gratitude is repugnant to her, Aura asserts, forafter all - she is thoroughly accustomed o the contempt normal peopleshow for the way in which she squanders her beauty and talents (II,90). After arranging the wedding of all marriageable ouples in thevicinity, she quietly slips out and away, whereupon he company prompt-ly lavishes that very unwanted gratitude upon her memory: "The girlfrom abroad . . . a good fairy . . . an angel How could we haveso misjudged his blessing from heaven to let her escape thus " Pursuitis suggested, to which the answer comes: "Wait . . . that is useless.Can you hold back lightning or a champagne cork as it flies forth? Pre-cisely this evanescence is what makes her so magnificent; f we heldher fast, she would only sour us with her disastrous pranks." II, 99)



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In this early phase, Arnim's own overabundance of imaginative zealresulted not merely in a rather non-problematic, cavalier attitude to-ward the material dimension of reality but also in a general indifferenceto the problem of the artist's salvation through an act of mediatory

sacrifice by Phantasy. The only sacrifice the latter makes at this pointis the fact of her human individuation, which is otherwise unencum-bered by ethical or moral commitments; for nowhere does she encounterthe ideating force of a worthy male counterpart, so that at the end shemust return, somewhat sadly, whence she has come. In giving full reinto Aura's expression of self - which is reminiscent of the spritely man-ner of Bettina Brentano, the author's future wife - Arnim has circum-scribed through personification the broad mediatory character of Phan-tasy, whose rococo, Anacreontic coloration here still betrays its classical

origns.Arnim's transition figure of Ariel reflects a continuing attempt to

preserve such a unified and unproblematically rococo view of creativeexistence. In the story of Aura, the author was able to avoid the specificproblem by not including the ideating figure of the poet. In the Arielnarratives, he seeks unsuccessfully to solve reality's split by includingboth halves of the creative polarity within the single androgynous igureof Ariel. Such a self-mediating being would unite an unlimited powerof imaginative individuation with an absolute power of ideation - a

phenomenon conceivable as enduring only in the being of God. Instead,the demigod Ariel alternately partakes of Phantasy's ole and - partiallythrough his poet's "revelations" in Ariels Offeenbarungen (1804) butalmost exclusively in Der Wintergarten (18o9) - of the poet's mascu-linely intellectual role. WVhile no serious poet problem could arise onthe jocosely social level of Aura's mediation, Arnim has at least pavedthe way through his monolithic portrayal of Ariel in the Ofenbarungenfor a deepening and internalizing of the mediatory ethos, which culmi-nates still later in the ultimate conflict of the poet's soul. Hence, in the

earlier work, the ambivalent and all-expansive image of Ariel - un-doubtedly modeled on Shakespeare's frothy air spirit - does not merelycharacterize he poet's phantasy but represents he total Romantic genusof phantastic poet. His forward-pointing shadow envelops like a fram-ing vision the actual narrative scene of a materially embattled present.

Two years before the first appearance of the name in his poetry,Amim writes to Brentano that "Aridel s a completely wonderful fellow,not just a dancer or poet: he practices strange arts . . " (Steig I, 51).The transcendent dancing aspect in the Offenbarungen parallels Aura'salluring but elusive movements, while his demigod nature appears roman admirer's letter in the fragmentary frame of this verse novel, tellingof Ariel's departure: "Do not think me out of my senses, but my sensesare sick since I no longer hear his voice: my demonic genius is goneand my art has gone along with him" (198). Kryoline continues herdescription, which echoes the impact of Aura:



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He consorted with all sorts of weird characters, with whom hewandered about singing songs incognito. He came - no one knowswhence, he has gone - no one knows whither, he has deceivedeveryone, given away much of his money and has left his bills

unpaid. In the moonlight, Ariel appears ike a sublime idea: withhis dark hair falling in locks he hardly looks light of heart butrather like a light spirit brooding concernedly on the face of man.(199 f-)

The materializing, eminine force in Ariel's dual nature and its sourcein the realm of idea is reflected here in Arnim's juxtaposing he hero'smetaphysical appearance o the elements of Romantic moonlight and thewavy locks of dark hair. The dimension of phantasy s further empha-sized in references, by now familiar, to lamented, restless departure,

to unknown origin, and to deceptive or changeable dentity, whose totalflux is further mirrored above in the musical element of minstrel song.The masculine poet's function of intellectual and ethical mediation ap-pears in Ariel's final brooding concern here for the destiny of his era.By beginning the descriptive sequence of this passage with materialdetail and concluding with a universal allusion to the human imagina-tion's far-reaching role as an ideating force, Arnim suggests the poet'sfulfillment as the goal of the mediatory cycle.

Later, the female admirer pays the back-rent for departed Ariel (as

phantasy) in exchange for which the landlady offers her the manuscriptof these revelations hat Ariel (as poet) has left behind. On one of thesemnanuscript heets Ariel expresses a prophetic vision of the mythologicalspringtime of Romantic poetry, where Ariel, the poet, and Ariel, the"sublime dea" of poetic phantasy, will have become one in the creativeact of the poet's symbolizing perception and in the advent of symbolicalor aesthetic reality: "And where art becomes one with nature, that ismy realm, there I send forth my roots infinitely far, back into the pastto all beginning, up into the future to the regeneration of the world:

There is where my home is " (2 15). Arnim very clearly identifies theRomantic dualism at this point in terms of art (masculine deation) andnature (feminine embodiment). 7 Ariel, like Faust, is aware of the twosouls in his breast that move past each other as opposed forces, eachstill yearning - in the best Romantic sense - for its fulfillment in theother. Finally, this visionary utterance reaffirms Arnim's conception ofAriel in the Offenbarungen as a poet-prophet figure on the scale ofSaint John of Patmos.

Although Ariel's demigod lustre never disappears completely, inDer Wintergarten Arnim visualizes Ariel's poet role in terms of hisouter clash with an inhospitable, anti-poetic climate. Because the po-tential poet is surrounded here by a state of political oppression, onlya weak formulation of inspiring phantasy is noticeable in this work,namely in the figure bearing the name "die Geniale." In effect, then,Arnim delineates Phantasy's mpact on the poet figure by negation,



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through her almost complete absence, and a rather disillusioned poetimage results. Ariel is first discovered by members of the figurativewinter-garden colony, perched high on a portal vantage where he isguarding the solitary villa of the handsome lady who personifies German

art. In the darkness, the stranger's lantern is "mistakenly" identifiedas the colony's star of hope blazing against the wintry sky (XI, 190).Closer scrutiny of the light and its owner reveals Ariel in the role ofnight watchman - a far more important poet emblem than the star ofhope, and peculiarly Romantic. Ariel says of his earlier enthusiasmfor Romanticism's great program of a rebirth of imaginative art: "Ibecome completely involved in whatever stirs me . . . We had hopedfor a flourishing era in Germany and had worked hard. Like a won-drous, many-sided mirror, she was supposed to unite the world. To

make a long story short, war came and smashed the mirror like a storm-lashed and homeless dove" (XII, i i). Thus this mirror image reflectsthe mediatory role which the Romanticists had envisioned for pre-Napoleonic Germany as a sanctuary for the imaginative spirit.

Political and autobiographical implications make it increasingly clearas Der Wintergarten progresses that Ariel is also Arnim's own poet'smask, 8 and that creative inspiration has become a more problematicmatter to him. A somberly demonic tone makes its first appearancewhen Ariel relates how only the intervention of a friend from out of

the golden dawn-clouds of Ariel's youth has prevented the poet novicefrom destroying himself during winter's famine, that is, during the reignof Rationalism and Napoleonic violence (XII, 1 3). Ariel announceshis intention of undertaking a voyage of exploration around the worlduntil this European winter will have passed: "If I return, then I shallhave used my time to best advantage and will enter without guilt intoEurope's new era" (XII, 29). Thus the imaginative poet feels that thedominant spirit of materialism in the war-torn German provinces istoo sterile a soil for the germination of poetic phantasy and for culti-vation by the artist. Instead, Ariel will leave Europe's hostile presentand seek inspiration by exploring the world's literature of the past. Andindeed, the main body of Wintergarten tales simply represents a retell-ing by Arnim of stories originating in the seventeenth and eighteenthcenturies. The narrative Ariel frame ends amidst the springtime thawas the allegorical lady of German art adopts an orphaned child (symboliz-ing the paradisiacal era of the future) and bids a sorrowful farewellto Ariel, whereuponr the narrator significantly adds: "O, may the returnof the world traveller really bring new joy to her " (XII, 254). The

concluding image of a ferryman's orphaned child reflects first thatdistant, spiritual homeland of absolute and unself-conscious harmony,then the artist's and Phantasy's creative act of aesthetic union, and

finally it is Romanticism's climactic emblem for the ultimate mnysteriumof human existence.

As Arnim became more aware of the poet's problem of struggle for



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creative impetus, he also visualized more clearly the mediatory cycleof imaginative activation hat proceeds from phantasy, hrough the poetand his work of art, and closes in that golden era of poetic culture,which is mediated by the new poetry and where Phantasy finds her

home again. The author's awareness of this is mirrored first in his dis-sociating the portrayals of materializing Phantasy and the ideating poetin order to dramatize the poet's struggle and Phantasy's impact, andsecondly, in an increasingly ethical formulation of the poet's ownmediatory function. The result is increased narrative interest and anenrichment of meaning in Romanticism's aesthetic myth of the artist'ssalvation. The dissociated portrayals of the Tyrolienne and Juvenis markthe real starting point of this development in Arnim's formulation ofthe imaginative crisis. Here, for the first time, the roles of Phantasy

and the poet are both present, completely distinct, and of equal im-portance.

In the Juvenis tale (i818), the Tyrolienne - representing phantasy,as indicated earlier is also said to come from a distant land and to beof uncertain parentage. Again, the absence of any proper name as wellas her inability to describe her residence except in terms of "right" and"left" contribute the familiar, anonymous universality noted before inArnim's characterization of Phantasy. She too is capriciously elusiveand coquettish and yet possesses a modest candor that disarms. WhenJuvenis hears the tender singing of this child of nature, he feels himself"climbing, at times like a sleepwalker on mountain peaks, at othertimes like a dreaming miner down into the depths of glimmering, un-known, and abandoned passageways. uvenis thought that such a spring-time, in which this kind of bird could be heard, s after all the brightestand most beautiful." (X, 226) In this context, the typically Romanticimages of springtime, he mountain-climbing omnambulist, and of thedreaming miner moving through mysteriously flickering depths are es-pecially meaningful metaphors for the poet and for the domain of

poetic phantasy. Juvenis first meets the Tyrolienne in his unknownmother's wintry greenhouse, a meeting which prefigures Juvenis' re-demption in the Tyrolienne's true springtime of poetic fulfillment thatsoon surrounds his tiller of the soil. In the greenhouse, Juvenis' emo-tional commitment to the Tyrolienne and his sacrifice for the sake ofphantasy are demonstrated by his paying for the cherries she has stolenfrom the greenhouse's "artificial" ree of wisdom (X, 208). This bondmotif was already noted in Kryoline's payment of Ariel-Phantasy's"stolen" rent, for which she receives the poet Ariel's manuscript. The

image is used by Arnin~ o represent an implicit pact between Phantasyand the poet-to-be that will require sacrifice of their respective identitieswhen a harmonious union replaces the polarity of their separate beings.By involving the poet-initiate in a decisive social test where he mustunequivocally take sides by assuming her debt or "Schuld," Phantasy'sunique existential challenge demands instantaneous recognition in the



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sense of kairos, returning perhaps only in another, equally obscure in-dividuation.

The nature of the dualistic struggle between his material and hisideological self becomes evident when Juvenis, in prefiguration of the

porte mnaudit, xclaims: "The cherry thief is at once my sickness andmy life " (X, 217). The poet novice, painfully conscious here of thesplit in his own being between matter and idea, is in extreme need ofexternally mediated salvation, which can only come to him through theTyrolienne's love. The latter, being an incarnation rom the ideologicalrealm, is of course self-mediating and hence does not require such sal-vation. 9 The approaching resolution of the conflict within Juvenis isforeshadowed n his thoughts, where the image of the Tyrolienne an-swers "every charming idea, every pleasant play of words with yetmore tender and charming words, tones, and ideas" (X, 217). The Ty-rolienne then rewards his inner triumph by aiding Juvenis to escape bothfrom the military prison, whither his devotion to her had brought him,and from his previous life as a soldier, i. e. from a materialistic vocation(X, 220). Finally, the Tyrolienne is able to repay her greenhouse debtto him in the form of "genuine" herries of wisdom from her springtimegarden, that is, from poetry's paradise (X, 222 f.).

In this way, Arnim develops an ascending chain of redemptiveimagery, beginning with the germinal motif of Phantasy's entrance intothe pre-springtime greenhouse, where - significantly the future artistis waiting for flowers. With his increasing awareness of the imaginativeforce in his life, he enters the phase of trial and inner conflict. Theprogression of motifs culminates n Juvenis' vindication of his creativepower as an artist - which is reflected in the sudden arrival of spring-time beyond the prison walls. This explains Juvenis' initial impressionof the Tyrolienne: "Her countenance, which appeared to him with alovely paleness, had to wait until spring for its rosy rue and thereforeyearned for springtime's coming" (X, 206). Arnim underscores the

sacrifice inherent in accepting union with phantasy, first by blockinghis characters' nstinctive affection so that Juvenis wears feminine cloth-ing for his escape with the Tyrolienne, and then by revealing in theepilogue that the mediator of Juvenis' poetic rejuvenation is actuallyhis sister. That is, the author stresses their close, organic relationshipwhile also suggesting that the poet can never completely possess theinspirational orce acting through him. But Phantasy here forms thenecessary bridge of particularizing mediation also for her mother's (i. e.the intellect's) realm of pure - and hence sterile - idea or speculation,which Arnim renders with his image of the greenhouse. The creativetension within this Romantic "holy trinity" of Intellect, Phantasy, andthe poet is reflected n a temporary rivalry between mother and daughterfor Juvenis' affection that is then harmonized when the "unitarian" ig-ure of the father (i. e. religious belief) returns from the Orient.

Juvenis, as well as the Faustian fragment of Die Pdpstin Johanna



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(posth. 1846), mark Arnim's closest approach o the allegorical bridgingof split reality envisioned in Novalis' concept of universal redemption.Henceforth, in his ambitiously conceived Kronenwichter chronicle, theauthor strives toward a realistic yet visionary approach, n which a nar-

rowing particularization f the poet concept results in the painter hero,Anton, and in a more limited, politically utopian age. Actually, in PartOne of the epic, Arnim's innovative preoccupation with this detailtechnique of historical myth-making tends initially to quite smotherthe existential artist problem. The result is that the spirit of phantasyonce again - as noted earlier for the roles of Aura and the Ariel of theOffenbarungen has temporarily no active, ideating counterpart. In-stead, the composite materializing igure of Griinewald in Part One(18 17) acquires by assimilation ertain features of the poet role. Sig-nificant in this connection are Griinewald's raits of the prophetic min-strel and of the impulsive, ransvestite actor, "who, in one and the samebreath, wanted to laugh and to cry, to be amusing and touching" (III,365). Indeed, in the unfinished novel's first part, whose completion dateapproximates hat of Juvenis, Griinewald appears n the familiar phantasyattire of the Tyrolean maiden from this latter work, with green felthat and jacket, red bodice, and dark blue skirt (III, 39I f.). Like Auraand the Tyrolienne, Griinewald is also an early orphan and leads, likethem, a Romantic "Wanderleben." As another combined embodiment

of phantasy, who is originally one of the "Guardians" f the Hohen-staufen crown as well, Griinewald has the metamorphic capacity fortransforming his personality according to the "mask" he adopts, whetherit be that of a minstrel (III, 356), a Tyrolean maiden (III, 395 ff.), or thatof an administrative fficial of Duke Ulrich's court (III, 423). His muta-bility reflects strikingly another of Arnim's paradoxical tatements con-cerning the poetic imagination, which is found in letters of October andNovember, 18I2, to Jakob Grimm: "My theory of poetic invention:

S. that phantasy is only then true, when - deceiving - it deceives

itself, just as human reason only then feels convinced when it is madetrue by the truth it is seeking . . . " (Steig, III, 224/242). Thus theillusion of any fanciful disguise he chooses to wear deceives Griinewaldto the extent that he creates for himself a correspondingly new existen-tial role, through which the truth of a new world of human experienceis open to him. In this Tyrolienne "mask," he mediating Griinewaldis able to prophesy the birth and death of his former sweetheart's on,as well as the death of her husband, Berthold, the pseudo hero of thework (III, 483 f.).

According to the notes for continuation of Part Two, Griinewaldwas to have supplied verses for Anton's paintings (IV, 398), just as inJuvenis the Tyrolienne furnishes the illustrations for the poet-plow-man's writings. Distinguished by his harp or zither, Griinewald firstturns up in Arnim's dedication to Goethe of Des Knaben Wunderhornas that work's guiding spirit, 0 and his final transformation occurs at



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the outset of the Kronenwiichter's second part, where he appears andremains as an ordinary, immutable protagonist with the name "Giilden-kamm." Here, where the artist Anton's salvation is consummated, Griine-wald is replaced as mediator, first by Susanna, the gay, imaginative young

daughter of Emperor Charles V and the Egyptian gypsy queen Isabella(IV, 381; cf. also Isabella v. Agypten). Later, Susanna's mediation isalso obscured by the artist's decisive bond to the mysteriously visionaryVoluptas. Anton's realization of his love for Voluptas furnishes theclimax in the artist's odyssey of self-verification. As a hauntingly beau-tiful shade, Voluptas does not represent solely a mystical intensifyingof Susanna's sisterly role as arbiter, for Voluptas is a composite imageof all the women Anton has loved. The essence of everything beautifulin his life, her spectral form returns to taunt Anton at critical pointsin his artist's journey (IV, 233 ff.).

In Arnim's sketches for the d6nouement, the artist-hero's winningof the imperial crown of the united German lands parallels the adventof a peaceful age of art as well as Anton's gaining of the imaginativeperception of a unified reality. For, as the Parzival-like king of theKronenburg, he is finally also able to symbolize directly his vision ofcreative phantasy in a perfect work of art, namely in his painting ofthe Voluptas spirit, whose features nlysteriously and significantly evolveinto those of the Madonna (IV, 383). ~ Embracing creative imagination

in this way as part of her domain, the Holy Mother's image of recon-ciling grace extends Phantasy's mediatory scope also into Christianity'ssphere of the sacred. Anton's spiritual growth and the developmentof his symbolizing phantasy have now merged in the Romantic uniomystica of total religious experience.

With the demonstration of self-unity as mirrored n Anton's con-summating his symbolic master painting, he and his art further projectPhantasy's mediatory chain of redemption in a two-fold way. First,his painting mediates Romanticism's all-pervasive dualism by unitingpagan aesthetic sensuousness (Voluptas) with transcendental Christianity(Mary), a union epitomizing Romantic mysticism. Then, Anton as thereforming artist-king must mediate between the prosaic realm of his-torical reality and the domain of metaphysical ideals. In addition, Arnimhimself, by having formulated these ideas in his historically visionarynovel, embodies his own characterization of the poet, viz. as that pro-phetic reconciler who continually mythologizes the raw materials ofhistorical chance by infusing them with the truth of aesthetic meaning(XIII, 460; Steig, I, 38). With this, the Romantic cycle of mediation

closes on itself, for Anton's painting, like Arnim's aesthetic myth ofthe artist, actually mirrors its own creation by depicting here the sym-bolic figure of Mary-Voluptas and thereby representing the imaginativepoet's vision of his own creative imagination. In so doing, the totalRomantic symbol of salvation becomes self-mediating, from both thestructural and existential viewpoints, and exists in this way for its own



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sake. The narcissistic, ransvestite, and androgynous motifs evident insuch monolithic figures as Aura, Ariel, Griinewald, Voluptas, and thePiipstin Johanna can also be related to the basic condition of self-mediating hybris. Moreover, the impressive ocus as well as the limited

content and static goal of Romanticism's aesthetic myth can likewisebe attributed o this intriguing quality of the circulus vitiosus.

Returning at this point to an earlier syllogistic comparison, theinitial premise of the redemptive pattern asserted a split reality,which was qualified by the minor premise affirming phantasy's sym-bolizing mediation. However, this qualifying premise n Romantic aesthe-tics also appears as the new, imaginative reality and substance of theconclusion. Therefore, what remains as essentially "progressive" n theprogram initiated by Friedrich Schlegel is the stylistic innovation itaccomplished, ts new perception of the world - but not that newworld itself, for which the search s still continuing. Schlegel had plottedthe new existential center of Western art in a modern, Romantic my-thology; instead, the "new" center was found paradoxically n the soulof the Romantic artist himself. For the first time in the modern era,the poet figure was confronted with mediating, i. e. creating, his ownsalvation instead of relying on a conventional but no longer adequatetheodicy. And this sovereignty of the creative ego in the Romanticartist's existential posture has its ultimate mandate n a kind of aestheticunio mystica, in that absolute and irreducible identity of the creativeact as proclaimed n "the beginmling ord" of the Genesis according toSaint John.

l Letter of Oct. 22, 1812 to Jakob Grimm, in Reinhold Steig, Arnim und die ihmnahestanden Stuttgart, 1894 ff.), III, 243. Cit. Steig.

2 Siimtliche Werke, ed. Wilhelm Grimm (Berlin, 1839 ff.), II, 247. This and allsubsequent quotations n English are translations y the writer. Following is the originalGerman text of this passage: "Und es erschien iiberall durch den Bau dieser Welt

eine h6here, welcheden Sinnen nur in der Phantasie rkenntlich wird: in der

Phantasie,die zwischen beiden Welten als Vermittlerin steht und immer neu den toten Stoff derUmhiillung zu lebender Gestaltung vergeistigt, ndem sie das H6here verk6rpert." Merenumber citations within our text refer to the above edition.

3 Inherent in the symbolical style, this reciprocal process of ideating the materialand materializing he idea has climactic expression n Stefan George's mythic principleof "Vergottung des Leibes" and "Verleibung des Gottes." Gesamtausgabe er Werke(Berlin, 1927 ff.), VI/VII, 52.

4 Cf. author's article "The Romantic Golden Age in Arnim's Writings," n Monats-hefte L (1958), pp. 24 ff.

s This view is also supported by a possible nterpretation f the key Majoratsherren

passage (op. cit.) concerning the nature of phantasy. The subject pronoun in the finalphrase, "indem sie das H6here verk6rpert," can be construed either actively with atransitive verbal aspect ("by her materializing hese higher ideas"), as we have hereto-fore chosen to do, or passively with an intransitive verb coloration ("in that she per-sonifies these higher ideas").

6Cf. Arnim's definition of the child symbol in Ariel's Offenbarungen, d. JacobMinor (Weimar, 2912), I42. Subsequent citations within the text refer to this editionof the work.



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SCf. Arnim's statement during his debate with the brothers Grimm with regardto "Natur- & Kunstpoesie": " . . . dennoch bleiben beide, was sie sind, die Kunstdas Ordnende, die Natur das Schaffende" n letter of Oct. 2 , 1817 to Jakob Grimm(Steig, III, 401).

8 The fact that the child of Brentano and the poetess, Sophie Mereau, was christened

"Achim Ariel" suggests that "Ariel" represented a private chiffre between the friends,perhaps ranscending Achim Arnim's mere nom de plume and poet's mask.9 Cf. the role of the "Kaiserin" n Hofmannsthal's Frau ohne Schatten, esp. her

protean aculty of life-giving metamorphosis hich corresponds o Phantasy's nature here.Both must appear n individuated orm in order to mediate the material, mortal worldbut in so doing expose themselves o loss of spiritual dentity through the sacrifice ofloving. Johanna, he daughter of Melancholia n Arnim's Pdpstin Johanna, lects to makea comparable acrifice when she renounces her immortal dentity for the sake of herlove to Ludwig.

10oThe dedication (XIII, I-8) consists of a modernized reprinting of Wickram's"Griinenwald" ale (No. 44) in the Rollwagenbiichlein '555). Another reference tothe minstrel appears n Arnim's appended essay, "Von Volksliedern" (XIII,

479).11In this painterly context, Arnim's acquaintance with Volupta, a traditionally Ro-man addition to the Charites, may stem from Botticelli's well-known "Primavera," hereindeed not merely the Madonna-like eatures of Volupta but the festive representationof love, youth, and spring, as well, would have potent appeal for a Romantic symbolist.

Romantic Phantasy

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