Sturm und Drang, conjeturas sobre el origen de la frase.

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Sturm und Drang. Conjectures on the Origin of a Phrase Author(s): William S. Heckscher Source: Simiolus: Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art, Vol. 1, No. 2 (1966 - 1967), pp.

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STURM UND DRANG

CONJECTURES ON THE ORIGIN OF A PHRASE

WILLIAM S. HECKSCHER

For Virginia Woods Callahan

'Nennen Sie mir eine Empfindung, ich habe sie gehabt' Joh. Anton Leisewitz

'Die Gelehrsamkeit ist eine erborgte Wissenschaft. Das Genie ist eilie angebohrne, uns ganz eigenthumliche Wissenschaft'

'Regeln sind wie Krucken, eine nothwendige Hulfe fur den Lahmen, aber ein Hindernis fur den Gesunden'

Edward Young, Gedanken iiber die Original-Werke, I760

Introductory

Most of the participants of the 'Sturm und Drang' movement outgrew its peculiarities in their later years and turned their backs on the ideals which previously they had defended with so much zest. Much of what in after years has been written on 'Sturm und Drang' as a literary event, has been written with the disapproving hindsight in mind that was voiced by its aging proponents. The movement features in the literary histories as an antecedent to German Classicism and as a preparatory step in the direction of Romanticism. 'Sturm und Drang' and its interrelationship with similar tendencies in, e.g., the music or in the politics of the time, its undeniable premonitions of the French Revolution - these and other themes belong to a number of aspects which have never received the attention they deserve. As far as I could ascertain, next to nothing of value has ever been said about the sources of inspiration of 'Sturm und Drang' let alone the linguistic significance and derivation of the phrase itself.

All I intend to offer here are conjectures in regard to the antecedents of the movement which, as we study its beginnings, suggest at first superficial glance that it has come about all' improvviso - seemingly without any pievious warning. I shall show that this impression needs careful reexamining.

The curious habit of giving a name to a literary movement or artistic style and of characterizing such a movement with a pregnant phrase (even while it is still in pro- gress) is a phenomenon of relatively recent date. The question concerning the When? and By Whom? a given movement received its label holds a peculiar fascination for

* This essay has grown out of two different studies, one an article by Earl G. Mueller discussing 'Pieter Brueghel the Elder's 'Storm at Sea," the other by myself: 'Reflections on Seeing Holbein's Portrait of Erasmus at Longford Castle,' Essays in the History of Art Presented to Rudolf Witthower, London (Phaidon Press) I967.

I gratefully wish to acknowledge assistance in the form of practical help and invaluable advice from the following Nothelfer: Virginia W. Callahan to whom this essay is dedicated, Petra ten Doesschate, Ulrich K. Goldsmith, I. Grafe, E. de Jongh, H. Knap-Go, Karla Langedijk, Sandra van der Maas, Julia Mueller, Leland R. Phelps, E. K. J. Reznicek, D. P. Snoep, Martha Stuart, Annemarie Vels Heijn.

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the student of cultural history. It is here that the phrase 'Sturm und Drang' will justly claim our attention if only for the reason that while we know a great deal about the When? and By Whom?, we know next to nothing about the Why? of this phrase.

It was one of the founding fathers of the movement who, in the year I776, more or less by accident hit upon the name 'Sturm und Drang'. From where he got his inspiration, we do not know. The words were suggested by him to a fellow-dramatist as the substitute-title for a drama which never quite managed to succeed. Soon, however, they were transferred to the movement itself: they became commonplace, at first, in the phrases 'Sturm und Drangperiode' and 'Stuirmer und Drainger,' and around i8oo in the words 'Sturm und Drang' themselves.

Naturally, long before the eighteenth century, artists might proudly speak of their compositions as an 'ars nova". The naming of 'Sturm und Drang' represents one of the first instances where the propagators of a given movement went beyond a mere recording of such notions. Boldly and succinctly they spelled out what they were trying to accomplish. Seen in this light, 'Sturm und Drang' could be called a three-word manifesto.

Tempestas-Affectus and their Opposites: Tranquillitas-Apathia

I now intend to show that the choice of the words, accidental as it may have been in the beginning, was anything but arbitrary. It must have been deeply anchored in wholly novel psychological insights and emotional needs that had made themselves felt in the second half of the eighteenth century. This becomes clear as soon as we realize that the concepts of Sturm and Drang were part of the Stoical terminology. Their older equivalents: tempestas (or: ventus, procella, intemperantia and others) = Sturm, and affectus [plural] (or impetus, perturbationes, passiones and others) = Drang, were part of the vocabulary of Cicero and Seneca, of the Bible as well as the Churchfathers and, invariably, they had carried a derogatory meaning. For our better understanding it is useful also to keep in mind that their equally important counterparts were, on the one hand Tranquillity (tranquillitas) and, on the other, Apathy (apathia, i.e. the absence of the passions according to the late classical Latinization of the Greek term), and to realise that while Tranquillity suggested a quietistic yet alerted state of mind, Apathy was indicative of a singularly passive, yet equally desirable state of mind. Both attitudes in combination had, in fact, for centuries been acknowledged as the sine qua non of a virtuous and rational existence, following the recta (as against the humana) ratio, the distinguishing mark of the cultural elite.

In view of this change from a negative evaluation to a positive one, the truly significant aspect of the origin of the r8th century 'Sturm und Drang' rests not in the coining of a felicitous phrase, much as it deserves our admiration: its true merit rather consists of the bold ennoblement of two attitudes which - being as we saw the opposites to Tranquillity and Apathy - had in the past been regarded as insurmountable barriers, blocking the path by which man might arrive at perfection and thus enter into the beata vita. With their unmistakable ring of the revolutionary, the words Sturm and Drang, especially when linked together to form a kind of battle-cry, must have evoked alarming associations in the minds of those contemporaries of the 'Stiirmer and Dran- ger' generation who remained in sympathy with the rational ideals of Enlightenment.

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The Nature of 'Sturm und Drang'

'Sturm und Drang' passed over the literary scene of Germany with unexpected fury. Like fireworks left to themselves, it was as a phenomenon spectacular and devastating, uninhibited and shortlived, and often of great beauty. The movement originated in the course of the I760's, sparked by impulses which came from abroad, especially England obsessed with the ideas of Genius, Plagiarism, the Sublime. After only two decades, in the early I780's, its elan was spent. The movement had gathered momen- tum under the leadership of Herder, Schiller and Goethe. They and their followers were under the sway of Edmund Burke and Longinus, Shakespeare and Rousseau, Edward Young and Ossian. Their catechism was a slender volume which the aging poet Edward Young had composed in I795 under the title Conjectures on Orginal Composition. Two German translations appeared nearly simultaneously in the year after its publication and evoked powerful responses among the avant garde of the German literati. Young's work, a veritable Declaration of Creative Independence, ushered in the end of literary imitatio (aemulatio, not imitatio, was one of its slogans), paved the way for a totally novel concept of plagiarism, and helped to foster the cult of literary genius as that of an artist unimpeded by the dictates of morals or scholarship. Genius, in the words of Young, 'grows, is not made".

'Sturm und Drang' and the American Revolution

As late as I776 the movement had no name. In that year Friedrich Maximilian Klinger (I752-I83I), easily the most militant among the writers advocating ignorance and scorning aesthetic restraint, wrote a drama which, characteristically, he planned to name Der Wirrwearr, i.e. Confusion. It is here that Klinger's friend and mentor, Christoph Kaufmann (I753-I795), stepped in to persuade the young author to drop this somewhat self-incriminating title and to name his play instead Sturm und Drang. The new title, it turned out, did little to recommend Klinger's play but it did score a momentous success as the label of the literary movement2.

Inspite of its failure, it is worth looking for a moment at the play itself. A remarka-

i. [H. E.] v[on] T[eubern], s. t. Gedanhen iuber die Original-Werke. In einem Schreiben des D. Youngs an den Verfasser des Grandison. A us dem Englischen, Leipzig I760 (ed. Kurt Jahn (Kleine Texte fur Vorlesungen und tbungen, LX), Bonn 1910, 46 pp.). A second (different) German translation followed in the same year. - For a general discussion of the Conjectures, see W. Thomas, Le Poete Edward Young (I683-I765). Paris I90I, 469-488; M. W. Steinke, Edward Young's 'Conjectures on Original Composition' in England and Germany (Diss. Illinois), New York I9I7; Lawrence Marsden Price, English German Literary Influences. Bibliography and Survey (University of California Publications in Modern Philology, IX, i) I9I9, see especially Part II, chap. I5 'Young, Herder, and the 'Sturm und Drang' Critics,' 386-39I; Hans Thulme, Beitrage zur Geschichte des Geniebegriffes in England (Studien zur englischen Philologie, Heft LXXI), Halle 1927, 87 ff.; see also Rudolf Wittkower, 'Imitation, Eclecticism, and Genius,' Aspects of the Eighteenth Century (ed. R. Wasserman), Baltimore I965, I57 f. - See also our Mottos and for the simultaneous influence of the English concept of the Sublime in the sense of disengaged admiration of horrid events such as Storms at Sea, see Note 17 infra. For the strange English duality: passion and obscurity vs. ratio- nalistic and mathematical tendencies, see Erwin Panofsky, 'The Ideological Antecedents of the Rolls-Royce Radiator,' Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, CVII, 4, I963, 273-288.

2. As early as 1773, Lavater uses 'Sturm und Gedrangtheit'; see J. and W. Grimm, Deutsches Worterbuch, Leipzig i86o, s.V. 'Sturm,' cols. 584 and ,ibidem, s. v. 'Drang,' cols. 1333-35; H. Duent- zer, Christoph Kaufmann, Leipzig I 882, 69. - For the use of the phrase 'Sturm und Drang,' etc., see Grimms' opus, cols. 584 f. - The movement, its personalities and their achievement (but not its genesis) are discussed in detail by Ray Pascal, The German Sturm und Drang [New York I9531. For a good survey see also H. B. Garland, Storm and Stress, London, Sidney, etc. [1952].

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ble point about it has, as far as I am aware, never been sufficiently stressed. Klinger's Sturm und Drang is set on American soil, in the midst of the Revolution:

... Und nun seyd ihr mitten im Krieg in Amerika. Ha, lasst michs nur recht fiihlen auf Amerikanischem Boden zu stehn, wo alles neu, alles bedeutend ist (I, i).

The War of Independence was to Klinger a realization of the ideals that moved him and his exuberant German colleagues.

The year I776 was the year of the Declaration of Independence as well as that of the appearance of Klinger's Sturm und Drang. It is surely more than coincidence that both movements experienced their beginning, their efflorescence, their crises, and their ultimate ebbing away at almost precisely the same moments in history. No sooner had George Washington consolidated his gains, abolished the Colonies, and established a novus ordo, than the cold measured forms of Classicism superseded in Weimar the happy abandon of Storm and Stress. Much of this pattern, characteristic of our movement and of the American War of Liberation was, incidentally, repeated in the course of the French Revolution - a typical matter of action and reaction, swinging back and forth not unlike a pendulum3. The angry young men who had flourished between the years I760 and I780 in the role of radicals, turned overnight into most respectable citizens. Kaufmann acquired fame as an educator and as a member of a Quietistic Sect. Klinger ended his ripe old age as a distinguished nobleman in St. Petersburg where, with the rank of general, he was in charge of the cadets of the Russian Army. Schiller became a university professor, while Goethe submerged himself in the tasks of a Minister of State at the Archducal Court of Weimar4.

The Why? of 'Sturm und Drang'

It is easy to see from our historical point of view why as negative a term as Wirrzwarr - embarassing enough as the title of a play - would have been doomed to failure had anybody attempted to suggest it as a name for a literary movement. Yet, we might well ask where the magic lay that sanctioned the words 'Sturm und Drang' which Kaufmann had suggested as a substitute title. In order to appreciate the immediate success of the two simple words linked by 'und' and of the undisputed position they have held through almost two hundred years, we must try to understand their function against their historical background. The English term 'Storm and Stress', it will turn out, is here of little help. The German words implied, as we have seen, vehement opposition to

3. The appeal which the events in America had for the adherents of 'Sturm und Drang', is mentioned in passing by Lawrence Marsden Price, opus cited in note I. - Ernst Gombrich has shown how also in the course of the French Revolution the pendulum swung from one extreme to another, and how the Religion of Reason that claimed to have ousted 'Fanaticism' only led to a new dogmatism which could not fail to provoke a reaction against Rationalism; cf. his 'Dream of Rea- son: The Iconography of the French Revolution,' a splendid lecture, delivered at Duke University on April I5, I966, - I am not blind to the fact that the 'Sturm und Drang' movement not only failed to invade all of Germany (Berlin for one never succumbed) but that, at the same time, it went beyond her geographical boundaries. Cf. Hand Schnorf, Sturm und Drang in der Schweiz (Diss.), Zuirich I914. Vittorio Alfieri (I749-i 803) wrote in I776 his Agamennona, a fine specimen of 'Sturm und Drang' on Italian soil which only recently was brought to the stage by the genius of Vittorio Gassman.

4. See Henri Brunschwig, La Crise de l'Etat Prussien a' la fin du X VIIIe Siecle et la Genese de la Mentalite Romantique, Paris I947, II2. - See also note 2 supra, and W. S. Heckscher, Goethe and Weimar, Durham N. H. I96I.

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an existence regulated by established authority as well as free abandon to the dictates of one's passions. The English words 'Tempestuosity' and 'Passion' (the historical antitheses of 'Tranquillity' and 'Apathy'), clumsy as they may sound when taken in conjunction, have the merit of coming nearer to the intrinsic meaning of German 'Sturm und Drang'. I suggest that we examine - one at a time - the concepts of Tempestuosity and Passion in the light of their historic significance.

'Sturm' - Tempest/Tempestuosity and Tranquillity

'It gives me pleasure to see nature in these great though terrible scenes. It fills the mind with grand ideas, and turns the soul in upon itself'

Edmund Burke (I745/46)

The word Tempest and its derivates, as any Latin dictionary will bear out, were almost invariably taken to refer to Storm at Sea. The opposite to Tempest, namely Tran- quillity, had the same maritime connotation. St. Thomas Aquinas made this clear when he defined: 'Est enim tranquillitas quies maris', 'Tranquillity signifies the Sea at rest.' Yet, while Thomas may have echoed Cicero, we should not forget his indebted- ness to the wonderful passage in the Gospels where Jesus subdues the Storm - 'tunc surgens imperavit ventis et mari, et facta est tranquillitas magna' (Matth. viii: 26). Erasmus of Rotterdam, in his Paraplhrasis in Evangelium Matthaei, has this to say to our passage: 'Nihil enim surdius aut impotentius mari commoto, & tamen ad Domini jussum repente versum est in summam tranquilitatem', 'For surely, nothing is more obdurate and more passionate than the raging sea; and yet, it was suddenly turned into absolute tranquillity at the command of the Lord' (ed. Opera, Leyden, VII, I706, col. 5I).

Mediaeval art shows a few instances, between the eleventh and the fourteenth centuries, where Jesus - rising in the navicula - makes an imperious gesture in the direction of a naked male figure seated at the lakeshore in an inhibited pose, chin resting on hand, which clearly typifies him as the 'Tempest Vanquished' personified5 (Fig. i).

5. This and other phrases in which the term 'Tranquillitas' occurs are listed by Domenicus Nanus Mirabellius under this catchword in his inexhaustible Florilegium magnum seu Polyanthea [prefera- bly to be consulted in the editio novissimarum novissima by Josephus Lange, Venice I630 and subsequent eds.]. In at least one mediaeval work, the Byzantine Heavenly Ladder of John Climacus, 'Tranquillity' plays a prominent part as a personification of virtue. The best known Climax manuscript - teeming with personifications-Vaticanus graecus 394, e.g., shows 'in an oval mandorla ... the tigure of Tranquillity, with arms outspread' and from behind the mandorla 'emerge the heads of six female figures' - illustrating the opening words of chap. xxix; 'Behold, even we, who are set in the deepest pit of ignorance, in dark passions (sic) and in the shadow of death of this body, now make bold to begin to speculate concerning heaven on earth. For as the firmament has the stars for its beauty, so has Tranquillity the virtues as her ornament'; see John Rupert Martin, The Illustration of the Heavenly Ladder of John Climacus (Studies in Manuscript Illumination 5), Princeton U. P. 1954, 79 f. and fig. I29 on Plate XLIII.

Cesare Ripa's 'Tranquillita' is of great interest because Ripa takes his cue from classical antiquity. He describes her as a woman of fair appearance, leaning trustingly against a ship in order to show how tranquillity consists of the peaceful state of the waves; a cornucopia in her hand indicates peace by heavenly decree, an anchor is given her for obvious security reasons; see Icono- logia, ed Siena I6I3, 307. For the prototype, mentioned by Ripa, see the reverse of a denarius of Antoninus Pius in which a woman, identified by the inscription as TRAN QVIL LITAS AUG, is shown 'towered, draped, standing, right holding rudder ... two cornears in her left'; see H. Matting- ly, Coins of the Roman Empire in the British Museum, IV, London 1940, 38, nr. 25I, fig. 6.I3.

Petrus Berchorius (fl. I340) deals with 'Tempestas' only in malo under the headings 'Iniquitatis redundantia, Prosperitatis affluentia, Crudelitatis violentia, Aduersitatis pestilentia.' - In mediaeval art, Tempestas appears on rare occasions as a pensive male nude, seated at the lakeshore in the pose of inhibition, in illustration of Matth. viii; 26f. (Mark iv: 36; Luke viii: 22); see our fig. i. We,

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Fig. i The Tempest Personified (far left) Subdued by Jesus (Matth. viii: 26 f.), MS. London, B.M. Add. 39627, fol. 98 r. Gospel Book (I356)

The theologically instructed beholder would easily think here of the Book of Proverbs (X: 25) which contrasts piety and sinfulness by comparing the sinner to the passing tempest, the virtuous man to the immobile cube (fundamentum) 'Quasi tempestas transiens impius non inuenitur, iustus autem quasi stabile fundamentum.' We shall come back to this significant contrast. With very few exceptions, the tempestuosity of the sea was regarded as such a mani-

festation of a chaotic state of nature which, owing to its lawlessness, could easily be held up as an image of all that with which the world forever threatens the integrity of

as was possibly the artist also, are reminded of the River Jordan who at times may appear in early Christian art in representations of the Baptism of Jesus as an awestruck witness. Along with our example, the Princeton Index of Christian Art lists (among a total of I 7 representations of Storm personified) the following MS. illuminations of the Storm-Stilling Miracle attended by this figure;

Florence, Laurenziana, Plut. VI. 23, Gospelbook (iith century) - fols. i6 ro, 70 ro, I20 Vo. Paris, BN, gr. 74, Gospelbook (I2th century) - fols. 15 vO, 71 vO, I24 VO. London, BM, Add. 39627, Gospelbook (I356) - fols. 26 ro, 98 ro (Fig. i), I6i vo. For a Baroque Tempest Personified, see our Fig. 3 and Note 8 infra. For marine symbols in art

see - beside Stridbeck's Breughel Studien - J. Richard Judson, 'Marine Symbols of Salvation in the Sixteenth Century,' Essays in Memory of Karl Lehmann (Marsyas Supplement I), New York and Locust Valley I 964, I 36-I 52. For the stormwinds and their Christian interpretation see 'Symbolum XCIX (Aeolus, ventorum Deus)' in Michael Pexenfelder's remarkable Ethica symbolica efabularum umbris in veritatis lucem varia eruditione, noviter evoluta, Munich I675, 6i 8-623,and W. S. Heckscher, 'Renaissance Emblems,' The Princeton University Library Chronicle, XV,ii, 1954, 64, figs. 4 and 6. - Possibly even before recognising Neptune as a ruler of the seas, the Romans worshipped Fluctus, Ventos, Tempestates; see article 'Tempestates' in Pauly-Wissowa's Real-Encyclopadie, I934, cols. 479 f. For German 'Sturm' as signifying a maritime tempest, see the examples in the Grimms' Deutsches Worterbuch, cols. 586 f. - Tempting as it may be, we should not confuse the nature of i8th century 'Sturm' with Giordano Bruno's heaven-inspired eroici furori, the heroic enthusiasms with their metaphysical implications. For the different character of this concept, cf. Hans Thume's study, cited in note I supra, especially p.p 22-27. - For a 20th century 'Sturm' Movement, cf. Der Sturm. Herwarth Walden und die europdische Avantgarde Berlin I9I2-I932, Berlin (Orangerie Charlottenburg) I96I and W. S. Heckscher, 'Genesis of Iconology,' Acts of the XXIst International Congress of Art History. Bonn I964 (scheduled for I966/67), note 43.

The German language has as far as I am aware nothing to match Patridge's Dictionary of Slang. In such a German equivalent, the words Sturm and Drang would undoubtedly be shown to play an important role in the language of the nursery insofar as it deals with the digestive functions, that is to say with flatus (Sturm) and peristalsis (Drang).

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the contemplative life. Vita contemplativa was held to be a mental state safeguarding man's dignity and peace of mind, affording an impenetrable fortress, harbour and refuge amidst the sinful turbulence of everyday existence.

Confining ourselves to the Renaissance, we may select, more or less at random, two or three examples which will illustrate this adequately.

Whenever Erasmus of Rotterdam voiced his anxieties in regard to the religious upheavals of the Reformation, as he did in a state of ever increasing alarm from the early I520'S onward, he used with preference the word tempestas. Whatever threatened the tranquillitas studiorum6, above all the activities of the Luttherani, he branded as 'Tempest'. When, for example, he bemoaned the fact that his friend Ulrich Hutten had sided with the Reformers, he said: 'O, how I loved Hutten's festive spirit which now the Lutheran Tempest has snatched away from the Muses!' 'Amabam et festiuum Hutteni ingenium: id Lutherana tempestas Musis eripuit!7'

The other example I have chosen dates in the second part of the century. William of Orange (d. I584) favored the princely motto 'Calm in the midst of raging seas', SAEVIS TRANQVILLVS IN VNDIS. Those words he had inscribed on the verso of a medal that was graced with an icon showing the Halcyon Bird, trustfully brooding in her nest, miraculously sheltered amidst tempestuous waves against the onslaught of the four winds (Fig. 2). In seventeenth century painting it could be the prince himself who appeared, full length, in the midst of a raging sea of troubles. He would be shown actively resisting a variety of antagonists, among them Death, Jupiter flinging his thunderbolts, War as well as the maritime Tempest personified8 (Fig. 3).

6. Ep. ed. Allen, Nr. 980, May 30,15 I 9. 7. Ep. ed. Allen, Nr. I I 84, p. 443, addressed to Gulielmus Budaeus, from Louvain, February i 6,

152I. 8. Our fig. 2, showing 'Halcyone Approaching Her Nest,' is the reproduction of the verso of a

medal struck in I 569 in honour of Willem of Orange. The mailed fist of A eolus ventorum Deus is here inscribed CHRS. Heavenly intervention according to the fable secures a seven days' truce with the stormwinds. The engraving comes from Joannes Jacobus Luckius, Syltoge numismatum elegantiorum, Augsburg I620 (unpaginated). For the use of SAEVIS TRANQVILLVS IN VNDIS, see J. Dielitz, Die Wahl-und Denkspriiche ..., Frankfort I884, 28. For the Christian significance of the fable of Halcyone, cf. Michael Pexenfelder, S. J., 'Symbolum LX,' Ethica symbolica cited in note 5 supra, PP 350-355.

The alternative to William of Orange's heroically enduring motto is suggested by Hamlet (III, i): 'Whether 't is nobler in the mind to suffer / The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, / Or to take arms against a sea of troubles.' This idea of the Prince, heroically resisting a sea of troubles, is time honoured. When in the i6th century Florence became a naval power, it was understood that Cosimo Primo (conveniently he was born under the tempest-calming zodiacal sign of Capricorn) would, in his capacity of commander of the fleet, vouchsafe the tranquillity of the seas - a guarantee for everlasting peace; see Eve Borsook, The Companion Guide to Florence, London I966, 47-49. From this tradition of heroic resistance we must understand Gerrit van Honthorst's Hamlet like portrait of Prince Frederik Hendrik (d. I647), the son of William of Orange, in the Huis ten Bosch Palace in The Hague. Here it graces the Oranjezaal, i.e. Frederik Hendrik's elaborate Mausoleum whose iconographic program the Princess-Widow, Amalia of Solms, had planned with the aid of Constantijn Huygens. The painting is titled 'De volstandigheit [i.e. Constantia] van Sijn Hoog [heyt] in alle onweer.' (Fig. 3) The Prince, literally, 'takes arms against a sea of troubles.' He appears in full (old fashioned) armour, his sword drawn, while the other hand holds an enormous apotropaeic shield, his left foot precariously resting on a narrow rock-ledge [undoubtedly the firm cube of Tranquillity], with his right foot subdueing one of two floating Tritons. Shown en face, he is placed in a contrapposto pose, facing the beholder with an expression curiously withdrawn in meditation. Death and War rise against him from the waves, while three figures menace him from a darkened sky rent by a flash of lightning; they are: A Gorgonesque Fury - the personification of Envy, Jupiter about to discharge a second thunderbolt, and a power-diving figure whose legs terminate in serpents. He can be no other than the Tempest personified, ferociously blowing at the Prince. The situation is summarized in the dossier assembled for the Widow of Frederik Hendrik in the late I640's and early I650's with the words: 'aenvegting van winde see damp en roock / uyt- beelding van sijn volstandigheyt.' See in general J. G. van Gelder, 'De schilders van de Oranjezaal,' Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboeh I948-49,152 and cat. rais. 22. See also D. F. Slothouwer,

IOO



: VMMVS CASTRENMIS

GYVLHELMI PRINCIPIS AVRIA- ci, tirsNalOvij), cuflus fub ipfum (uti videtur)

: blhclgiciprimordium. Anno Chrift 1is 6 S.

;~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~~. '; iS0 J ;iCEE''# J .................. ... ..

Fig. 2 SAEVIS TRANQVILLVS IN VNDIS Engraving after a Medal struck for William of Orange (I568)

Fig. 3 Gerrit van Honthorst, Frederik Hendrik's Constancy,

Painting on Canvas, The Hague, Huis ten Bosch Palace, Oranjezaal (ab. I650)

(By Courtesy of Her Majesty the Queen)

De paleizen van Frederik Hendrik, Leyden [I946], chap. 'De Oranjezaal," I 78-260. The Dutch words describing the painting and mentioning the Prince's 'Apotheosis' (infra) come from MS. Inv. I4 XIII - 23 (sine foliatione) in the Koninklijk Huis Archief. It was my privilege to inspect and now to cite them with the gracious permission of Her Majesty Queen Juliana.

Van Honthorst, as E. de Jongh suggests, may have taken his Tempest from 'Boreas Rebuked by Neptune' ('angium caudae illi pro pedibus sunt') in the engraving after Rubens's composition in Casper Gevart's Pompa Introitvs Honori Serenissimi Principis Ferdinandi Austriaci a S.P.Q. Antverp. decreta et adornata, Antwerp I642, Plate opp. p. I5. For Envy as a Fury conquered by Death, see Otho Vaenius, Quinti Horatii Flacci Emblemata, Antwerp i6I2, I72 f. For the significance of constantia in the Baroque, see note i 8 infra.

For the 'Rock of Tranquillity in the Midst of a Raging Sea' - a not uncommon topos among the pictorial allegories of Renaissance Stoicism - cf. our Tailpiece (Fig. 5) with the portrait in profile of the Florentine historiographer and student of Fortuna, Francesco Guicciardini (I482-1540); see Alfred Armand, Les Medailleurs Italiens des XVe et XVIe Siecles, II, Paris I883-88,152, nr. 5, and Felix Gilbert, Macchiavelli and Guicciardini, Princeton U. P. I965, 27I-30I and esp. 290 ff. - The conch blowing Triton, shown in lost profile, echoes (in reverse) a composition by Jacob de Gheyn III; see F. W. H. Hollstein, Dutch and Flemish Etchings and Engravings, VII, Amsterdam s.a. I99. - The iconographic program of this composition has yet to be properly treated, among others by examining it as part of the all embracing and all pervading iconography of the Mausoleum. Our painting, e.g., should be understood as an ancillary companion to the main composition, Jordaens's vast 'Apotheosis of Frederik Hendrik [hitherto wrongly described as 'triumph' - for the Dutch libretto speaks of 'vergoodingh van syn hoogheyt'],' to give the composition of the year I652 its proper title. In it there occurs a banner inscribed TRANQVI [ilitas]. The late i 8th century gradu- ally lost its grip on the finesses of Baroque Iconography which is borne out by the official descrip- tion of our picture (I767); 'In het daar op volgende Stuk ... staat FREDERIK HENDRIK onder een Zinnebeeldige [i.e. emblematical] Gestalte, hy is Geharnast van 't Hooft tot de Voeten, staande met de linker Voet op een Rotzsteen, vertredende met de rechter veelderley [sic] Monsters, als Oorblazers [sic], Valsheid, Moord, Nyd, en anderen die hem omringt hebben. Hy heeft in de rechter hand een Zwaard, en aan de linker Arm een Goud Schild, hebbende eene houding om hen Kloekmoedig en Onbevreest af te wagten'; cf. Jan van Dyk, Beschryving der Schilderyen in de Oranje Zaal, van het Vorstelyke Huys in 't Bosch ..., The Hague 1767,2I. Forthe'Triumph,' ibidem, 47.

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The Renaissance cult of Tranquillity with its triumph over Tempestuosity originated in the wake of a revival of imperial Roman Stoicism. On the authority of Marcus Aurelius, Tranquillity and Serenity had become imperial prerogatives and titles9. From the 4th century onward, the emperors' title could be VESTRA SERENITAS. The emperors might also allow themselves to be addressed as 'Tranquillissimi ac Christianissimi Domini Nostri'"0. At the same time, Tranquillus or Tranquillinus was considered a suitable name for sons of distinguished families - a custom that was reviv- ed once more in the course of the Renaissance11.

The elaborate cult of Tranquillity and all that it implies was based on pagan moralistic writings. Lucius Annaeus Seneca, for example, devoted one of his extensive Dialogues to 'Tranquillity of the Mind'. In the year I5I5 this Tranquillity Dialogue appeared at Froben's in Basel in a publication of Seneca's writings which, at the same time, was the first edition of a classical author supervised by Erasmus of Rotterdam12.

'Drang' - The Passions

As we consult the Grimms' Deutsches W5rterbuch under 'Drang,' we find the definition: 'anreizung, innerer trieb, impetus, impulsus'13. I took the liberty of expressing the idea of 'innerer Trieb', with the conventional term 'The Passions' for the following reason: Tranquillity was, in its strictest observance, the attempt at arriving at the outward projection of an inner harmony and firmness of mind. One could enter into the spirit of tranquillity - 'recipere mentis tranquillitatem' - only by discarding the Four Pas- sions, the affectus in Latin. These were Elation and Desire, Agony and Fear. Like the Four Temperaments, the Passions had entered the world with the Fall of Man and, like the Four Temperaments, they were pernicious to man's body and soul. In the words of Petrarch: Elation renders unduly exuberant gaudium dilatat, Desire inflames spes [or cupiditas] inflammat, Agony stifles dolor angustat, Fear despirits metrus dejicitl4.

To Erasmus Passion is the enemy of the rational mind - 'affectus est omnis animi motus, & opponitur rationi'15. By yielding to the Drang of his passions, man exposed himself to the arbitrariness of Fortuna, the goddess whose attributes were significantly associated with unruly motion: the sphere and the wheel, the sail and the waves agitat- ed by the stormwinds. Tranquillity, on the other hand, rather than being withdrawal or escape, was a proud achievement, the result of militant self-discipline. He who partook of Sublime Tranquillity, and only he, was capable of exercising science and wisdom in a frame of mind which made him - be he ruler or sage, or both - not unlike God. As Plutarch put it: 'Most appropriate, however, is Tranquillity for the benefit of various endeavours such as Science and the Application of Prudence, all of which renders those

9. W. S. Heckscher, In Memoriam Godefridus Ioannes Hoogewerif, Utrecht I963, 6 f. io. DuCange, Glossarium mediae et infimae latinitatis, Niort I886, s.v. 'tranquillitas'. ii. Ulysse Chevalier, Repertoire des Sources Historiques du Moyen Age. Bio-Bibliographie, II,

Paris I907, col. 4552. 12. s.t. 'Ad Serenvm. De tranquillitate vitae libri duo,' Ioannes Frobenivs verae philosophiae

stvdiosis S.D. ... Erasmi Roterodami cura, Basel (July) I5I5, 134 ff. I3. Article cited in note 2 supra. See also note 5. 14. Klaus Heitmann, Fortuna und Virtus (Studi italiani I), Cologne-Graz I958, 89-150. For the

concept of apathia, see Theodor Riuther, Die sittliche Forderung der Apatheia in den beiden ersten christlichen jahrhunderten. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des christlichen Vollkommenheitsbegriffes, Freiburg 1949.

15. 'In elegant. Laurentii Valae,' ed. et comment., Erasmus, Opera omnia, I, Leyden I703, col. I072.

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that aspire after it Godlike' 'commodissima est tranquillitas, cum ad alia, cum ad scientiam & prudentiae exercitationem ... quae Deo simili reddit sui participem'16.

It is not necessary to trace the stages by which the theory of the passions evolved, viaDescartes (I649), Hobbes (I65I), Antoinele Grand (I662), and others, untilultimate- ly it reached the eighteenth century in a modified form. It will be sufficient to have highlighted with our examples taken from the i6th and I7th centuries and from Roman imperial Stoicism itself, the way in which the Stoical virtue had served for ages as the ideal of the 'Sage ..., l'Homme sans Passions,' until it was eclipsed in the second half of the i8th century - if only temporarily - by the cult of its opposite, Tempestuo- sity. For the same holds true mutatis mutandis of the Passions. Their ennoblement in the course of 'Sturm und Drang' had been preceded by a long-drawn softening up process in the discussion of the Ruling Passions or inclinations naturelles. And while thus around I760 the Passions had become salonfdhig, Edmund Burke, in I757, had seen in the raging Tempest, provided it was observed in a detached way, an ideal manifestation of the Sublime'7.

'Sturm und Drang' Defeated

'Quasi tempestas transiens impius non invenitur, justus autem quasi stabile fundamentum'

(Prov. X: 25)

The adherents of 'Sturm und Drang' turned their scorn on the timehonoured attitudes of mind: Tranquillity, Constancy'8, and mental Quietude. They claimed their opposites as ideals: Tempestuosity, Passion, and restless Motion.

One of the most fervent protagonists of 'Sturm und Drang', young Johann Wolfgang Goethe, had to struggle hard to free his mind of its importuning. In I775-76, the poet, on being appointed Minister of State and Counsellor at the Court of Weimar, placed in his suburban garden 'Am Stern' a curious cubistic monument which is still standing (Fig. 4). He designed it to serve as a warning to disassociate himself from his unruly past, and as a reminder to hold in check his innate tempestuosity and feverish desire for change'9.

i6. See article by Domenicus Nanus Mirabellio, opus cited in note 5 supra. I 7. I have here in mind Justus Mbser's Der Werth wohlgewogener Neigungen und Leidenschaften,

Hannover I 756, in which the author claims that inclinations and passions should rule the virtues. - For the earlier stages of the discussion of the Passions, see Anthony Levi, S. J., French Moralists: The Theory of the Passions I585 to I649, Oxford I964 (with a rich bibliography).

The horrible, vested in the vastness of the ocean, becomes, around I 757, the manifestation of the Sublime, provided that the beholder of the horrible remains detached, spectator not participant. This was formulated by Edmund Burke and echoed forthwith by many in England and abroad; see his A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Idea of the Sublime and the Beautiful, Part Two, Section ii, ed. J. T. Boulton [I958], 57 f. & xlvii, and note i6; 'the reference to the ocean echoes throughout the i8th century debate on the sublime.' In Poetry we encounter in the year I762 William Falconer's 'The Shipwreck': 'Down on the vale of Death, with dismal cries / The fated victims cast their shuddering eyes / In wild despair; while yet another stroke / With strong convul- sions rends the solid oak'; for further details see T. S. R. Boase, 'Shipwrecks in English Romantic Painting,' The Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes XXII, I959, 335. See also J. A. Emmens, 'De kinderen van Homerus,' Ikon Bulletin III, Utrecht I966, 3 and E. de Jongh, 'Het sublieme en de vlekken van Alexander Cozens,' Vrij Nederland, May 23, I965, 9.

I8. See W. Welzig, 'Constantia und barocke Bestandigkeit,' Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift XXXV, i96i, 4I6-432.

I9. W. S. Heckscher, 'Goethe im Banne der Sinnbilder,' Jahrbuch der hamburger Kunstsammlun- gen VII, I962, 33-54, and fig. i. When I analyzed Goethe's monument, I failed to mention that young Erasmus of Rotterdam, in chosing as a lifelong companion the solid God Terminus with his

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w .. - q4er {o- < ,..-

Fig. 4 Wolfgang von Goethe, Altar of Good Fortune (Weimar, 1777)

The monument consists of nothing more than a sphere resting on a square cube. Sphere and Cube had been used through the centuries as contrapuntal symbols of Tempestuosity and Tranquillity respectively. Originally they may even have stood for the Creator and the Created20. The Sphere was an age-old image of forever restless motion and was therefore quite naturally chosen as the attribute supporting the Goddess Fortuna when she was associated with the tempestuous waves. The Cube signified the Creator, terra firma, and solid rest and finally also man guided by virtue. With this in mind it is easy to see how Goethe wished to express with his monument in quasi- emblematic language the permanent struggle of the homo quadratus, the much ma- ligned Square Man, who strenuously resists the siren songs of 'Sturm und Drang'.

device CONCEDO NVLLI, had placed himself under the tutelage of a similar moral sign; see Edgar Wind, 'Aenigma Termini,' Journal of the Warburg Institute I, I937, 66-69. - For the cube the figura solida, and its opposite, the rota elementorum, see also Karl-August Wirth, 'Erde,' Reallexikon zur deutschen Kunstgeschichte, esp. section 'Demonstrationsfiguren,' cols. 1020-23 & fig g b, and article 'Cube' in Guy de Tervarent, Attributs et Symboles dans l'Art Profane I450-I600, II. Geneva, cols. 136 f.

20. Thus according to Boethius paraphrasing Parmenides in his Consolatio Philosophiae, III, xii, ed. Bernhard Gothein, Berlin I93, I i0: 'Ea est enim diuinae forma substantiae ut neque in externa dilabitur, nec in se externum aliquid ipsa suscipiat; sed, sicut de ea Parmenides ait: 7aTv-oO?v EUxX0ou apotLplg iva.yxtov 6yxc rerum orbem mobilem rotat. dum se immobilem ipsa conservat' 'Thus, to be sure, is the form of the divine substance that it suffuses itself neither into external matter nor receives anything from without so that, according to Parmenides, 'from all sides, like the well rounded sphere, 'it rotates the mobile orb, while, in itself, it remains immobile. "

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As in contemplating 'Sturm und Drang' we ask ourselves cui bono?, we become aware of a strange dichotomy in German writing of the igth and 20th centuries. On the one hand there are the worshippers of authority and tradition who, like Goethe and Schiller, having liberated themselves of the dictates of 'Sturm und Drang', seldom manage to lift themselves off the ground. German classical literature tends to become both ponderous and humorless, dogmatic and moralistic21. The few exceptional poets who knew how to synthesize, and who were thereby able to incorporate some of the immortal aspects of 'Sturm und Drang' in their writings, Jean Paul Richter and Adam Gottlob Oelenschlager, Eduard Moerike and Adalbert Stifter, Gottfried Keller and Wilhelm Rabe, Heinrich Heine and Theodor Fontane, Arno Holz and Stefan George have largely been relegated to the rank of stars of the second magnitude and are read today only by a select few Feinschmecker.

Whatever the ultimate verdict on 'Sturm und Drang,' we may safely say that the powers that helped to shape it are still everywhere at work: in the effective angriness of youth, in the disinclination of the mature scholar to be goaded by the sheer force of authority and convention, in the psychologist's deepened understanding of the all pervading influence of man's unsconscious drives. To the cultural historian these aspects should be a matter of constant contemplation but not - needless to say - a matter of mere approval or disapproval.

21. See W. S. Heckscher, Goethe and Weimar, Durham N. H. I96I.

Fig. 5 (a) Francesco Guicciardini togatus with Biretta (r.), (b) Rock of Tranquillity in a Tempestuous Sea (v.), Bronze Medal, Uffizi (ab. I1540)



Sturm und Drang, conjeturas sobre el origen de la frase.

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