Figures of Simplicity

Birgit M. Kaiser

Description

Figures of Simplicity explores a unique constellation of figures from philosophy and literature—Heinrich von Kleist, Herman Melville, G. W. Leibniz, and Alexander Baumgarten—in an attempt to recover alternative conceptions of aesthetics and dimensions of thinking lost in the disciplinary narration of aesthetics after Kant. This is done primarily by tracing a variety of "simpletons" that populate the writings of Kleist and Melville. These figures are not entirely ignorant, or stupid, but simple. Their simplicity is a way of thinking; one that author Birgit Mara Kaiser here suggests is affective thinking. Kaiser avers that Kleist and Melville are experimenting in their texts with an affective mode of thinking, and thereby continue, she argues, a key line within eighteenth-century aesthetics: the relation of rationality and sensibility. Through her analyses, she offers an outline of what thinking can look like if we take affectivity into account.
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations

Introduction: On Subterranean Connections

1. Aesthetics: Sensation and Thinking Reconsidered

The Copernican Turn
The Folds of Small Perceptions
Sensate Thinking
Figures of Simplicity

2. Sentimentalities

Befuddling the Senses (The Betrothal in St. Domingo)
Spectacularly Simple: Well-Willingly Seeing Nothing (Benito Cereno)
Sentimentalizing Resentment

3. Affectivity

Resolute Simplicity (Billy Budd, Sailor. An inside narrative)
Calculating Mindlessness (Michael Kohlhaas)
Baroque Heroes

4. Insistence

On Passive Resistance (Bartleby, the Scrivener. A story of Wall-Street)
Figures of Simplicity
Lingering before Consciousness (Das Käthchen von Heilbronn oder Die Feuerprobe)
Supersensible Figures of the Fold

5. Conclusion

Notes
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Esthétique et philosophie de l'art
• Philosophy

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 02 janvier 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781438432311
• Langue: English

Extrait

SUNY series, Intersections: Philosophy and Critical Theory
Rodolphe Gasché

Figures of Simplicity
Sensation and Thinking in Kleist and Melville
Birgit Mara Kaiser

Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2011 State University of New York
Cover illustration, photograph of “The Match” (2003, fabric and Styrofoam) by Frances Bagley. Reproduced with permission of the artist.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kaiser, Birgit Mara.
Figures of simplicity : sensation and thinking in Kleist and Melville / Birgit Mara Kaiser.
    p. cm. — (Suny series, intersections: philosophy and critical theory)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4384-3229-8 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Melville, Herman, 1819–1891—Criticism and interpretation. 2. Kleist, Heinrich von, 1777–1811—Criticism and interpretation. 3. Thought and thinking in literature.
4. Senses and sensation in literature. 5. Literature, Comparative—American and German.
6. Literature, Comparative—German and American. I. Title.
PS2388.T53K35 2010
813'.3–dc22
2009054369
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Il y a deux manières de dépasser la figuration (c'est-à-dire à la fois l'illustratif et le narratif): ou bien vers la forme abstraite, ou bien vers la Figure. Cette voie de la Figure, Cézanne lui donne un nom simple: la sensation. La Figure, c'est la forme sensible rapportée à la sensation .
La sensation, c'est le contraire du facile et du tout fait, du cliché, mais aussi du « sensationnel », du spontané, etc. La sensation a une face tournée vers le sujet […] et une face tournée vers l'objet […]. Ou plutôt elle n'a pas de faces du tout, elle est les deux choses indissolublement […] .
Gilles Deleuze, Francis Bacon. Logique de la Sensation
Acknowledgments
As it is the case with any work, this book could not have been written without the support, help, and positive energy of many people. First and foremost, I would like to thank Anselm Haverkamp, who accompanied this project from the start. Without his confidence in its first outlines, and his encouragement throughout, which always came at the right moments, this book would not have been possible. He taught me a perspective on literature that continues to be an inspiration far beyond the narrow scopes of this project, and for which I am deeply grateful. I am also indebted to the members of my dissertation committee Cyrus R. K. Patell, Mikhail Iampolski, Nancy Ruttenberg, and Paul Fleming for their criticisms on a first draft of this book, as well as for the inspiring courses I took with them at NYU and the stimulating discussions, both personal and intellectual, that resulted from them. I would especially like to thank Nancy Ruttenberg for her enthusiasm for my project and for her professional support when it was most needed. I am also grateful to Avital Ronell for the inspiration of her teaching, which was one of the most energizing parts of my graduate studies at NYU.
I would like to thank the DFG Graduate Program “Representation—Rhetoric—Knowledge” at the European University Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder), Germany for granting me the opportunity to finish my dissertation on a DFG-scholarship. The lively intellectual context of this remarkable circle of scholars was perfectly suited to my writing, and provided the right mixture of critique, correction, and inspiration.
It is an incredible honor to be part of a publication series that has established such long-standing and high standards in theoretical debates as “Intersections: Philosophy and Critical Theory,” and I am thus very grateful to its editor, Rodolphe Gasché, for his interest in my project and the opportunity to be included in his series. In this context, I would also like to thank James Peltz, Kelli Williams–LeRoux and Andrew Kenyon at SUNY Press for their professional support, openness, and patience throughout the process of publication.
This book could not have come to fruition without the help of many friends who were, and continue to be, an intellectual and personal inspiration. They offered balanced, insightful, thought-provoking input for this book, and among them, I would especially like to thank Thomas Khurana, Dirk Setton, and Katrin Trüstedt for their careful readings of early versions of the chapters, Leonard Lawlor for his critique and encouragement, Monika Lanz for her incredible effort to “polish” what is not my mother-tongue, and Barbara Thiele and Cornelia Thiele for their meticulous and joyful way of going again and again through the written manuscript in search for yet another tidbit to correct. I would also like to thank Emy Koopman for her help with the index.
And last but not least, I would like to thank my parents and my brother for their loving support, and for their confidence in what I was doing, without which it would have been much harder to finish this project in good spirit. My most heartfelt gratitude, however, goes to Kathrin Thiele, for her love, the sharpness of her mind and her challenges to my thinking. Without her, work and life would not by far be as rich. I am grateful that she shares both with me.
Abbreviations Ä Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten, Ästhetik , vol. 1, ed. and trans. Dagmar Mirbach. Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 2007 ADE Heinrich von Kleist, An Abyss Deep Enough: The Life of Heinrich von Kleist in his Parables, Essays and Letters , ed. and trans. Philip B. Miller. Boston: Dutton Books, 1982 BB Herman Melville, “Bartleby, the Scrivener,” in Herman Melville, The Piazza Tales and Other Prose Pieces 1839-1860 , ed. Harrison Hayford, Alma A. MacDougall, G. Thomas Tanselle et al. Evanston/Chicago: Northwestern University Press, 1987 BBS Herman Melville, Billy Budd, Sailor (An inside narrative) , ed. Harrison Hayford and Merton M. Sealts Jr. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962 BC Herman Melville, “Benito Cereno,” in Herman Melville, The Piazza Tales and Other Prose Pieces 1839-1860 , ed. Harrison Hayford, Alma MacDougall, G. Thomas Tanselle et al. Evanston/Chicago: Northwestern University Press, 1987 BF Gilles Deleuze, “Bartleby; or, The Formula,” in Essays Critical and Clinical . Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997 BSD Heinrich von Kleist, “The Betrothal in Santo Domingo,” in The Marquise of O—and Other Stories , trans. David Luke and Nigel Reeves. London: Penguin, 2004 CPR Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason . Amherst: Prometheus Books, 1990 F Gilles Deleuze, The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque . Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988. J Herman Melville, The Writings of Herman Melville. Journals , ed. Howard C. Horsford with Lynn Horth. Evanston/Chicago: Northwestern University Press, 1989 MK Heinrich von Kleist, “Michael Kohlhaas,” in The Marquise of O—and Other Stories , trans. David Luke and Nigel Reeves. London: Penguin, 2004 OF Heinrich von Kleist, “Ordeal by Fire,” in Three Plays. Prince Friedrich von Homberg, The Broken Pitcher, Ordeal by Fire , trans. Noel Clark. London: Oberon Books, 2000 P Herman Melville, Pierre; or, The Ambiguities , ed. Harrison Hayford, Hershel Parker, and G. Thomas Tanselle. Evanston/Chicago: Northwestern University Press, 1971 PB Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten, Philosophische Briefe von Aletheophilus . Frankfurt/Leipzig: Universität zu Halle, 1741 SW I/6 Heinrich von Kleist, Sämtliche Werke , Vol. I/6 (“Das Käthchen von Heilbronn oder die Feuerprobe. Ein großes historisches Ritterschauspiel”), ed. Roland Reuß in cooperation with Peter Staengle. Basel/Frankfurt/M: Stroemfeld/Roter Stern, 2004 SW IV/1 Heinrich von Kleist, Sämtliche Werke , Vol. IV/1, Briefe I (März 1793-April 1801), ed. Peter Staengle in cooperation with Roland Reuß. Basel/Frankfurt/M: Stroemfeld/Roter Stern, 1996. SW II/1 Heinrich von Kleist, Sämtliche Werke , Vol. II/1 (“Michael Kohlhaas” [1810]), ed. Roland Reuß in cooperation with Peter Staengle. Basel/Frankfurt/M: Stroemfeld/Roter Stern 1990 SW II/4 Heinrich von Kleist, Sämtliche Werke , Vol. II/4 (“Die Verlobung von St. Domingo”), ed. Roland Reuß in cooperation with Peter Staengle. Basel/Frankfurt/M: Stoemfeld/Roter Stern, 1988 SW II/7 Heinrich von Kleist, Sämtliche Werke , Band II/7 (Berliner Abendblätter 1), ed. Roland Reuß and Peter Staengle. Basel/Frankfurt/M: Stroemfeld/Roter Stern, 1997 SWB Heinrich von Kleist, Sämtliche Werke und Briefe , ed. Helmut Sembner. Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 2001
Introduction
On Subterranean Connections
We start here from a hunch, at a venture, so to speak. We start from the impression of a curious connection between Heinrich von Kleist's and Herman Melville's texts. It is definitely a curious connection, because at first both writers seem to have very little in common, and it has been scholarly impossible to establish their awareness of each other. We cannot assume that Kleist was influential for Melville—Melville never stated anything like it, nor do we find implicit or explicit references to Kleist's writings in his texts. The American writer moved in a different intellectual and creative universe, years after the German writer had died. Nevertheless, there is a quality to their work, that renders them incredibly close, it seems. Their texts are populated by strange figures, which all in one way or another defy our common registers of calculation, deliberation, or reasoning. Upon a second look, thus, as this book would like to show, their bizarre figures i