Research and Writing
The last of the self-acknowledged
philologists had probably been born toward the end of the nineteenth
century, and all my teachers were taught by that generation. By
this time the mainstream of literature students and teachers
were already rejecting philology along with much else associated with
traditional culture. Notions from philosophy and aesthetics
became suspect in the twentieth century, as did the most revered poets
and cherished
ideals. Ironically, this rejection was fostered by an especially
literate and sensitive group from my own American South. In
literature for example, William K. Wimsatt, Cleanthe Brooks, Robert
Penn Warren, and their contemporaries demonstrated how seeking out the
sense of a text in terms of history or of the poet's life, was simply
fallacious. These so-called New Critics encouraged far freer
reading. Members of my own generation then went on to
demand a more enlightened morality in literature. Their views on
art became suffused with politics, so that their selection and
interpretation of older works sought relevance to current events.
As
the literary canon was dropped, the language which its poets had used
was no longer upheld as standard. A new linguistic science
shifted the focus to real-time, spoken language. Oral traditions
replaced the literate norm. "Incorrect" ceased to apply to
grammar at all, but
rather to attitude, or to use the preferred, Marxian term, "ideology."
I had
written my own dissertation under the
influence of the art critic Heinrich Wölfflin (1864-1945) and the
intellectual
historian Günther Müller (1890-1957), on the concept
"baroque."
Philippson was my adviser, because that was "his" period at
Illinois. Since my writing occurred in Germany, Professor
Philippson was not around
to caution me against Müller's
thesis
that art embodies national
history. I soon saw, on my own, that I had treated one particular
work in grand overarching terms, so that my first published
article was
a refutation of my dissertation. I went ahead to write
another little piece evaluating some sonnets by the poet's own
purpose in revising them. That article drew attention for its
by then discredited
critical assumptions. About that time my
aesthetic-intellectual preoccupations were interrupted.
I noticed how the distinguished Yale
professor Hermann Weigand had opined that "Thomas Mann's Sprachgefühl is slipping," and
I thought someone ought to examine that. My effort
entailed a careful reading of this most important German author, who
remains to this day in disrepute among German nationals. Thomas
Mann held at least three great attractions for me. Above all
else, he is the last incomparable master of the German language, a
quality to which I was vulnerable. But also his knowledge of
German history and letters, so far superior to that of the
professoriate, was a valuable aid to me. Most attractive was his
demonstration, with Joseph and his
Brothers and with Lotte in
Weimar, that Bible scholars were leaving
much to be desired in their own vital craft of
philology. The same seemed to be
true of literary critics.
Furthermore,
for a 20th-century student of German, the recent German calamity was a
fascinating problem which seemed to cast all of German history into
question, perhaps even
all
Western
culture. Thomas Mann explores the ominous crest of German
philosophy and art in his novel Dr.
Faustus. This formidable work led
me back to its prototype in the 16th century. That old Faust Book
no longer existed in its original form. Recovering it challenged
me to try my
own hand at philology. I applied the venerable techniques more
instinctively than expertly, but did succeed in showing how the Faust
Book must actually be something much different from what scholars had
long
assumed. I edited the old manuscript and even tried, with a translation, to popularize
its archetype. As usual, I got lucky.
My efforts were actually read by German professors. I got job
offers without ever applying. This was not remarkable at
the time, but I mention it because today it would constitute a
violation of university regulations.
In those days, the Faust figure was seen as
pretty much
central to German letters and culture. I watched
not without vanity to see when researchers would be taking my findings
into account. After about fifteen years the first evidence came
in a standard book on literary history which mentioned the Faust Book
in accordance with my notions (without attribution). No one had
ever questioned my
work,
much less refuted it. But even today, after half a
century, it's a toss up whether "cutting edge" Faust Book research
knows anything about it. The point was that publication in print had
ceased to constitute a forum among researchers in the
humanities. Instead, it functioned as the necessary display of
credentials which teachers had to file regularly both at their
own institutions and with funding sources. Years were to pass
before I recognized this change.
In the meantime, I was myself posing as an
administrator and taking myself very seriously, indeed. I had
been chosen department head because my youth made me seem harmless
enough to my old professors, who just did not want to be bothered, but
I
thought the position required me to prove myself as a scholar.
Where I had hitherto focused on older literature, now my exalted post
required me to write on the classics. I produced a biography of
the German poet Wolfgang Goethe, then I tried a critical assessment of
his major work, Faust.
I gave both manuscripts to university
presses, and the second was very slow. The problem of biography
continued to occupy me, as did the problems now posed by
publication. I submitted my Luther:
An Experiment in Biography to a trade house, hoping that they
would make a better effort to get it before the public. I may
also have feared that my method and message could not survive scholarly
peer review. As it turned out, one of the more prestigious
university presses, finding itself without anything for the Luther
500th birthday, got Doubleday's permission to re-issue the
book on their new, imperishable paper stock. Perhaps encouraged,
I wrote a history of German letters which, while conveying my own
"larger" view of the thousand-year development, at the same time
satirized scholarly presentations. Here was a book no scholarly
press could accept, and no trade press could hope to sell.
My first reaction to this failure was
to focus
again on the old 16th-century Faust Book. I had now come to see it in
the
historical perspective of early Protestantism. For the rest, I
had reverted to
what Helmut Rehder had taught in my first graduate seminar. I was
ready to
confess
that the study of literature--or as my colleagues might put it,
the theory of literature--as practiced in the university was quite
beyond me. I found myself baffled both by the critical views of
my time and by the seeming triviality of the materials chosen for
research--and teaching. I had returned
to
Gottfried Herder's view that both cultural expression and comprehension
are contingent on cultural experiences. I think I
must have fallen into despair at the vacuity of the academic
enterprise. Like Antaeus, I seek sense and succor in my own
native soil. Whether I look to Weimar or to Ithaka, I must be
able to explain it all to my brother the horned
toad.
Postscript
The body of this
chapter was written toward the end of the 20th century.
It treats research as I understood that term at the middle of that same
century. While my teachers' thought went back to the 19th,
all of us had been much influenced by the recent, spectacular work in
the
natural sciences of our own day. Modern physics had pretty much
determined the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947), and
was most prominently represented by the physicist, classicist and
philosopher of science Carl Popper. Popper famously recognized
science to be the free play of imagination, subjected to empirical
disproof. Popper contended that genuine research sets forth
propositions vulnerable to being demonstrated false.
In truth, this was no more
than Cicero had argued in
Tusculans I, 14, and Popper surely knew that, but in our era Popper
is given credit for the doctrine. His argument was that all
scientific
progress depends upon statements formulated in a way subject to
disproof. It
was with Popper in mind that the mathematician Wolfgang Pauli, on a paper submitted to him
for critique, remarked: Das ist nicht
einmal falsch--"This is not even
wrong!" I turn to that often quoted dismissal here, because Pauli
could apply it today to almost all writing in the social sciences, and
quite all presentations in the humanities.