Georg Lukács and the Demonic Novel

Dämon in order to overcome the demonic. In his Theory of the Novel, he 

explicitly hopes that the determinant-system of Goethe’s “Urworte” can be 

resolved in favor of the unity and heroic authenticity of Dämon, whose oppo-

nent, Tyche, defines the arbitrariness of social conventions and institutions. 

In the form of the novel, the victorious hero cannot resolve the contradiction 

of individual and society without violating the reality principle and commit-

ting the aesthetic transgression of idealization or romanticization. Merely 

fictional resolutions ring false in comparison to real contradictions, to an 

external reality that does not allow the Dämon—or “the soul” (die Seele)

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to fully actualize itself. This situation defines the relation between the modern 

world, its art, and its epic forms:

But this transformation [Wandlung, the overcoming of the duality 

of nature and culture] can never be accomplished from the side of 

art alone [niemals von der Kunst aus]: the form of the great epic [for 

Lukács: from Homer to the novel] is bound to the factual reality 

[Empirie] of the historical moment [des geschichtlichen Augenblicks], 

and every attempt to depict utopia as if it were real [die Utopie 

als seiend zu gestalten] can only result in a destruction of forms, 

not in a creation of reality [endet nur formzerstörend, aber nicht 

wirklichkeitschaffend].

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Lukács believes that soul and forms, nature and culture, Dämon and Tyche, 

must be unified in reality before they can be unified in representation. The 

peculiarity of this construction is its toleration of idealism in life and in art 

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Georg Lukács and the Demonic Novel

that is rejected in the novel. In comparison to Goethe’s idea of the demonic as 

historically variable but irreducibly given, Lukács’s idea of “transformation” 

(Wandel) means the historical overcoming of the nature-culture opposition, 

leading to a reunification of the epic and the aesthetic in life.

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