Georg Lukács and the Demonic Novel

The Demonic Infrastructure of The Theory of the Novel

Lukács was looking for something in Goethe that Goethe never claimed to 

provide. This is striking in the first pages of The Theory of the Novel, which 

begin with the Luciferian spell of Greek antiquity. The Plotinus quote from 

the  Theory of Colors (“If the eye were not like the sun / How could we 

behold the light?”), which Lukács cites in the Heidelberg Aesthetics (HÄs 

186), is paraphrased and ornamented, not to define a certain possibility of 

aesthetic perception, but to hypostasize the real possibility of a complete sen-

suous unity of inside and outside, subject and object: “the fire, which burns in 

the soul, is of the same essence [Wesensart] as the stars . . . because fire is the 

soul of every light and every fire clothes itself in light” (TdR 21). This unity, 

which Lukács attributes to the Greeks, conforms to his reading of Goethe. 

When Lukács contrasts “our” Kantian understanding of the stars with that 

of the Greeks, Makarie’s internalization of the heavens provides the implicit 

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Georg Lukács and the Demonic Novel

model: “Blessed are the times . . . whose paths [Wege] are lit by the light of 

the stars” (TdR 21). The motif is again repeated and developed:

Even if threatening and incomprehensible powers [drohende und 

unverständliche Mächte] make themselves felt from beyond the circle 

[jenseits des Kreises] that the constellations of present meaning [die 

Sternenbilder des gegenwärtigen Sinnes] draw around a cosmos that 

is meant to be experienced and shaped by man [der erlebbare und 

zu formende Kosmos], such forces are still never able to suppress the 

presence of meaning [die Gegenwart des Sinnes]. (TdR 25)

And finally comes the explicit contrast with Kant: “Kant’s starry sky [Stern-

enhimmel] now shines only in the dark night of pure knowledge [in der 

dunklen Nacht der reinen Erkenntnis] and no longer lights . . . the lonely 

wanderer’s paths” (TdR 28).

In the course of this sidereal exposition, the word Luciferian makes one 

of its two occurrences in The Theory of the Novel; here it is the result of the 

modern uprooting of art from the immediate sensuous totality of its Greek 

origin. In modernity, the totality can no longer be found in the “rounded” 

unity of life but only in “autonomous” works:

The visionary reality [visionäre Wirklichkeit] of a world made to our 

measure [uns angemessen], art, has become . . . independent [selbstän-

dig]; . . . it is an artificial totality [eine erschaffene Totalität], because 

the natural unity of the metaphysical spheres has been permanently 

ripped apart [für immer zerrissen]. (TdR 29)

In modernity, art becomes artificial, a merely manufactured formal perfection 

without correspondence to a larger and equally organic reality. Modernity 

misunderstands the Greek “totality of being” as mere art and turns the 

ancient light-bearer into a

seductive power [verführerische Kraft] that still lay dormant even in 

dead Greek culture [noch im toten Griechentum lag], the blinding 

Luciferian reflection [luciferisch blendender Glanz] of which made 

it possible to forget the world’s unsealable fissures [die unheilbaren