Georg Lukács and the Demonic Novel
The Demonic Infrastructure of The Theory of the Novel
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LUKACS - ŞEYTANİ ROMAN
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 176.88.30.219 on Fri, 22 Jan 2021 23:33:11 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
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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
[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-
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-
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
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