Georg Lukács and the Demonic Novel

The Demonic and the Luciferian in The Theory of the Novel

By the time Lukács names the demonic in the fifth section of part 1 of his the-

ory, the general outlines of the topic are already so implicitly ubiquitous as to 

make it almost superfluous to introduce Goethe directly. The fact that Lukács 

does so can perhaps be read as a sign that he does not expect readers to make 

the connection without a hint—or, on the other hand, that he thought read-

ers would notice it and he wanted to address it directly. Either way, the overt 

recourse to the demonic suggests that he wanted his theory to be read in this 

context. The explicit invocation of the demonic thus looks like the tip of an 

iceberg which, implicit in the rest of the theory, is now announced.

When Lukács names the demonic and makes it into a manifest topic, he 

does not do so in a simple way. He characteristically jumps in at the level of 

consequences and implications. Also, in comparison to the first four sections 

of his theory’s first part, the passages on the demonic appear oddly fragmen-

tary or even vestigial. Overall, the concluding fifth section has a summary 

function with respect to the sections that preceded it, and the demonic flows 

directly out of preestablished contexts. The introduction of the demonic by 

name thus appears to be motivated by a desire to amplify and expound. But it 

is not only an emphatic reiteration. Like the Luciferian in the Heidelberg Aes-

thetics, Lukács’s reflection of his thesis in Goethe’s concept introduces decisive 

new elements that broaden and perhaps contradict the preceding theory.

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Georg Lukács and the Demonic Novel 

153

The idea of the demonic first comes into play in a Novalis citation to the 

effect that the belief in the identity of “fate and character” (Schicksal und 

Gemüt) is “the youthful faith of all poetry” (der Jugendglaube aller Poesie, 

TdR 74). The genre of the novel painfully breaks faith with this primal unity. 

Starting from this thesis, the demonic emerges as part of a reflection on the 

extended consequences of novelistic irony. Irony suspends “poetic” faith in 

the heroic unity of fate and character. Despite and because of this point’s 

apparent redundancy, its extension in the direction of the demonic allows 

it to be reformatted in a language expressing the urgency of the underlying 

historical problem. Irony, the symptom of the present epoch, is a symptom of 

the narrator’s inability to concede the pointlessness of the hero’s aspirations 

and give up “the youthful faith of all poetry”:

This insight [diese Einsicht], his irony, turns against his hero, who 

perishes [geht zugrunde] out of poetically necessary youthfulness 

[in poetisch notwendiger Jugendlichkeit] in the realization of this 

faith, but the narrator’s irony also turns against his own wisdom by 

forcing him to admit [einsehen] the futility of the hero’s battle [die 

Vergeblichkeit dieses Kampfes] and the final victory of reality [den 

endgültigen Sieg der Wirklichkeit]. His irony comprehends [erfaßt] 

not only the deep hopelessness of the battle, but also the even deeper 

hopelessness of giving it up . . . By figuring [gestalten] reality as the 

victor, irony reveals [enthüllt] the vain inanity [Nichtigkeit] of this 

reality in the face of the vanquished hero. (TdR 74)

If the narrator did not have some residual investment in the representative-

ness of the protagonist, the narrative would be pointless. The narrator, whom 

Lukács frequently characterizes as representative of “mature masculinity” 

(gereifte Männlichkeit), knows that he should know better than to worry 

about young heroes and the youthful hopes of all poetry. But he cannot help 

wishing he were wrong in this knowledge. He narrates the hero’s downfall