Divine Fury (63 page)

20
. On prophecy in the Romantic period, see Ian Balfour,
The Rhetoric of Romantic Prophecy
(Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002); Murray Roston,
Prophet and Poet: The Bible and the Growth of Romanticism
(Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1965). On prophecy and poetry generally, see James L. Kugel,
Poetry and Prophecy: The Beginnings of a Literary Tradition
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990). On Lowth, see Jonathan Sheehan,
The Enlightenment Bible
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), 148–182; Samuel Taylor Coleridge,
The Table Talk and Omniana of Samuel Taylor Coleridge
, ed. T. Ashe (London: G. Bell and Sons, 1884), 174. Schlegel and Novalis are cited in Balfour,
Rhetoric of Romantic Prophecy
, 40, 43. On “time of the prophets,” see Paul Bénichou,
Le temps des prophètes: Doctrines de l’âge romantique
(Paris: Gallimard, 1977). On the “consecration” of the writer more generally in this period and the artistic appropriation of religious functions, see Bénichou’s classic
Le sacre de l’écrivain, 1750–1830: Essai sur l’avènement d’un pouvoir spiritual laïque dans la France moderne
(Paris: José Corti, 1985).

21
. Shelley, “A Defence of Poetry,” 513.

22
. Ibid.; James Engell,
The Creative Imagination: Enlightenment to Romanticism
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981), 256–264.

23
. William Hazlitt, “Whether Genius Is Conscious of Its Powers,” in
The Plain Speaker: Key Essays
, intro. Tom Paulin, ed. Duncan Wu (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), 90; F. W. J. Schelling,
System of Transcendental Idealism
, trans. Peter Heath, intro. Michael Vater (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1978), 222.

24
. William Wordsworth, “The Tables Turned,” ll. 21–24, in
The Collected Poems of William Wordsworth
(Ware, Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions, 1995), 574.

25
. On Romantic epistemology and the master metaphor of the lamp, see M. H. Abram’s classic analysis in
The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1974). On Shelley, see Engel,
The Creative Imagination
, 259; August Wilhelm Schlegel,
Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature
, trans. John Black, 2nd ed. (London: George Bell and Sons, 1904), 359 (Lecture XXIII).

26
. William Blake, “All Religions Are One,” in
The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake
, ed. David V. Eardman, rev. ed. (New York: Anchor Books, 1988), 1.

27
. On Blake’s idiosyncratic Christianity, see Robert M. Ryan,
The Romantic Reformation: Religious Politics in English Literature, 1789–1824
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 43–80. F. W. J. Schelling,
Philosophie der Kunst
(Darmstadt, Germany: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1960), 104 (section 63).

28
. Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu, “Des Anglais et des Français,” in
Oeuvres complètes de Montesquieu
(Paris: Chez Firmin Didot, 1838), 626; William Robertson,
The History of Scotland During the Reigns of Queen Mary and King James VI
, 2 vols. (London: T. Cadell, 1769), 2:301; Marc Fumaroli, “The Genius of the French Language,” in
Realms of Memory: Rethinking the French Past
, ed. Pierre Nora, trans. Arthur Goldhammer, intro. Lawrence D. Kritzman, 3 vols. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 3:555–605. On the relation between the universal and the particular in Romantic thought, see Breckman,
European Romanticism
, 31–33.

29
. On the “brotherhood of genius,” see Edgar Zilsel,
Die Geniereligion: Ein kritischer Versuch über das moderne Persönlichkeitsideal
, intro. Johann Dvorak (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1990), 83ff. Zilsel’s work, first published in 1917, drew largely on nineteenth-century examples in establishing this doctrine of the “Brüderschaft der Genies.” See also William Wordsworth, “The Prelude,” Book 13, ll. 300–305, in
Collected Poems
, 882; Arthur Schopenhauer,
The World as Will and Representation
, trans. E. F. J. Payne, 2 vols. (New York: Dover Publications, 1969), 2:377; Max Scheler,
Exemplars of Persons and Leaders (Vorbilder und Führer)
, in
Person and Self-Value: Three Essays
, ed. and partially trans. M. S. Frings (Dordrecht, Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff, 1987), 182–183. Scheler originally began this work, which analyzes the ideal types of the “genius,” the “hero,” and the “saint,” in 1911, and worked on it intermittently until 1921, though it was not published until 1933.

30
. Scheler,
Exemplars
, 184–186. Scheler also invokes Kant and Schopenhauer.

31
. For a succinct summary of Herder’s views, see Elisabeth Décultot, “Le génie et l’art poétique dans les textes du jeune Herder: Examen d’une tension,” in
Le culte des grands hommes, 1750–1850
, eds. Thomas W. Gaehtgens and Gregor Wedekind (Paris: Edition de la Maison des Sciences de la Homme, 2009), 103–116.

32
. Thomas Carlyle,
On Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History
, ed. and intro. Carl Niemeyer (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1966), 114.

33
. Delacroix’s letter is cited and translated in Hugh Honour,
Romanticism
(New York: Harper and Row, 1979), 266. Delacroix actually painted two pictures of Tasso. The first was begun in 1823 and displayed in the Salon of 1824. A second, described here, is dated 1839. See Eugène Delacroix,
Journal
, ed. Michèle Han-nosh, 2 vols. (Paris: José Corti, 2009), 1:106n39.

34
. Gilles Néret,
Eugène Delacroix, 1798–1863: The Prince of Romanticism
(Cologne, Germany: Taschen, 2000). On Tasso’s use of
genio
, see Edgar Zilsel,
Die Enstehung des Geniebegriffes: Ein Beitrag zur Ideengeschichte der Antike und des Frühkapitalismus
, intro. Heinz Maus (Hildesheim, Germany: Georg Olms, 1972), 296–297. Hazlitt and Shelley are cited in C. P. Brand,
Italy and the Romantics: The Italianate Fashion in Early Nineteenth-Century England
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1957), 91–92. For Byron’s lament, see George Gordon, Lord Byron, “The Lament of Tasso,” 1.3–5; Germaine de Staël,
De l’Allemagne
, cited and translated in Maurice Z. Schroder,
Icarus: The Image of the Artist in French Romanticism
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1961), 32.

35
. Frederick Burwick,
Poetic Madness and the Romantic Imagination
(University Park: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996), 21–42; Dino Franco Felluga,
The Perversity of Poetry: Romantic Ideology and the Popular Male Poet of Genius
(New York: State University of New York Press, 2005), 13–32; Alexander Gerard,
An Essay on Taste
(London: A. Millar, 1759), 176–177.

36
. Schlegel is cited in J. Hillis Miller, “Friedrich Schlegel and the Anti-Ekphrastic Tradition,” in
Revenge of the Aesthetic: The Place of Theory in Literature Today
, ed. Michael P. Clark (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 58–76 (citation on 71). Miller does not cite the last sentence included here, which I have added back in from the original, Schlegel’s “Dialogue on Poetry.” For the quotation by Schiller, see his
On the Aesthetic Education of Man
, trans. and intro. Reginald Snell (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2004), 58.

37
. Heine is cited in Honour,
Romanticism
, 256–258. Lamartine, from the
Méditations poétiques
(1820), is cited in Pascal Brissette,
La malédiction littéraire: Du poète crotté au génie malheureux
(Montreal: Presses Universitaires de Montréal, 2003), 302.

38
. Arthur Schopenhauer,
World as Will
, 1:190–191 and 2:376. The first volume of Schopenhauer’s work was published in 1819; the second volume, an elaboration of themes set forth in the first, followed in 1844. Chapter 31 of the second volume is entitled “On Genius.”

39
. On Staël, see the detailed analysis in Kathleen Kete,
Making Way for Genius: The Aspiring Self in France from the Old Regime to the New
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012), chap. 2; Isaac Disraeli,
The Literary Character of Men of Genius Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions
, new ed., ed. Benjamin Disraeli (London: Frederick Warne, 1850 [1818]), 50. For Carlyle quotations, see his
On Heroes, Hero-Worship
, 188–195.

40
. Beethoven is cited in Leo Braudy,
The Frenzy of Renown: Fame and Its History
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 426. On genius and the literary press, see David Higgin’s careful study,
Romantic Genius and the Literary Magazine: Biography, Celebrity, and Politics
(Milton Park, UK: Routledge, 2005). On Byron and the travails of celebrity, see the lively account in Fred Inglis,
A Short History of Celebrity
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010), 62–70. See also George Gordon, Lord Byron, “Detached Thoughts,”
The Works of Lord Byron, in Verse and Prose
, ed. Fitz Green Halleck (Hartford, CT: Silas Andrus, 1846), 270.

41
. The reference to “multitudes” is an allusion to Walt Whitman’s celebrated poem “Song of Myself,” which contains the line “I am large, I contain multitudes” (section 51); Thomas Carlyle, “Count Cagliostro: In Two Flights,”
Historical Essays
, ed. Chris R. Vanden Bossche (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 35; Schopenhauer,
World as Will
, 1:191; Felluga,
Perversity of Poetry
, 13–32; George Becker,
The Mad Genius Controversy: A Study in the Sociology of Deviance
(London: Sage, 1978), 21–75. On the medical and psychological investigation of the alleged links between genius and madness, see chap. 5 below.

42
. As George Becker rightly observes, “the semireligious quality surrounding the notion of genius constitutes a cornerstone in the association of genius with madness” (Becker,
Mad Genius
, 21).

43
. Charles Baudelaire, “Sur Le Tasse en prison d’Eugène Delacroix,” first published in
Les épaves
in 1866 and available on line at
http://fleursdumal.org/poem/318
. Baudelaire was a great admirer of Delacroix’s work, and of this painting in particular. See Rebecca M. Pauly, “Baudelaire and Delacroix on Tasso in Prison: Romantic Reflections on a Renaissance Martyr,”
College literature
30, no. 2 (2003): 120–136; Giacomo Leopardi, “Dialogo di Torquato Tasso e del suo genio familiare,”
Operette Morali: Essays and Dialogues
, trans. and intro. Giovanni Cecchetti (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), 166–183.

44
. Jean Paul actually employed two terms,
Doppeltgänger
and
Doppelgänger
, in his novel
Siebenkäs
, using the first in the sense that we now reserve for the second, and thus giving the word, as it were, its own double. See Paul Fleming, “Doppelgänger/Doppeltgänger,”
Cabinet
14 (2004); Percy Bysshe Shelley’s
Prometheus Unbound
, in
Shelley’s Poetry and Prose
, 215. On the Shelleys’ collaboration on
Frankenstein
and other texts, see Mary Shelley (with Percy Bysshe Shelley),
The Original Frankenstein
, ed. and intro. Charles E. Robinson (New York: Vintage, 2009).