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Samuel Frederick

Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies, Volume 49, Number 2, May

2013, pp. 148-170 (Article)
3XEOLVKHGE\8QLYHUVLW\RI7RURQWR3UHVV
DOI: 10.1353/smr.2013.0021

For additional information about this article

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/smr/summary/v049/49.2.frederick.html

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The Self-Destruction of the Enlightenment

Novel: Voice and the Problem of Narration
in Blanckenburgs Beytrge zur
Geschichte deutschen Reichs und
deutscher Sitten
samuel frederick The Pennsylvania State University
Readers familiar with the rst book-length publication in German dedicated to
the theoretical study of the novel, Christian Friedrich von Blanckenburgs Versuch ber den Roman (1774), might be forgiven for not knowing that the same
author also published a novel. In the reception of both Blanckenburg and the
eighteenth-century German novel, the theorists only work of ction has been relegated to footnotes, when not ignored completely. There are, however, good
reasons for this neglect. Not only is it a work of dubious literary quality, it is
also a book that displays a peculiar ambivalence with respect to its own generic
status. Although it presents itself asand sometimes appears even to take the
shape ofa novel, there are salient aspects of the book that persist in obstructing
its ostensible narrative form. This tension is already present in its title, Beytrge
zur Geschichte deutschen Reichs und deutscher Sitten, which gives little indication that it is even intended to be a novel. For although Geschichte is a standard designation for ctional narrative at this time (as in Blanckenburgs two
favourite novels, Geschichte des Agathon and The History of Tom Jones), the
word has here been stripped of this potential generic connotation, rst by being
subordinated to the term Beytrge, and second by not being tied to an individual (so critical to Blanckenburgs normative conception of the novel), but instead
to the entire German people. In this context, Geschichte suggests that we are
dealing here not with any ctional story, but with something much broader
that concerns historical events. Indeed, the word Beytrge rather unambiguously announces that the book is to consist of scholarly contributions of a historiographical nature.
This genre designation is made to carry the most weight in the title not only
semantically, as its rst word and dominant conceptual category, but also graphically. If we look at the books title page (Figure 1), we can see how the texts
generic status is maintained, even as it is confused, in a peculiar typographical

seminar 49:2 (May 2013)

The Self-Destruction of the Enlightenment Novel 149

Figure 1: Title page of Blanckenburgs novel.

organization of terms in which Beytrge, in the largest font, is prominently

centred, but Geschichte pushed toward the margin. Complicating this hierarchy further is the third, most unambiguous generic category, Ein Roman,
which is nonetheless shrunk down in size and cordoned off, not for emphasis,
but as if to keep it in check. Is this book a novel or a set of scholarly contributions? Even before it properly begins, Blanckenburg announces and puts into
tension these generic categories, with the latterthe non-ctional scholarly discourseseeming at rst to dominate, at least typographically, over the former.

150

SAMUEL FREDERICK

This tension persists throughout the entire work, which Blanckenburg clearly
wants to be a novel, but which he cannot help sabotaging at every step of the
way with authorial intrusions that crowd out most of the material of narrative
interest. The theorist-turned-novelist thus privileges the theoretical over the narrative, lling his new book with meta-discursive commentary in which it appears
the author has decided to write his announced Beytrge after all, even at the
expense of its expected story, its Geschichte.
In this article I will analyze Blanckenburgs novel guided by three main motivations, each tied to this generic hybridity. First, more broadly, the lack of critical attention to the novel needs to be rectied. As the only work of ction by the
author of Germanys rst theoretical monograph on the novel, a work that continues to be relevant to discussions of the history and theory of the genre, the
Beytrge deserves more than a cursory look. Coming only one year after the
voluminous Versuch ber den Roman, Blanckenburgs novel asks to be read as
the authors attempt to model that which he argues for in his theoretical work.
The Beytrge, however, has received very little critical attention and is usually
dismissed, in passing, as a curiosity and a failure.1 Without entirely disagreeing
with this assessment, I believe a closer analysis of the novel will reveal important
conicts between Blanckenburgs theory and his attempted application of this
theory.2 In particularand this brings me to my second motivationBlanckenburgs injunction against authorial intrusions needs to be investigated carefully
in relation to his own blatant transgression of this rule. Why, in his theoretical
work, does Blanckenburg insist on banishing the author from the text? What exceptions does he make? And what purpose does his disregard for his own rule
serve within the narrative structure of his novel?
Attending to these questions will bring me to the theoretical crux of this article (my third main motivation), which concerns the role of voice in narrative.
Narratological debates about the status and function of narrative voice do not
address its importance in terms of a texts narrativity (i.e., how does the overt
presence of a narrator contribute to or negatively impact the degree to which we
identify a given text as narrative?). I wish ultimately to use Blanckenburgs
novel to conceptualize voice anew as the locus of conicting textual impulses
that have critical consequences for a given works narrative status. The rst of
these impulses is to tell or continue telling the story ostensibly under way; the
second is to bring that telling to a halt in order to make way for a more urgent

1 With the exception of four contemporary reviews, there exists no scholarly work dedicated
mostlylet alone exclusivelyto this novel. The lengthiest discussions of the Beytrge in
recent scholarshipnone of which exceeds seven pagescan be found in Sangs Blanckenburg
dissertation of 1967 (1069), Thoms dissertation on the novel and the natural sciences (259
66), and most recently in books by Heinz (14244) and Fulda (1037).
2 In this way my reading differs from the two most recent discussions of the novel, by Heinz and
by Fulda, each of whom argues that the Beytrge should be seen as conforming to the theory set
out in the Versuch.

The Self-Destruction of the Enlightenment Novel 151

desire to theorize or to instruct. One impulse is narrative, to write Geschichte;
the other non-narrative, to write Beytrge. My theoretical intervention will
draw on Walter Benjamins Der Erzhler, an essay conspicuously absent
from narratological discussions of voice, in order to explore how the textual
manifestation of voice (as the reections and interventions of the narratorthe
one who speaks or tells) might be seen as an alternative source of narrativity,
though one that in Blanckenburgs hands ends up positioning the novel against
itself.
I should note that this articles tri-fold structure does not match these three
motivations exactly. I will use the rst part to provide an outline of Blanckenburgs theoretical position, more broadly, and his prescriptions and proscriptions
for the use of authorial voice in the novel. The articles second part is dedicated
to an analysis of the Beytrge in relation to these theoretical convictions. In the
third and nal section I will discuss the narratological problem of voice in light
of Blanckenburgs texts before coming to my conclusion.
I. The Prescriptions and Proscriptions of the Versuch ber den Roman
A central task for Blanckenburg in his lengthy theoretical work is to provide the
guidelines and models whereby the novel of modernity might transcend the status of light entertainment to become a serious instrument for Bildung, thus assuming the position the epic held in antiquity. To this end, Blanckenburg insists
on the critical distinction between the narrative of bloes Erzehlen and that in
which Wirkung und Ursache play an essential role. The former is a skeletal
concatenation of mere events without unifying purpose; the latter a causally motivated unfolding of meaningfully connected occurrences.3 In the novel, the lattera unied, teleological trajectoryshould be dominant. Blanckenburg
famously advocates for the novels primary attention to das Innre over das
Aeuere as the proper and most effective means of conveying this causally motivated trajectory of events. The inner workings of characters, in particular, are
was wir in Handlung sehen wollen (58), since these affective motivations help
provide Bewegung (265) toward an end by injecting a Wie into an otherwise
lifeless procession of happenings (272).
Providing the reader access to characters inner lives, however, will not in
and of itself be enough to avert bloes Erzehlen. The narrator himself must contribute to the transformation of mere story into affective plot.4 As Blanckenburg
stresses, the narrator can preempt Die bloe Erzhlung der Begebenheit, but
3 This distinction may remind us of E.M. Forsters discussion of story versus plot, where story
relies on nothing more than a sense of temporality, but plot depends on the logic of causality.
4 There is no question for Blanckenburg that the novelist (and his narrator) should be male. In
fact, his entire theory presupposes a gendered conception of the genre and its readership, where
the female reader is drawn to the weak form of the romance or adventure novel, but what is required is a robust, male readership for a robust new novel, or at the very least one that can educate its female readers appropriately. On this aspect of Blanckenburgs work, see Angelika

152

SAMUEL FREDERICK

only, wenn er diese Erzhlung in Handlung zu verwandeln weis (494). But

how, exactly, does he turn a plain sequence of external happenings into a teleological unfolding of internally motivated events? The answer in large part involves a structural move similar to how the Russian Formalists conceived of the
workings of suzhet (usually translated plot) on the fabula (usually translated
story): the author-as-narrator arranges or moulds the given material of
nature into an ordered, unied whole. In Blanckenburgs words, he avails himself of Die Kunst, diesen Materialien allen Gestalt und Anordnung zu geben;
sie, im rechten Maa, am rechten Ort, in der gehrigen Verbindung zu gebrauchen. . . (248).
The task of Wahl und Anordnung (255), however, inevitably involves
more than just silent arrangement. The narrator needs to make the causal connections among events explicit, to make palpable (Blanckenburgs adjective of
choice is anschauend) the motivations and complications behind each effect.
More often than not this calls for a certain amount of intervention and explanation. The characters themselves, however, should not be used for this purpose.
This was one of the failures of the epistolary novel, according to Blanckenburg
(though he would reassess this form of the novel in his review of Werther later
the same year), where characters serve as mechanical puppets, mere mouthpieces
of the author (28788). But if the narrator himself must make anschauend how
the inner life of his characters necessarily precipitates the novels unfolding of
occurrences, how is he to carry out this task without drawing too much attention
to himself as narrator (who, for Blanckenburg, is the authors surrogate5)? For
just as characters should not speak the intentions of the author, neither should
the narrator: Er mu sich nicht geradeswegs zum Lehrer aufwerfen; noch weniger mssen es seine Personen. Wir selbsts, ohne sein Vordociren, mssen an ihm
lernen knnen (253). Most of the narrators Reexionen and Bemerkungen
are for Blanckenburg not merely superuous (ppiger Auswuchs, der weggeschnitten zu werden verdient [284]); they threaten to disrupt the necessary
whole that the novel must maintain, along with its illusion of self-sufciency.
Consider the limitation Blanckenburg imposes on the narrator in the following passage from the Versuch:
Wenn mein Begriff, meine Voraussetzung vom Ganzen richtig ist: so versteht
es sich von selbst, da der Romanendichter seine eigne Absichten, die er mit
seinem Werk gehabt hat, so genau mit den, in seinem Werk gebrauchten Mitteln
verbunden haben msse, da sie aus diesen erfolgen, ohne, da wir seine Hand

Schlimmer, Der Roman als Erziehungsanstalt fr Leser: Zur Afnitt von Gattung und Geschlecht in Friedrich von Blanckenburgs Versuch ber den Roman (1774).
5 Since Blanckenburg does not fully distinguish between author and narratoras was customary
at this timeI will continue to use the term narrator where Blanckenburg employs Dichter.
For Blanckenburg, the overt presence of the narrator was only a reminder of the presence of the
author (525).

The Self-Destruction of the Enlightenment Novel 153

weiter im Spiele sehen. Er mu vorher die Materialien, das heit, seine handelnden Personen und ihre verschiedenen Eigenschaften, aussuchen, zurechtputzen,
nach Maagabe ihrer entworfenen Einrichtung zusammen setzen, das Werk
aufziehen, und nun es seinen Weg gehen lassen. Der Dichter selbst gehrt
gar nicht mit ins Ganze seines Werks; er wre was auerordentliches, das
gleichsam in den Gang desselben hineingriffe. Der Knstler, der all Augenblicke ber seiner [sic] Uhr stellen mu, hat wahrlich keine gute Uhr gemacht
(33940)

This proscription against authorial commentary emerges in part from Blanckenburgs desire to adopt a revised conception of mimesis that is distinct from mere
Nachahmung. The ideal artist should not just render an image of nature, but create it anew. In doing so, however, he does not meddle with Gods handiwork.
His task is to show how everything ts together in its divinely ordained order,
not to redene that order. To this end, the novelist must assume a privileged,
God-like position above his work so as to see the whole that will determine its
teleological shape. Only the author of ction can accomplish this; the historian,
who also tells stories, cannot (Brenner 65). Since the historian is a part of the
world about which he tells, he is denied a vista from which to see the whole. The
novelist, on the other hand, has created his world. He, like the Creator, can therefore see eine, bis ins Unendliche fortgehende Reihe verbundener Ursachen und
Wirkungen, and is compelled to order his ctional world according to that picture of nature: Wenn der so gepriesene Grundsatz der Nachahmung irgend
einen Sinn hat: so ists wohl kein andrer, als der: verfahret in der Verbindung, der
Anordnung eurer Werke so, wie die Natur in der Hervorbringung der ihrigen verfhrt (313). It follows that to properly accomplish this mode of ctional creation
the novelist must refrain from making himself present in his work, and like the
Deist God disappear behind it.
This conception of the narrators role has its roots in Plato, who in Book III
of The Republic distinguishes between mimesis, the direct imitation of action
(suitable for drama), and diegesis, the indirect telling or retelling of action (more
suitable for the epic). In the Poetics, Aristotle gives marked preference to the
mimetic mode, even in the epic: The poet himself should speak as little as possible, since when he does so he is not engaging in mimesis (59). Blanckenburgs uneasiness with respect to authorial presence can be traced back
through this tradition. The image he employs in the quotation above, however,
has a more recent lineage. In guring narrative as a machine, specically an horological device whose functioning should not require intervention on the part of
its creator, Blanckenburg seizes on a popular Enlightenment metaphor. The
image of the watch functioning in the absence of its maker thus points to the
theological assumptions at the basis of Blanckenburgs aesthetic-formal proscriptions. If the novelistic work is to mirror nature, it too must be governed by
the same providential design (Frick 361). A maker who intervenes in his work
would betray that works imperfection, exposing a rift in the teleological unity of

154

SAMUEL FREDERICK

his creation. Blanckenburg, however, wants to make sure that the novel does not
end up merely conveying the mechanical succession of time. In this way, the
horological metaphor will turn out to be troublesome for him. For if the narrator
of the novel makes himself invisible to ensure the proper functioning of his
work, then he will be less able to intervene in the ways often necessary to distinguish his novelistic edice from the chronicle or adventure novel, whose story
and characters, because they lack the connective tissue provided by a narrator,
appear Maschinenmig (260; see Sang, 77).
This rule against authorial intrusion, furthermore, appears especially out of
place when brought to bear on the works of the three novelists whom Blanckenburg praises above all others: Fielding, Sterne, and Wieland. These model novelists Betrachtungen und Moralen und Sentenzen (414) are for Blanckenburg
not at all disruptive, but serve the teleological whole by making causal connections clearer. They are allowed, in particular, wenn in dem Gange des Werks
dadurch eine Wirkung hervorgebracht wird, so, da das Ganze dadurch fortrckt,
und seinem Ziele nher kommt, oder wenn dadurch ein Licht aufgeklret wird,
das uns den Zusammenhang aufklret (405).6 Blanckenburg continues by praising Wielands digressions (forms of authorial interruption); these observations,
he writes, cannot be labelled mere Einschiebsel, but are in fact frs Ganze so
nothwendig, als irgend ein andrer Theil. They consist of Dinge, die alle
nothwendig sind, unsre Vorstellungen vollstndig zu machen, und die doch mancher Leser nicht aus sich selbsts herauszunden vermag (406). Authorial commentary, then, is not just sanctioned, but sometimes even necessary, since it is
able to make up for the deciencies of the reader by going over and above the
prescribed showing (288) of the affectively motivated interconnections among
events and actually tellingprecisely and clearlywhat these connections
are. Blanckenburg even uses the same metaphor of the clock he had evoked to
proscribe authorial presence in prescribing exactly this kind of intervention: Er
[der Dichter] kann uns die Rder zeigen und das Werk zerlegen, um uns zu lehren, warum der Zeiger dies vielmehr als jenes gewiesen hat (100).
Blanckenburgs theory, in effect, puts him in a bind: he both needs the narrators voice and wants to banish it. He needs it to make explicit how the machine
is functioning, in part so that it doesnt just coldly and mechanically tick off
events; but he wants to banish it, also, in order to let it function: to keep it moving
without interruption, so that it properly models the Enlightenment notion of selfsufcientand providentially orderednature.7 That Blanckenburg employs the

6 Blanckenburg also addresses the role of the comic narrator (who is allowed a certain amount of
Laune), but only very briey and as a kind of afterthought in the very nal pages of the book
(52627). And even there he prefaces the discussion with a strong reminder of his position:
Das grte Lob, das er [der Dichter] erhalten kann, ist, da wir ihn ganz ber seinem Werke
vergessen haben (525).
7 Fulda explains that Blanckenburgs mechanistic worldview aligns him with the proponents of
pragmatism (107), which Fulda argues informs his entire theory and practice of the novel.

The Self-Destruction of the Enlightenment Novel 155

metaphor of the machine both as a positive (380) and a negative (260) model for
the novelin addition to using the horological metaphor both positively and negativelyonly draws attention to his ambivalence with respect to the role of the
narrator in maintaining this machine. If, in an attempt to save the narrative, he
tells the reader precisely how (das Wie [265]) a sequence of events is motivated
and causally linked, this act will only threaten to undo the narrative by interrupting its necessary movement toward an endeffectively bringing the novel to a
halt. Does this mean that the proper novel is doomed by the very features that
have been mobilized for its success?8
II. The Mechanical Self-Destruction of the Beytrge
Blanckenburgs own attempt at the genre seems to suggest that it is. For when
Blanckenburg set out to write a novel himself he naturally took with him his
theoretical system, including its self-defeating stance toward the role of the narrator. Only its rst reviewer, however, felt that the resulting book was a successful translation of theory into practice. Herr v. Blankenburg hat Wort
gehalten, und seine Theorie der Romane durch sein eigen Beispiel besttigt
(499), wrote an anonymous critic in the Frankfurter gelehrte Anzeigen.9 He
was alone in this assessment. Even the otherwise glowing review in the Magazin der deutschen Critik pointed out the mismatch between Blanckenburgs theoretical convictions and his venture into the genre, in particular with respect to
the role of authorial commentary (55). Indeed, the Beytrge is by no means a
demonstration of the perfectly functioning machine as set out in the Versuch,
but rather a kind of absurd display of gadgetry with too many bells and whistles, one whose actual function is lost in the noise of narrative embellishment.
It is a novel run amok, a novel that effectively collapses under the strain of its
own absurd attempt to account for the causal relations among even the most
trivial occurrences. As J.K.A. Musus wrote in a contemporary review, its narrator giebt eine so genaue Analyse der aus ihrem Charakter entspringenden
Handlungen, Sitten und Meynungen, da dem Leser das warum des warums
aller Aeuerungen ihrer Thtigkeit aufgelt wird (508). In insisting on detailing the precise causal chain of so many insignicant actions the narrator does
not so much clarify as confuse. What is supposed to offer insight into the
8 I have singled out a contradiction that one might argue is resolved by the simple application of
moderation. The Versuch even gestures toward this balanced approach to authorial intervention
(the narrator should only intervene under sehr, sehr wenigen Bedingungen [414]). Hahl also
argues convincingly that Blanckenburg means for such interventions to be pragmatically integrated into the narrative (3643). The contradiction, however, is all the more salient and, I
believe, remains fascinatingly unresolved by virtue of its extreme manifestation in Blanckenburgs own foray into ction. I therefore stand by my reading of the Versuchs theoretical inconsistency as in fact conrmed by its practical application in the Beytrge.
9 Both the Versuch and the Beytrge were published anonymously. This reviewers unambiguous
identication of Blanckenburg as the author of both shows to what degree his theory was
known and discussed in intellectual circles at the time.

156

SAMUEL FREDERICK

motivations or explain the precise origins of mostly trivial occurrences ends up

obfuscating their purpose and frustrating the reader. As Horst Thom rightly
notes, Die Handlung ertrinkt in einer weitschweigen Anhufung von Banalitten (265). Furthermore, in constantly interrupting his narrative to provide
explanatory commentary, the narrator only disrupts the very connections he
means thereby to maintain. By thus delaying the progression of event to event,
the asides to the reader that are intended to elucidate and thereby motivate this
progression end up impeding it, weakening when not entirely dissolving its
necessary direction and momentum. As any potential cohesiveness in this
sequence of events is lost, so too is the reader within the sequence. For when
the story nally does move forward we are not so much brought closer to any
meaningful end as we are taken on disorienting detours. As Musus writes, we
nd ourselves auf so viele Nebengnge that we inevitably ask, Wo sind
wir? (508).
Despite this unnecessarily complicated approach to its telling, the situation of
the novel is actually fairly simple. The Beytrge concerns a certain Freyherr von
Bernklau and his wife, a fairly annoying, at times even repulsive, couple whose
words and actions only expose their basic ignorance and mean-spiritedness.
The husband is obsessed with hunting; his wife wants a child. Neither cares
much for what the other desires, so that they bicker and ght more often than
not. An uncle is brought in to make peace, which is successful enough that by
the middle of the book the wife nds herself pregnant. In the second half of the
novel the husband becomes despondent and the uncles younger sister comes to
stay with the couple to help around the house, but only ends up becoming
another source of petty domestic tension. The novel ends with a startling event
(which I will discuss below), but notas it leads one to expectwith the birth
of the child.
This child is the putative hero of the book, and we are to assume that in its
subsequent volume(s)the only one published is announced as a larger works
Erster Theil (see Figure 1)he would take centre stage. The novel thus reads
like an extended prelude to a chain of motivated occurrences that is never actually set in motion. True to Blanckenburgs emphasis on cause and effect, the
whole book is one excessively detailed and protracted account of the causal origins of the very gure whose story it apparently means to tell. The central problem, however, is that on this macro-narrative level we are only ever provided an
account of this causethe effect itself remains unnarrated. To compound this
problem, the precise cause and its immediate consequences (the childs conception and the wifes pregnancy) are treated with such euphemistic discretion that
they could easily escape the readers attention entirely. Their narration is nearly
lost in the jungle of the narrators prolixity.
Even the scene in which the wife tells her husband she is expecting a
childwhich is also the point at which the reader rst learns (for certain) of this
factonly appears on the page in an outpouring of dashes that partly cover over
this crucial information:

The Self-Destruction of the Enlightenment Novel 157

Dame: ich hoffe du wirst dich freuen, Mein Kind, wenn
Ritter: Hm?
Dame: Erben Wahrsagung der Zigeuner
Ritter: Erben? Hm? Lieb? Ja aber mglich?
Dame: Mein Kind!
Die Unterhaltung ist geendigt. Unsre Dame htte vieleicht gerne fortgesetzt;
aber ihr Gemahl fngt an, die Lehne des Stuhls mit seinem Rcken zu suchen, den Tisch um sich weg zuschieben, sich auszudehnen; die Suppe hat
zu gut geschmeckt: wir drfen nicht auf mehr Worte hoffen. (171)

In piling up these dashes the narrator does not simply elide what is critical to this
exchange. These blanks, rather, draw attention to what is missing. But in doing
so, they also announce the insignicance of the event, as if the narrator were
hereby aunting the peculiar near-disappearance of his storys origin in the
books convoluted layering of discourse. (It goes without saying that the primal
scene itself is left completely unnarrated, presumably occurring in the ellipsis
between books I and II, or while the narrator chatters away during the last chapter of the rst book.10) Once the narrator curtly informs us that the conversation
has ended, we are invited to join the husband in his initial reaction, which is to
doze off. Thus the important information to be gleaned from this dialogue is not
only hidden on the page; it is agged by the text as uninteresting, even soporically boring.11 Nonetheless, the reader who can read in between the lines may
now rest assured that at least the novels main character exists in embryonic
form.12 But this same reader would be mistaken in thinking that something like a
real plotat least as Blanckenburg himself prescribes itwill now begin to
develop.
As the features of the Beytrge I have described so far make plain, this book
shares many of the ingredients also found in Tristram Shandy, including prominent narrative delays and authorial intrusionseven the liberal use of the m-

10 The confusion as to the books basic events is illustrated by Thoms summary, which suggests
the conception occurs during the rst narrated night, not the second (264).
11 Later, the reader will have a chance to voice this boredom directly: Es ist ein langweilig Ding
um diese Geschichte! (237). This is a common complaint among its readers. Even the otherwise positive reviewer of the novel in the Magazin der deutschen Critik writes that the novels
rst part was mehrmahlen langweilig, and that of the friends whom he convinced to read the
book, half of them threw it away after an hour, and the other half, even though they nished it,
found it on the whole durchaus langweilig (43).
12 Michelsen writes: Durch das Prinzip der kausalpsychologischen Detailschilderung wird in diesem ganzen, ber 200 Seiten starken Band [its actually over 300 pages], nicht viel mehr als die
Zeugung des (nie auftretenden) Helden geschildert (93). In designating the conception the only
event of the novel, Michelsen at the same reduces its signicance as such an event by pointing
out that it is really only a precondition for the appearance of a gure who would be capable of
making actual, narratively interesting events: the hero. Since this hero never appears, our forgettable cast of characters is only left to dawdle about.

158

SAMUEL FREDERICK

dash. And of course both spend more time on the trivial circumstances surrounding their protagonists conception than on his actual life. Indeed, the Beytrge
has been dismissed, not without justication, as a clumsy Sterne pastiche (Lmmert, 575; Michelsen, 93). Reviewing the novel in the Teutscher Merkur, J.H.
Merck is quick to point out these similarities: So sehr auch der V[erfasser] sich
dagegen verwahrt, so ist doch die Nachahmung Tristram Shandys zu sichtbar,
und jeder Leser wnscht vielleicht mit uns, da er nicht in Sternes, sondern in
seiner eigenen Manier mchte gedichtet haben (270).13 Blackenburg himself is
mindful of his novels Shandyism and attempts to preempt such attacks, writing
in the books prologue that although he has read Tristram Shandy oft und viel,
his novel has nicht das mindeste gemein mit ihm (n. pag.). Commenting in a
letter on Mercks criticism, Blanckenburgs friend C.F. Weie couldnt help
agreeing, against his friends insistence, with the reviewer: Aber, fragen Sie
sich selbst einmal darin, warum so viel, so lange Einschiebsel? In der That hat
Sie Ihr Reichthum zur Verschwendung verfhret. Sie zerreien den Faden der
Geschichte mit jedem Augenblicke, und lassen den Leser immer so lange harren,
bis Sie wieder anknpfen um ihn gleich wieder zu zerreien, da er nicht
wei, welches Ende er erhaschen soll, um ihn fest zu halten. Weie concludes,
allein wer eine Geschichte liest, ist begierig auf den Fortgang, er liest sie nicht
der Einschiebsel wegen (67). In the prologue, Blanckenburg defends his longwindedness, touching on the very problem that I highlighted above in my discussion of his theoretical convictions: Wenn ich diesen [his imagined sympathetic
readers] zu weitlug, zu berig, zu umstndlich scheine: so werden sie nden, da die bloe, kahle Erzhlung kahler Vorflle einfltiger Geschpfe, noch
kalter und langweiliger und fruchtloser ohne diese Umschweife und Entwickelungen gewesen seyn wrde (n. pag.). Even though he generally prohibits it,
Blanckenburg here again concedes that authorial commentary is often necessary
to esh out the skeletal sequence of events so as to transform them into the material of a proper plot. The watch, as we will see even more strikingly below, requires its makers interventions. Still, Blanckenburgs self-assessment is not so
sanguine. In using comparative adjectivesmore boring, etc.to describe
what the novel would be without his loquacious interventions, Blanckenburg
only admits that the nal product still is boring and frigid and unsuccessful,
despite his efforts.
This comparison of the Beytrge with Tristram Shandy is instructive beyond
their structural similarities. If in Shandy Sterne shows the contingency of action,
event, and the causal structures that ground conventional narrative, as critics
such as David Wellbery have convincingly shown, then in the Beytrge we can
see Blanckenburg going out of his way to show the necessity of action, how
everything is the way it is and how one thing leads to another, however trivial
13 Even the laudatory reviewer in the Magazin der deutschen Critik complains about the novels
excessive digressivity, blaming it on Sterne: Fast mgt ich glauben, da Sterne hier der Verfhrer sey (55).

The Self-Destruction of the Enlightenment Novel 159

and unimportant it may be.14 But in its attempt to do this, his narrative ceases to
be about these occurrences and becomes a mechanical exercise in justication.
The absurdity of following through with this tactic is especially apparent in exchanges like this one, where the reader interrupts the narrators interruption to
confront him about the purpose of his repeated interruptions:
Sie sind mit Ihrem Moralisiren, und Ihren Einschiebseln, und Anreden, und
Fragen an den Leser ganz unausstehlich, lieber Freund!
Es ist meine Art nun einmal so!
Ihre Art? Was geht uns Ihre Art an? Sie mssen Rechenschaft von Ihrem Thun
und Lassen, als Autor, zu geben wissen! (43)

Of course the reader is only perpetuating the problem in demanding Rechenschaft. This exchange thus highlights the danger of the narrators strategy:
were he to follow through with it consistently, it would lock him into an innite
loop of self-justication. The novel sometimes appears to be caught in such a
spiral, only adding to its disorienting effects. After the laconically dismissive
Es ist meine Art nun einmal so! the narrator proceeds to defend his digressions
more substantively, insisting, da ohn diese Einschiebsel, Anreden und Fragen
auch nicht einer [der Leser] sich etwas bey der Gelegenheit, wo er sie fand, gedacht haben wrde (43). The narrator maintains here and throughout that his interruptions are also devices meant to force the reader to think about what he is
reading so as to take from it a lesson about his own inner self: denken mcht
ich sie gern lehren. Ich wollte sie gern aufmerksam auf sich selbst, gern mehr
mit sich selbst und mit ihrem Innern bekannter machen (44). So much is in
accord with his theory (e.g. Versuch 296), and yet sober reections like these do
little to ameliorate the frustration triggered by all these justications. And anyway, Blanckenburg himself admits in the prologue that his excessive authorial
intrusions in fact violate his own theoretical proscriptions: Manche Bemerkung,
manche Ausschweifung steht ganz wider meine eigene Theorie da. (n. pag.).
True to the absurd logic of the book, no matter how much he tries to justify
them, in doing so he will only create further need for justicationad innitum.
In this way, the machine that Blanckenburg has created, however much it
corresponds to the ideal presented in the Versuch, may function too well. As
Jutta Heinz puts it, die Kausalitt scheint so weit getrieben, da man die Verknpfung der Ereignisse beinahe mittels einer Formel ausdrcken knnte (143).
For Thom, the novels strict causal logic is analogous to the mechanistic

14 The following observation from Wellberys analysis of Sterne helps to foreground his imitators
differences: Auf die schlichte Darstellung einer Kausalsequenz kommt es Sterne jedoch nicht
an, sondern auf die Betonung der Diskrepanz, die das Verhltnis zwischen Ursache und Wirkung kennzeichnet (24).

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conception of late Enlightenment natural sciences mixed with a good dose of

theodicy (260). Blanckenburg seems to show his hand in this regard when he introduces into the novel a mechanical object as a central prop: a chiming repeater
watch. This object is, of course, hardly arbitrary. It is the need to wind the chiming clock that (partly) interrupts the act of reproduction at the beginning of Tristram Shandy; and it is the watch that Blanckenburg uses as a metaphor for the
perfectly functioning machinery of narrative in the quotation from the Versuch I
discussed in the previous section. In the Beytrge, the watch functions narratively as an object of intervention: the uncle forces the husband to give it to his
wife as a way of making peace. Yet even while it stabilizes the couples relationship long enough for them to conceive a child, it just as soon precipitates the
rescission of that stability. For the chiming of the Repetiruhr drives the husband crazy, preventing him from sleeping. The very device that guarantees order
(both generally, in terms of temporal sequencing, and more locally, in terms of
marital relations) is the same device that keeps interrupting that order.
The watch becomes the medial analogue to Blanckenburgs narration,
which is so excessively controlled by the gure of the narrator that it becomes
overbearing. As such, Blanckenburgs choice of repeater watch is especially telling. The repeater, unlike the striking clock (such as the one that gures prominently at the beginning of Tristram Shandy), does not chime on its own. It can
only strike the number of hours (and in some cases quarter hours or even minutes) when somebody presses a button. The watchmaker who constructs a repeater would be unable to wind it up and let it work on its own, because he would
have to intervene in order for it to chime the hour. Since the chime is the principal way in which a repeater tells time, its very mechanism would be functionless
without this manual intervention. No longer does the watchmaker disappear
behind his handiwork; with the repeater, he becomes one with it. The repeater in
the Beytrge thus takes up Blanckenburgs ideal image of narrative as a watch
from the Versuch and forces back its absent maker.
The horological analogue of the repeater watch ultimately exposes the instability of the novels entire narrative structure. The authorial narrator of the Beytrge so persistently keeps track of the causal connections and affective
motivations that drive his story that he effectively prevents these from truly
becoming signicant narrative forces. In almost unceasingly commenting on his
own invention (repeatedly making his watch chime), even drawing the reader into
dialogue about it, his remarks cease to be mere narratorial discourse or reective
commentary, but functiononce removedas discourse on his own narratorial
discourse. Weie points to this multiplication of discursive levels in his correspondence with the author: Ihr Roman sieht nun mehr einem Commentar ber
einen Text hnlich, als da er selbst Text wre, ja Sie kommentieren nicht nur
den Text, sondern den Commentar selbst (68). In persistently defending his tactic of describing seemingly trivial actions in agonizing detail as something useful and necessary, the narrator only begs the question. To what larger
structure, exactly, do these interruptions belong? What whole do they serve?

The Self-Destruction of the Enlightenment Novel 161

Lassen Sie mich doch! Sie werden schon sehen, da dies Bedenken und Besinnen auch seinen Nutzen, und seine Nothwendigkeit frs Ganze haben wird,
und da, weils nun einmal nicht anders kommen kann, es auch nicht anders
kommen durfte. Es ist ja unsre Verabredung, da ich das, was der Natur und
Wahrheit gem erfolgt, zum nothwendigen Stck des Ganzen machen soll.
Und hiemit, Gott befohlen! (34)

But we never do see the usefulness and necessity of all these Einschiebselincluding this one. It soon becomes clear that none of his interruptions and commentary is necessary to any whole, primarily because no such narrative whole is
allowed to form. (Have we even entered the narrative proper yet? Arent we still
in the prologue to the actual novel, yet to be published?) The result is not so
much Blanckenburgs dreaded bloes Erzehlen, in which action follows action
in a series of kahle Vorflle. Instead, the narrator drags out each minute, trivial
action with explanatory and apologetic commentary, overcrowding the events
themselves with bavardage. The narrators garrulousness even infects his characters, whose discourse becomes longer and longer, and less and less relevant to
the little that carries narrative weight in the novel.
But something remarkable does happen at the end of the book, andin a
curious ironic inversionthis something is directly related to the novels excesses of commentary and its lack of any interesting story. In effect, the very
proliferation of desultory discourse, which had up to then prevented story from
developing, leads to the rst and only real event of narrative consequence in the
novel (discounting the rather uneventfuland of course unnarratedconception). But this event also brings the book to a close, as if it had expended itself
and could go no further (indeed, no further parts were ever published15). That
nal event isttingly enoughthe death of a character.
The novels tentative protagonist, Freyherr von Bernklau, has been waxing
philosophical in an attempt to proclaim and also justifyin the face of all the
evidence to the contraryhis own intellectual powers. His ramblings in effect
carry over from the narrators own ramblings (they are in fact formally inseparable from them since Bernklau is not directly quoted), and represent the same discursive excess that swallows up the novels meaningful action. The repetitive
and completely empty discourse that lls pages upon pages suddenly comes to
an end, however, when it becomes apparent that Bernklaus septuagenarian servant, Christian, is dying. Bernklau had been so wrapped up in his self-justifying
babbling (which appears to be mostly going on in his head, anyway), that he neglected to call a doctor for his sick servant, and the text at this point makes it

15 Lmmert notes that the second part of the novel was announced in the Allgemeine
Verzeichni of the Frankfurter und Leipziger Ostermesse des Jahres 1777 under Fertig gewordene Schriften (584n2), though it has never been found. The forward to the correspondence
with Weie, published in 1806, contradicts this information, claiming that Blanckenburg did not
want to continue the novel (66).

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clear that his ramblings essentially prevented him from coming to his loyal servants rescue in time.
This ending serves as a damning commentary on Blanckenburgs experiment with this novel, whose larger structure and design, as per Blanckenburgs
own theoretical convictions, remain stubbornly beholden to a conventional conception of the unifying plot. What leads up to this point in the book at once precipitates an actual narrative occurrence, but also turns out to have violent
consequences, both for a character in the book and for the book itself. Seen in
parallel, the endings narrative and meta-narrative levels reveal a symmetry that
indicts both Bernklau and the novels authorial commentary. Just as Bernklau
obsesses at length over his own perceived wisdom all the while making it more
and more apparent that he is irredeemably ignorant, so too the narrator has been
obsessing at length over the perceived necessity of his commentary all the while
making it more and more apparent that nothing at all of what he has contributed
was actually necessary to his storys success. Instead of this commentary providing narrative support to the normative plot system that the novel presupposes,
the narrators ceaseless justications end up undermining that very system. In
effect, just as Bernklaus babbling leads him to forget his servant, who dies, so
too the narrators babbling leads him to forget his novel, which succumbs.
Curiously, what ultimately kills the novel is its own rst step toward something resembling success, which only underscores Blanckenburgs deep ambivalence toward his own undertaking. Nonetheless, this destruction of the novel is
the only possible consequence of his nearly contradictory theory, in which narratorial commentary is both necessary for and disruptive of the unied whole the
novel is supposed to maintain for its own success. In this respect, the ending
serves as a taking account of what Blanckenburg has accomplishedand the results are dire, so dire that he essentially lets his book die. No real ending is provided; no subsequent volumes are published. The novel is aborted before it can
even be brought to life. Christians death thus also stands in for the death of the
unborn, young Bernklau. He, too, is effectively aborted, since it is his story that
is supposed to be told, but never is.
The novel thus ends, and in ending fails to end. Blanckenburg ultimately denies us a telos that should, as per his own theory, give meaning to his novels
seemingly endless series of causes and effects: Ohne Vereinigung der verschiedenen einzeln Fden eines Werks in ein Ende, ohne Verknpfung ihrer in ein
Knoten, lt sich kein wahrhaftes Ganzes denken (Versuch 395). It is as if in
constantly seeking origins he had turned his back on any proper close to his
book. He was obsessed with beginnings, not endings. So instead of granting an
end, he kills off the novel with a dramatic gesture that doesnt bring closure at
all, but violently and abruptly terminates.16

16 Even more revealing is that Blanckenburg insists the death of a character is a wholly inappropriate ending for the novel form: Der bessere Romanendichter hat andre und mu andre Absichten

The Self-Destruction of the Enlightenment Novel 163

III. Narrative Voice, Narrativity, and the End of the Enlightenment Novel
In persistently and destructively foregrounding the narrator, Blanckenburgs
strange novel offers an alternative way to think through the problem of narrative
voice (as the textual appearance of the narrating persona in address or commentary), which in recent theoretical discussions has mostly sidelined questions of
genre and narrativity. These are two aspects of voice that Blanckenburgs theory
and its application in the Beytrge raise in compelling ways, thereby providing a
unique perspective not only on the shifting possibilitiesand limitationsof the
novel form in the late Enlightenment, but also on the paradoxes of narrative discourse itself.
In classical narratology, Grard Genette introduced the category of voice to
distinguish questions concerning the narrator or narrating instance (who
speaks?) from those concerning point of view (who sees?). Since there is, of
course, no actual voice in a text, the term functions as a metaphor that helps to
isolate the role of the speaker in a narrative (186), for instance in terms of his or
her identity, authority, or frequency and conspicuousness of appearance. As such,
the concept can be usefully deployed in addressing the ner differentiations
between and within categories of person (e.g. rst-person or homodiegetic narration and third-person or heterodiegetic narration), which are ultimately alsoto
come back to Genettes initial distinctionrelevant to problems involving narrative perspective (focalization). A story that is consistently focalized through its
characters, for example, will leave little trace of a narrating instance, the job of
telling having been taken over by the gures in the narrated world. Some theorists
have even proposed degrees of narratorial audibility, ranging from the selfreferential overt narrator to the nearly imperceptible covert narrator (Chatman
196262). While postclassical narratologists have questioned this basic model
Richard Aczel suggests using Bakhtin to read the text as the site of multiple,
often competing voices; Monika Fludernik sees voice as generated in an act of
mimetic illusionism constitutive of the reading processthe debates have mostly
involved the structural function or ontological status of the narrator.17 Only Andrew Gibson has questioned the viability of the concept altogether, seeing it as a
residue of idealism that ground[s] the technology of the text on reassuringly
ontotheological foundations (And the Wind Wheezing 642). Gibson nds narratologys nostalgia for voice illogical: it continually seeks to restore the
sense of a human presence whose loss or distance is in fact its own founding condition (Commentary 711).
In Der Erzhler, Walter Benjamin makes a similar claim about our distance from the presence of the actual, embodied narratorbut in doing so he
shifts the stakes of a debate that had not even yet begun. What distinguishes
mit seinen Personen haben, als die bloe Bestimmung ihres uern Geschicks (395). On nality and teleology in Blanckenburgs theory, see Frick (363-364).
17 See the special issue of New Literary History dedicated to voice (issue 32.2, summer 2001) for
a more detailed discussion of these and other theorists positions.

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Benjamins notion of voice and narrative rst and foremost from that of classical and postclassical narratologists is the normative thrust of his analysis.
Narratology aims to provide an accurate description of narrative functionality;
Benjamin is mainly interested in exploring what constitutes narratives actual
and proper essence. Benjamins deeply historical conception of narrative
treats formal features not as concrete elements of any text, but as modalities in
a model of communication rooted in memory and experience. For Benjamin,
the absence of human presence whose loss, to quote Gibson again, is a founding condition both of narrative and its theorization reminds us even more urgently that this gure of the storyteller is missing from the empty stories that
bombard us every day (43839). True storytelling should able to reclaim that
presence.
Although he does not use the term voice, Benjamin is at pains to stress
the source of narrativity in oral storytelling, and repeatedly gures the audience
of narrative as listeners (44243). The essence of storytelling is for him intimately connected to this oral tradition and to the central role of the narrator himself, and has little to do with any conventional story content that this narrator
might convey.18 Benjamin ignores such elements of the story, providing specically non-narrative examples of what comprises a narrative: practical advice, scientic instruction, proverbs and maxims (442). These examples are essentially
linked to the narrator gure, who must cease telling his story in order to impart
this wisdom, such as in Gotthelf, whose narrators provide agricultural advice
(441442) and theological guidance, or in Hebel, whose Schatzkstlein is interspersed with scientic excursions (442) and who, in this collections most
famous story, Unverhofftes Wiedersehen, narrates the passing of time and the
ineluctability of death via a list of historical occurrences unrelated to the fate of
the two main characters (450451).19 The voice of the narrator thus makes manifest that which is in excess of conventional narrative content; but this excess, as
the residue of the storytellers presence, represents what is fundamentally constitutive of narrative itself. For Benjamin, then, narrativity emerges not from plot or
characters, but from the experience conveyed in and through the act of telling.
Voice is what makes that experience palpable by conveying the texts repository

18 In this respect Benjamins analysis bears close resemblance to Boris Eichenbaums discussion
of skaz narration in Leskov. Jurij Striedter has even suggested that Benjamin might have been
directly inuenced by the Russian formalists work (56). Skaz is a narrative mode that attempts
to provide the illusion of oral storytelling by emphasizing the idiosyncrasies of speech and style
in a prominent narrator. Eichenbaum specically contrasts the device of skaz with plot, noting
that, The center of gravity is shifted from the plot (which is now reduced to a minimum) to
the techniques of verbal mimicry and verbal gesture (269).
19 In his review of Dblins Berlin Alexanderplatzin which parts of the Erzhler-essay are recycledBenjamin lists similar non-narrative features of the text as elemental to its epic character. These include, among other things, Bibelverse, Statistiken, Schlagertexte. Their montage
in this high modernist text, however, is so dicht that they leave little room for the author (as
narrator) to be heard (233).

The Self-Destruction of the Enlightenment Novel 165

of wisdom, which is tied via an authority gure (the speaker or narrator) to a
material context and thereby to history. In this way Benjamin redenes narrative,
shifting its constitutive formal feature from plot to voice, from the stuff of
narrative to the act of narrating, which grants advice (44243) by transmitting
true, lived experience (Erfahrung). A texts voice is thus both fundamentally
narrativeas the instantiation of this transmissionand also, in terms of what
we typically expect from a story, utterly non-narrative, since the key moments in
which this voice becomes present typically coincide with the cessation or sidelining of plots progression.20
The narrative and that which is a feature of the non-narrative (instruction,
advice) are thus uniquely aligned in Benjamins essay, as they are in Blanckenburgs novel, where the authors impulses to tell Geschichte and provide commentary (as Beytrge) appear to be one and the same. As we have seen,
however, Blanckenburg is unable to keep these impulses from tearing apart his
work, whereas in Benjamin they are intimately interwoven. Voice in the Beytrge is not just the locus of advice giving, but of the authors inability to let
go of theorizing (which is closer to Benjamins dreaded explanation), such
that it ruptures the narrative even as it is attempting to give it meaning and purpose. The rift that it thereby opens up shows a nascent genre struggling to legitimize itself, all the while undermining its very effectiveness. Blanckenburgs
experiment in the genre in which he can claim theoretical expertise is important
precisely because we can see this conict and its consequences. That he fails to
keep the Beytrge and the Geschichte of his work in productive tension, though,
does more than just perform the novels breakdown. Wound up to the point of
snapping open, the watch of his narrative spills its gears and springs, offering us
a better look at its minute features in relation to their intended function within
the (failed) mechanism. Furthermore, the Beytrge provides a glimpse, by way
of its theoretical foundations and historical context, into the shifting aesthetics of
the novel itself.
If we were to follow through with Benjamins diagnosis, however, then
Blanckenburg would be on the losing side. For Benjamin the novel is a symptomatic manifestation of narratives decline (442), complicit with the news in
transmitting information instead of advice (444). No event reaches us now,
Benjamin laments, without being burdened by explanation (44445), something
true narrative ought to banish: Es ist nmlich schon die halbe Kunst des Erzhlens, eine Geschichte, indem man sie wiedergibt, von Erklrungen freizuhalten

20 My interpretation of Benjamin remains deeply informed by classical narratology. Another way

to express the paradox is by appealing to the story/discourse binary: story is the bare sequence
of events that discourse arranges and presents. Discourse, therefore, is all we can ever really
speak of in narrative; the originary story must be reconstructed on the basis of that discourse
alone. Thus when discourse turns away from the storyto provide maxims, instruction, etc.
we are really left with nothing but discourse (there is no story to reconstruct), which is the voice
of the narrator foregrounding himself and his desire to tell, but without any object to that telling.

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(445).21 Blanckenburgs overt narrator, even though he tries to instruct (indeed,

this is his primary impulse, the Endzweck of the genre [Versuch 249]), ends
up only explaining and is in this way closer to how Benjamin characterizes the
historian, who is the inverse of the true storyteller (451).22 Indeed, the voice of
the narrator in the Beytrge sounds like the Benjaminian storyteller who has imprisoned himself in the novel of his own making. The voice that might have been
a source of a more creative, self-generating narrativity is trapped by the novelistic constraints its author has imposed on it.
If we ultimately rejectas I think we shouldBenjamins historical narrative (in which the rise of the novel coincides with true narratives devolution),
while still holding on to his acute insights into narrative ontology, then Blanckenburgs Beytrge represents not so much one salient example of the decline of
storytelling as an experiment in the evolving form of a genre that, like the book
it imitates, Tristram Shandy, forces us to rethink the constitutive features of
that genre. But unlike Sternes masterpiece, in which a failed narrative is
part of its parodic success, Blanckenburgs work is instructive as a truly failed
workone that must fail given the conditions the author has set up for its success. If Tristram Shandy points beyond its immediate historical context to the
novels ironic potential, then the Beytrge only points to the dead-end of its
own rather serious aesthetic presuppositions, to the limitations of its historical
context, which it is unable to overcome. Seen in this way, what causes Blanckenburgs novel to self-destruct is the authors rm belief in the explanatory and
justicatory power of his surrogate voice, the narrator, and that this voice is in
the service of his conception of plot, and by extension the novel itself, as a unied structure. This conviction of Blanckenburgs also illustrates why his novels self-destruction is important for insight into the German novel of this
period, because it highlights the contradictions inherent in the formal and
generic rules that were about to be called into question by a series of new literary revolutions. Blanckenburgs theory and his novel bear witness to the
impending sea change.

21 Such explanation, too, would require the foregrounding of the narrator, and thus the suspension
of the storyas weve seen in Blanckenburgs novel. Benjamin rejects explanation not for this
reason, but for its complicity with making the mechanism of plot transparent by means of einer
genauen Verkettung von bestimmten Ereignissen (452). This precision should be avoided, and
connections among events, instead, be left tantalizingly ambiguous (his example here is Herodotus [445-446]). This importantly points up a deep rift between the two theorists. For Benjamin,
true storytelling should forgo psychologizing (446) as the means for providing this bare
sequence with motivation.
22 Benjamins notion of the historian is essentially the opposite of Blanckenburgs. The latter
aligns the writing of history with the bare sequence of events, lacking any proper motivating
connections. The relation between historical and ctional writing in this period, however, is too
complex to address here. See Fulda for a nuanced discussion of the theory and practice of historiography and ction in the eighteenth century (77ff), in particular in relation to Blanckenburg
(102ff).

The Self-Destruction of the Enlightenment Novel 167

In order to read the Beytrge as providing a unique perspective on this shift
in the historical development of the German novel, I suggest we replace Benjamins decline-of-storytelling narrative with a model proposed by Jacques Rancire, for whom the history of literature is marked by a tension between what he
calls the representational regime and the expressive (or aesthetic) regime. The
former is guided by the principles of mimetic identity and organic coherence,
in which one nds a totality of parts adjusted to one another to contribute to a
single end (53). The latter takes apart these hierarchies, setting out from the
ruin of the generic principle (50) to afrm a principle of literature as style (or
writing) itself. Although Rancire rejects a strict historical break between these
two regimes, we might say that they roughly correspond to Foucaults classical
age and modern era, respectively. The Beytrge in effect shows the hierarchical
conception of art that is at the core of the classical, representational endeavour
having exhausted itself, unable to make the leap from the primacy of ction
(Aristotelian representation of action) to the primacy of language (art no longer
governed by the mimetic principle [53]) (50). The hierarchical edice in
which language must be subordinated to the ction, the genre to the subject, and
the style to the characters and situations represented (47) is in its death throes, a
victim of its own aesthetic assumptions. Ironically, from this standpoint, what
dooms Blanckenburgs novel is not so much his narrators persistent interruptions as the belief in the proper plot that he wishes thereby to maintainor, as
I put it above, the belief that his prominent narrator is in the service of this unied narrative system. As the ending of the Beytrge reveals, the very ingredients
of a proper novel are ultimately what coincide with its premature termination.
Only a quarter century later, with the Romantics and Jean Paul, would the role of
narrative voicein the German context, at leastbe emancipated enough from
the constraints of plot to achieve a new type of novelistic discourse. Sterne had
achieved this emancipation, but Blanckenburg does not seem to be ready to follow his predecessor and leave behind the dependence on a conventional, causally
linked sequence of events as the basis for narrativity.23 Ever the optimistic
Enlightenment thinker, Blanckenburg still unwaveringly believes in the causally
determined nature of the world and our ability to replicate this world in narrative.
The novelistic means he chooses to convey these connections as reliable only
show updespite his intensionsthe absurdity of this Enlightenment belief.
Blanckenburg seems to be unaware of the parodic potential of this discrepancy, and he fails to seize on the power of narrative voice as a feasible vehicle
for narrativity in and of itself. Even though he holds in his hands the means for a
send-up of the novel or for an ironic reection on the limits of the genre itself, he
treats them as the sober tools of the conventional novelist. As Fulda writes,
Was bei Sterne die herkmmliche Romanform aust, will Blanckenburg also

23 Blanckenburgs Sterne is a rather tame novelist. See Fulda (11921) on Blanckenburgs naive
reading of Sterne.

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in ihren Dienst stellen (120). Sterne, the skeptic, questions the conventional
novel form, expanding its generic and narrative potential. Blanckenburg, by contrast, is the apologist, applying Enlightenment theodicy to a literary genre so as
to justify the limits of its form, even as he repeatedly comes up against these limits.24 The Beytrge is thus in more ways than one an exemplary novel of an era,
since it is also exemplary of the end of that era. It shows the presuppositions of
one aesthetic period (or, with Rancire, regime) brought into conict with the
impulses that would eventually transform these generic principles. And it thereby
offers us a glimpse of how that impasse would soon be overcomeor at least
challenged anewas the Enlightenment was left behind and with it, ultimately,
the eighteenth century, too.
In the process of providing unique insight into this historical shift, Blanckenburgs attempt at writing a novel also exposes one of narratives peculiar paradoxes, one that, furthermore, is especially relevant to the changing role of
narrative and voice in the eighteenth century: to tell a story is always to get in
the way of the story one means to tell. Not only does narrative discourse, ostensibly at the service of story, invariably distort that story by refracting it through a
particular lens. As we have seen, discourse also, manifest as a prominent narrative voice, suspends and therefore delays story, preventing it from moving forward. For Peter Brooks, this delay is constitutive of plots double-movement of
postponement and discharge (101); but his psychosexual model of narrative teleology ultimately privileges that nal consummation over any movement toward
it. The Beytrges self-destruction compels us to turn this model on its head. I
thus suggest we pick up Benjamins reections and locate the primary determinant of narrative not in plots drive for unity and closure, but in the act of telling,
manifest in the text as voice, which aims to perpetuate itself in the face of plots
inevitable termination. Seen in this way, to tell is to prevent narratives consummation (and inevitable destruction) in an end, but not (pace Brooks) so as to
make that resolution more meaningful or pleasurable. Rather, the impulse to tell
resists storys unfolding so as to perpetuate itself as the unimpeded energy of
narrative in and of itself. Blanckenburg can be seen to tap into that energy in the
Beytrge. His mistake was to assume, like Brooks, that he needed an end to give
it purpose and meaning. That his novel in fact lacks a proper end and thus any
actual teleological shape only compounds the mistake, since every element that
comprises the novel, including its conspicuous voice, remains geared toward
supporting that larger, but ultimately absent, design. The Beytrges missing
end, then, doesnt free the narratives voice to generate narrativity anew, but
rather turns that voice against its own originary impulse, revealing that this
24 This analogy to theodicy might be extended to the ways in which Blanckenburg tries to justify
these very limits. The inappropriate interruptions are themselves the blemishes in an otherwise
ideal and perfectly structured system. Blanckenburgs project is to show that this system remains
unied and therefore still perfect, despite these blemishes. That his justications constitute additional interruptions that require further justication seems to have eluded him.

The Self-Destruction of the Enlightenment Novel 169

impulse only ever ourishes within the very model it seeks to resist. Though it
remains a failed and often tedious novel, in forcefully staging these conicting impulses of narrativeto unleash the primacy of language in voice and to maintain the system of plotthe Beytrge redeems itself as more than a mere curiosity.
Indeed, that which frustrates readers and ultimately dooms the novel isttingly,
given Blanckenburgs ambivalencethe very aspect that makes it theoretically
valuable.
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