Camden House

Chapter Title: 8: The Spirit World of Art and Robert Schumanns Gothic Novel Project: The
Impact of Gothic Literature on Schumanns Writings
Chapter Author(s): Monika Schmitz-Emans
Book Title: Popular Revenants
Book Subtitle: The German Gothic and Its International Reception, 1800-2000
Book Editor(s): Andrew Cusack, Barry Murnane
Volume: 116
Published by: Camden House, an imprint of Boydell & Brewer
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8: The Spirit World of Art and Robert

Schumanns Gothic Novel Project:
The Impact of Gothic Literature on
Schumanns Writings
Monika Schmitz-Emans

ITTLE IS KNOWN about the literary ambitions harbored by the young Rob-

ert Schumann (181056) prior to his becoming an influential music

critic and the pioneer of a distinctly romantic direction in European music.
Although most of his early literary works have not survived, Schumann
bequeathed a multifaceted, mostly fragmentary oeuvre.1 For a long time
he strove to emulate his literary idol, Jean Paul, before abandoning these
hopes of writing a novel in favor of musical composition although, as we
shall see, his musical criticism was distinctly literary, shaped by his youthful
encounter with romantic writings. As a critic Schumann mainly worked for
the Neue Zeitschrift fr Musik (New Journal for Music), and he was its sole
editor from 1834 to 1844. His copious writing on music refers to works
by contemporary composers as well as to musical performances. Alongside
critical reviews in the narrower sense, he experimented with several other
kinds of texts on musical works, performances, and aesthetics, ranging from
dialogues to aphorisms, fictional letters, narratives, and speeches. Occasionally ideas and motifs used by Schumann in his more obviously fictional writings recur in his music writings.2
Schumanns use of the gothic can be located within the broader aesthetic discourses of romanticism. In deploying spectral figures and such
motifs as secret societies, he developed complex questions of artistic autonomy and the desire for a clear and distinct language capable of describing
aesthetic phenomena that otherwise deny clear, realistic explanation. This
involved something of a change in the semantic and functional nature
of the gothic, however, in that he used motifs derived from his favorite
authors such as Jean Paul and E.T.A. Hoffmann as complex poetological
figurations for aesthetic (self-)reflexivity. If romantic critics rejected the
abstract language of philosophical and scientific terms as inadequate for
art, this essay will show how Schumanns fragmentary novel Selene and
his various works of musical criticism drew on elements of the gothic in

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THE SPIRIT WORLD OF ART

145

order to construct a suitably poetic way of analyzing and illuminating the

non-linguistic artform of music without relying on potentially defamiliarizing categories of rational abstraction. Viewed thus, Schumanns writings
suggest an intermedial context to the paths of transfer and transformation
of the gothic in the course of the nineteenth century. Having established
Schumanns connections to earlier gothic writing around 1800 as mediated through Jean Paul in particular, this essay will proceed to analyze the
intermedial and aesthetic modifications of the gothic in his literary and
critical writings.

Schumann, Jean Paul, and the Gothic

Many romantic composers were powerfully attracted to gothic subjects:
Carl Maria von Weber drew inspiration for his opera Der Freischtz (The
Marksman, 1821) from the first tale in Apel and Launs four-volume
Gespensterbuch (Book of Ghosts, 181013), and Heinrich Marschner
produced an opera with the title Der Vampyr in 1828.3 Subjects from
fairy tales were also interpreted in such a way as to lend them a distinctly
gothic atmosphere as in the case of another romantic composer, E.T.A.
Hoffmann, whose opera Undine (first performed in Berlin in 1816) was
based on Friedrich de la Motte-Fouqus Kunstmrchen (literary fairy
tale) of that name. Schumanns musical compositions, by contrast, did
not use gothic narratives and plots; instead, his examinations of the gothic
realm were restricted to his literary production, as a novelist and as a
critic. Nevertheless, some of his compositions bear the traces of romantic
atmospherics that savor of the numinous and uncanny, and his writings
on music reveal moments of intermedial productivity drawing musical
structures in gothic figurations.
In his teenage years Schumanns fascination for literature was articulated in his determination to make a name for himself as a creative writer
rather than as a composer. He established a literary circle with some friends
modeled on the Lesegesellschaften (readers societies) of the late eighteenth
century, and at the age of sixteen he began work on a novel entitled Selene,
the very title of which underlines the influence of his literary idol Jean Paul.4
The first part of Selene is recorded in fragmentary form in Schumanns diaries from the period between 1828 and 1830.5 These fragments consist of
a series of nightly episodes during which several characters meet in a gothic
setting and discuss matters of mortality and immortality. These short narrative episodes are flanked by numerous plans for the project and reflections
on how best to structure it. Jean Pauls influence is apparent throughout;
for example Schumanns protagonist is called Gustav, the name of the central character in Die unsichtbare Loge (The Invisible Society, 1793), a novel
to which Schumann explicitly referred in the fragments. Of Jean Pauls novels Die unsichtbare Loge is most often considered in terms of the gothic,

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146

MONIKA SCHMITZ-EMANS

and Schumanns fragments feature various individual scenes that are heavily
influenced by those in this novel.
Although none of Jean Pauls novels can actually be regarded as
gothic, his texts do indeed display many elements of gothic literature.6
He was only mildly interested in deploying characters typical of gothic
literature; his villains, for example, are mostly non-demonic and they
represent quite earthly, if not trivial qualities and habits such as egoism, vanity, and snobbery. His novel Die unsichtbare Loge is reminiscent
of typically gothic settings, depicting the protagonists early childhood
in a subterranean room where three stony monks are his guardians.7 In
Titan a tenebrous park becomes an important scene of action and the
protagonist encounters several mystifications, including the apparition of
a mysterious man costumed as a monk, several doppelgngers, a strange
prophecy, a hidden testament, wax figures, and other gothic requisites
(JP, 3:7830). In Jean Pauls last novel, Komet (Comet), the leatherman Kain appears onstage an extremely mysterious character whose
eccentric behavior is not, however, related to supernatural causes, but is
motivated psychologically and with reference to mesmerism (JP, 6:563
1036).8 This is underlined in Jean Pauls rejection of authentic spectral
appearances as elements of his plots, opting for an explained supernatural
in which ghosts are revealed as products of mystification, or as the products of dreams and imagination.
The impact of gothic literature was formative mainly for the dream
narratives Die wunderbare Gesellschaft in der Neujahrsnacht (The Marvelous Society on New Years Eve) and Die Rede des toten Christus (The
Discourse of the Dead Christ). In the former a literary writer narrates a
dream he had on New Years Eve 1800/01 in which he was visited by a
strange group of ghostly characters who are later revealed to be dream
visions (JP, 4:112138). The latter text, Die Rede des toten Christus,
depicts the horrifying vision of a world without God (JP, 2:27075). As
a relatively independent Blumenstck (flower-piece) the speech is integrated into the novel Siebenks, in which the eponymous character later
fakes his own death, stumbles across a skull while walking by night in
a graveyard, and toys with the idea of giving a midnight sermon from
the churchs pulpit with the skull as a Yorick-like prop.9 Die Rede des
toten Christus is another imaginary preaching scene and the churchyard
itself serves as a significant background. At midnight the dead meet in the
churchs interior to hold a service, and Christ appears to tell this congregation that despite traversing heaven and hell, he has failed to find God.
Mankind is deserted there is no heavenly Father, and one can hope
for nothing after death but complete destruction and nothingness. The
world is nothing but an immense graveyard. Before awakening from his
nightmare, the narrating I dreaming this event imagines the giant serpent of eternity destroying the whole world.

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THE SPIRIT WORLD OF ART

147

As already suggested, Schumanns Selene provides the most obvious

proof of intertextual links to Jean Paul and the gothic tradition. Not only
is the protagonist in Selene named after Jean Pauls main character in Die
unsichtbare Loge, he also suffers a similar fate. For example, Jean Pauls Gustav spends his early childhood years in the mystical atmosphere of a subterranean cavern, protected by a so-called Genius and three stony monks,
while Schumanns Gustav and his sister Selene grow up in a cemetery as the
children of a gravedigger, isolated from the outer world and surrounded by
mysterious sounds. Where Jean Paul makes sparing use of gothic elements
in his novel, which is primarily conceived as a Bildungsroman, Schumanns
main intention seems to be a genuinely fantastic narrative based on gothic
motifs. The fragment Nachtphalne in d. Selene (T, 1:145; a Phalne
is a kind of moth, employed here in association with night and darkness)
deals with a midnight visit that Gustav pays to Prince Carl, who is sleeping
on a sofa with Jean Pauls Unsichtbare Loge lying open in front of him.10
Gustav throws the book away, saying it contains another Gustav (he obviously regards the literary character as his own mirror image and reacts to it
as if it were such a reflection or a double), and he wakes the prince up
when he extinguishes the flickering nightlamp. The two young men start
drinking, and Gustav leaves at dawn, staggering dizzily.
The Midnight Piece from Selene in Schumanns diary depicts a dialogue between two characters, a prince and Gustav, whose belief in God
has obviously been shattered. They discuss issues of madness, desperation, and the question of a life after death, and the existence of God is
debated back and forth in a rhetorical process of questioning, just as it
is in Jean Pauls Rede des toten Christus, though Schumann stresses the
painful weakness and mortality of man more strongly than Jean Paul. The
topic of mankind having lost metaphysical confidence and orientation can
be regarded as a typically gothic subject.11 The motifs used by Schumann
to symbolize his protagonists state of mind are also typically gothic: a
dark sky illuminated only by dim moonlight and Gustavs physical stiffness, which makes him seem like a mummy (T, 1:13435).
The midnight-piece immediately following this scene is set in
a graveyard and contains a number of gothic images. Indeed, the text
consists mainly of an enumeration of such motifs: graveyard and graves,
mounds and epitaphs, cypresses, shadows, the hands and the sounds of a
clock, a gravedigger, the moon, a female somnambulist in a white nightgown, and a skeleton. An unearthly and ghostly voice calls the somnambulist Selene (who had previously been introduced as a sleepwalker), the
girl sits down on a grave, meets the skeleton, is embraced by him, and
receives an icy kiss; and then the skeleton leads Selene into the church,
where he starts playing a waltz on the organ (T, 1:13536). (The Argentinian-German composer Maurizio Kagel later wrote a musical composition based on this scene.)

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MONIKA SCHMITZ-EMANS

Another fragment, entitled Altarstck (altarpiece), shows several

characters Minona, Gustav, Selene, and the Prince late at night
in a dark, silent cathedral surrounded by the ancient and forbidding
stone statues of saints (T, 1:13638). There is a flash of light and a man
appears, dressed in a white cloak and resembling a visionary. This apparition is followed by a succession of tones suggesting a spectral organ
recital, which at first are solitary, pure, but then swell to a crescendo
until the fabric of the cathedral resounds and the statues quiver. In a
flickering and then dying light the mysterious music fades away, only
to reemerge when the darkness is dispelled by a clear moon resembling
Gods eye. The listeners are convinced they have witnessed a seraphic
hymn, and a deeply shaken Gustav speaks about the heavenly sounds of
an eternal, distant bliss (himmlische Klngen einer entschlafenen Seligkeit). The mysterious sounds appear to reply to his words and refer to
themselves messengers and sounds from a next world (Tne aus dem
Jenseits) for which Gustav longs but which he will never reach in this
life (Vorboten einer Welt, der du entgegenweinst, die du hier nimmer
findest). As these sounds obviously take over the function of angels
(i.e., messengers), Gustav asks them if there is immortality for man but
receives no answer and so Gustav characterizes human existence metaphorically as a dissonant seventh chord (Septimenakkord), leaving all
wishes and all hope unfulfilled.
The parallels to Jean Pauls Rede des toten Christus are evident: both
texts depict an empty, dark church at night surrounded by a churchyard
that functions as a symbol of metaphysical isolation and as a setting
in which to ask despairing questions concerning the existence of God
and the immortality of the soul. In Jean Pauls text Christ himself articulates the disruption of belief, whereas Schumann employs the medium of
a mysterious organ concert. Schumanns Gustav, however, either seems
unwilling to understand these messages or receives unsatisfactory answers
to his questions. In this episode music bridges the gap between mankind
and eternity, an idea that conforms closely to Jean Pauls own ideas about
music but does not play a role in his Rede des toten Christus.12 In Jean
Pauls text dissonant sounds indicate the desolate state of a world without
God; for Schumann the unresolved chord, by contrast, symbolizes that
Gustav is unable to communicate with heaven.
Jean Pauls themes such as whether God exists, the question of
immortality, and the interrelation between body and soul served as
material for Schumanns compositional experiments, in which the will to
write literature played a much greater part than the desire to communicate well-developed philosophical positions of his own. By writing the
segment Vorfrhling zu Selene (T, 1:146; Early Springtime to Selene)
in mid-November, Schumann returned to his novel project again, now
explicitly distinguishing his character Gustav from Jean Pauls character

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of that name and from similar figures in the fictions of Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (T, 1:146). Young Schumann was aware of his dependence
on motifs, themes, and topics that he found in literary texts, especially
from gothic influences, but he was obviously also ambitious to transform
the found material into something new although this ambition was
still without any clear aim. Some days later Schumann noted that he was
almost in agreement with himself concerning the novels plan (T, 1:146),
referring again to a Titian painting, but his intention had become to let
Jean Paul himself appear on the novels imaginary stage. This plan, however, was never carried out: the trace novel project disappears within the
diary. It seems that Schumann had given up trying to emulate Jean Paul,
contenting himself with merely reading the masters writings.

Intermedial Contexts of the

Gothic in Schumanns Writings
Together with the fragmentary sketches of his novel, Schumanns diary
reports everyday events from his own life as a young student, such as
states of drunkenness (Knillitten), the consumption of wine and oysters, meeting student friends, and musical performances. Surrounded by
such heterogeneous information there is a fragment following the title
line Eve of Selene (Vorabend zur Selene) in which Gustav is introduced as a lonely gravediggers son and Selenes brother, whose only
consolations are the churchyard flowers and a harmonica.13 An unearthly
Genius in a fantastic Greek robe awakens him to a proper understanding
of music and hence to real life.
In this fragmentary sketch Schumann suggested an analogy between
the arts of music, poetry/literature, and painting, following in the footsteps of many predecessors, including Jean Paul. This analogy is of interest
less as a new and original idea than as proof of the thesis that Schumanns
gothic writing experiment was shaped by aesthetic (self-)reflection. Poetry
and music, for example, are analogously interlinked when Schumann refers
to musical composers as sound poets (Er ist Mahler u. Dichter, u. zwar
Tondichter; T, 1:140). Poetry/literature and painting are furthermore
configured as parallel artforms; the plan of a novel, according to Schumann,
might as well serve as the concept of a painting. Underlining this intermedial reflection, he speaks of the dominant colors of his own novel-project, comparing it as a Nachtstck (nightpiece) set in a moonlit graveyard
to a painting by Titian, and imagining how he would go about executing
his project as a painting were he not a writer (T, 1:140). Based on gothic
elements, Schumanns novel project as becomes clear in the course of
the fragments was not conceived to merely reflect music on the level of
content; generally speaking, gothic images and motifs serve as devices to

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MONIKA SCHMITZ-EMANS

reflect on music. Moreover, the novel itself seems to have been planned as a
sort of musical composition, as subsequent fragments make clear.
As is perhaps evident from the account so far, Schumanns use of
gothic motifs in his early literary efforts was less motivated by considerations of plot than by an interest in atmospherics, which is sustained
in his musical composition in the form of myriad romantic effects of a
distinctly gothic kind. Such effects are prominent in his Opus 44 Piano
Quintet (1842), which contemporaries saw as one of the outstanding
exemplars of the new (that is, romantic) music, as distinct from the
music of the classical era that had concluded with Beethoven.14 In his
1982 film Fanny and Alexander, Ingmar Bergman exploited the spectral
atmospherics of this chamber piece very suggestively. The second movement, scored as a (funeral) march, is used to intimate the death and revenance of the childrens father and to evoke a hypnagogic state between
waking and dreaming.
In his use of gothic motifs to characterize the realm of art, Schumann
upheld a key element of aesthetic discourse in romanticism for which
many authors, including Jean Paul, frequently employed the motif of
a spirit world.15 The semantic and connotative dimensions of this
motif in the writings of Jean Paul are too complex to be discussed here;
it should however be stressed that images of a next or other world
that can be experienced in dreams reflect the specific ontological status
of imaginary realities. Romantic texts often referred to a spirit world of
poetry/literature that cannot be explained in definite terms. According
to Jean Paul, the idea of such a spirit world was a formative influence on
romantic culture and derived mainly from Christianity.
The idea of a spirit world was often taken up in modified form by
E.T.A. Hoffmann, for whom the motif was just as important as it was
for Jean Paul. Stylistically Hoffmann was of less influence on Schumann
than Jean Paul, although his importance should not be underestimated,
and he was certainly a model for Schumann in his multiple roles of literary
author, music critic, and composer. In Hoffmann there is no clear borderline between fictional writing and music criticism. Neither is there such
a distinction for Schumann, for whom Hoffmanns ber alte und neue
Kirchenmusik (On Church Music Past and Present, 1813/14) and the
theoretical dialogue Der Dichter und der Komponist (The Poet and the
Composer, 1813) likely served as models of that most romantic of blurred
genres: the critical essay set in a fictional narrative context. In Hoffmanns
narratives several characters, beginning with the protagonist of his early
Ritter Gluck, serve as representatives of the spirit world of art.16 In the
story Don Juan, Donna Anna from Mozarts opera Don Giovanni takes
on ghostly form, appearing by night to a music enthusiast to whom she
gives acoustic signs of her existence at the very moment that the singer
of the Donna Anna role lies dying in her room.17 Hoffmanns essay

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Beethovens Instrumentalmusik (Beethovens instrumental music) mentions the spirit world of art in the context of music criticism.18
The motif of living statues or other artificial creatures, such as automata, coming to or being endowed with life is another prominent gothic
motif variously modified in romantic narrative to serve as an important
device of reflection within aesthetic discourse; they function as concretizations of the idea of the past still being present in a ghostly way, whether
to stress the power of ancestors over descendants, the power of fate, or
other predeterminations of individual existence. The past represented
in seemingly lifeless images, pictures, and statues thereby becomes a
fatal force determining the heteronomous fate of the younger generation.
Because it encapsulates the return of the past in the present, the living
artwork is a significant motif of the Freudian uncanny in gothic narratives. Hoffmanns texts uphold the familiar gothic motif of living works of
art such as paintings and sculptures serving as indicators of heteronomy
and the power of fate represented by the appearance of images belonging
to the past. In addition, Hoffmann added a complementary affirmative
semantic connotation whereby living images provide proof of the power
of art. Imagination creates a reality that is not mimetically derived from
natural objects but has its own autonomous existence. Living images
overcome the stigma of being mimetic second-degree realities.
Both the concept of a spirit world and the motif of living art can
be reduced to a common denominator, and their significance for romantic aesthetic discourse is based on their commonality. Both are figures of
transgression or of liminality. The idea of a spirit world implies otherworldly influence exerted on the world of the living, thereby suggesting
the notion of a permeable boundary between this life and the afterlife.
The suggested transgression symbolizes the impact of art on the recipient. He who regards an image, reads a text, or listens to a piece of music
is confronted by a dimension of the world that is patently different from
the quotidian, outside the range of mundane experience and knowledge,
beyond even rationality and rational explication. Suggesting that the borderline between life and art is open, living images and other animated
pieces of art are transgressive in that they insist upon the power of art and
upon dimensions of experience that cannot be explained in rational terms.
On the level of symbols and images, Schumanns writings on music
are related to these movements in gothic literature especially when he
takes up romantic ideas (as they were conceived in texts by Hoffmann,
Jean Paul, and others) according to which the sphere of music can be
described as an immaterial and shadow-like world beyond mundane
sensory experience. He combined his descriptions of musical compositions with images and scenes from such ghostly realms, transforming the
spirit world and the living image from elements of fictional narratives
into a form of descriptive language that makes use of narrative strategies.

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MONIKA SCHMITZ-EMANS

The life of images and artificial figures is linked with positive connotations, and so is the idea of spirits appearing on the stage of perception. Schumann implicitly affirmed Hoffmanns concept of autonomous
artificial representation as a message from a sphere beyond ordinary life,
knowledge, and thinking.
In his reviews and aesthetic reflections Schumann variously employed
motifs of a spirit world and its messengers, as well as of living works of
art, in a manner clearly influenced by the gothic in order to characterize the individual specificity of musical compositions. His criticism is
marked by the idea of music as a potential encounter with the spirits
of composers. Thus, reading a score attributed wrongly, in the critics
view to Carl Maria von Weber, Schumann commented: Und wenn
man mir seine Handschrift zeigte, ja stnde er selbst aus dem Grabe auf
und beteuerte, da die Phantasie von ihm, ich knnt es nicht glauben
(Even if one were to show me his handwriting, even if he were to arise
from the grave to assert that the fantasy were his, yet I should not believe
it).19 Elsewhere, Schumann claimed that in listening to Beethovens compositions it might happen that auf einmal in einzelnen Momenten der
ganze Meister lchelnd und in Lebensgre vor uns [steht] (M, 2:167;
at certain moments the master himself suddenly appears smiling and large
as life before us).
In his 1834 review of Chopins Variations on L ci darem la
mano from Mozarts Don Giovanni, in B-flat Major, Opus 2 (1827),
Schumann used the motif of living characters of art analogously to
Hoffmann in order to give a strong impression of the way Chopins
variations on a Mozart theme is performed and thus to give an affirmative comment on the composition itself: Eusebius [a fictional character invented by Schumann] spielte wie begeistert und fhrte unzhlige
Gestalten des lebendigsten Lebens vorber . . . (M, 1:14; Eusebius
played as one enthused, conjuring forth innumerable figures of liveliest
life). In the third variation, according to Schumanns judgment, we see
Lauter Mondschein und Feenzauber (M, 1:15; nothing but moonshine and faery-magic). The fourth variation constructs a complex auditory impression coming close to visuality: as Eusebius plays, one hears
lauter springende Champagnerstpsel, klirrende Flaschen, Leporellos Stimme dazwischen, dann die fassenden, haschenden Geister, der
entrinnende Don Juan . . . (M, 1:16; the popping champagne corks,
tinkling bottles, Leporellos voice in-between, then the grasping, clinging ghosts, Don Juan escaping . . .). After listening to Chopin etudes,
[Da] wirds einem wie nach einem selgen Bild, im Traum gesehen,
das man, schon halbwach, noch einmal erhaschen mchte . . . (M,
2:49; It is the same feeling that one has on having seen a blessed image
in a dream and, already half awake, struggling to hold on to it). In a
review of Chopins Tarantella, Opus 43, we read: Ein Stck in Chopins

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tollster Manier; man sieht den wirbeldnen, vom Wahnsinn besessenen

Tnzer vor sich, es wird einem selbst wirblich dabei zu Mute. Schne
Musik darf das freilich niemand nennen, aber dem Meister verzeihen
wir wohl auch einmal seine wilden Phantasieen, er darf auch einmal die
Nachtseiten seines Innern sehen lassen (M, 3:155; A piece in Chopins
most eccentric manner: one sees the whirling dancer, obsessed by madness, and one feels whirly oneself. One cannot call this beautiful music,
but we will certainly excuse the masters wild fantasies; for once he
may show the night side of his inner life). The reference to Nachtseiten
echoes the title of a formative work for the German gothic, Gotthilf
Heinrich Schuberts Ansichten von der Nachtseite der Naturwissenschaft
(Views of the Dark Side of the Natural Sciences, 1808). Later, referring to a rondo by W. Sterndale Bennett, Schumann permitted himself
the following bon mot: nach der vorhergehenden Komposition wirkt
die Bennettsche wie der Tanz einer Grazie nach einem Hexenreigen
(M, 3:155; After the previous composition, Bennetts seems like the
dance of one of the Three Graces following a witches roundelay.) In
remarks clearly referring to Apel and Launs ghost story, widely known
through Matthew Lewiss translation The Bleeding Nun, Schumann
commented on a composition by Lwe in a similarly blithe tone: Das
Presto bergeh ich, weil es mir durchaus mifllt. Aus dem Finale sieht
mich eine verschleierte Nonne wie durch ein Gitterfenster an: mittelalterlich ist es gewi (M, 1:77; I will not comment on the presto,
because I definitely dislike it. In the finale, a veiled nun is gazing at me
as if through a barred window; it is certainly medieval).
The suggestion of potentially living characters being embodied
in musical compositions becomes even stronger when different listeners
are pictured as receiving analogous impressions. Schumann characterized Franz Schuberts composing style as delicate genre painting and
remembered an occasion
einesmals whrend eines Schubertschen Marsches [gab] der Freund,
mit dem ich ihn spielte, auf meine Frage, ob er nicht ganz eigene
Gestalten vor sich she, zur Antwort . . .: wahrhaftig, ich befand
mich in Sevilla, aber vor mehr als hundert Jahren, mitten unter aufund abspazierenden Dons und Donnen, mit Schleppkleid, Schnabelschuh, Spitzdegen u.s.w. Merkwrdigerweise waren wir in unsern
Visionen . . . einig. (M, 1:109)
[When a friend with whom I played Schuberts March answered
my question whether he did not see very specific characters before
his inner eye, he said to me: actually I was in Seville, but more than
hundred years ago, surrounded by promenading Dons and Donnas
dressed in clothes with trains, wearing pointed shoes and rapiers.
Amazingly, our visions were the same.]

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Occasionally Schumann imagined the compositions themselves to be

reviewed as if they were characters in their own right. For example he
described the impressions he got from a piece by William Sterndale Bennett as follows:
Wenn ich es auch nicht aus der ersten Quelle wte, da dem Dichter hier whrend des Komponierens das Bild einer Nachtwandlerin
vorgeschwebt htte, so mute doch jedem gefhlvollen Herzen all
das Rhrende, das eine solche Scene hat, augenblicklich berkommen. Als frchte man, die Trumerin auf der hohen Zinne zu
wecken, wagte da niemand zu atmen, und wenn die Teilnahme an
mancher Stelle sogar gleichsam ngstlich war, so wurde sie durch
die Schnheit der Erscheinung zum reinen Kunstgenu gemildert.
Und hier trat jener wundervolle Accord ein, wo die Wandlerin auer
aller Gefahr wie auf ihr Ruhebett hingelagert schien und ruhige
Mondesstrahlen darberflieen. (M, 2:7980)
[Even if I did not know firsthand that the artist imagined the apparition of a female sleepwalker during the composition, every feeling
heart would be touched by the moving force of such a scene. As if
afraid of waking up the dreamer on a high rooftop, no one dared to
breathe, and if in some places empathy became too strong, beauty
eased it and made it a pure artistic experience. And then the wonderful chord when the sleepwalker seemed out of danger and resting in
her bed, with calm moonbeams streaming over her.]

Finally, it is of interest that the same critical conceit of imagining musical

compositions as the living embodiment of a character has been applied to
Schumanns own compositions, as in the case of his Piano Quintet, Opus
44, which Wasielewski sees as depicting a wayfarer gradually ascending a
mountain path before stopping to gaze back upon his route.20
In other texts Schumann revisited the familiar theme of the spirit
world. About pieces by Bach and Beethoven he wrote of the noblest
kind of music, about rare mental states the artist is supposed to unveil,
and about the postulate that the artist should lead me into the spirit
world of art step by step (M, 2:133). According to Schumann, this is
the ultimate measure of real art, which many works do not achieve. In
the Schwrmbriefe (enthusiastic letters) included in his music criticism,
Schumann wrote about a Zauberland der Musik (M, 1:135; magic
world of music). He honored the young Brahms as a mentor who opened
up another world: Wenn er seinen Zauberstab dahin senken wird, wo
ihm die Mchte der Massen, im Chor und Orchester, ihre Krfte leihen,
so stehen uns noch wunderbarere Blicke in die Geheimnisse der Geisterwelt bevor (M, 3:17677; If he points with his magic wand to a sphere
where the masses of choir and orchestra lend him their power, we may

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155

expect wonderful insights into the mysteries of the spirit world). At the
end of his review of a trio by Jakob Rosenhain for piano, violin, and violoncello, Schumann attempted to explain himself to the reader by describing a specific atmosphere:
Trtest du, lieber Leser, aus einem weigetfelten erleuchteten Marmorsaal auf einmal des Nachts hinaus und in einen Fichtenwald
mit struppig und knollig ber den Weg sich hinziehenden Wurzeln vom Himmel fallen schwere einzelne Tropfen du rennst
mit dem Kopf links und rechts an, ritzest dich blutig in Struchern,
bis sich endlich nach langem Umherirren ein Ausgang findet, so
empfndest du, was ich beim bergang vom Rosenhainschen Trio
zu einem von Anton Bohrer, gleichfalls fr Pianoforte, Violine und
Violoncello [empfunden habe]. (M, 1:191)
[If you, dear reader, were suddenly to step out of a white-paneled
illuminated marble hall at night into a spruce wood with unkempt
and knobbly roots covering the pathway, with heavy drops of rain
falling singly from the sky, dashing your head against obstructions
right and left, tearing yourself bloody on thorny bushes, until, after
wandering for a long time, an exit finally appears then you would
feel what I felt on listening to a trio by Anton Bhrer after hearing
Rosenhains.]

Elsewhere, a Schubert trio is described as flying wie eine zrnende Himmelserscheinung ber das . . . Musiktreiben hinweg (M, 1:202; over
ordinary musical affairs like an angry heavenly apparition).
One final motif that clearly links Schumanns writings on music with
gothic literature is the secret society.21 For example Schumann invented
a band of music-enthusiast friends who called themselves Davidsbndler (members of the order of David), recalling the biblical King
David who successfully fought against the Philistines.22 The Davidsbund first appeared in the context of a novel project that was interrupted
when Schumann started working for the Neue Zeitschrift fr Musik. At
the beginning of the novel fragment, we meet a figure characterized as a
Schwedenkopf (a Swedish head), a reference to Jean Pauls Wunderbare
Gesellschaft in der Neujahrsnacht (Marvelous Society on New Years Eve).
In Schumanns contributions to the Neue Zeitschrift, the Davidsbndler
played an important role and reappeared frequently. He used the friends
voices as a device to express his own impressions, reflections, opinions,
and judgments, and his aesthetic reflections are framed by episodes from
the circle of the Davidsbndler. The activities of the secret circle are linked
with various mysteries and thus offer an opportunity for mystification.
When Schumann arranged the first entrance of the Davidsbndler in his
periodical, he commented on them in a footnote stressing the mysteries

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surrounding them a comment that actually forms a part of the fiction

itself. Some weeks later he presented a declaration to his readers, entering the fictitious characters level of reality under his own name, leaving
their mysteries unsolved, however.
Within Schumanns Neue Zeitschrift fr Musik the framing construction of the mysterious Davidsbund served several purposes: heightening
curiosity and suspense; stimulating empathy; allowing the different characters to articulate different opinions about aesthetic phenomena, topics,
and concepts; provoking the use of different writing styles and genres,
such as dialogues, narratives, aphorisms, letters, and speeches. And above
all it suggests that the music essays themselves, as we read them, form
a part of a mysterious background story. Thus the writing of reviews
and articles itself became a process of aesthetic composition, a project
supported by the fact that gothic motifs evidently were literary material a substance open to quotation and modification.

Conclusion
Although Schumanns writings as a music critic can in some respects
be regarded as the continuation of his early literary projects, this by no
means occurred seamlessly. They were shaped by the desire for a clear and
distinct language to describe aesthetic phenomena. The main problem
here was a general one: romantic critics rejected the abstract language of
philosophical and scientific terms as being inadequate for art. In the context of an aesthetics of artistic autonomy, works of art were regarded as
individual phenomena that resisted classification and schematic representation and that could not be explained adequately using scientific terminology. And there was also a problem specifically related to the aesthetics
of music and the description of musical pieces: music was regarded as
imageless and beyond conceptualization at the same time. So how could
music be represented by means of verbal language and in terms of aesthetic discourse?
Romantic art criticism was thus shaped by the attempt to write about
art in a competent and reflexive manner, to bring pieces of art within the
realm of understanding understanding, however, that was necessarily
individual itself and not reducible to abstract terms. As Jean Paul wrote in
his Vorschule der sthetik (Preparatory School of Aesthetics), only poetic
means can express the character of poetry; aesthetic discourse about art
thus has to be artificial itself, and he used the metaphor of a second
world within our world to characterize poetry in a suitably poetic image
himself.23 This implies that it cannot be unambiguous and distinct like
philosophical terms. Other romantics such as the Schlegel brothers concurred and confirmed the challenge of this idea.24

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157

Images and visual concepts can be used to express aesthetic impressions and they stress at the same time that they are only approximations and correspond to individual experience and imagination. Musical
artworks stimulate the imagination of their listeners (or readers) and provide the outline features of appearances. It is possible to describe music by
transforming those features into characters, scenes, and plots. Thus verbal
images prevent the disappearance of musical impressions; images of vague
ghostly, phantom-like, appearances remind the reader of the transgressive
character that is constitutive of the aesthetic phenomena at stake.
In 1854, the critic and theorist Eduard Hanslick explained the specific problem confronting writing about music: there is no natural original to musical representation, and music does not convey a conceptual
content. Since the kingdom of music is not of this world (Ihr Reich ist
in der That nicht von dieser Welt), one can only speak of it in one of two
ways, either mit trocknen technischen Bestimmungen (in dry technical
terms), or mit poetischen Fictionen (through poetic fictions).25 Consciously and methodically, Schumann experienced the means of a critical language to be developed in order to analyze and describe music and
the uses he could make of this language. In this context, as the examples
above indicate, he took advantage of images, ideas, and suggestions from
literary writings, especially from gothic literature.
His variations on the topic of a spirit world clearly follow in the
footsteps of literary predecessors such as Jean Paul and E. T. A. Hoffmann. Likewise his modifications of the idea of living works of art
were not completely original, but can be traced to multiple sources and
are deployed in equally various ways. The motif of the secret society, for
instance, shaped his articles and reviews on the level of both structure and
content. Rather than simply providing for suspense as gothic novels had
previously had done, this also situated the critic himself in an uncertain
shadowy realm, making him part of an imaginary story that cannot be
illuminated completely. Thus this construction served to express the conviction that in the world of art nothing can be exhaustively analyzed and
rationally illuminated. Talking and writing about art implies becoming
irreversibly entangled in ambiguous and obscure experiences. This seems
to be the essence of Schumanns intermedial variations of the gothic.

Notes
1

Schumanns literary projects are discussed in Leander Hotaki, Eine unendlich

verwobene Flche: Zur Dichtung Robert Schumanns, in Robert Schumann: Philologische, analytische, sozial- und rezeptionsgeschichtliche Aspekte, ed. Wolf Frobenius et al. (Saarbrcken: SDV, 1998), 25567. Aigi Heero analyzes Schumanns
lyrical oeuvre in Robert Schumanns Jugendlyrik (Zwickau: Studiopunkt Verlag,
2003). See also Joseph A. Kruse, Robert Schumanns Lektre: Zeitgenssischer

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Kanon, individuelle Schwerpunkte, kompositionsspezifische Auswahl und seine

Urteile als Leser, in Robert Schumann und die Dichter: Ein Musiker als Leser,
ed. Bernhard R. Appel and Inge Hermstrwer (Dsseldorf: Droste, 1991), 123
34. As Bernhard Appel reports, a reading list of about six hundred titles can be
derived from Schumanns diaries; see Bernhard Appel, Robert Schumann als
Leser, in Appel and Hermstrwer, Robert Schumann und die Dichter, 13.
2

See Michael Struck, Literarischer Eindruck, poetischer Ausdruck und Struktur

in Robert Schumanns Instrumentalmusik, in Robert Schumann und die Dichter,
11122.
3

In 1826 Schumann wrote a dramatic fragment entitled Der Doppelgnger.

According to Aigi Heero (Robert Schumanns Jugendlyrik, 89), this text can be
regarded as ein Beweis von Schumanns frhem Interesse an dualen Strukturen,
an Masken- und Rollenspielen schon vor seiner Bekanntschaft mit dem Werk Jean
Pauls (proof of Schumanns early interest in dual structures, in masks and roleplay even before his encounter with Jean Pauls oeuvre). English translations of
German quotes throughout this paper are by Mark Schmitt, Andrew Cusack, and
Barry Murnane.
4

The significance of Jean Paul for Schumann is discussed in Manfred Eger, Jean
Paul als Schlssel zu Robert Schumann, Jahrbuch der Jean Paul-Gesellschaft
26/27 (1991/92): 36375. Eger argues in favor of the thesis that Jean Paul
[ist] ein unentbehrlicher Schlssel zum Verstndnis mancher Schumannscher
Klavierwerke ist (363; Jean Paul is an essential key to understanding many of
Schumanns piano works). Of course, other literary authors also influenced
Schumann; see Peter Rummenhller, Die romantischen Motive im Werk Robert Schumanns, in Peter Rummenhller, Romantik in der Musik: Analysen, Portraits, Reflexionen (Munich: dtv, 1989), 14958; Susanne Hoy-Draheim, Robert
Schumann und E.T.A. Hoffmann, in Schumann und seine Dichter: Bericht ber
das 4. Internationale Schuman-Symposion am 13. und 14. Juni 1991, ed. Matthias
Wendt (Mainz: Schott, 1993), 670; and Hermann Beck, E. T. A. Hoffmann
und R. Schumann, in Hermann Beck, Methoden der Werkanalyse in Musikgeschichte und Gegenwart (Wilhelmshaven: Heinrichshoven, 1974), 5659. Aigi
Heero (Robert Schumanns Jugendlyrik, 81) is convinced that Schumanns frheste Ansichten ber das Zusammenwirken von Literatur und Musik (Schumanns
earliest thoughts regarding the interplay of literature and music) were inspired by
Friedrich Schiller.
5

Fragments and notes on Selene can be found in Robert Schumann, Tagebcher,

ed. Georg Eismann and Gerd Nauhaus, 3 vols. in 4 parts (Leipzig: Deutscher Verlag fr Musik, 1971), 1:13440, 1:14546, 1:149 (hereafter cited in text as T).
6

On this debate see Hansjrg Garte, Kunstform Schauerroman: Eine morphologische Begriffsbestimmung des Sensationsromans im 18. Jahrhundert von Walpoles
Castle of Otranto bis Jean Pauls Titan (Leipzig: Garte, 1935), and Matthias
Bickenbach, Jean Pauls Titan und die Maschinen des Schauers, Populre Erscheinungen: Der deutsche Schauerroman um 1800, ed. Barry Murnane and Andrew
Cusack (Munich: Fink, 2011), 26990.
7

Jean Paul [Richter], Werke, ed. Norbert Miller, 6 vols. (Munich: Hanser, 1959
63), 1:7470 (hereafter cited in text as JP).

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159

See Monika Schmitz-Emans, Der Komet als sthetische Programmschrift:

Poetologische Konzepte, Aporien und ein Sndenbock, Jahrbuch der Jean-PaulGesellschaft 35/36 (2001): 5992.

Jean Paul [Richter], Flower, Fruit and Thorn Pieces, or the Married Life, Death
and Wedding of the Advocate of the Poor, Firmian Stanislaus Siebenks, translated
by Edward Henry Noel (London: Sampson Low, Son and Marston, 1871).
10

Jean Paul also named this novel Mumien, or mummies. The term Mumie
(mummy) can be interpreted here as metaphor for a body which is inhabited by a
soul and nevertheless lifeless, stiff, without emotions. In an essay integrated into
Jean Pauls poetic dialogue Selina, the narrator Jean Paul refers to the beliefs
of several different cultures concerning the question of immortality and discusses
the function of mummies in the religion of Ancient Egypt: these host the souls of
the deceased for three thousand years before the souls are reincorporated in new
bodies (JP, 6:1149). The title mummies indicates the novels setting at a court,
among people mortified by rules and conventions, people without vital feelings
and empathy. At the same time the mummy image is connected with the more
general topic of human souls incarcerated in their bodies as in an alien and mortal
vessel.

11

See Manuel Aguirre, The Closed Space (Manchester: UP, 1990).

12

See Monika Schmitz-Emans, Jean Paul Schumann Heine: berlegungen zu einer poetisch-musikalischen Konstellation, Jahrbuch der Jean-PaulGesellschaft 42 (2007): 85104, and Christine Lubkoll, Mythos Musik: Poetische
Entwrfe des Musikalischen in der Literatur um 1800 (Freiburg i. Br.: Rombach,
1995).
13

The title is separated from the main text and suggests that Selene belongs to
the evening even more so because Selene originally was the name of a moon
goddess (T, 1:13940).
14 See Wilhelm Joseph von Wasielewski, Robert Schumann: Eine Biographie, 2nd
ed. (Dresden: Kuntze, 1869), 183.
15 See Jean Paul, Vorschule der sthetik, 5: Poetische Materialitten (Poetic
Materialities) and 25: Poesie des Aberglaubens (Poesy of Superstition) (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2000), 3440 and 9498 respectively.
16

Die Musik schliet dem Menschen ein unbekanntes Reich auf; eine Welt, die
nichts gemein hat mit der ueren Sinneswelt, die ihn umgibt, und in der er alle
durch Begriffe bestimmbaren Gefhle zurcklt, um sich dem Unaussprechlichen hinzugeben (Music opens the door to an unknown realm for the listener,
a world that has nothing to do with the external world of the senses, where he
leaves behind all those feelings that have names in order to give himself up to the
inexpressible); see E.T.A. Hoffmann, Schriften zur Musik: Nachlese, ed. Friedrich
Schnapp (Munich: Winkler Verlag, 1963), 34, also 60513.
17

E.T.A. Hoffmann, Smtliche Werke, ed. Friedrich Schnapp, 6 vols. (Munich:

Winkler, 1976), 1: Fantasie- und Nachtstcke, 67ff.
18

Thus Hoffmann on Beethovens Symphony no. 5 in C Minor: Wie fhrt diese

wundervolle Komposition in einem fort und fort steigenden Klimax den Zuhrer
unwiderstehlich fort in das Geisterreich des Unendlichen (How this marvellous

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composition draws the listener irresistibly in an ever-ascending climax ever onward

into the spirit world of the infinite), Hoffmann, Schriften zur Musik, 3435).
19

Robert Schumann, Gesammelte Schriften ber Musik und Musiker, ed. Heinrich
Simon, 3 vols. (Leipzig: Reclam, 1888), 2:94 hereafter cited in text as M).
20

So gewhrt dies Werk gleichsam das Bild eines Wanderers, der durch die blhend reiche, am Bergeshange sich ausbreitende Landschaft dahinziehend, immer
hher steigt, um sich auf der Spitze des Gipfels umschweifenden Blickes noch
einmal der Betrachtung des zurckgelegten Weges zu erfreuen; see Wasielewski,
Robert Schumann, 183.
21

Bernhard Appel, Schumanns Davidsbund: Geistes- und sozialgeschichtliche

Voraussetzungen einer romantischen Idee, Archiv fr Musikwissenschaft 38
(1981): 123.
22

Equally gothic is Schumanns invention of two pseudonyms for himself, the

spontaneous, instinctive, sanguine persona of Florestan and the reflective, melancholic Eusebius. He seemed thus to dissociate his artistic self into two doppelgngers for the purpose of his music criticism. Florestan seemed to stand for
Schumann the composer, Eusebius for Schumann the critic. Thanks to Andrew
Cusack for this observation. The double-naming was inspired by Jean Paul. See
Appel, Schumanns Davidsbund.
23

See Jean Paul, Vorschule der sthetik (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2000), 30.

24

See Friedrich Schlegel, Gesprch ber die Poesie, in Kritische FriedrichSchlegel-Ausgabe, ed. Ernst Behler et al. (Paderborn: Schningh, 1958), pt. 1,
2:28490.
25

Eduard Hanslick, Vom Musikalisch Schnen: Ein Beitrag zur Revision der sthetik der Tonkunst (Leipzig: Weigel, 1854; reprint, Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Hrtel,
1978), 62.

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