[In the following excerpt, Grimm comments on themes of love and eroticism in Büchner's dramas, particularly Danton's Death.]

What [Büchner's] texts contain is clear—and clearly the critics, virtually without exception, have chosen to avert their eyes. Let us begin by simply listing what the reader encounters.

Two women commit suicide out of love for their men: one while in the grip of madness, the other through a conscious decision (decades before Wagner's Tristan and Isolde, she dies a veritable “love-death”). And there are men no less extreme in their passions: one drowns himself after having nearly strangled his lover; another attempts to take his own life in a similar manner—in a state of erotic intoxication, already anticipating ultimate fulfillment. A third, seized by blind despair, compulsively and methodically murders his woman, stabbing her to death in an almost ritualistic process of judgment and execution. All this in only three dramas, one of which is a sketchy fragment; dramas, moreover, teeming with true love and trollops, lovers and libertines, the most delicate tenderness and the most drastic lasciviousness, dramas in which flies mate on people's hands, curs couple in the streets, and we are confronted by the question: “Don't you feel like … tearing off your pants and copulating over someone's ass like dogs … ?”¹

I am speaking of Danton's Death, of Leonce and Lena, of Woyzeck. I am speaking of Georg Büchner. Of all the many dozens of studies, monographs, and dissertations that have been devoted to this writer, not a single one actually deals with love; and among the hundreds of essays and articles on Büchner, there is, according to the existing bibliographies as well as the most recent handbooks and commentaries,² only one short article entirely devoted to this subject. It comes to us from Brazil, was authored by Erwin Theodor [Rosenthal], carries the title “Büchners Grundgedanke: Sehnsucht nach Liebe” (“Büchner's Fundamental Idea: The Longing for Love”), and was published in 1962 in the journal Revista de Letras.³ Today, almost 150 years after the young writer's death, this is all that “the literature” has to offer regarding a theme which an insightful critic (one of the few) has described—albeit only in passing and in a manner which both exaggerates and is overly cautious—as functioning for Büchner as the “core [Angelpunkt] and meaning of life.”⁴

The core and meaning of life for this writer? The scientist and revolutionary? The author of a seditious pamphlet? The fugitive conspirator who, at the age of twenty-three, died in exile in Switzerland, then the most proper and prudish of lands? His “fundamental idea,” his overpowering “longing” was for love? But I must ask: What do we really know about Georg Büchner's view of love? What have we dared to know? In point of fact, we have only Rosenthal and a few scattered attempts.⁵

And yet, the very first scene of Büchner's first play begins with lines which unambiguously define the way this theme will be presented. A card game is in progress; and the figure who initiates the dialogue as well as the “love interest” is none other than Georg[es] Danton. He turns to his wife Julie and remarks: “Look at Madame over there—how sweetly she fingers her cards. She knows how, all right—they say her husband always gets the cœur, the others the carreau. You women could even make us fall in love with a lie.”⁶ The symbolic implications of the card suits mentioned by Danton are unmistakable. This is true of the “cœur,” the heart, which traditionally has expressed a concept of love containing both Amor and Caritas. It is equally true of the “carreau” or diamond: here Büchner sets up a frivolous, obscene counterpart to the heart, using a sign the shape of which is decidedly suggestive. Contrary to one critic's ponderously naive thesis, it is surely not intended to serve as a metaphor for the “world theater.”⁷ Rather, what Büchner is referring to is something much more intimate, though no less universal. His friend Hérault develops and concretizes the reference when he takes the card names literally and declares that young ladies should not “play games like that. The kings and queens fall on top of each other so indecently and the jacks pop up right after.”⁸ (The reader will, I trust, forgive this Büchnerian smuttiness; the playwright could not have his “bandits”—to use his own hyperbolic term—talk like parsons' daughters, even though he himself was engaged to the daughter of a parson.)

What the duality of “cœur” and “carreau” conjures up from the very beginning is the entire range of the erotic: from the purest, indeed most chaste, affection as expressed by that ancient emblem the heart, all the way to the crassest carnality, which is denoted by the red diamond. And the two areas are not kept separate from one another but are closely bound together, in however daring, unbourgeois, and unstable a manner. Their common denominator is love—but not love as a mere concept or some anemic “fundamental idea,” but rather as an all-embracing fundamental experience, an experience which is at once joyous and overwhelming. For let us not forget that Julie and Danton, whose gentleness and kindness toward each other (“dear heart,” she calls him)⁹ culminate in Julie taking her own life for the sake of her beloved, exist alongside of Hérault and his promiscuous “queen of diamonds,” a woman who can make a man fall in love with a lie. What is more, these two radically dissimilar couples are joined by Camille Desmoulins, who exhibits what is perhaps the most faithful and selfless love to be found in Büchner's works—yet it is precisely this figure who calls for the elemental “limb-loosening, wicked love” of Sappho, with “naked gods and bacchantes” and, again completely uneuphemistically, “Venus with the beautiful backside”!¹⁰ Unvarnished sexuality, the most tender affection, and a classical Greek sensuality which the declaration that Venus, along with Epicurus, is to become the “doorkeeper of the Republic”¹¹ clearly endows with emancipatory and even utopian traits: all this is present in Büchner's images and allusions, as well as in his invocations of Renaissance licentiousness. Attentive readers cannot fail to note that in the opening scene of his first drama the playwright sketches out a full panorama of the world of Eros; he develops, or at least alludes to, all its various manifestations, which not only recur in, and color the rest of, this drama of revolution, but also suffuse Büchner's comedy Leonce and Lena and, to an even greater extent, his proletarian tragedy, Woyzeck.

Yet there is more. This fundamental experience is not limited to Büchner's plays nor even to those of his writings which have been preserved. It can also be found in that “complete fragment,” the novella (or story) Lenz, and must have been present in his play, apparently lost forever, “Pietro Aretino”—present, once again, unless all indications are wrong, in the most multifarious manner. What, after all, do we learn about that unhappy writer, Lenz? Does his breakdown not result in part, indeed primarily, from the collapse of his love for Friederike? Does he not fall apart because her “happiness,” which always made him so “calm,” no longer washes over him, and instead her “fate,” as well as his own, lies on his heart “like a hundredweight”?¹² These are all direct quotes which, it must be added, occur directly before the central passage in which Lenz is seized by the “obsession” of resurrecting a dead girl, something he attempts to carry out with “all the misery of despair” and all the force of will he still possesses. It is surely no coincidence that the child at whom he vainly hurls his demented “Arise and walk!” also bears—or bore—the name Friederike.¹³ And we find this blasphemous phrase repeated word-for-word in Leonce's frenzied ecstasy of love;¹⁴ moreover, the underlying concept also crops up in Büchner's letters to his fiancée, Minna Jaeglé. In February of 1834, while at the university of Gießen, he wrote: “I am alone as if in a grave; when will your hand awaken me?” To this he added the highly allusive line: “They say I am mad because I have said that in six weeks I will rise again, but first I will ascend into heaven, in the diligence [to Strasbourg] that is.”¹⁵ Clearly, Büchner was not reluctant to mingle erotic allusions with references to Christianity and the Bible. This connection between his letters to Minna, his comedy, and his narrative dealing with Lenz can also be developed out of another passage in the story, the section which describes the religious ecstasy that the tormented writer experiences with such intensity after he preaches: “Now, another existence, divine, twitching lips bent down over him and sucked on his lips; he went up to his lonely room. He was alone, alone! Then the spring rushed forth, torrents broke from his eyes, his body convulsed, his limbs twitched, he felt as if he must dissolve, he could find no end to this ecstasy.”¹⁶

Let us here carefully note Büchner's choice of words! Not only does he mention “ecstasy,” he also causes the '′Ερωs λυσιμελήs of Sappho, referred to by Camille as “limb-loosening love” (gliederlösende Liebe), to spring from overheated piousness. It is important to see the connection here to the love scene in Leonce and Lena¹⁷ and, above all, to Büchner's “fatalism letter” of 1834, in which he tells Minna: “I glowed, the fever covered me with kisses and enfolded me like the arm of a lover. Above me there were waves of darkness, my heart swelled in infinite longing, stars forced their way through the gloom, and hands and lips bent down.”¹⁸

The almost mystic undertones of this erotic fever-fantasy are as evident as is the startlingly erotic quality of Lenz's pietistic experience of transcendence. But even there, is not all “heavenly” love—if in fact such a thing is present in Büchner's writings—overshadowed by a love which is thoroughly worldly? When we seek to categorize the causes and effects of Lenz's madness, it is clear that those of a philosophical and social nature play an important role.¹⁹ Yet should we not also look elsewhere, not so much in the area of religion—which lately has been stressed to the point of excess²⁰—as in that of sexuality? Both in regard to Büchner in general, and in this context in particular, the emphasis on religious elements reveals itself as a highly dubious approach. Granted, certain remnants of Christianity are present in Lenz; after all, the man had studied theology. But are these remnants not thoroughly secularized by Büchner, just as he secularized so many other references to Christianity and the Bible? Indeed, to pose a rather heretical question, should not Lenz's mad attempt at resurrecting the dead Friederike be viewed as an attempt at reviving the bliss he experienced with the living Friederike? The shattered man, in the utter demise of his joy and happiness, prays “that God should grant him a sign and revive the child”!²¹ And Büchner chose these words, too, advisedly.

Or consider “Pietro Aretino,” Büchner's supposed “obscenity” dealing with the renowned eroticist of the Renaissance, a man who, like the Marquis de Sade, won for himself the cynical and yet admiring epithet, “the divine one.” God knows, it is high time that the information which has been preserved or can be deduced²² regarding this work is taken seriously, rather than being brushed aside with an embarrassed blush. Let us dare to admit that Büchner wanted to write about this man precisely on account of, and not despite, Aretino's having written the “Sonetti lussuriosi” (“Voluptuous Sonnets”)—on “sixteen positions of a pair of lovers in coitu” after drawings by Giulio Romano—as well as the so-called Ragionamenti, his notorious “Conversations” among courtesans. Because, not in spite of, Aretino's “vigorous sensuality” in both life and art, the young German writer found him a fascinating figure. It is actually of little import whether the “legendary ‘Aretino’ drama” (thus Walter Hinderer)²³ was almost complete or only a conception, whether it was intentionally destroyed or lost in some other way. What is important is the subject matter and the fact that Büchner concerned himself with it. Quite recently, this work—or conception—has been the object of further speculation by a scholar, on the one hand, and a writer, on the other. According to the literary historian Hermann Bräuning-Oktavio, the drama would have been a historical “painting on a colossal scale,” a gigantic fresco portraying the “power and greatness of human passions”;²⁴ according to Gaston Salvatore, in whose play Büchners Tod (“Büchner's Death”) the fevered deliria of the dying poet are haunted by Aretino,²⁵ Büchner would have linked the Italian not only to questions of revolution and class conflict but also to modern concepts regarding the problem of the intellectual's servile role in society—a favorite topic of Bertolt Brecht, by the way.²⁶

It may well be that Bräuning-Oktavio's hypothesis possesses a certain validity; in any event, it is more convincing than Salvatore's notion of how Büchner would have portrayed this man who was known and feared by all Europe; who—for this reason—was showered with gifts, honors, and bribes; whom the great Ariosto apostrophized as the “scourge of the princes”;²⁷ indeed, who liked to refer to himself proudly as “a free man by the grace of God” (per divina grazia uomo libero).²⁸ There is something colossal, almost monstrous, about this condottiere of the pen, something of a “Great Dane with dove's wings,” to use the phrase which Büchner applies to Danton.²⁹ And yet, if one takes a closer look, it appears that in the case of Aretino, too, it was love that was of primary importance. Even a cursory glance at the Italian's life leads one to believe that the play dealing with him—as far as we know, Büchner's last or next-to-last work³⁰—would have repeated and intensified, nay, virtually doubled, the theme of love which the young writer had developed in his previous literary efforts. In 1829 his contemporary, Christian Dietrich Grabbe, published Don Juan und Faust, and I for one am convinced that in 1837 Büchner would have followed suit by providing us with a work which would have amounted to a Danton and Woyzeck.

Aretino lends himself to an undertaking of this sort not only through his insatiable “affirmation of pleasure in every form,” nor his endless “series of loves, love affairs, and love encounters” which, as was the case with Danton, caused him to be involved with women of all social strata, “the highborn and the low, those with intelligence and those with a price.”³¹ At the same time, he was also hopelessly in love with one woman who, having brought him great happiness, betrayed him—just as Marie betrays Woyzeck. For the rest of his life, Aretino was caught in the toils of an obsessive love from which he was unable to free himself even after this woman's death. His declarations of passion for the young Perina Riccia remind us, in their sensual intensity, of Danton's stammerings to Marion,³² just as his searing lamentations at her deathbed recall Woyzeck's desperate grief as well as that felt by Lenz. We even hear echoes of some of Büchner's own statements.³³ (Salvatore, despite the many problematical aspects of his play, at least gives us some sense of all this when he has Minna appear before the feverish, sexually aroused Büchner as a courtesan.) In recent times, it has been regretfully noted that “we have not a single really good play about the Cinquecento.”³⁴ It is my firm conviction that Büchner's “Pietro Aretino,” marked by both “cœur” and “carreau,” was, or would have become, the work that could have filled this gap.³⁵

But let us concentrate on the texts we possess, let us return to Büchner's first and most important work, Danton's Death. For I wish to commit yet another heresy by declaring that in this play the theme of love is no less central than that of revolution. Indeed, the two are inseparably intertwined. Even if we limit ourselves to the main characters, we see that this is true not only of Julie and Camille's wife, Lucile, but also of the “grisette” or “hetaera,” Marion.³⁶ All three of the leading female figures in Danton's Death contribute—each in her own way—to the exemplary unleashing of both the dialectic of revolution, with all its contradictions, and of love “in every form.”

As has been indicated, Julie and Lucile belong together, even more so at the end of the play than in the early scenes. Critics have noted that Woyzeck and Leonce and Lena exhibit elements of a circular structure in that their endings, to a certain extent, flow back into their beginnings.³⁷ However, something that has hardly been noticed, let alone investigated, is the circular construction of Danton's Death³⁸ and the concomitant function which is assigned to the two female figures as well as to love. This oversight is the more surprising since all these elements are particularly noticeable in Büchner's drama of revolution. One need only compare the first scene (“Danton on a footstool at Julie's feet”) with the last scene where Lucile sits “on the steps of the guillotine”:

DANTON.
No, Julie, I love you like the grave. … They say in the grave there is peace, and grave and peace are one. If that's so, then in your lap I'm already lying under the earth. You sweet grave—your lips are funeral bells, your voice my death knell, your breasts my burial mound, and your heart my coffin.
LUCILE.
(enters …) I'm sitting in your lap, you silent angel of death. … You dear cradle, you lulled my Camille to sleep, you strangled him under your roses. You death knell, you sang him to the grave with your sweet tongue.(39)

The connection between these images, the cyclical way in which they anticipate and echo one another, can hardly be overlooked, especially since they are so boldly unusual. There can be no doubt that Büchner created this connection intentionally; the references to sweetness and love, peacefulness and silence, the correspondence established in both instances between a lap (Schoß, which can also mean “womb”) and a grave—all this is simply too exact to be regarded as accidental. Even the cradle, which at first is missing from the opening scene, soon puts in an appearance. Before the next scene begins, we encounter the line, “having coffins for cradles,”⁴⁰ a phrase which clearly anticipates Lucile's speech at the end of the play; and, of course, the evocative rhyme of “womb” and “tomb,” of “cave” and “grave,” is something of which psychoanalysis has long been aware. In the programmatic writings of Norman O. Brown, to which I shall eventually return, one finds the laconic yet unambiguous words: “Birth, copulation, and death, equated.”⁴¹ This is precisely what Büchner accomplishes: “cradle,” “womb” (Schoß), and “grave” are—as Danton himself declares—“one and the same.” When Lucile utters the phrase “dear cradle,” she is addressing the dreaded guillotine, the killing machine she also refers to as an “angel of death” and a “death knell”; and when Julie reaches for the vial of poison from which she imbibes her love-death, she does so with the words: “Come, dearest priest, your amen makes us go to sleep.”⁴² Both of these death scenes are love scenes, just as both figures are, above all else, women in love. True, it seems at first that Julie regards Danton's words as frivolous and shocking, for she turns away from him with an almost Kleistian “Oh.” However, she quickly regains her composure, and with it her love for Danton, a love in which she henceforth abides with steadily increasing confidence and unreservedness until finally, with the words “sleep, sleep” on her lips, she follows Danton and the darkling world into the “slumber” of death.⁴³

The same development can be discerned in Danton's much-cited loneliness: from his fatalistic and seemingly resigned declaration, “we are very lonely,”⁴⁴ to the fervent intimacy he shares with Julie in the aftermath of his agonizing nightmare. In the latter scene, which occurs in the second act, Danton is able to say, “Now I'm calm”—and are we not forced to envision him in his wife's arms, not just in her presence? “Completely calm, dear heart?” she asks, full of concern, and he replies: “Yes, Julie, come to bed.”⁴⁵ That all this is connected to various aspects of the play's concluding scenes—for example, to the revolutionary's fear of the loneliness of death, a fear which is so difficult to reconcile with the philosophy he manifests in other situations,⁴⁶ and, above all, to Julie's actions and attitude, to the extraordinary love-sacrifice she offers—cannot be ignored. The correspondences extend even to specific words and phrases, something which is particularly evident in Danton's cry: “Oh Julie! If I had to go alone! If she would abandon me! And if I decomposed entirely, dissolved completely—I'd be a handful of tormented dust. Each of my atoms could find peace only with her. I can't die, no, I cannot die.”⁴⁷ As a comforting answer, Julie has a messenger carry a lock of her hair to the imprisoned Danton: “There, bring him that and tell him he won't go alone. He'll understand. Then come back quickly. I want to read his looks in your eyes.”⁴⁸ And, once again, Danton is freed from his agony. “I won't go alone,” he says to himself as if he has been saved, “thank you, Julie.”⁴⁹ Now he is able to face the guillotine, composed and calm.

Julie's love-sacrifice is indeed extraordinary. What renders it even more extraordinary and even more indicative of the importance Büchner attached to love is the fact that it has absolutely no basis in historical reality. It did not at all occur to the real Julie (who was actually named Louise) to accompany her Georges in death. Not only did she survive him by decades, but she had also no compunctions about remarrying—although, admittedly, this did not happen until she had mourned Danton for a few chaste (or, at least, relatively chaste) years.⁵⁰ The banality of these facts is sobering; yet it also serves to establish irrefutably that the heroic transfiguration effected by Büchner evinces his own concerns and conceptions. And then there is Lucile, who is presented as deriving a limpid, self-effacing happiness from the love she shares with Camille. Even with this character, Büchner departs from what he read in his history books. Instead of having her arrested, condemned, and executed on the basis of Laflotte's denunciation, which is what actually happened,⁵¹ he causes her to provide a second example of transfiguration achieved by means of a luminous love-sacrifice. Like Julie, Lucile is cloaked in radiance. Or, as Maurice B. Benn puts it: “Against the dark background [of the play, these] two pure figures … appear in an almost radiant light.”⁵² Of course, Julie chooses death without hesitation and in the full freedom of her spirit, while Lucile, like Ophelia, falls victim to madness and is able to return to herself only at the very end of the play. Yet this ending, one of the most moving and magnificent in all of world drama, not only presents, in the words of Benn, “a sudden return of lucidity”⁵³ for Lucile; it also crowns and confirms the triumph, the limitless glorification of love in Büchner's drama of revolution. The passage in question is deceptively brief; it begins with the entrance of a militia patrol and then breaks off with Lucile being led away to her death:

A CITIZEN.
Hey—who's there?
LUCILE.
Long live the King!
CITIZEN.
In the name of the Republic! (She is surrounded by the watch and led off.)(54)

These lines must be read with the utmost attentiveness and exactitude. On the one hand, they serve to close the circle of the play's “love interest” which begins at the gaming table with the bantering about “cœur” and “carreau”; on the other hand, in testifying to the power of love, they also provide a final manifestation, indeed a proclamation, of the republic, and with it, the revolution. The part of the play's action which is connected to the revolution is encompassed by the theme of love. Even the scene in which Danton and his followers are executed, a scene in which their severed heads kiss “at the bottom of the basket,”⁵⁵ is framed by—and one might say, sublated into—this theme as it is developed in the two scenes devoted to Julie's and Lucile's acts of self-sacrifice and transfiguration. Yet, at the same time, the part of the play which deals with love is also subjected to a sublation. In that final scene, in which love shines forth one last time and reaches what could be termed its apotheosis, Lucile is, in a very literal manner, “surrounded” by the power of the revolution in its most concrete form.

The vividness of this action, which is truly theatrical in the best sense of the word, is no less striking than the imagery Büchner utilizes at the beginning and end of Danton's Death, or, for that matter, the basic circular structure of the play as a whole. Here, both themes are fused together in a relationship as inseparable as that of form and content. Comfort and hope, refuge from the present and assurances regarding the future, all are intertwined in Büchner's play. Truly, for individual human beings, love is all that remains. For humanity, however, there is the revolution. Although conservative critics would have us believe that the notion of progress and the linear movement of history is flatly rejected, and in its place a Spenglerian “circular movement of all history” is glorified,⁵⁶ this conclusion cannot be substantiated, regardless of whether one concentrates exclusively on Danton's Death or examines the young writer's entire oeuvre and biography.⁵⁷ Büchner was a man who despaired and yet continued to fight, a militant who founded the Society of Human Rights, wrote The Hessian Messenger, and yet admitted that he “felt as if [he] were crushed under the terrible fatalism of history.”⁵⁸ If ever anyone had a right to lay claim to that dictum of Gramsci, “pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will,”⁵⁹ then it was surely Büchner, a revolutionary in that most reactionary of times, the German Vormärz period. However, what sets him apart from Gramsci, and even raises him above the Italian's paradox, is the fact that he was a great writer and, both as a writer and a revolutionary, a man who loved. Büchner wanted “life and love” among human beings to be “one and the same”; he wanted love to be life and “life [to be] love.”⁶⁰

I believe that one can legitimately take these words, which come from a fragmentary scene not included in the final version of Leonce and Lena, and apply them in a general sense to Büchner's entire concept of love.⁶¹ For are they not equally true of Marion, the third major female figure in Danton's Death? Does not this “grisette,” in an exemplary manner, live a life of love? In her existence, are not life and love in fact identical? Admittedly, this is yet another heresy, and one especially offensive to those who, while not necessarily conservative in their political views, are nonetheless rigorously moralistic.⁶² But have the numerous attempts to explain Marion with concepts such as “tragedy” and “guilt” really helped us to understand this figure? Should we deprive her of what she terms “the only thing,”⁶³ and instead burden her with “a dark, animalistic sadness,” in effect, a bad conscience?⁶⁴ Ought we not instead approach both Marion and Danton as well as their relationship with one another—and, by extension, Georg Büchner's treatment of love in its entirety—with very different concepts and values? That it is not enough simply to rattle off a few of the fashionable phrases of the playwright's era, such as the well-known “emancipation of the flesh,” is, I would hope, obvious. It was no accident that Büchner repeatedly distanced himself from the Saint-Simonians and the Young Germans.⁶⁵ As for the latter group, their supposedly daring heroines⁶⁶ resemble, when compared with Marion, nothing more than “marionettes with sky-blue noses and affected pathos,” the fleshless and bloodless constructs for which Büchner mocked the “so-called idealist poets.”⁶⁷ But should we descend to the opposite extreme and—utilizing a word which carries with it the most repulsive of associations—see in Marion “something subhuman” (Untermenschliches)?⁶⁸ Neither this dubious concept nor the “uncontrollable animalistic lustfulness” which has been linked with it nor, by any stretch of the imagination, the insipid sensuality of the Young Germans can touch the essence of Marion's being; and the yammering and howling, the erotic spasms and convulsions which fill Peter Weiss's Marat/Sade also have very little to do with the serenity and delicacy, indeed the poetry of Marion and her scene.

Unfortunately, there is not enough space here to quote the love scene between her and Danton in its entirety. I can only point to the naturalness, the lyrical-idyllic simplicity and yet eloquence with which Marion—sitting “at the feet” of Danton, according to a telling stage direction—narrates the story of her life, which is to say the story of her love. “My mother was a smart woman. She always said chastity was a nice virtue.” Thus Büchner, taking a sly jab at bourgeois morality, has Marion begin her account: “When people came to the house and started talking about certain things, she told me to leave the room. When I asked what they wanted, she said I ought to be ashamed of myself. When she gave me a book to read, I almost always had to skip over a couple of pages.”⁶⁹ Marion goes on to recall how once, in springtime, while still a girl, she found herself “in a peculiar atmosphere,” an atmosphere which “almost choked me.” Luckily, a young man appeared who, though he often said “crazy things,” was “good-looking.” In time, Marion says, “we couldn't see why we might not just as well lie together between two sheets as sit next to each other in two chairs.” Then, soon thereafter, she declares with calm frankness: “But I became like an ocean, swallowing everything and swirling deeper and deeper. For me there was only one opposite: all men melted into one body. That was my nature—who can escape it?”⁷⁰

When the young man, who believed Marion was his alone, learned of her activities, he kissed her as if he wanted—again that word—to “choke” her: his arms wrapped tight around her neck; she was “terribly afraid.” But he released her and then went off and drowned himself (an event which is conveyed to us only by Marion's indirect and highly evocative remarks; see chapter 5 below). “I had to cry,” she admits, “that was the only break in my being.”⁷¹ Since then she has lived in complete unity and harmony with herself:

Other people have Sundays and working days, they work for six days and pray on the seventh; once a year, on their birthdays, they get sentimental, and every year on New Year's Day they reflect. I don't understand all that. For me there is no stopping, no changing. I'm always the same, an endless longing and seizing, a fire, a torrent. … It's all the same, whatever we enjoy: bodies, icons, flowers, or toys, it's all the same feeling. Whoever enjoys the most prays the most.⁷²

Marion's autobiographical account closes with this avowal, which clearly provides the philosophical, or ideological, highlight of the entire scene. Büchner was not, however, content to stop here. The ensuing dialogue between Marion and Danton provides yet another highlight—in this case, one which is lyrical-idyllic, even lyrical-utopian, in nature:

DANTON.
Why can't I contain your beauty in me completely, surround it entirely?
MARION.
Danton, your lips have eyes.
DANTON.
I wish I were a part of the atmosphere so that I could bathe you in my flood and break on every wave of your beautiful body.(73)

It is at this point that Lacroix, loud-mouthed and vulgar, enters the scene. Accompanied by a pair of common whores, he fills the air with crude remarks; and thus the scene ends on a jarringly discordant note that tears apart the idyl briefly shared by the two lovers.⁷⁴

I would like to ask: Could a playwright possibly express more in a single scene? Could a scene be any more unambiguous? How can it be that Büchner has been so completely misunderstood here by so many experts, by virtually the entire corps of critics? Or, phrased more maliciously: How is it possible to react to such a text—particularly when it is part of Büchner's drama of revolution—in a way which is so blind to history and so indifferent to art, so joyless and so dismally sanctimonious? It is perhaps not entirely accidental that the only voice which has been raised in favor of Marion comes to us from Sweden!⁷⁵ Everything else one encounters reeks of puritanism and philistine narrow-mindedness. The eternal bourgeois (who, by the way, lurks not just in “bourgeois” critics) is not only repelled by a “soulless whore” or, at best, a “hetaera”; he finds her positively frightening. Indeed, Marion “is obviously a very dangerous person,” we are informed in all seriousness.⁷⁶ Critics' sensibilities—not to mention their senses—have failed to grasp this woman and her message even though, beginning with the very first scene and Camille's proclamation of Venus and Epicurus as the patron saints of the republic, it pervades the entire drama and stands inscribed as a secret motto over the events of the revolution. Of course, we also notice a marked heightening of the current of eroticism: Camille merely demands primal love and Greek sensuality, while Marion actually manifests these ideals, actually lives and proclaims them with her own flesh.

After Marion's scene, there can be no doubt that the erotic-utopian qualities which the play first presents in a purely theoretical manner or in broad outline, have now become elements of concrete praxis and thus must be recognized as a crucial dimension of the entire theme of revolution. And how could it be otherwise? Are not love and sensuality of every sort, as well as the achievement of full happiness in this life, integral and inalienable aspects of the complete and liberated human being, the total human being, and hence essential components of any full concept of revolution? If one draws on Camus, as does Benn, and speaks of Büchner's “threefold concept of revolution,” which combines sociopolitical rebellion with metaphysical revolt and an overturning of established aesthetic norms⁷⁷—then why not also acknowledge Büchner's liberation of Eros, that is to say, his sexual revolt? Are we not forced to do so by what we encounter in his works? I can no longer ignore the testimony of these texts. “Cœur” and “carreau” speak with a clarity that leaves little to be desired; what they say to us is far clearer and more convincing than any painstakingly assembled collection of quotations from Arthur Schopenhauer, whom some critics want to drag into the discussion of Büchner at all costs.⁷⁸ But so be it! If, in 1813, the year of Büchner's birth, this notorious reactionary and misogynist among German thinkers examined the “fourfold root of the principle of sufficient reason,” then Büchner, the loving rebel among German writers, in Danton's Death dealt with the fourfold root of the principle of revolution. Indeed, it seems to me that even if one were to ignore the play, it still would be possible to establish the necessity of Büchner's support for a fourth revolt, the revolt of Eros:

For what would it be this revolution
Without universal copulation?(79)

Here we clearly have an area of intersection between Büchner and the author of Marat/Sade, regardless of how crude the latter's intentionally primitive slogans may seem when compared with Marion's scene. When Bo Ullmann, who is responsible for the aforementioned contribution from Sweden, refers to her message as a “utopia of unmutilated, total humanness,” a “utopia of the erotic negation of both self and possession,”⁸⁰ he merely provides more restrained but, by the same token, considerably more apt formulations of what Weiss, his German-born countryman, has in mind.

But though it is an admirable virtue, the open-mindedness in eroticis displayed by Ullmann and Weiss is not in itself sufficient for a full understanding of Marion. The same is true of some “sisterly” insights; however knowing they may be, they remain incomplete or even lead to new varieties of misperception. Margaret Jacobs, for example, starts out on the right track when she writes of Marion: “In a special sense she is natural, but one must beware of assessing her as naive.”⁸¹ Precisely in its contradictoriness, this statement is directly on target. Unfortunately, Jacobs fails to perceive the full implications of her own aperçu, for she immediately lapses into a moralizing approach and decides that there is “something undeniably gruesome” about Marion. Even the moment of illumination provided by our Swedish critic flickers, dims, and finally disappears. In spite of all his accurate perceptions, Ullmann not only pushes Marion in the direction of “childishness” and “foolishness”⁸² but feels compelled—even while acknowledging her “innocence” and “purity”—to describe her as “dirty”! Finally, he judges Marion to be “truly unfit for a utopia” because, as he goes on to inform us, she is “scarcely a person of this world”! (Wouldn't “although” make more sense?) Thus a utopian presence is registered, but only in order to be denounced as a failure. What seems to exert a certain fascination is not so much utopia itself as its supposed collapse. That this perspective involves a distortion, indeed almost an inversion of the concept of utopia is quite obvious. In actuality, Büchner is concerned neither with the “abandonment” nor with the “defense” of an erotic utopia, but rather with imagining and manifesting it. The fact that the present, even when it is revolutionary, fails to live up to the utopian goal does not refute the latter any more than the temporary collapse of the ongoing sociopolitical revolution refutes or even “compromises” its particular utopian vision.

However tempting it may be, one cannot connect Marion with Marie of the Woyzeck fragment;⁸³ nor can one view the proletarian tragedy as a necessary continuation of Danton's Death, much less its recantation.⁸⁴ This would presume, within Büchner's oeuvre, an evolution which has never been convincingly demonstrated. And if indeed one is willing to make the interpretive leap of associating the suicide of Marion's lover with the murder of Marie by the pond, why not link the young man's death with Leonce's loudly announced decision to plunge into the river and drown, a decision motivated not by despair, but rather by the ecstasy of love? In other words, one could just as easily concentrate on the laughable consequences of Marion's “terrible dangerousness” as on those which are somberly serious. Of course, it cannot be denied that she admits: “My mother died of grief, people point at me.” But she adds: “That's silly”⁸⁵—a comment that Büchner meant to be taken seriously. Marion's mother, who is so ironically characterized as wise and moral, can hardly be regarded as tragic; if anything, she is to be pitied. And Marion's first lover is not only pitiable, he is comical. To say this obviously involves a degree of exaggeration—but is not the death brought on by grief a standard element of cheap melodrama? And does not the young man's impetuous suicide smack of a certain callow foolishness? The playwright, in any case, speaking through that incorrigible materialist, Valerio, describes such deeds as “lieutenants' romanticism.”⁸⁶ Even the phrase “a foolish thing” is supplied by Büchner himself.⁸⁷ He refrains from condemning Marion morally—or, for that matter, in any way. She exists outside of the traditional value system which bases itself on Christian ethics and hence she cannot be defined in terms of its conception of morality. Marion does not have a faulty or corrupted conscience, she has no conscience at all. She is not an evildoer, not a sinner, not laden with guilt. In the final analysis, she is not even immoral. She can only be termed amoral. As both elemental nature and its utopian projection, she exists before as well as after and above all traditional, which is to say bourgeois, moral strictures and sexual mores. Marion is entirely natural and yet at the same time she presages a perfect utopia. The first of these aspects serves as an anticipatory manifestation, a poetic image, of the second aspect. Or, to draw on yet another notorious thinker, though he certainly was not always a misogynist: Marion, as a living revaluation of all the values of love, stands both before and beyond good and evil (and, by the way, completely removed from the world of work). She is the “restoration of nature, free from false moralism [moralinfrei],” to use Nietzsche's lapidary description of this condition.⁸⁸

It is only through an appreciation of such paradoxes that we are able to understand Marion, her relationship to Danton, and the function of her scene. On the one hand, she is nature in its purest form and yet, on the other, she is not at all natural. Actually, she is caught between two sets of constraints: she is acutely susceptible to those of nature and she finds herself a prey of those of society. Only gradually is she able to overcome the double disharmony caused by these forces and mechanisms. This is revealed to us twice—here Büchner is quite exact—in the oppressive feeling of suffocation or choking which is so vividly visited upon Marion before she finally is able to become herself. In the midst of spring's luxuriance, it symbolizes the powerful drives of nature; in the enraged embrace of her disappointed lover, it represents society's insistence upon possession. For Marion, both issues now belong to the past; life and love have long since become one and the same. When this feeling of suffocation recurs at the end of the scene, it is no longer associated with her but instead with Danton. Coming on the heels of his strained debate with Lacroix and Paris, it is symptomatic, both specifically and in a broad sense, of an external compulsion to “exertion” and “work,” to purposeful “action” in general;⁸⁹ symptomatic, moreover, of the individual's renunciation of pleasure and obsession with productive accomplishment, as well as of that sad state of affairs in which people mutually oppress one another. Referring to his friends, Danton might well have repeated his line from the opening scene: “Their politics [i.e., their plans, their appeals, their demands] are getting on my nerves.”⁹⁰ Marion, however, uses a different image in conveying this thought to Danton: “Your lips are cold, your words have stifled your kisses.”⁹¹

Even in her lament, Büchner's grisette manifests, as a utopian projection, precisely that which Büchner's revolutionary, who is trying to blaze a trail to utopia, would like to achieve in historical reality: the realm of untrammeled pleasure. Marion is actually able to live the existence Danton demands, impatient and audacious—and hence burdened with guilt. She is able to be what he can only long for. The playwright has allowed her to rise above all constraints and enter that much sought-after realm. As Ullmann points out, Marion has attained complete and unmutilated “humanness” (Menschennatur); she has managed to transcend all notions of private property, an achievement which allows her to possess the entire world. Moreover, she has dissolved her sense of self; thus her existence, while totally unfragmented, is marked by infinite multiplicity. However, such fulfillment can only exist as the projection of a possibility; this perfect unity of being can only reside on the periphery of history, where origin and goal flow into one another. For the revolutionary who lives in the midst of a bloody reality, all this is unattainable. Danton, entangled in history, thoroughly caught up in the developments of each new day, must remain in a state of inner disharmony from which he can escape only for a few moments at a time. His agonizingly acute consciousness, which constantly disturbs his peace of mind, and Marion's seamless, almost unconscious, happiness are discordantly juxtaposed, their compatibility and loving encounter notwithstanding. Büchner's grisette manifests a tangible utopia, a concrete praxis of erotic liberation; in Büchner's revolutionary, we see a concretization of utopia's dependence on history and its concomitant contradiction of reality.

Yet the difference between Danton and Marion is not presented simply as a painful disharmony, but instead primarily in terms of a reconciliation. For this is the central meaning of the brief, lyrical exchange that consummates the idyl shared by the two lovers. Does it not almost resemble a duet? While it seems to begin so abruptly, the dialogue actually is a logical continuation of what has already been said, a final, poetically terse evocation both of the undistorted nature that preceded man's descent into history and of the erotic utopia that lies somewhere in the future. These lines are not intended to provide contrast; instead, they represent a culmination.⁹² What does it mean when Danton voices his ardent desire to enfold Marion “completely” inside himself and feels a need to become “part of the atmosphere” so that he might “bathe” his lover in his “flood” and “break on every wave” of her “beautiful body”? And what are we to make of that seemingly cryptic line in which Marion reproachfully tells Danton that his lips have eyes? Should we follow the lead of formalist criticism and conclude that this is nothing more than a bold image that anticipates Rimbaud and the Dadaist Hans Arp? Should we accept the judgment of the critic and poet Walter Höllerer and view it as “surreal estrangement”?⁹³ But does not Hinderer offer a more convincing explanation when he speaks of a “metaphor for Danton's inability to turn off his consciousness”?⁹⁴

Yet even this interpretation, while establishing a persuasive connection between form and content, provides only half the answer. The other half can be found in a book which makes no reference to Büchner, a book which carries the trendy—and yet appropriate—title, Love's Body. Experiences of the sort described by Marion are, the author emphatically informs us, “polymorphous perversity, the translation of all our senses into one another, the interplay between the senses,” which is to say “the metaphor, the free translation.”⁹⁵ And in truth, however suspicious we may be of faddish prophets and lecture-circuit revolutionaries, could we find a better description of Büchner's “new, previously unarticulated sensibility”⁹⁶ than this passage by Norman O. Brown? Does not the concept of “polymorphous perversity,” the interplay of all the senses, provide, if not the, at least a key to Danton's lips that have eyes? Or, to phrase the question differently, is not the “metaphor” also a sensual reality? This notion, among others, is elucidated as Brown, proceeding in his inimitably eclectic manner,⁹⁷ issues a prophecy regarding an erotic utopia: “The human body would become polymorphously perverse, delighting in that full life of all the body which it now fears. The consciousness strong enough to endure full life would be no longer Apollonian but Dionysian—consciousness which does not observe the limit, but overflows, consciousness which does not negate any more.”

Does this not constitute a summation, and a rather detailed one at that, of both the dialogue and the relationship between Danton and Marion? Are they not, like the fervent disciple of Freud, though in a much more direct way, involved in the “complete abolition of repression” and the “resurrection of the body”? As if he were not only allowing Marion to reflect, but also seeking to outdo Danton's “laziness,”⁹⁸ Brown announces: “The riddle of history is not in Reason but in Desire; not in labor but in love.” To be sure, Brown is indulging in extreme understatement when, in his earlier and better known book, Life Against Death, he refers to all this as “a little more Eros.”⁹⁹ There is no denying that his writings run the risk of making an absolute of erotic liberation. Yet it is by no means mere eclecticism that leads him to draw not only on Nietzsche and, especially, Freud, but also on Marx, whose concept of the “total person” he blends with ideas taken from the other two thinkers.¹⁰⁰ (The concept, it will be remembered, first appeared in the Economic-Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, that is to say, seven years after Büchner's death.) The necessity of connecting Marx and Freud, perhaps Nietzsche as well, and, in any event, Marxism and psychoanalysis, social and sexual revolution, was perceived long before Brown came on the scene. One need only think of Wilhelm Reich and, above all, Herbert Marcuse and his book, Eros and Civilization.¹⁰¹ Actually, it is of secondary importance which of these thinkers one relies on for supporting testimony. What is crucial—as well as astounding—is the fact that in Büchner's works we encounter a thoroughly modern view of revolution, one which is not just twofold but actually fourfold; indeed, I would go so far as to say that in his oeuvre every conceivable variety of revolt is not only present but is developed to its fullest extent. Both love and revolution are here in all their various forms; both possess central importance and, at the same time, are inseparable from each other. Nowhere is this more evident than in the female figures of Danton's Death, and most of all in Marion.

Thus it is no exaggeration to say that Marion, the embodiment of sexual liberation, can be viewed as the pleasure principle incarnate: a notion which—let me make this point one last time—involves absolutely no value judgment. Nothing could be further off the mark than to dismiss Marion as an inferior variant of her partner by declaring, “[Her] insatiability … is a distortion, a vulgarization of Danton's.”¹⁰² For if one were carefully to compare the two figures, would it not emerge that the very opposite is much closer to the truth? Certainly, the playwright did not hesitate to underscore Danton's own naturalness and sensuality; in fact, he even relates these qualities to Marion's versions of them by having his protagonist anticipate, almost word-for-word, one of her key statements. Prior to the grisette's declaration, “that was my nature,” her visitor has candidly announced, “That's my nature.”¹⁰³

Notes

1. Georg Büchner, The Complete Collected Works, translations and commentary by Henry J. Schmidt (New York: Avon Books, 1977). Hereafter CCW 48; cf. Georg Büchner, Sämtliche Werke und Briefe. Historisch-Kristische Ausgabe mit Kommentar, edited by Werner R. Lehmann (Hamburg: Christian Wegner Verlag, 1967-). Hereafter HA 35.

2. See Werner Schlick, Das Georg-Büchner-Schrifttum bis 1965: Eine internationale Bibliographie (Hildesheim, 1968) and Klaus-Dietrich Petersen, “Georg-Büchner-Bibliographie,” Philobiblon 17 (1973): 89-115. Compare also Hinderer's Büchner-Kommentar zum dichterischen Werk (München, 1977), as well as Gerhard P. Knapp, Georg Büchner (Stuttgart, 1977).

3. Erwin Theodor [Rosenthal], “Büchners Grundgedanke: Sehnsucht nach Liebe,” Revista de Letras 3 (1962): 201-13.

4. See Gonthier Louis-Fink, “Volkslied und Verseinlage in den Dramen Büchners,” in Martens, pp. 442-87.

5. A few of them are quite useful. Particularly noteworthy, although by no means equal to each other in quality, are Bo Ullmann's chapter, “Marie und die Preisgabe der erotischen Utopie,” in his Die sozialkritische Problematik im Werke Georg Büchners und ihre Entfaltung im “Woyzeck”: Mit einigen Bemerkungen zu der Oper Alban Bergs (Stockholm, 1972), pp. 62ff. and 160ff., and Wolfgang Martens, “Zum Menschenbild Georg Büchners: ‘Woyzeck’ und die Marionszene in ‘Dantons Tod,’” in Martens, pp. 373-85, as well as the studies of Swales and Reddick mentioned in the introduction, n. 86. I was unable to consult Ursula Segebrecht-Paulus, “Genuß und Leid im Werk Georg Büchners” (diss., München, 1969).

6. CCW 17; cf. HA 1, 9: “Sieh die hübsche Dame, wie artig sie die Karten dreht! ja wahrhaftig sie versteht's, man sagt sie halte ihrem Manne immer das cœur und andern Leuten das carreau hin. Ihr könntet einen noch in die Lüge verliebt machen.”

7. Herbert Anton, Büchners Dramen: Topographien der Freiheit (Paderborn, 1975), p. 17—which means, as has been caustically noted, that the female lap (Schoß) is presented as a stage the masks of which conceal the “indestructible muttonhead” (unverwüstlicher Schaafskopf) of the masked god Dionysus (cf. Hinderer, p. 90).

8. CCW 18; cf. HA 1, 10: “Ich würde meine Tochter dergleichen nicht spielen lassen, die Herren und Damen fallen so unanständig übereinander und die Buben kommen gleich hinten nach.”

9. Cf. HA 1, 41: “lieb Herz.”

10. CCW 20; cf. HA 1, 11: “die gliederlösende, böse Liebe”; “nackte Götter, Bachantinnen [sic]”; “die Venus mit dem schönen Hintern.” For the latter passage, see Hinderer, p. 93.

11. Ibid.: “Thürsteher der Republik.”

12. Cf. CCW 124 and HA 1, 92-93: “Glückseligkeit”; “ruhig”; “Schicksal”; “centnerschwer auf dem Herzen.”

13. CCW 125-26; cf. HA 1, 93: “fixe Idee”; “mit allem Jammer der Verzweiflung”; “Stehe auf und wandle!”

14. In one of the scattered fragments of Leonce and Lena, one finds the line: “Arise in your white dress and glide through the night and say to the corpse arise and walk!” (Steh auf in deinem weißen Kleid u. schwebe durch die Nacht u. sprich zur Leiche steh auf und wandle!) HA 1, 141.

15. HA 2, 423-24: “Ich bin allein, wie im Grabe; wann erweckt mich deine Hand? … Sie sagen, ich sei verrückt, weil ich gesagt habe, in sechs Wochen würde ich auferstehen, zuerst aber Himmelfahrt halten, in der Diligence nämlich.”

16. CCW 117; cf. HA 1, 84-85: “Jetzt, ein anderes Seyn, göttliche, zuckende Lippen bückten sich über ihm nieder, und sogen sich an seine Lippen; er ging auf sein einsames Zimmer. Er war allein, allein! Da rauschte die Quelle, Ströme brachen aus seinen Augen, er krümmte sich in sich, es zuckten seine Glieder, es war ihm als müsse er sich auflösen, er konnte kein Ende finden der Wollust.”

17. See CCW 160-61; cf. HA 1, 125.

18. HA 2, 426: “Ich glühte, das Fieber bedeckte mich mit Küssen und umschlang mich wie der Arm der Geliebten. Die Finsterniß wogte über mir, mein Herz schwoll in unendlicher Sehnsucht, es drangen Sterne durch das Dunkel, und Hände und Lippen bückten sich nieder.”

19. See Knapp, Georg Büchner, pp. 75ff., who provides further bibliographical references.

20. In this regard, a particularly prominent role is being played by Wolfgang Wittkowski, who has launched a full-scale campaign to “Christianize” Büchner; see his contributions listed in chapter 5, n. 26. The weakness of Wittkowski's approach is revealed specifically with regard to Lenz in an article by Heinrich Anz (see chapter 3, n. 37).

21. CCW 126; cf. HA 1, 93: “daß Gott ein Zeichen an ihm thue, und das Kind beleben möge.” Once again, Leonce and Lena provides a corresponding text; CCW 160 and HA 1, 124:

    LENA.

    … The moon is like a sleeping child, its golden locks have fallen over its dear face.—Oh, its sleep is death. Look how the dead angel rests its dark pillow and the stars burn around it like candles. Poor child, are the bogeymen coming to get you soon? Where is your mother? Doesn't she want to kiss you once more? Ah, it's sad, dead, and so alone.

    LEONCE.

    Arise in your white dress and follow the corpse through the night and sing its requiem.

    (LENA.

    … Der Mond ist wie ein schlafendes Kind, die goldnen Locken sind ihm im Schlaf über das liebe Gesicht heruntergefallen.—O sein Schlaf ist Tod. Wie der todte Engel auf seinem dunkeln Kissen ruht und die Sterne gleich Kerzen um ihn brennen. Armes Kind, kommen die schwarzen Männer bald dich holen? Wo ist deine Mutter? Will sie dich nicht noch einmal küssen? Ach es ist traurig, todt und so allein.

    LEONCE.

    Steh auf in deinem weißen Kleide und wandle hinter der Leiche durch die Nacht und singe ihr das Todtenlied.)

    Thus the final version. But originally Leonce continued in a manner reminiscent of Lenz (cf. HA 1, 141).

22. See the summary provided by Hermann Bräuning-Oktavio, Georg Büchner: Gedanken über Leben, Werk und Tod (Bonn, 1976), pp. 41ff.; the following two quotes are also taken from this book.

23. See Hinderer, p. 172.

24. See Bräuning-Oktavio, p. 42.

25. Gaston Salvatore, Büchners Tod (Frankfurt, 1972), pp. 75ff.; for a “generic” background of sorts, see my survey essay, “Dichter-Helden: ‘Tasso,’ ‘Empedokles’ und die Folgen,” Basis 7 (1977): 7-25.

26. See, for instance, Brechts Tui-Kritik, ed. Wolfgang Fritz Haug (Karlsruhe, 1976). “Tui” is a playful chinoiserie of Brecht's, derived from “tellect-uel-in” = “intellectuel.”

27. The famous epithet, “the divine one,” which has already been mentioned, also stems from Ariosto; see Peter Stafford's introduction to Pietro Aretino, The Ragionamenti (London, 1970), p. v.

28. See ibid., p. ix.

29. CCW 64; cf. HA 1, 49: “Dogge mit Taubenflügeln.”

30. It appears that Büchner worked on his Aretino play in the summer or fall of 1836; see Knapp, Georg Büchner, p. 26 (who mistakenly writes “1837”).

31. Bräuning-Oktavio, pp. 42, 46.

32. See CCW 31-32 and HA 1, 21-22; compare Aretino's declaration in Antonino Foschini, L'Aretino (Milano, 1951), p. 137: “E tu mi fai lagrimar di piacere solo a pensarti.”

33. See ibid., p. 139: “O Iddio, salva Perina, ché io l'ho amata, l'amo e l'amerò sempre, finché la sentenza del dí novissimo giudicherà le vanità nostre.” Although those quotes are taken from a biographical essay which is strongly novelistic, their content and, to some extent, their wording are based on Aretino's letters.

34. Stafford, p. viii. It appears that the Englishman knows nothing of Büchner and has never heard of the interesting as well as shocking if, admittedly, less significant “cinquecento drama” by Oskar Panizza, Das Liebeskonzil (The Council of Love), which first appeared in 1895.

35. There is a certain irony in the fact that, instead of Büchner's own work, we have his translation of a play which the same English critic judges to be “probably the worst drama” dealing with this period: Victor Hugo's Lucrèce Borgia; cf. ibid. and compare HA 1, 193ff.

36. See CCW 16; cf. HA 1, 8 and Maurice B. Benn, The Drama of Revolt: A Critical Study of Georg Büchner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976). Hereafter Benn, p. 135.

37. As to Woyzeck, compare in particular Klotz, Geschlossene und offene Form im Drama, p. 110 and Wilhelm Emrich, “Von Georg Büchner zu Samuel Beckett: Zum Problem einer literarischen Formidee,” in Aspekte des Expressionismus: Periodisierung · Stil · Gedankenwelt, ed. Wolfgang Paulsen (Heidelberg, 1968), pp. 11-32. Both emphasize the circularity, the carrousel, the “world-wheel” (Weltrad) in the structure of Danton's Death. There are others, however, who reject this view or at least wish to modify it; see especially Benn, p. 254: “It has occasionally been suggested that the action of the play is circular, that the end is implicit in the beginning. This is evidently not so. The action has rather the form of a spiral ascending to an acme of tragic suffering.” But he also states with regard to Leonce and Lena: “At the end of the play the situation—politically, psychologically, metaphysically—is still essentially the same as at the beginning” (ibid., p. 169). The same thesis is advanced by Richards, Georg Büchner and the Birth of Modern Drama, p. 114.

38. As for Danton's Death, there is a rather general reference to a “circular structure” (struttura circolare) in Giorgio Dolfini, Il teatro di Georg Büchner (Milano, 1961), p. 52. It is interesting to note that a similar structure can be detected in Heiner Müller's play Germania Tod in Berlin; see Schulz, p. 137.

39. See CCW 18, 95-96; cf. HA 1, 9, 75:

    DANTON.

    Nein Julie, ich liebe dich wie das Grab. … Die Leute sagen im Grab sey Ruhe und Grab und Ruhe seyen eins. Wenn das ist, lieg' ich in deinem Schooß schon unter der Erde. Du süßes Grab, deine Lippen sind Todtenglocken, deine Stimme ist mein Grabgeläute, deine Brust mein Grabhügel und dein Herz mein Sarg.

    LUCILE.

    (tritt auf und setzt sich auf die Stufen der Guillotine) Ich setze mich auf deinen Schooß, du stiller Todesengel. … Du liebe Wiege, die du meinen Camille in Schlaf gelullt, ihn unter deinen Rosen erstickt hast. / Du Todtenglocke, die du ihn mit deiner süßen Zunge zu Grabe sangst.

40. CCW 19; cf. HA 1, 11: “Särge zur Wiege haben.”

41. Norman O. Brown, Love's Body (New York, 1966), p. 47; see also p. 42.

42. CCW 92; cf. HA 1, 72.

43. CCW 73; cf. HA 1, 73: “Schlafe, schlafe”; “Schlummer.”

44. CCW 17; HA 1, 9: “wir sind sehr einsam.”

45. CCW 55-56; cf. HA 1, 41.

46. It has been correctly pointed out that Danton's fears are “entirely inconsistent with his rational assumptions about death and what follows it” (cf. Richards, p. 55). When the same critic—in the same sentence, moreover—perceives in this an “essentially religious feeling,” he errs grievously.

47. CCW 78-79; cf. HA 1, 61: “O Julie! Wenn ich allein ginge! Wenn sie mich einsam ließe! … Und wenn ich ganz zerfiele, mich ganz auflöste—ich wäre eine Handvoll gemarterten Staubes, jedes meiner Atome könnte nur Ruhe finden bey ihr. … Ich kann nicht sterben, nein, ich kann nicht sterben.”

48. CCW 82; cf. HA 1, 64: “Da, bring ihm das und sag' ihm er würde nicht allein gehn. Er versteht mich schon und dann schnell zurück, ich will seine Blicke aus deinen Augen lesen.”

49. CCW 85; HA 1, 67: “Ich werde nicht allein gehn, ich danke dir Julie.”

50. See Hinderer, p. 90.

51. Ibid., p. 106; also, compare Josef Jansen, ed., Erläuterungen und Dokumente [zu] Georg Büchner[s] ‘Dantons Tod’ (Stuttgart, 1969), p. 10.

52. Benn, p. 138.

53. Ibid., p. 139.

54. CCW 96; cf. HA 1, 75:

    EIN Bürger.

    He werda?

    LUCILE.

    Es lebe der König!

    BüRGER.

    Im Namen der Republik! (Sie wird von der Wache umringt und weggeführt.)

55. CCW 94; cf. HA 1, 74: “auf dem Boden des Korbes küssen.”

56. See especially Helmut Koopmann, “Dantons Tod und die antike Welt: Zur Geschichtsphilosophie Georg Büchners,” Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie 84 (special issue, 1965): 22-41.

57. Clearly, the notions of a circular movement of history and a cyclical recurrence of that which has already been were not entirely foreign to the playwright. Not only the death of God and the rise of European nihilism, but also other elements of Nietzsche's thought were indisputably anticipated by Büchner. Yet can one proceed to read the “eternal recurrence of the same” (ewige Wiederkehr des Gleichen) into his works—especially since even Nietzsche's own use of the concept is far more complex than is commonly realized? It seems to me that one must be much more careful here and, in any event, differentiate with greater care, not only in regard to Büchner but also in regard to Heinrich Heine and Ludwig Börne, who are likewise forced into Koopmann's scheme.

58. CCW 306; cf. HA 2, 425-26.

59. Gramsci's pessimismo dell'intelligenza, ottimismo della volontà is also invoked—the text in question was first published in 1970—by Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Palaver: Politische Überlegungen (1967-1973) (“Palaver: Political Considerations”) (Frankfurt, 1974), p. 129. It would seem to be no accident that, five years earlier, this same critic had edited the radical pamphlet, The Hessian Messenger.

60. See HA 1, 141: “… Leben u. Liebe eins seyn lassen, daß die Liebe das Leben ist, und das Leben die Liebe.”

61. They constitute a response by Leonce to Valerio's ironic question, “Marry?” (Heirathen?) Büchner apparently realized that this was too serious, too weighty for a comedy for he later struck the words. However, the fact that they express one of his basic concerns is established by the ensuing line, which was not struck, but only slightly altered: “Do you know, Valerio, that even the most insignificant human being is so great that life is far too short to love him?” (Weißt du auch, Valerio, daß selbst der Geringste unter den Menschen so groß ist, daß das Leben noch viel zu kurz ist, um ihn lieben zu können?) In the initial draft, this passage read: “Do you know, Valerio, that even he who is most insignificant is so great that human life is far too short to love him?” (Weißt du auch Valerio, daß auch der Geringste so groß ist, daß das menschliche Leben viel zu kurz ist um ihn lieben zu können?) See CCW 162 and HA 1, 126, 142.

62. See especially Martens, “Zum Menschenbild Georg Büchners”; however, Benn has also adopted this view to a large extent. Its inversion, a nonmoralistic judgment which simultaneously stresses the notion of eternal recurrence à la Koopmann, was provided early on by Walter Höllerer, “Büchner: Dantons Tod,” in Das deutsche Drama: Vom Barock bis zur Gegenwart. Interpretationen, ed. Benno von Wiese (Düsseldorf, 1958), 2, pp. 65-88; here, p. 73.

63. CCW 32; cf. HA 1, 22: “das Einzige.”

64. See Georg Büchner, edited by Wolfgang Martens (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1965). Hereafter Martens, p. 375.

65. See, for example, HA 2, 451-52.

66. See especially Karl Gutzkow, Wally, die Zweiflerin; Theodor Mundt, Madonna, oder: Unterhaltungen mit einer Heiligen (both published in 1835).

67. See HA 2, 444: “Marionetten mit himmelblauen Nasen und affectirtem Pathos”; “sogenannte Idealdichter” (from a letter to his family of July 28, 1835).

68. See Martens, p. 376; this is also the source of the ensuing quotation. At the same time, Martens fully realizes that it is mistaken to speak of a “Young German sensualism” (Jungdeutscher Sensualismus) in regard to Büchner and his works (ibid., p. 380).

69. CCW 31; cf. HA 1, 21: “Meine Mutter war eine kluge Frau, sie sagte mir immer die Keuschheit sey eine schöne Tugend, wenn Leute in's Haus kamen und von manchen Dingen zu sprechen anfingen, hieß sie mich aus dem Zimmer gehn; frug ich was die Leute gewollt hätten so sagte sie mir ich solle mich schämen; gab sie mir ein Buch zu lesen so mußt ich fast immer einige Seiten überschlagen.”

70. CCW 31-32; cf. HA 1, 21-22: “Ich gerieth in eine eigne Atmosphäre, sie erstickte mich fast. … Ein junger Mensch kam zu der Zeit in's Haus, er war hübsch und sprach oft tolles Zeug. … Endlich sahen wir nicht ein, warum wir nicht eben so gut zwischen zwei Bettüchern bei einander liegen, als auf zwei Stühlen neben einander sitzen durften. … Aber ich wurde wie ein Meer, was Alles verschlang und sich tiefer und tiefer wühlte. Es war für mich nur ein Gegensatz da, alle Männer verschmolzen in einen Leib. Meine Natur war einmal so, war kann da drüber hinaus?”

71. CCW 32; cf. HA 1, 22: “Er kam eines Morgens und küßte mich, als wollte er mich ersticken, seine Arme schnürten sich um meinen Hals, ich war in unsäglicher Angst. … Das war der einzige Bruch in meinem Wesen.”

72. Ibid.: “Die andern Leute haben Sonn- und Werktage, sie arbeiten sechs Tage und beten am siebenten, sie sind jedes Jahr auf ihren Geburtstag einmal gerührt und denken jedes Jahr auf Neujahr einmal nach. Ich begreife nichts davon. Ich kenne keinen Absatz, keine Veränderung. Ich bin immer nur Eins. Ein ununterbrochnes Sehnen und Fassen, eine Gluth, ein Strom. … Es läuft auf eins hinaus, an was man seine Freude hat, an Leibern, Christusbildern, Blumen oder Kinderspielsachen, es ist das nemliche Gefühl, wer am Meisten genießt, betet am Meisten.”

73. CCW 32-33; cf. HA 1, 22:

    DANTON.

    Warum kann ich deine Schönheit nicht ganz in mich fassen, sie nicht ganz umschließen?

    MARION.

    Danton, deine Lippen haben Augen.

    DANTON.

    Ich möchte ein Theil des Aethers seyn, um dich in meiner Fluth zu baden, um mich auf jeder Welle deines schönen Leibes zu brechen.

74. Ibid., pp. 21ff.

75. See Ullmann's study cited in n. 5 above.

76. Benn, p. 137. Even the charge of soullessness, which in this context is thoroughly odd, is flung at Marion by the otherwise perceptive critic (cf. ibid.): “But [Marion] has no soul.” Many additional examples of this view could be adduced.

77. This is perhaps the place to state emphatically that my exacting and provocative criticism of the existing secondary literature on Büchner is not intended to obscure or denigrate its many significant accomplishments. I readily admit that I am indebted to other critics in various respects. However, a theme as complex and important as the one at hand must be pursued with complete freedom, indeed audacity, “wherever it may lead” (Benn, p. 3).

78. See Wolfgang Wittkowski, “Georg Büchner, die Philosophen und der Pietismus,” Jahrbuch des Freien Deutschen Hochstifts 1976 (Tübingen, 1976), p. 371: “Die Triebkraft des Unbewußten und die Begrenztheit des Erkennens fanden wir … bei Büchner. … Darüber hinaus praktizierte er letztere gegenüber Schopenhauer selbst (falls er ihn las).” Or ibid., p. 399: “In seiner Dissertation—leider [!] erst in der 2. Auflage nach Büchners Tod—kritisierte Schopenhauer …”—whereupon, as in the first instance, our critic blithely concludes that “perhaps here, too” (vielleicht auch hier) Büchner is speaking ironically from Schopenhauer's position. What speaks volumes is the use of “unfortunately” in regard to a text which was not even available “until … after Büchner's death” (assuming the latter ‘failed’ to find some way of reading it in spite of this).

79. Peter Weiss, Dramen I (Frankfurt, 1968), p. 244: “Denn was wäre schon diese Revolution / ohne eine allgemeine Kopulation.” For the English version, see Peter Weiss, Marat/Sade, trans. Geoffrey Skelton, verse adaptation by Adrian Mitchell (New York, 1966), p. 92.

80. See Ullmann, pp. 64-65.

81. See Georg Büchner, Dantons Tod and Woyzeck, ed. with introduction and notes by Margaret Jacobs (Manchester, 1968), p. 119; the ensuing quotation is taken from the same source.

82. Regarding this and what follows, see Ullmann, pp. 64ff.

83. See especially the essay by Martens, “Zum Menschenbild Georg Büchners.”

84. I should like to remind the reader that the relevant chapter in Ullmann's book is entitled, “Marie and the Abandonment of the Erotic Utopia”—as if the impossibility of realizing a utopia in the proletarian milieu of Woyzeck and Marie, that is to say, in the midst of the most extreme poverty and exploitation, could in any way refute this utopia!

85. CCW 32; cf. HA 1, 22: “Meine Mutter ist vor Gram gestorben, die Leute weisen mit Fingern auf mich. Das ist dumm.”

86. CCW 161; cf. HA 1, 125: “Lieutenantsromantik.”

87. CCW 32; cf. HA 1, 22: “ein dummer Streich.” Büchner, however, does not apply the term to the young man's suicide, but rather to his impulse, fed by passion and jealousy, to murder Marion, an impulse which he very nearly satisfies. Here again the “comic” parallel to Woyzeck is unmistakable.

88. See Friedrich Nietzsche, Werke in drei Bänden, ed. Karl Schlechta (München, 1954-56), 3, p. 739 (to which I have to resort in this case). Obviously, mine is a rather free, perhaps even daring, application of Nietzsche, who so conspicuously ignored Büchner. Nevertheless, I do not feel that this is unjustified. The two writers have far more in common than is generally supposed.

89. See CCW 21, 37, 45; cf. HA 1, 12, 25-26, 33: “Mühe”; “Arbeit”; “Handeln.”

90. CCW 20; cf. HA 1, 12: “sie reiben mich mit ihrer Politik noch auf.”

91. CCW 37; cf. HA 1, 26: “Deine Lippen sind kalt geworden, deine Worte haben deine Küsse erstickt.” The image of suffocation is also employed by Lucile (cf. CCW 96 and HA 1, 75). It would be very useful to have detailed investigations of such clusters of words and images; see, for example, William Bruce Armstrong, “‘Arbeit’ und ‘Muße’ in den Werken Georg Büchners,” in GB III, pp. 63-98.

92. For an opposing view, see Helmut Krapp, Der Dialog bei Georg Büchner (München, 1968), p. 141.

93. See Höllerer, p. 83 and, in a similar vein, Krapp, p. 141.

94. Hinderer, p. 98.

95. See Brown, p. 249.

96. Thus Krapp, Georg Büchner, p. 141; he is to be commended for having accurately recognized this aspect.

97. For the ensuing quotes, see Brown, pp. 307, 308.

98. CCW 51; cf. HA 1, 38: “Trägheit.”

99. See Norman O. Brown, Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytical Meaning of History (Middletown, Conn., 1970), p. 322. The book was first published in 1959.

100. See Brown, Love's Body, p. 318.

101. First published in 1955. A brief report on Brown, Reich, and Marcuse as well as a massive condensation of their thought is contained in Jost Hermand, Pop International: Eine kritische Analyse (Frankfurt, 1971), pp. 72ff. Yet there are Marxist critics who take these trends very seriously; see, for example, the important study by the Czech theoretician Robert Kalidova, “Marx und Freud,” in Weiterentwicklungen des Marxismus, ed. Willy Oelmüller (Darmstadt, 1977), pp. 130-89.

102. Simon, in his introduction to Georg Büchner, Danton's Death, p. 17.

103. CCW 20, 32; cf. HA 1, 12, 22: “Meine Natur war einmal so”; “Mein Naturellist einmal so.”