This essay analyses the specific rhetoric of degeneration which was observable in the antisemitic polemic discourse of the last decades of 19th century. It provides an overview of the representation of Jewish art und artists as it took shape in the antisemitic literature of the Wilhelminian epoch. The growing emphasis placed by psychiatrists and racial theorists on the pathologies of the,,Jewish race“, such as hysteria or degeneration, resulted in the tendency to pathologize Jewish art and artists, which were deemed responsible (...) for the alleged decline of German culture. Mere aesthetic categories underwent a process of reduction and ideologization and were finally used for defamatory purposes, as shown in the case of the antisemitic denigration of Heinrich Heine. In order to demonstrate this, the analysis outlines the strict dichotomic logic of these argumentations, as the definition and consolidation of an ideal German essence was usually based on the construction of a degenerated Jewish identity. (shrink)

The collection Guarigioni, rinascite, metamorfosi is part of Sandro Barbera’s project to compile two volumes containing updated versions of his most incisive essays on Goethe and Schopenhauer. Unfortunately, his untimely passing left us preparatory material, but no drafts of new work. In his introduction, Stefano Busellato explains that the initial project had to be shelved in favor of a collection of essays that, to Barbera’s mind, were all but ready for publication. Four essays, each marking a major step in his (...) thought, have been added to his original selection.One of this collection’s many strengths is the wide range of themes that Barbera’s shrewd analysis explores in works by Goethe, Schopenhauer, and... (shrink)

English summary: In "Also Spoke Zarathustra," Nietzsche referred to, considerably more than in his other writings, the sum-total of the western tradition and condensed within it our cultural heritage in a stupendous synthesis, which he configured in a curious space of citations, parodies, and echoes. Already the colorful singularity makes the text an important bearer and filter of tradition and a model case, on which literary and philosophical approaches, confronted with the question of cultural memory and Nietzsche's reassessment of it, (...) are able to mutually compliment and illuminate each other. This anthology documents a spectrum of possible avenues into Nietzsche's chief work, into his characteristic dynamic of recreation, and to the specific forms in which he actualized the compression of western tradition in "Zarathustra." The pathos of "Zarathustra," Nietzsche's parody, and the concept of cryptomnesia (the forgotten memory), in which the transvaluation of tradition is placed within the horizon of productive forgetting, are therefore special challenges for literary studies as well as the thinking of the present. German description: In 'Also sprach Zarathustra' bezieht sich Nietzsche weit mehr als in anderen Schriften auf den Fundus der abendlandischen Uberlieferung und verdichtet mithin unser kulturelles Erbe in einer riesigen Synthese, die sich als eigentumlicher Spielraum von Zitaten, Parodien und Anklangen konfiguriert. Gerade die schillernde Singularitat dieser Synthese macht den Text zu einem bedeutenden Trager und Filter der Tradition und somit zu einem Modellfall, an dem sich literaturwissenschaftliche und philosophische Zugangsweisen, die sich mit der Frage nach dem kulturellen Gedachtnis und dessen Umwertungspraxis bei Nietzsche konfrontieren, erganzen und gegenseitig beleuchten konnen. Der Sammelband dokumentiert ein Spektrum moglicher Zugange zu Nietzsches Hauptwerk, zu seiner charakteristischen Dynamik der Neuschopfung und zu den spezifischen Formen, in denen sich die Verdichtung der Tradition im 'Zarathustra' artikuliert. Das Pathos Zarathustras, Nietzsches Parodie und der Kryptomnesie-Begriff, der die Umwertung der Tradition in den Horizont eines produktiven Vergessens stellt, werden dabei zu besonderen Herausforderungen der Literaturwissenschaft sowie des Denkens der Gegenwart. (shrink)