|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
his intelligence, frees himself from the limitations of what his enthusiasm has created.10 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
By rupturing the illusion by in a sense destroying his own creation the poet frees himself from being bound by the text he has created. As the text progresses, the possibilities narrow, as what has gone before determines what shall follow: the gesture of Romantic Irony reminds us that this is after all just the creation of a man like us, who can do what he likes with his material. The ultimate examples of this are novels like Diderot's Jacques le Fataliste, or Thomas Mann's Doktor Faustus, the example regularly taken as paradigmatic in modern discussions. As these examples suggest, while the original formulations of Romantic Irony were made in the specific context of German Romanticism, the problems the theory is attempting to address are general ones faced by all literature, and they are bound up with the notion of closure. To quote D. C. Muecke's formulation,11 'How can a work of art, which of its nature is something that can be finished and therefore something finite and static, express the infiniteness of life?' The answer of the Romantic Ironists was that 'the work of art should itself acknowledge its limitations and by doing so with irony it would take on the dynamic quality that life has and which art should therefore express'. This refusal of closure is not a negative act, but one which enables the reader to cope with seriousness and sublimity. Here are two more modern reformulations: |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The self-aware artist reveals his detached presence behind the work, calling attention to his creative role and thus to the fictional nature of the work; and thereby he undermines the credibility of the work as dramatic illusion (which at the same time undermines any illusion of godlike creativity). But by making the admission that his work is indeed fiction, by admitting art's representational limitations (and by admitting that he is indeed a 'buffoon' and not a god) the ironic artist creates the dramatic space for his art to unfold as a valid activity in its own terms. His 'mockery' of art reveals a combination of detachment and affirmation. A negative sets the stage for a 'positive'.12 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
More optimistically still: |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The authentic romantic ironist is as filled with enthusiasm as with skepticism. He is as much a romantic as an ironist. Having ironically acknowledged the fictiveness of his own patternings of human experience, he romantically engages in the creative process of life by eagerly constructing new forms, new myths. And these new fictions and self-concepts bear with them the seeds of their own destruction. They too die to give way to new patterns, in a never-ending process that becomes an analogy for life itself. The resultant artistic mode that alone can |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
10 Hughes (1979) 1423. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
11 Muecke (1969) 195. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
12 Seery (1990) 17980. |
|
|
|
|
|