Dear All,
Please find below the translation of some passages in German that are in the essay by Hirsch, provided by John. Thank you, John!
293 Footnote, Dilthey: “Thus these educational novels express the individualism of a culture which is restricted to the sphere of interest of private life. In the German middle and small states, the power of the state in officialdom and military affairs was opposed to the young generation of writers as a foreign force. They were enchanted and intoxicated by the discoveries of poets concerning the world of the individual and their self education.”
301 – Dilthey: These struggles are the apprenticeship years, teaching the individual about the realities that exist, and thereby preserving their true meaning. For the end of such apprenticeship years consists in the subject losing their antlers, entering with their desires and opinions into the existing conditions and their interconnection with the world and acquiring an appropriate standpoint in it.
Steinecke
304 – 1. The novel must open itself to reality in all its manifestations – political, social and societal realities – and reflect them faithfully. Therefore, it must also show the social shortcomings that make up a large part of contemporary reality.
304 – 2. But like any poetry, the novel must also idealize: it must make the ideas that sustain this reality visible, it must give a balanced, harmonious account, it must “reconcile”.
306 – Stifter: I have probably wanted to do something about the wickedness that in general … prevails in the state relations of the world, in its moral life and in poetry. I wanted to contrast a great simple moral force with miserable depravity.
