The Genius and t

Copyright:
Economic and Legal
Conditions of the Emergente
crf the 'Author'

Thc Comincrce of Letters: Thc Study of the EighteenthCcrrtury Book Trade, .by JOI-INFEATI-~LK
The Gcnius aild the Crzpy rigll t: E c o n ~ i i ~;incl
~ i c I,sgal Conditions
M ~ i i t -1.4
of thc 1,rricrgcncc of tlre "Aiithor,"
WOODMANSFE
"De f ~ ~ c tCopyright"'?
o
fieldirig's Works in Partnership,
1769-1 $21, bj* I[.iuc;~iAMORY
Sounding thc L-iterary Market in f-'rerevolutionarj France, hjv
RONCRTDARNTON
''Frondetrr'' Joi~rnalismin the 1770s: Thcatcr Criticism and
Radical Polit ics in the Prcrevolutionary French Prcss, by
N I N AR. GELBART

405

425

449
477

493

Book. eithcr nurnerous sheets of whitc paper that havc hceri stitched together in stich
a way ttiat they can be filled with wrlting;
or, a highly usefirl iind convenicnt, instrument cnnstructcd of printcd shccts variously boi~ridin ourdbortf, paper, vellutta,
Icather, etc. for presenting the truth tn anothcr in such a way ttiat it can be corivcniently rcad and recognized. Mariy people
work o11 this ware bcfcx-c it 1s complcte and
bccon~csan actual book in this scrise. Thc
scholar and the writer, the papermaker, the
typc founder, the typcsetter and the printer,
thc proofreadcr, tfie publisher, the book.
binder, sometimes even thc gilder and thc
brass-worker, etc. Ttlus iliany nlout hs are
fcd by this branch of manufitctiire.

Al1~:enzeinesOeconomis~hes
Lexicon (1751)'

En.. No-rri. Owing to tlie nurnber of essays, there are no book reviews in
tfiis special issuc, but reviews are a regular and csntinuing presence in
ECS and will return in the ncxt issile.

1 WISI'Ito express nly g t ~ t i t u d ct i ) the National tiumrinities C'enter ior rts gcnerous
support of the rcsearch for thts irticle, and to M H. Abriirns, Gerald Graff, kielmut
Kreuzer, and IJdu Strutytlski for their helpfui comments and si~ggestions.
'Georg tieirlrich Zinck, Alig~rrreirresO~conornischesI,~sicon,3rd ed. (Leiprig,
1753),col. 442. This and al1 subsequent trarisiations, unless indicated, are my own.

T1IE GENIUS AND THE COPYRIGHT

INCONTEMPORARY USAGE an author is an individual who is solely

responsible--nnd t herefore exclusively deserving of credit-for the
production of a ~iniquework. Although the validity of this concept
has been put in question by structuralists and poststructuralists who
regard it as no more thari a socially convenient fiction for the linguistic codes arid conventioiis tliat make a text possible, its g~nesis
has received relatively little attentiorr despite Michel Foucault's
observation that "it would be worth examining how the author becarne individualized in 1-i culture like ours, what status he has been
given, at what moment studies of authenticity and ctttributiun began,
in what kind of system of valorization the author was involved, at
what poirit we began to recount the lives of authors rather than of
heroes, and how this fundamental category of 'the-man-and-his-work
criticism' beganSw2
Foucault'c questiorts go to the heart ctf the problern that will concern me in this essay.
In rny view the "author" in its modern sense is a relatively recent
inventiori. Specifically, it is the product of the rise in t he eighteenth
century of I riew gruirp of itidividuals: writers who sought to earn
their livelifiood fro~rithe sale of tfieir writings to the new and rapidly
expanding reading public. Ir! Gerrriny this new group of iridividuals
hund itself without any of the safeguards for its labors that today
are cociified irt copyright laws. In response to this problern, and iri
an eflort to establish the economic viability of living by the pen,
ttiese writers set about redefining the nature of writing. Their reflections on this subject are what, by and large, gave the concept
of authorship its rnodern forrr~.~
In the Kenaissnce and in tlie heritage of the Renaissance ir1 the
first half of the eighteenth century the "author" was an unstable
rnarriage of two disiinct concepts. Ele was first and forernost a craftsman; that is, he was master of a body of rules, preserved and handed
down to hirn in rhetoric and poetics, for nianipulating traditional
materials in order to achieve the efTects prescribed by tfle cultivated
audience of the court to wliich he owed botfl his livelihood and
social status. tiowever, there were those rare mornents iii literature
l"What 1s an Author'!" iii Josu Harari, ed., Textual Sfratrgies: Prrsper,iives in
Post-Struc~ricralistCrlfiii~m(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell tiniv. Press, I Y79), p. 141.
ICf. Jacclues Derr~da'srefiections on the connection betweeri copyright and authorsfiip in "Lrmited Inc a b e . . . ," Glyph, 2 (l978), 162--251.

427

to which this concept did not seeni to do justice. When a writer

nianaged to rise above the requirements of the occasion to achieve
something higher, rnuch more than craftsmanship seemed to be
involved. To explain such moments a new concept was introduced:
the writer was said to be inspired---by some rnuse, or even by God.
These two conceptions of the writer--as craftsrnan and as inspired-would seem to be incompatible with each other; yet they coexisted,
often between the covers of a single treatise, until well nto the
eighteenth century.
it is notcworthy that in neither uf these conceptions is the writer
regarded as distinctly and personally responsible for his creation.
Whether as a craftsman or as inspired, the writer of the Renaissance
and neoclassical period is always a vehicle or instrument: regarded
as a craftsrnan, he is a skilled manipulator of predefined strategies
for achieving goals dictated by his audience; understood as inspired,
he is equally the subject of independent forces, fbr the inspired
mornents of his work--that which is novel and most excellent in
it--are not any rnore t he writer's sole daing than are its more routine
aspects, but are instead attributable to a higher, external agencyif not to a muse, theri to divine d i c t a t i ~ n . ~
Eighteentli-century theorists departed from this compound model
of writing in two significant ways. They minimized the ele.rnent of
craftsmanship (in some instantes they sirnply discarded it) in favor
of the elenicnt of inspiration, and they internalized the source of
that inspiration. That is, inspiration carne to be regarded as emanat ing riot frorn ou tside or above, but from within the writer himself.
"lnspiration" carne tu be explicated in terins of original genius,
with the consequence thnt the inspired work was made peculiarly
and distinctively the product--and the property-of the writer.'
'Of course riot every writer who invoked tke muses did so with the passion and
conviction, say, of Milton. The irnportant ttiing, in the present context, is that
writers continued to e~nploythe converition of scribing the creative energy of a
poern to ari external force right through the Renaissance and into the eighteenth
century.
T h i s is neatly doeurnented in Johann Georg Sulzer's entry for "Dichter" (Pwt)
in his four-volurr~edictionary of esthetic ternls, Allgerneitte Theorie der schiinen
Kriste, first issued irr 177 1- 74. After cititig with favor f Iorace's wil'lingness to
extend the honorific ternl "poet" onty to the writer "'ingenlum cui sit, cui mens
divinior atyut os magna sonatururn,' " Sulzer observes tliat on occasiun "poetry,
aiie custonrary lariguage of the poet, corrtains sornething so extraordinary and en-

428

EIGH'I'EENTH-CENTURY STUDIES

This sketch of the development of the concept of the writer since

the Renaissance (which, to be surc, 1 have oversimplified) may be
illustrated by two statements, one made by Alexander Pope
( 1 688-1 744) at the very beginning of this development and anothler
by Williani Wordsworth (1 770- - 1850) speaking from the other side
o' it. As tlic first major English poet to achieve wealth and status
without t he aid of patronage but cntirely from the sale of his writings, Pope still professes the Kenaissance view of tlie writer as
priinarily a craftsman whose task is to utilize the tools of his craft
for their culturally determined ends. In a familiar passage from his
Essal, on Criricism (1 7 1 1) Pope states that the function of the poet
is not to invent novelties, but to express afresh truths hallowed by
tradition:
True wit is nature to advantage dressed;
U'hat oft' was thought, but ne'er so well expressed;
So~nething,whose truth convinced at sight we find,
That gives us back the image of our mindV6(297-300)
However, Pope also incorporates in the E s s ~ ythe other seemingly
arlomalous view of the writer as subject to "happiness as well as
care," as capable, thal is, of achieving sornething that has never
been achieved befsre. This the poet can acco~nplishonly by violatirig
the rilles of his craft:
Sorriie beauties yet no preeept can declare,
For there's a happiness as well as care.
Music resembles poetry; in each
Are nameless graces which no methods teach,
And wfrich a master hand alone can reach.
Jlf, wliere the rules not far enough extend,
(Since rules were made but to proniotc their end)
Sorric lucky licensts answer to the fui1
Th'
iritent proposed, that Iicense is a rule.
,. .
1 hus Pegasus, a nearcr way to take,
May bolcily deviate frotn ahe cornrnon track.
Great wits sometimes rnay gloriously olTend,
thusiastic t l r ~ ti t was callcd tfte language of the gods-for which reason ii rnuist
hdve ri extr~ordiriarycause that uridoubtedly is tu be sought in the genius and
character o1 the poet" ([Frankfurt and Lsipzig, 17981, 1, 659).
""Ari Essay o11 Criticisnr," ir1 Iiazard Adams, ed., Cr~riralTheury since Plato
(New York. llarcourt Brace Jovanovich, 19711, p. Lb l .

THE CENlIUS AND THE COPYRIGHT

And rise to faults true critics dare not rnend;

Frorn vulgar bounds with brave disorder part,
And sntcli a grace beyond the reach of art.' (141-55)
Such moments of inspiration, in which the goet snatches a grace
beyvnci the reacli of the rules and poetic strategies that he cornmands as the mzistcr of a craft, are stilI the exception for Pope.
However, frorn the margins of theory, where they reside in the .t?ssr;ry
at the beginning of the century, these rnoments of inspiration irnove,
irn the course of time, to the center of reflection on the nature of
writing. And as they are increasingly credited to the writer's own
genius, they transform the writer irito a unique individual uniquely
responsible for a unique product. That is, from a (mere) vehicle of
preordained truths-truths as ordained eitlier by universal human
agreernent or by sotne higher agency--the writer becomes an uuthor
(Lat. auctor, origina tor, founder, creator).
It is as such a writer that Wordsworth perceives himself. Discussing the "unremittirig hostility" with which the Lyricnl Ballads
were received by the critics, Wordsworth observes that "if there be
one conclusion" that is "forcibly pressed upon us" by their tlisappointing reception, it is "that every Author, as far as he is great
and at the saiiie time original, has had the task of creating the taste
by which he is to be enjoyed"(ita1ics Word~worth's).~
lnasmuch as
his irnniediatc audienct: is inevitably attuned to the products of the
past, the great writer wlio produces something original is doomed
to be niisunderstood. Thus it is, according to Wordsworth, that "if
every great Poet . . . , in the highest exercise of his genius, before
he can be thoroughly enjoyed, has to cal1 forth and to commuriicate
power," that is, empower his readers to understand his new work,
"this service, in a still greater degree, falls upon an original Writer,
at Iiis first appearance in the world."
Of geiiius the only proof is, the act of doirig well wht is worthy to be
done, and what was riever done before: Of genius in the fine arts, the only
irifallible sigri is the widening the sphere of human sensibility, for the
deligfit, honor, and benefit of tiuman nature. Genius is the introduction of'
or, if that be riot allowed, it
a new element into the intellectutzl univ~~sc:
'lbid., pp. 279-80.
"Tssay, Supplementry to the Preface," in Paul M. Sali, ed., Literary Criricsm
of CF/i/liiirri W r d worth
~
(Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 19661, p. 182.

'TWE GENIUS AND 'THE COPYRIGHT

is the application of powers to objects on which they had not before been
exereised, or the employmcnt of them in such a manner as to produce
effects hjtherto ur~known.~

E;or Wordsworth, writirig in 18 15, the genius is sorneone who does

sornething utterly new, unprecedented, or in the radical forrnulation
that he piefers, produces something that ncver existed besore.
The conception of writing to which Wordsworth gives expression
had been durnbrated a half century earlier 3n an ecsay by Edward
Young, C,Tor?jecturrs
on eigincal Composirion. Young preached originality in place of the reigniiig eniphasis on the mastery o l rules
csxtrapolated from classical literature, and he located the source of
this essential quality in the poet's own genius. His essay attracted
relatively little attriition in Eiigland; but in Germany, where it appeared in two separate translations within two years of" its publication in 1759, it had a profound impact. Gernan theorists from
Herder and Goethe to Kant and Fichte elaborated the ideas sketched
out by Young and shifted them from the periphery to the very center
of tlre ttreory of the arts.
One of the reasons for this development, 1 would suggest, is that
Young's ideas answered the pressing need of writers in Germany to
establish ownership of the producti of their labor so as to justify
legal recognition of that ownership in the form of a copyright law.1
Thc relevante of his ideas to this enterprise had already been suggested by Young hirnself w1ie11he enjoined the writer to
Let riot great exairrples, or authorities, browbeat thy reason irito too great
a dilfidencc: of thyself: thyself so reverente, as to prefer the iiative growth:
of thy own mind tu the richest irnport from abroad; such borrowed riches
make us poor. The rr1iir-i who thus reverencss hirriself, will soon fin$ the
world's revzrence lo follow his own. His works will stand distinguished;
kiis the sole property of them; w h ~ property
h
alorne can confherthe noble
title ef ari autiior; that is, of one who (ts speak accurately) thinks and
eurnposes; wljilc: other invders of the press, how voluminous and iearned
soever, (with due respect be it spcken) only read and write."
"bid., p. 184.
ioOttieriiriportant reasons for German thinkers' peculiar receptiveness to Yourig's
ideas are dlscussed iri M. H. Abrarnis, The M i r r o ~urzd the Lamp j0xford: Oxford
Uriiv, Press, 19531, pp. 281 E.
i IEdward lioung, Conjrclures un Original Cornposition in a Letter to the Author
of Sir C'hurlcs Crundi~on,iri Edmund D. Jones, ed., English Criricirl Essays.
Sixtuersth, LTever~ret.nthand Eight'eenth ~"enrurles(London: BxfUrd Univ. Press,
1975), p. 289.

43 1

Here, amid the organic analogues for genial creativity that have
made this essay a rnonurnent in the history of criticisrn, Young raises
issues of property: he makes a writer's ownership of his work the
necessary, and even sufficient condition for earning the honorific
title of "author," and he makes such ownership contingent upon a
work's originality.

The professional writer emerged considerably later in Germany

t h a n in England and Friincc. Pope had long since written bis way

to fame and fortune in England by the time that writers were even
beginning to attempt ro live from the sale OS their writings in Gerrnany." T'ir -: generation of Lessing (1 729-8 1) was the first to try to
do this, but it had little success. After ten years of struggle Lessing
writes his brother in 1768:
?ake my brotherly advice and give up your plil~tto Iive by the pen. . . .
See that you beeorne a secrerary or get on the fculty sornewhere. It's the
only way to avoid starving sooner or later. For me t's too late to take
another pat1.i. In so advising, I'rn not suggesting that you should conipletely
give up everything to which inclinatian arid geriius drive you.I3

From the point of view of tlie development of a profession of letters,

what Lessing recomrnends is a step backward to writing as a parttime occupation, an activity pursued by the writer as an official of
the court to the degree allowed by the social and ideological as well
as contractual obligations of his office.I4 In 1770 Lessing hirnself
would be forced to take such a step and to accept a position as court
I20nthe errrergence of the writer/author in Gerrnny, see liians Jurgen Waferkorn
(upon whose spadewurk all of thw i i A S i rc r.ec;ent treatrnents draw heavily ), "Der freie
Schriftsteller," Archiv jiir C e ~ c h i ~ . hdes
r r BucItwt~sens,5 ( 1 9641, cols. 523--7 12;
and Heinrich Busse, AutorscIzc~j'tiisr Werkherrschcfi (Pderborn: Ferdinand Sclhoningh, 198 1). 1 have profited froiil ehese works es~~ecially
bccause they explore both
ths chnging situtiorr uf the writer and changirig ways of' concepturrlizirig writing.
See also the essays edited by tielmut K r e u ~ e rin the vulur~iethat LiLi. Zeirschrgt
jiir Literaturwis~enschaftutzd Linguistik devoted to authorship in 198 1 (Vol. 1 1 ,
No. 42). For a brief Eriglish tretrnent of thr: evolution of a profession of letters
ir1 Gerrnany, see W. H. Bruford, Crrmany in tfie E'ighteerrth Cenrury (Canibridgt.:
Carnbridgi: Univ. Press, 1935), pp. 27 1-327.
ljGoithold Ephraim Lessing, Cesamrnefte I;f+rk&,ed. Paui Rilla (Berlin: Aufbau,
?196X), IX, 277.
lJHelrnuth Kiesel and Paul Mnch, Gesellscfiaft zrnd Literatur irn 18. Jahrhunderl (Munich: C . H . Beck, 1977), p. 79.

433

EIGt4TEENTH-CENTURY STUDIES

THE GENIUS AND THE COPYRIGI-IT

librarian in Wolfenbttel. The other two giants of the period, Friedrich Gottlob Klopstock (1 724-1 803) and Christoph Martin Wieland
(1733--18 13), met with similar fates.
Despite the rapid expansion of the inarket for books which began
in the 1770s. the prospects of the next generation of writers did not
improvr substantially, as the biographies of writers like Brger,
Moritz, and Schiller attest. I-laving made a reputation for himself
with Tlrr Robbers, which he had published at Iiis own expense in
1781, the twenty-two-year-old Schiller resolved to break his connections with the Duke of Wrttemberg and try his luck as a professional writer. fle would later describe the decision as precipitate,
but at ihe time Schiller appears tu have had little idea of the manifold vicissitudes of casting one's lot with the new reading public.
"The public is now everything to me," lie writes,

[Geist]" for wliich he had so long yearned, "to be and to achieve

what 1 can be and achieve by virtue of the powers that have been
meted out to mew-sornething that his "former circumstances made
utterly impossible." And reflrcting back upon his struggles, he concludes that it is

432

rny school, my sovereign, my trusted friend. 1 now belong to it alone. I

sliall place niyself before this and no other triburial. It alone do I fear and
respect. Sumething grand comes over me at the prospect of wearing no
other Setters than thc decision oS thc world--af appealiny tti no othcr
tlirurre than the human spirit.I5

These high expectations are expressed in the "Announcement" of

Die rheii~ischeTholir, a periodical conceived by Schiller in 1784
when he failed io make it as house poet to the Mannheirn National
Theater. The periodical was just the first of a series of such editorial
projects tliat tfie poet took on in an efort to earn his living as a
writer. Despite his productivity, however, Schiller just barely succeeded i n making erids meet; and when his health broke down from
overwork in 1791, he followed in Lessiiig's faotsteps and accepted
a pension from his Danish admirer, Prince Friedrich Christian von
Schleswig-llolstein-Sonderburg-Augusienburg.
(It is in t he form of
letters addressed to this benefactor that 0t1 the A~stheticEliucafion
of Mon was first conceived in 1793-94.) Schiller embraced the
patronage of the prinee with much the same enthusiasm that he
had displayed in coiniiieriding himself to the public less than a
decadt: before. In a Ietter to Baggesen, who had been instrumental
in securing the pension, he welcornes it as the "freeclsrri of mind
i'lr'riedrich Scliiller, Siimtlictrr Werke, ed. Cerhard Fricke and Herbert G . Gpfert (Munich: Hanser, 1959), V, 856.

impossible in the Gerrnan world of letters to satisfy the strict demands of

art and simultarieously procure the minimum af support for one's industry.
1 have been strugglii,g lo reconcile tlie two for ten years, but to rnake it
even in some rneasure pussible has cost me my health.lb
What made it so difficult to iive by the pen in eighteenth-century
Germany? As this brief account of writers' struggles suggests, Germany found itself in a transitional phase between the limited patronage of an aristocratic society and the democratic patronage of
the rnarketplace. With the rise of the middle classes, deniand Sor
reading material increased steadily, enticing writers to try to earn
a 1ivelihoc;ild from the sale uf their writings to a buying public* But
most were doorned to be disappointed, Sor the requisite legal, economic, and political arrangements and institutions were not yet in
place to support the large number of writers who carne forward.17
What thry encountered were the remnants of an earlier social order.
They expected, as professional writers, to trade in ideas in a country
tlrat did not yet have a flilly developed concept of intellectual p r o p
erty.18
IbSchiller to Raggesen, 16 December 1791, in Friedrich Schiller, Elriefe, ed.
Gerhard Fricke fh'funich: Carl Hanser, 1955), p. 266.
"ln a conteniporry catalogue of Gerrnan writers, Dus gelehrre Teutschlund
odpr Lexikon der jetzt Iebcrnden tcrzrtschen Schri~rstt'llrr,Johann Georg Meusel
placed the number of writers iit 1800 r around 10,650, up dramaticaily from some
3,000 irr 177 1 , 5200 iri 1784 and 7,C)00ir1 1791 (as yuoted in Kfesel and MUnch,
Gesr.llsc.hafi lind Lituratur, p. 90). See also Albert Ward (Book Produrtion, Ficiiun, and rhe Cerrnan Keading Publrc, 1740- 1800 [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 19743,
p. 88), who (Seduces from Mcusel's figures that in 1799 there would have: tveen one
writer to every 4,000 of the Gernian population.
IXFrthe many other obstacles encountered by would-be writers in eigliteenthcentury Germany, sez, in additiori to the worhs by Bruford, Haferkorn, hind Klssel
and Mnch (citcd above). \l.tifgang von Ungern-Sternberg, "Schrifitsteller und
literarischer Markt," in Rolf Grimminger, ed., Deutschu Au~Xlarungbis zur Franzi'ii.scl'wrrRevolution, 1680--1789 (Munich: DTV, 1Y 80), pp. 133 -85; and Mart ha
Woodmansee, "The Interests tn Disinterestedness: Karl Philipp Moritz and the
Eniergence of the Theory of Aestfietic Autonomy in Eighteenth Century Gerniany," ~ModernLangltage Quurterly l ? (Spririg 1984).

435

EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY S'TUDIES

THE GENIUS AND THE COPYRIGHT

The notion that property can be ideal as well as real, that under
certain circunistances a persori's ideas are no less his property than
his hogs and horses, is of course a rnodern one. In the country in
which Martin Luther had preached that knowiedge is Cod-given
and had therefore to be given frcely, however, this notion was especially slow to take h01d.'~At the outset of the eighteenth century
it was not generally thaught that the author of a poem or any other
piece of writing possessed rights with regclrd to these products of
his intellectual labor. Writing was considered a mere vehicle uf
received ideas which were already in the public doniain, and, as
such a vehicle, it too, by extension or by analogy, was considered
part of the public domain. In short, the relationship between the
writer and his work reflected the Renaissance view described above.
This view found expressiorr in the institutions of the honorarium,
the form in which writers were remunerated, and the privilege, the
only legal arrangen~entwhich served to regulate the book trade
until the last decade of the century when, one by one, the Cerman
stiiites began to enact copyright laws.
By tht: middle of the seventeenth century it had become customary for publishers to offer honoraria to thc writers whose works they
agreed to print. It would be a mistake, Itiowever, to conclude that
modest sums of morrey pid out in this way represented diresk compensation for those works. To the contrary, as the definition given
by Zedler's Utziversul-Lexikon iri 1735 shows, t i i ~konorariuin was
simply a token of esteem:

an acknowledgment of the writer's achievernents-the sum of which

began, witti iinie, to vary in proportion to the magnitude of those
achievernents. As such the honorarium resembled the gi fts made
to poets by aristocratic patrons. Indeed, as Coethe observes in the
twelf'th book of Dirhtung und IYnhrheit, the reiationship between
writers and publishers in the lirst half of the eighteenth century still
bore a striking resemblance to that which had existed between the
poet and his patron. At that time, Goethe writes:

434

Honorarium, means ackrlowledgment or reward, recognition, favor, stipend; it is not in propsrtion to or equivalent to the servces perforrned;
diKers from pay or wges, which are specifically determined by ~~,~tr.stcting
parties and which express a relatic~nshipof equivalente between work and
payment-20

The honorariun~a writer might expect to receive for his work bore
no relationship to the excharlge value af that work but was rather
IYLuther's farrious statemcnt, "Ich habs umsorist empfangen, urnsonst hab ichs
gegeben urld begetrire auch nichts dafr," occurs in his "Warning to P:rintcrsn
[Mahnung an di61 I)ruckur] in the t'ostllle (1525). On Luther's evident lack uf
any coricept of rntelleciual propertj and his positiorl ori book piracy, see l,udwig
Cieseke, Dir geschichtlichc* Erafrrticklungdes dvrrtsclien Urhebrrrechts (Cottirigeri:
Verlag Otto Schwartz, 19571, pp. 38-40.
ZoJohannHerririch Zedier, Crossrs vollstandiges Universal-Lexikon (Leipzig and
Halle, 173 S ) .

the book trade was chiefiy concerned with important scientific worlks, stock
works which commanded rnodest honoraria. Tfie production of poetical
works, however, was regarded as sornething sacred, and it was considered

close to sirnony to accept or bargain for an honorarium. Authors and

publishers enjoyed a rnost amazing reciprocity. They appeared, as it were,
as patron and client. The authors, who in addition to their talent were
usu~illyconsidered by the public to be highly mural people and were
honored accordingly, possessed intellectual status and felt themselves rewarded by the joy of their work. The book delers contented themselves
with the second rank ar~denjoyed a considerable advantage: afflluence
placed the rich book dealer above tke poor poet, so everything remalned
in the rnost beau tiful equilibriuni, Reciprocal niagnanirnity and gratit ude
were i ~ u lu~ieornrrron:Breitkopf rind Gottsched rmained intiinate friends
throughoui their iives. Stinginess and meanness, particularly on the part
of the literary pirates, were not yet in full s w i ~ ~ g . ~ ~
The "beaut iful equilibrium" described by Goethe coltapsed, however, as the rnarket for li~eratureexparided suficiently to induce
writers to try to make an occupation of it. They began to compare
"their own very n~odest,if not downright meager condition with the
wealth of the fAuent book dealers," Goethe continues,
they considered how great was the fame of a Cellert or a Rabentor, and
wit h w hat domestic straits a universally loved German writer must content
hirriself if he does not Iighten his burden through some ather ernploynierit.
Even the average arrd the lesser luri~inariesfelt an intense desire to better
their circurnstances, to make thernselves independerrt of the publi~hero;.~'
Eventually writers wouf d dernand Auctua ting honoraria based on
sales (i.e., royalties); in the eighteenth century, however, a flat sunl
2'Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, IrVerku. llarnburg edition in 14 vols. (Wamburg:
Christiar~Wegner, 1955), X, 5 17.
L2fbid.,pp. 517-18.

EIGHTEENTM-CENTURY STUDIES

THE GENIUS AND THE COPYRIGHT

remained customary, upon receipt of which the writer forfeited his

rights to any proits his work might bring. His work becarne the
property of the publisher, who would realize as much profit from
it as he could. It is the injustices to which this arrangement could
lead that Goethe alludes to above, injustices which made it diffcult
to keep up the pretense that writers were content not to be paid for
their work.
Christian Frchtegott Cellert (1715-69) was one OS the most
widely read writers of the period. Yet he rcieived only 20 Taler 16
Croschen for his popular Fables; and while he lived out his final
years in only rnodest comfort, thanks prirnarily to his patrons and
the good will of tlie Dresden court, his publisher Wendler became
a wealtliy rnan. Ln 1786 the remaindered copies alone of Cellert's
works Setched Wendler 10,000
Some mcasure oS this imbalance must be attributed to Gellert's unwillingness to accept money for his writing. Like other writers OS his generation, he viewed
writing in the terms Coetlie describes above. "At first, on account
of the public, 1 didn't want to t;iiir: anything from the publisher for
the Geistliche O d ~ nund Lieder," Gellert wrote his sister tsward
the end of his life; "however, as rny pension has now stopped, and
as my kin are dearer to me than the public, I asked 125 Taleir and
received 150."" Gellert was rcluctant, even asharned, to take rnoney
for his poetry becausc he did not conceive of writing as an occupation. Writers of the next generation no longer shared Cellert's
attitudes, as we have seen. Indeed, Lessing takes direct issue with
them in "Live and Let Live," a proposal for reorganizing the book
trade that he drafted in 1772:

Luther, 1 answer, is an exception in mny things. Furtherrnore, it is for

the most part not true that the writer received for nothing what. he daes
not want to give away for nothing. Often an entire fortune may have been
spent preparing to teach and please the world.l5

436

What? Tlie writer is to be blamed for trying to make the offspring of his
irnagination as profitabie as he can'?Just because he works with his xroblest
faculties he isn't supposed to enjoy the satisfaction tliat the roughest handyrnan is able to procure-that of owing his livelihood to his own industry?

437

Lessing, who views writing as an occupation, asserts his professional

identity in econornic terms, raising the issue OS fair compensation
for his work. Although his position was echoed by other writers
intent upon living by the pen, the older conception of writing as a
"priceless" part-tirne activity lived on in the institution of the honorarium.
I t 1 have given the impression so far of casting publisheirs in the
role of villciins iri the economic exploitation OS the writer, 1et me
hasten to correct it. Although they were faring rnuch better than
writers, publishers by this time were experiencing their own tribulations in the form of unauthorized reprints. The practice of repririting books without the permission of their original publishersa practice which would eventually be irnpugned as "piracy"-had
existed since the late fifteenth century. Zn the eighteenth century,
however, as reading became more colnrnon and the book trade becarne a profitable business, it grew to epidemic proportions, for the
Ucvelopment of legal institutions had not kept pace with the drarnatic growth of the trade. The only legal institution available to
publishers in eighteenth-century Cermany was the privilege. An
invention of the territorial princes to protect branches of trade they
deerned essential to their court economies, privileges had first been
extended to printers in the sixteenth century to enable them to
realize a profit on their investment in the production of a book before
that book cuuld be reprinted. Thus, the book privilege had as its
intent not the recognition of the rights of authors, but the protection
of printers. In tliis it resernbled the English copyright act which
was passed by Parli~nientin 1709 on the petition of the book~ellers.'~

s . .

But wisdorn, they %ay,for sale for cash! Sharneful! Freely hast thou

2SGotthold Ephraini Lessing, Werke, ed. Werbert G. Gopfert (Munich: Carl

received, freely thou must give! T h u s thought the noble Lutfier in trans-

Hanser, 19731, V, 7 8 1 'rhix proposal was never cornpleted and was not publishzd
until a f t a Lessiiig's death, in 1800.
W n the history uf Anglo-Aniericarr copyright, see Lynlan Ray Patterson, Copyright itr Hlstoricul Perspectir~e(Nashville, Tenri.: V,incierbilt Univ. Press, 1958),
esp. pp. 1 4 3 5 0 . A briefer ccount rrwy he found iri Marjurie Plnt, The Engli.rh

iating the Bible.

:'Kiesel and Mnch, Gesellschaft uud Literatur, pp. 147-48.
IJAs quoted by Carsten Schlingrnann, Gellvrt Erre lterur-historis;ihe Revision
(Bad Homburg: Cehlen, 1957), p.36.

Book n a d e : -4nEcvnomic 1listor.y of rhe hlaking crnd Sale of Books (Londur~:

George AIIen and Unwin, 1939), pp. 98--121, 420-44. Far a fuller treatrnenr of
the privilege and of copyriglit law in Ger~i~any,
see Ludwig Gieseke, De gr-

44 1

EICHTEENTH-CENTURY STUDIES

THE CENIUS AND Tk-IE COPYRIGHT

Legitimate publishers' resentment of the book pirates and authors' resentment of both triggered an interise debate in which al1
rnanner of questions concerning the "Book" were disputed. And here
we find an interesting interplay between legal, economic, and social
questions on the one hand and pkilosophical and esthetic ones on
the other. The problern of how these two Ievels of discourse-the
legal-economic a11d the esthetic--interact is one that historians of
criticisrn have barely explored. This is unfortunate because it is
precisely in the interplay of the two levels that critica1 concepts and
principies as fundamental as that of authorship achieved their modern forrn.
It would be hard to find a more patent example of such interplay
than the debate over the book that spanned the two decades between
1773 and 1794. l n addition tu publishers and legal experts, many
of the best known poets and philosophers of the period contributed.12
The debate generated so much comrnentary that it produced an
instantaneous hrsch~tng~~bericht
or survey: Ernst Martin Grgff's
Toward a Clari$cation of' the Property and f i o p e r ~Rights oJ
Wrirers und Publishrrs and o/ Thrir Mutual Rights and Obligations. Wirh Four Appendices. Including a Critical lnventory of Al1
Separale Yublicasivns and of Essrrys in Periodical and Other Works
in Germun Whirh Concern Mutters of the Book As Such rend Especiullj~R e p r i ~ ~ ~ i rThe
ig.~
treatise
~
makes good on this promise by
reviewing no less than twenty-five of the separate publications and
thirty-fivr of the essays written over the twenty-year period leading
up to its appearance in 1794.
The debate was precipitated by the announcement in 1772 of tlie
Deutsche Gelehrienrc~publik[German Republic of Letters]. In this
annouricement the poet Friedrich Gottlob KLopstock unveiled a scheme
to enable writers to circumvent publishers altogether and bring their
works directly to the public by subscription. His aim, he wrote, was

to ascertain whether it might be possible in this way for scholars to become

the owners [Eigenthimrr] of their writings. For at present, they are so
orily in uppramrirr; book dealers are the reul proprietors, becausc scholars
mrtst turri their writirtgs civer to tkiem if they want to have thcse writings
printed. This occltsion will show wliether or lrot one niight hope that the
public, nrid tlie scliolars among themsolvcs, will be iristrurnenral in helping
scholars actrieve actual possession of tl~eirprtlperty [Eigenthunzsl (itlics
Klop~tock's).'~

440

3ZAmot~g
the publisfiers and legal experts who contributed were Phillip Erasrnus
Reich, Jonehirn I-ieinric1.iCarnpe, Johann Stephan Piitter, arid Jotiann Jaicoh Cella;
t h e contribuiing poets arid philosophers inciuded Zacfiiirii-ts Becker, Gottfried August Brger, Kant, Feder, EhIers, and Fichte.
'jPkrsuch rlrrrr einleuchtenden Darsrellung des Eigentkrrirns und der Eigenrhttwrsre~*ltte
des Sc'hrtjtstellers und Erlegers uunJ ihrer gegrnsririgen Kechre und
C2rbindll~*hkrrren.
Mit vier Beyirrgcn. Nebsr einrm krltist'ltrn Errerchnissr allrr
deuischrrt besondererz Schrqtrri und ir!yeriudischen irnd c~ndernWerkerl stei.lertdrrl
Aufsiirz~iibrr das Bcherwesen beriluupt urrd cien B~*herrraclz6-lruck
insbesirndere (Leipsig, 17514), 382 pp.

This experiment in collective patronage did not have the direct

impact on tlre structure of the book tracls: that Klopstock had hoped
it might. Subscription was simply too demanding of the time and
resources of writers for many other writers to follow his exrnple.
And readers had already become accustonled to purchasing their
reading matter frorn the booksellers. This rrangement liad he advaiitage of enabling thein to browse before buying and to await the
reaction of other rcaders and the review:. Furthermore, publishers'
names had become an index of quality, a rneans of orientation for
the reader in the sea ot' published r i ~ a t t e r .In
~ ~short, cooperation
with the growing distribution apparatus had by this time becorne
virtually unavoidable. It was only on the rnorale of writers, thzrefore,
that Klopstock's experiment had a direct irnpact. But here his service w~tsconsiderable, for Klopstock was the most revered poet of
the periocl. Just by speaking out as he did he helped to create ainong
writers ttie autliurity requisite to advancing their interests with the
publishers. Thus, the Crilehr~enrepublimust be regarded as an
intportant rnilestone in ihe development of the concept of authorship--d.) Goethe seems to suggest in the ienth book of Uichtung
tlnd CYuhrheit when he remarks thzit in the person of Klopstock the
time liad arrived "for poetic genius to become self-conscious, create
for itself its own conditions, and understand how to lay the fuundation of an independent dig~tity."-'~
If Klopstocks's afirniatioii 01' the rights of authors seerns selfevident to us today, that is because it eventually prevailed. It was
anything but srlf-evident to tlie author of tbe entry "Book" in the
AIigetnrines 0etonornisc.hes Lexicorl of 1753, which stands as rhe
jJAs yuoted by Helniut Pape, "Klopstocks Autorenhonorare und Selbs?verlagsgewirine," Ari,hiv fur Ge~c-hichrrde$ Nuc hhesens, 10 (19693, cols. 103 f.
3'Kiesel arld Miirtch, Ge~ell~c,hrdt
und Literatur, p. 152.
'tlGostlle, Ct.t.rke, tX, 398.

E1GHTEENTf-I-CENTUKY STUDIES

TtIE C E N I U S AND THE COPYRIGHT

motto of this essay. There, where the book is still perceived as a

"convenient instrument for conveying the truth," none of the many
craftsmen involved in its production is privileged. Listed in the order
of their appcarance in the production, "the scholar and the writer,
the priper maker, the type founder, the typesetter and the printer,
the proofreader, the publisher, the book binder, . . . " are al1 presented as deserving equal credit Sor the finished product and as
having an equl claim tu the profits it brings: "Thus many mouths
are fed by this branch of manufacture." This definition of the bouk,
which now reads like the taxonomy o" anlrirals in the Chinesc encyclopcdia "cited" by Borges, suggests how differently the debate
launched by Kloystock might have turned out (indeed, how reasonablv some other resolution of it would have t ~ e e n ) It
. ~ makes
~
tangible just how much had to change before consensus could build
around his blci assertion of the priority of the writer as peculiarly
responsible-and
therefore uniquely deserving of credit-for the
finished product, "Book," which he helped to make, The nature of
writing would 11;zve tu bc complctely rethought, Arrd that, as 1 swggested at the outset OS the discussion, is exactly what eighteenthcentury t heorists did.
The debate in which a good deal of this reflection was carried
on focused on the question of whether or not the unauthorized
repruduction of books [Biichernnchdruck] should be prohibited by
law. As incomprehensibls as it may seern to us today, the weight of
opiniori was for a long time with the book pirates. For the reading
public as a whole considered itself well served by a practice which
not only niade inexpensive reprints available but could also be plausibly credited with holding down the price of books in general through
the coinpetition i t created. And given the taste of a rnajority of the
pu blic for light entertiir; .iient, it could hardly be expected ti3 have
been swayhsd by Perthe's objection that piracy was su cutting into

the profits of legitimate publishers that they could no longer afTord

to take risks on serious literature.
A variety of defeiises was offered for book piracy, but the most
pertinent to the genesis of the modern concept of authorship are
those which sought to rationalize the practice philosophically. Ellere,
as illustration, are two such defenses. The first is by a zealotis nrercantilist who seeks to advaxlce his interests by emphasizing a book's
physical foundation:

442

j71n this encyclopedia (Celesti~zlEnlporium oj-Berievolrnt Knowledge), Borges

writes, '"dnit.trcils,tre divided iritct a) those that belorig tu the Emperor, b) ernbalrnc-d
ories, c) tt~osethdi are trained, d) sucklirig pigs, e) merrnaids, f ) f;rbulous orics, g)
stray dops, h) those that are il~cludedin this classification, i) those that tremble
as it" they wtre ~ n a dJ,) irinu~nerableones, k) hose drwrr uitji a very firic canselYs
hir bri~sh,1) ottters, 111) ihose that hve just broken a tlower vase, n) those ihat
reserrible flies frum a distante" (Jorge Luis Borges, "'The Analytical 1,nguage of
John Will\iris," Other lrryl~isitions,1937-1952 [New York: Sirnon and Schuster,
19641, p 103).

443

The book is nut an ideal objeet, . . . it is a fabricatisn nade of paper upon

which thought syrnbols are printed. l t does not contain thoughts; these
rnust arise in thr: niind o' the comprehending reader. lt is a conlmodity
produced for hard cash. Every government has the duty to restrict, where
possible, the oiltflow of' its wealth, hence to encourage dornestic reproduction of foreigri art objects and not to hinder the industry of its own
citizens to the eririchment of foreign ~nanufacturers.~~
This writer's conclusion would be hard to deny were we to accept
his premises. If a book ~ o u l dbe redwced to its physical foundation,
its he suggests, then crf course i t vvould be impossible fijr i t s author
to lay claim to peculiar ownership of it, for it is precisely the book
qua physical objeci that he turns over to the publisher wlzen he
delivers his rnantiscript and that, in another format, is eventually
purchased by his readers.
'To ground the author's claim to ownership of his work, then, i t
would first be necessary to sliow that tkiis work transcends its phgsical ilundation. It would be necessary to show that it is an emanation
of fiis intcllect-an intentionnl, as opposed to a merely physical
obgect. Once this has been acknowledged, however, it will still rernclin to be shown how such an object can constitute property-as
the following statement by Ghristian Sigrnund Krause demcsristrates:
"But the ideas, the content! that which actually constitutes a book! which
only tlie author can se11 ur cornmuriicate!"--Once expressed, it is impossible for it to reniiii the author's property. . . . It is preoiselg for the purpsse
of using the ideas that most people huy books---pepper dealers, fishwiveb,
and the like, and literary pirates excepted. . . . Over and over agann it
coriies back to the sarrie questiori: f can read the contento; of a book, learn,
abridge, expand, teach, and trarislate it, write about it, laugh over it, find
fault with it, deride it, use it poorly or well--in short, do with it whutetler
3 % ~

quoted by Bosse, Autorsch~ft,p. 13.

444

EIGHTEENTII-CENTURY STUDIES

1 will. But the one thing 1 should be proliibited from doing is copying or
repririting it? . . . A published book is a secret divulged. With what justification would a preacher forbid the printing of his homilies, since he
cannot prevent any of his listeners froin transcribing his sernrons? Would
it not be just as ludicrous Sor a professor to dernand that his students
refrairr Srom using sorne new proposition he hud tritight them as Sor him
to dernand the same of bouk dealers with regard to a new book? No, no,
it is too obvious that the concept of intellectual psoperty is useless. My
pruperty must be exclusively mine; 1 must be able to ciispose of it and
retrieve i t unconditioin~illy.1-et sunzeone explain tu ixie how that is possible
iri the present case. Just let someone try taking back the ideas he has
originated once they h;ive been communicated so tliat they are, as before,
nowhere to be fouricl. Al1 the nzoney in the world could not rnake that
possible. '"

Krause acknowledges that a book is a vehicle of ideas; however, this

does not advzirice the interests of the author a n iota; for, as Krause
points out, it is precisely for the sake of appropriating tliese ideas
that readers purchase a book in the first place.
Krause's challerige to explain to hiin how ideas, once communicated, could reniain t h e property of their originator is taken u p by
Fichtc in the essay "Proof of ihe Illegality of Reprinting: A Rationale and a Parable" (1 793). f i c h t e rneets the challenge by showing that a book, in addition to bcing a n emanatiun of the writer's
intellzct, is also a verbal eiriboclin~entor irnpririr d1 ih3t intellect.
l-le proceeds by distinguishing between the physical and ideal aspects of a book-tliai
is, between the printed paper a n d content.
Repeating the operation, he then divides the ideal aspects of the
book lnto
the niurrrial aspect, the content of the book, the ideas it presents; and
. . . the j b r r ~of~ these ideas, tlie way iri which, the combirtation in which,
tlie plirasny alid wording in whicli they are presented. (italics Fichte'sJ-'O
Then, on the presupposition that we are "the rightful owners of a
thing, the appropriatioii of wliich by another i~ physically irnpos~ i t > l e , " ~Fichte
l
goes n to distinguish three distinct shares of property in the book: Wlien the book is sold ownership of the physicczl
'Ofrause, "ber den Bctiernachdruck," Detrtsrhrs Itfuserrrrt, 1 (January-June,
i 7839, 4 1 5-1?.
"'Fichte, "Pr-oof of the lllegiility of Reprinting," p. 225.
Jilbid., p 225.

objeet passes to the buyer to d o with as he pleases. T h e material

aspect, the content of the book, the thoughts it presents also pass
t the buyrr. To the extent that he is able, ttiiaugh intelle'tual
effort, to appropriate them, these ideas cease to be the exclusive
property of the author, becoming insted ttie common property of
both author and reader. T h e fortn in it,frich these ideas a r e presetited,
however, rerrrains the property of the aiithor eternally, far
each iridiviciual has his own thought processes, his owri way of forming
cuncepts and conrlecting theni. . . . All that we think we must think accordirig to the arialogy of our other habits of thought; and solely tlrrough
reworking new thouglits after the analugy of our 11;i bitual thought processes
do we make thenl our owri. Without this they re~riainsornething foreigri
in our niirids, which connects with nothing and afyects nothing. . . . Now,
since pure icfeas wittiout sensible iinages citnriot be thought, rn~ctrless are
they capable o" rep~esentationto others. Hence, each writer nlust give his
thuughts a certain Sorm, iind lie can give thenr no otlrer form than his own
because he has no other. But neither can he be willing tu hand over this
forrri iri niaking his tlioughts public, for no une can appropriute his thoughts
without thereby altering their fbrrn. This latter ttrus remains forever his
exclusive property. (italics mine)J2

In his central concept of the "form" taken by a thought---that which

it is impossible tor another person tu appropriate--Fichte solves the
pi~ilosoylniualp u ~ z l e sto whiclr the defenders of' piracy liad recurred,
a ~ i destablishes the grounds upon which t h e writer could iay clairn
tu ownership of his work--could lay claim, that is, to authorship.
T h e copyright Iws [l'rhebrrrechr] enacted in the succeeding decades turn upon Fichte's key concept, recognizirig the legitiniacy
of this claim by vesting exclusive rights to a work in t h e author
i n s o f u a s he is n C'rlheber (arigindor, creatorb-that is, in:jofar as
his work is riew or original [eigenttzlich], an intellectual creation
which owes its iridividuality solely nd exclusively to h i m ~ . ~Tjh e
j'Ibid., pp. 227- 28.
4iAlois?roller, "Originalitiit und Neuheit der Werke der Literatur urld Kunbt
und ~ C Ceschrtl<icks1~1ust1:r,''
I
ir1 T-rltz liodeige, eci , Da:, Rrchr iJnl Cvr~trsgut
Stuilien zunr Lrrht~bt~r. C'rrlags- und Pressrrecht (Freiburg i B . : Rornbdch, 1 3h4),
pp. 260-70. The firr*~irriport~ntlegisldtion occurretl ir1 Prussia in 1794. Baden,
however (accordirig to Rosse, Autors~-huJli,
p. 91, WLSthe tirst Cerrrlan siale to give
priuritj to the aiithor's cldirns ir1 legislation in 1810 A federal law coversrig atl of
the Gerinaii statec wtis riot ptissed until 1835. The dcicisive legisltion is collecteid
in Ch. .1: M. Eiberilohr, Stxrrindurig dtir G e ~ ~ rurrcl
r e inlerrludioncrlen krrrge zim
Schiilr dt.5 irfrrcrri\iIi-drri.\tr~chrrr Ergenfhtlrn~in Deur.\chlund, fiunkrrich trnd
Englzrnti (tieidelberg. Barrgel and Schmit t , t 856).

447

EIC; tTEEN'TM-CENTURY STUDIES

THE G E N I U S AND 'TIIE COPYRIGfiT

publisher, forrilerly proprietor of the work, henceforth functioned

as his agent.
It rernnins to retrace ttie paih by which Fichte arrived at this
concept of the "form" taken by a thought and the radically new
conception of' writing it implies. In advocating orignaility, Edward
Young had niade what proved to be enorrnously fecund suggestions
about the process by which this quality is brought about. An original
work, he had conjectured,

'rhe herb draws in water and earth arid refines thern into its own elenienits; the animal ~nakesthe lower herbs irito the riobler animal sap; man
traridorn~sherbs and anirtials into organic elernents of his lif'e, convcrts
theitri to thc opertiori of higher, finer s t i ~ ~ i u l i . ~ ~

446

inay be said to be of a vegetable nature; it rises spontaneously from the

vital root of genius; it grows, it. is not rizacie. Irnitiltions irre often a sort of
rnanul"itcture wrought up by tfiosc rncclianics, art and labor, out of preexistent niaterittls not their own.?-'

Young derogates the craftsman's manipulation of inherited techniques and rnritcrrialls as capable of producing nothing but imitations,
"duplicates of what we had, possibly much better, b e f ~ r e . "Original
~~
works are the product of a more orgariic process: they are vital,
groctJ ~ p o m n n e o u s l l ,from a root, and by i~nplication,unfold their
original form frorri ~ i t h i n . . German
'~
theorists of the grnie periocl
spellcd out the irnplications of these ideas.*i7That is, they expanded
Young's nretaphor Sor the process of genial creativlty in such a way
as to etTcct the new conception of coiziposition that eniibled Fichte,
in the final stage of the piracy debate, to "prove" the author's peculiar owriership of his work.
The direction in which their work took them is illustrated by
Lllerdcr's runiinations on the processes of nature in Vorn Erkennrri
tnnd E'~zpJ2nJender mrns~*iilichen
Seele ( 1 7 7 8 ) . What most inspires
Herder is the "n-iarvefous diligente" with which living organisn~s
takc in nd process alicn niatter, transforniing it in such a way as
to niakt: it part of thcmselvcs:
J4EduardYoung, Cotrjecturrs ori Originul Cornpositfun, p. 274.
J'lbili., p. 2'73.
J''Sze Abranis, 7'hr hfrrror und rhe Lurnp, pp. 198 fT.
"'Tkicr: bect study of the cutt of genius is Edgar Lilsel, Llie (;errierrligion. Ein
Pkrslri h iilrer dus niodertie) PrrsOrilr~~hAertsideul
mit ~ i n e hl.,
r ~ o r i ~ c h Iilegrndung
rn
(V~erinaand Leipzig. Wilhelrn Braurniiller, 19 18) Sce also his Die Erztstehlcttg dei
Getiiebrgrrfi. E l n Bpiirug zirr Pdt.rnge~c*hr.hreder ttiaike zind des Fruhkupitulr snzlrs ('Tubirigcn: Mohr, 1 926), ;irid Oskai- Walzel, " Dab I'roinetheussy ~nbol
von Shf'tesbury ru Goethe," Neue JuhrbucxherJLr ta> k l u ~ s i ~ t hzilterturrr,
e
.Y111
(1910), 40-71, 133--65.

The ease with which these ideas ribout

lri; ntiture of ncrture could

be ;idapted to reihinkirig the nature of composition is suggested by
the young Gurthe's description of writing as "ihe reproduction of
the world around rric by means of the interna1 world which takes
hold of, colnbines, creates anew, kneads everything and puts it down
again in its own fmn, r n a n ~ r e r . "Goethe
~
departs sharply froxn the
oldrsr- Renissamice arid rreoclassical corrception of tfre writer as essentially a vrhicle of ideas to describe him not only as transforniing
tliose ideas, but as transforming them in such a way as f.o rnake
tlieni an expression of his own-unique-mind.
I-ierder sums up
this new line of thought when he observes that "one oughi to be
able to regard rach book as the irnpl.int [Abdruck]OS a living hurnan
soul":

Any poern, cvcn a long poern--a life's (and soul's) work--4s a trernendous
betryer of its creator, often where the latter was least consciotus of betrayi~igliimself. Not onlly does one see in it the rnan's poetic talents, as
t h e crowd would put it; one also sees which senscs and inclinations governed
him, ftow he received irnages, how he ordercd and disposed them and the
chaos of Iiis irnpressions, the favorite places in his heart just as his life's
destinies, his n~anlyor childish uncfsrstanding, the stays of his thought
ttrid Iiis me~riory.'~)

Tliis radically new conception of the book as an imprint or record

a "trernendous
beirayer" of that individual-entails new reading strategies. In neoclassical doctrine the pleasure of reading had derived fi-orn the
rcadcrvsrecctgnition of hiriiself in a poei's representations (a pleasure
gu:iraiitet.d by tlie essental siniilarity of al1 men). Thus Pope's charge
to the poet to preserit "something, whose truth cunvinced at sight
we find,/ That gives uc buck the image of our mind." With Herdrr
ilie pleasuni: of reading les instead in the exploratiori cpf an Qther,

OS the intellection of a unique individual-hence

' h H r r d r r .~itrrtlic.hr
~
@Grite, ed. Bernhard Suphan (Berlin. Weidmarin, 1892),
VI11 175-76.
4Y(;oe~heLO Jacobi, 21 August 1774, in Guetfirs Briqfix, Hamburg editicin i n 4
vols. (itlliniburg. Christian Wegner, 1962), 1, 1 16.
'"t terdet-, I.)rrl f:'rXr~ntwtzrrtid E)tipfindun der n1en.s~hlit..tletl Suele, p. 208.

448

EIGI-ITEENTH-CENTURU STUDIES

in penetrating to the deepest reaches of tlle foreign, because absolutely unique consciousness of whieh the k o r k is a verbalized
embodinient. Herder describes this new ~ n dto
, his way of thinking,
"active" [iehendig] mode of reading as "divination into the soul of
the creator [Urheher]."51Not every writer merits reading in thrs
*ay, he says, but with writers who are "worth the troublefl---our
"favorite writersW-it is "the only kind of reading and the most
profound ineans of education."
Hercier's redefinition of the g;cs,rls of reading brings us back to
the questions with which this discussion began. For his recommendation that we treat a book as a revelation of the personality of its
author sets the stage for the entire speetrurri of the 'hman-and-hiswork criticism" to which Fotlcault alluded, as well as for the theoreticai tradition that undergirds it: hern-reneutics from Schleiermacher and Dilthey to a conternporary theoreticlan like E. D. kIirsc1-i.
Despite their many difkrences, al1 of these critics share ttie belief
that criticism has essentially to do with the recovery of a writer's
rneaning, and they a11 take for granted ths; concept of the author
that evoived in the cighteenth century. What we tend to overlouk
is the degree to which that concept was shaped by the specific
circurnstnces of writers during that period.