Divine Fury (60 page)

26
. I take the modern discourse of genius, in this respect, to be an extreme case of what the historian of science John Carson has called a “shadow language of inequality,” an exception of inherent difference that accompanies societies that are at least nominally committed to human equality. See his
The Measure of Merit: Talents, Intelligence, and Inequality in the French and American Republics, 1750–1940
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007), xiii. As the scholar Bernhard Fabian rightly concludes, an eighteenth-century author “may be said to qualify as a new theoretician of genius in proportion as he was anti-Sharpean or . . . anti-Hélvetian.” See the excellent introductory essay to his edited edition of Alexander Gerard,
An Essay on Genius
, ed. and intro. Bernhard Fabian (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 1966), xxi.

27
. Addison,
Spectator
, No. 160, September 3, 1711.

28
. On the “modernity” of the ancients, see Dan Edelstein,
The Enlightenment: A Genealogy
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 19–68; Larry F. Norman,
The Shock of the Ancient: Literature and History in Early Modern France
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011). I should stress that my use of “Moderns” in the title to this chapter refers
not
to the one side in the battle against the ancients, but rather to modernity and modern persons more generally. On the importance of originality, see, typically, William Duff,
Critical Observations on the Writings of the Most Celebrated Original Geniuses in Poetry: Being a Sequel to the Essay on Original Genius
(London: T. Becket, 1770), 2–3.

29
. Young,
Conjectures
, 17. On the origins and endurance of the talent-genius distinction, see Reino Virtanen, “On the Dichotomy Between Genius and Talent,”
Comparative Literary Studies
18, no. 1 (1981): 69–91. Resewitz is cited in Grappin,
La théorie du génie
, 130; Arthur Schopenhauer,
The World as Will and Representation
, trans. E. F. J. Payne, 2 vols. (New York: Dover, 1958), 1:391. I have altered Payne’s translation slightly, in keeping with the original.

30
. Paul Kaufman, “Heralds of Original Genius,” in
Essays in Memory of Barret Wendell by His Assistants
, eds. W. R. Castle Jr. and Paul Kaufman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1926), 201. On the reception of British concepts of genius in Germany, see Schmidt,
Die Geschichte des Genie-Gedankens
, 1:150–193; John Louis Kind,
Edward Young in Germany
(New York: AMS Press, 1966 [1906]); and J. Ritter, “Genie,” in Ritter, ed.,
Historisches Wörterbuch
, 3:285–296; Voltaire,
Lettres philosophiques, par M. de V
. . . (Amsterdam: E. Lucas, 1734), 211.

31
. H. B. Nisbet, “Genius,” in Alan Charles Kors, ed.,
Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment
, 4 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 2:108–112. On painting, see R. Wittkower, “Imitation, Eclecticism, and Genius,” in
Aspects of the Eighteenth Century
, ed. Earl R. Wasserman (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1965), 143–161. Notwithstanding its age and teleological bias, Ernst Cassirer’s chapter on the “Fundamental Problem of Aesthetics” in
The Philosophy of the Enlightenment
, trans. Fritz C. A. Koelln and James P. Pettegrove (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1951), remains deeply insightful. In a similar vein, see the more recent work of Louis Dupré,
The Enlightenment and the Intellectual Foundations of Modern Culture
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004), chap. 4 (“Towards a New Conception of Art”).

32
. The English commentator was Richard Blackmore,
A Treatise of the Spleen and Vapours, or Hypocondriacal and Hysterical Affections
(London: J. Pemberton, 1725), 257. See also Abbé Jean-Baptiste Dubos,
Critical Reflections on Poetry, Painting, and Music
, trans. Thomas Nugent, 3 vols. (London: John Nourse, 1748), 2:10 (Abbé Dubos’s popular
Réflexions critiques
were first published in French in 1719); Diderot, “Sur le génie,” in
Oeuvres complètes de Diderot: Revues sur les éditions originales
, ed. Jules Assézat, 20 vols. (Paris: Garnier frères, 1875–1877), 4:26–27. On the displacement of humoral theory and the development of vitalism, see Catherine Packham,
Eighteenth-Century Vitalism: Bodies, Culture, Politics
(London: Palgrave, 2012); Michel Delon,
L’idée d’énergie au tournant des lumières (1720–1820)
(Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1988), esp. chap. 8 on genius; Peter Hanns Riell,
Vitalizing Nature in the Enlightenment
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005).

33
. For a recent introduction to the extensive literature on the sublime, see Timothy M. Costelloe, ed.,
The Sublime: From Antiquity to the Present
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012).

34
. My reading of Boileau here draws on the insightful analysis of Larry Norman in his
Shock of the Ancient
, 4–6, 184–204. Joan DeJean makes a somewhat contrary case for the role of the moderns in formulating a modern conception of genius. See her remarks on Charles Perrault’s poem “Le génie,” in her
Culture Wars and the Making of a Fin de Siècle
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 50–51.

35
. [Nicholas Boileau],
Œuvres diverses du Sieur D
. . .
avec le traité du sublime ou du merveilleux dans le discours, traduit du grec du Longin
(Paris: D. Thierry, 1674), 24, 34, 87. The ancient Greek employed by Longinus is
phua
or
megalophuia
, somewhat equivalent to the Latin
ingenium
, though less common, and translating roughly as “great natured.” See also
The Works of Dionysius Longinus, on the Sublime: Or, A Treatise Concerning the Sovereign Perfection of Writing
, trans. Leonard Welsted (London: Sam Briscoe, 1712), 24;
Dionysius Longinus on the Sublime: Translated from the Greek, with Notes and Observations, and Some Account of the Life, Writings and Character of the Author
, trans. William Smith (London: J. Watts, 1739), 37. The key passages from Longinus,
Peri hypsous
, are 1.4 and 13.2.

36
. Longinus,
On the Sublime
, ed. and trans. W. Hamilton Frye and revised by Donald Russell, in
Aristotle, Longinus, Demetrius
, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), 163, 279 (
Peri hypsous
, 1.4 and 36.1).

37
. Gerard,
Essay on Genius
, 66; Pocock, “Enthusiasm”; Carl Friedrich Flögel, “Vom Genie,”
Vermischte Beiträge zur Philosophie und den schönen Wissenschaften
(Breslau: Berlag Johann Jacob Korns, 1762), 21; Johann Georg Sulzer,
Allgemeine Theorie der schönen Künste in einzeln: Nach alphabetischer Ordnung der Kunstwörter auf einander folgenden, Artikeln abgehandelt
, 4 vols. (Leipzig: M. G. Weigmann, 1773–1775), 2:610–614; John Gilbert Cooper,
Letters Concerning Taste
, 2nd ed. (London: R. and J. Dodsley, 1755), 101.

38
. Diderot, “Éclectisme,” in
Oeuvres complètes
, 14:322; Diderot, “Entretiens sur le fils naturel,” in
Oeuvres complètes
, 7:103.

39
. Milton C. Nahm,
The Artist as Creator: An Essay of Human Freedom
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1956), esp. Book I (“The Great Analogy”); Jan Goldstein,
The Post-Revolutionary Self: Politics and Psyche in France, 1750–1850
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005), chap. 1 (“The Perils of the Imagination at the End of the Old Regime”); Goldstein, “Enthusiasm or Imagination,” 30; Samuel Johnson, cited in Dupré,
Enlightenment and Intellectual Foundations
, 87; William Duff,
An Essay on Original Genius and Its Various Modes of Exertion in Philosophy and the Fine Arts, Particularly in Poetry
, ed. John L. Mahoney (Gainesville, FL: Scholars’ Facsimiles and Reprints, 1964), 23–24.

40
. Diderot is cited in Jaffe, “The Concept of Genius,” 594. See also Young,
Conjectures
, 24. Sulzer is cited in Abrams,
Mirror and Lamp
, 203.

41
. Duff,
Essay on Original Genius
, 86; Voltaire, “Génie,”
Œuvres de Voltaire
, 30:33; Young,
Conjectures
, 16; Immanuel Kant,
Critique of Judgment
, intro. and trans. Werner S. Pluhar (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987), 175–176. See, more generally, Paul Bruno,
Kant’s Conception of Genius: Its Origin and Function in the Third Critique
(New York: Continuum, 2010).

42
. William Wordsworth, “Essay Supplementary to the Preface to
Poems
” (1815), in
William Wordsworth: The Major Works
, ed. and intro. Stephen Gill (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), 659; Georg J. Buelow, “Originality, Genius, Plagiarism in English Criticism of the Eighteenth Century,”
International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music
21, no. 2 (1990): 117–128.

43
. Cooper, “Soliloquy,” 1:129.

44
. John Wesley’s “Thoughts on Genius” (1787) are interesting in the context of the Christian reception of the cult of genius. Prompted by a reading of William Duff’s
Essay on Original Genius
, and dated “Lambeth, November 8, 1787,” the notes are an informed summary of European reflection on the subject by one of the century’s most influential clergymen. They provide no indication that Wesley thought of genius and his Methodist faith as being incompatible. See “Thoughts on Genius,” in
The Works of John Wesley
(New York: J. Emory, 1831), 460–461. On the “Jewish Socrates” and the “Vilna Gaon” as two contrasting embodiments of Jewish genius, see Eliyahu Stern, “Genius and Demographics in Modern Jewish History,”
Jewish Quarterly Review
101, no. 3 (2011): 347–382, as well as Stern’s fine study
The Genius: Elijah of Vilna and the Making of Modern Judaism
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013).

45
. Franz Xaver Niemetschek,
Mozart: The First Biography
, intro. Chris Eisen, trans. Helen Mautner (New York: Berghahn Books, 2007), 3 (Niemetschek’s
Leben des K. K. Kapellmeisters Wolfgang Gottlieb Mozart
was first published in Prague in 1798); Friedrich Melchior von Grimm,
Correspondance littéraire
, December 1, 1763, in Otto Erich Deutsch,
Mozart: A Documentary Biography
, trans. Eric Blom, Peter Branscombe, and Jeremy Noble (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1965), 26; Claude Adrien Helvétius to Francis, 10th Earl of Huntingdon, London, April 1764, in ibid., 32;
Public Advertiser
, June 26, 1764, cited in ibid., 36.

46
. On Mozart as a “symbol of genius,” see Paul Henry Lang, “Mozart After 200 Years,”
Journal of the American Musicological Society
13 (1960): 197; Beda Hübner,
Diarium Patris Bedae Hübner
, December 8, 1766, in Deutsch,
Mozart
, 70;
Gazzeta di Motova
, January 12, 1770, in ibid., 105. On the
Miserere
, see Piero Melograni,
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 37–38.

47
. On this point, see Simon Schaffer, “Natural Philosophy and Public Spectacle in the Eighteenth Century,”
History of Science
21 (1983): 1–43;
Public Advertiser
, July 9, 1765, cited in Deutsch,
Mozart
, 45.