THE (QUEER) AESTHETICS OF JEAN PAUL'S SIEBENKÄS

Abstract

This article proposes that the eighteenth-century novel Siebenkäs contains the formulation of an aesthetic theory that embraces same-sex desire. The novel's author, Jean Paul Friedrich Richter, still relatively unknown among literary scholars today, uses the myth of Narcissus as an aesthetic blueprint for the novel. In doing so, he appears to comply with the aesthetic conventions espoused by his German Romantic peers, many of whom considered self-contemplation to be a prerequisite for gaining access to the Absolute, a term that designates an unconditioned totality that was dear to authors, artists and philosophers at the time. However, the article suggests that Jean Paul's true purpose is to employ the myth to subversive ends. In particular, the author builds upon the myth's homoerotic underpinnings – largely (but not entirely) forgotten in the eighteenth century – to articulate a theory of aesthetics that no longer seeks to efface homosexual desire. The aesthetic worldview that emerges from this process is one that foregrounds imitation as a fundamental building-block of queer aesthetics and that, in contraposition to some of the dominant aesthetic thinking of the age, advocates the legitimacy of an aesthetics that celebrates desire rather than suppressing it.