The Chemical Age: Presenting history with metaphors∗

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Asko NivalaBy contrast Schlegel’s aim was to elaborate a definition of the modernepoch that would be commensurate with its own immanent criteria ofevaluation. Herder was self-contradictory, in that while he believed oneshould always evaluate different eras according to their own criteria, atthe same time he criticized the modern epoch by using organic criteriaforeign to it. Schlegel developed the chemical metaphor to replace themechanistic one that was inadequate to describe the artificiality of themodern epoch properly. 39 The metaphor of a chemical age differed fromthe organic idea of harmonized and teleological growth by emphasizinginterruption and heterogeneity instead of continuity and homogeneity.When characterizing the history writing in the nineteenth century, HaydenWhite builds a dichotomy between mechanistic and organic models. 40Schlegel’s chemical model provides an alternative to this dualism.In the eighteenth century, organic models appeared suitable for depictinghistory. Chemical imagery never replaced this organic paradigm,but Schlegel’s metaphor of a chemical age belongs to a period of transitionwhen chemical imagery is introduced alongside the organic one.While Herder tended herbs and seedlings in his Weimar garden, F. W. J.Schelling and Percy Shelley, tried to advance their philosophical studieson the mystery of life by practical chemical experiments. 41 This change isrecognizable in J. W. von Goethe’s œuvre, which extends from the eighteenthto the nineteenth century. The protagonist of The Sorrows of YoungWerther (Die Leiden des jungen Werthers, 1774) was still a vulnerable andsensitive Werther who is touched by nature or Homer’s epics. At the turnof the nineteenth century, he was replaced by Dr. Faust who withdrewinto a scientific sanctum with his test tubes and hermetic schemes. Goetheutilized chemical and alchemical allegories to describe modern man inthe tragedies Faust I (1808) and Faust II (1832). In Faust II, for example39 Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy have problematized the commoninterpretation of early Romantics as uncritical worshippers of the ‘natural’. Lacoue-Labarthe & Nancy [1978] 1988, p. 104.40 White 1973, p. 17.41 As Chaouli notes, most of the other Romantics were much more familiar with practicalchemistry than Schlegel. Chaouli 2002, p. 2. Schlegel’s education in classical philologydid not embrace chemical experiments, but he only found it appropriate as a metaphorfor modern culture.92Asko Nivala: The Chemical Age: Presenting History with Metaphors. In: Bruce Johnson & Harri Kiiskinen (eds.): They DoThings Differently There. Essays on Cultural History. Cultural History – Kulttuurihistoria 9. k&h, Turku, 2011. Pp. 81–108.
The Chemical AgeFaust’s servant Wagner fabricates an alchemic Homunculus who is anartificial man living in a test tube. Another telling example is Frankenstein(1818) by Mary Shelley, where a secret, apparently electrochemical process,brings an artificial creature to life. In contrast to the more optimisticSchlegel, both Faust and Frankenstein connect the chemical nature ofmodern culture with dystopian fears aroused by the Industrial Revolution.Concepts and metaphors are always historical. Schlegel was consciousof the problem of linguistic historical modeling. He thought that thecognitive fields of history and language overlapped. 42 When Schlegeldescribed history according to the metaphor of chemistry, he also assignedto his concept of fragment a historico-philosophical meaning. That is, theinterpretation of the modern epoch as a fragmentary era meant that hiscontemporary era was the age of mere tendencies. Schlegel explained theconcept of tendency in a following way: ‘in the dialect of the “Fragments”,the word would mean that everything is still only tendency, that this ageis the age of tendencies.’ 43Through the concept of tendency Schlegel claimed that the modern ageis not a straightforward repetition of former eras. How is it possible thatcompletely new cultural compounds are mixed from the elements that areinherited from previous cultures? Although Schlegel thought that there arecultural and historical conditions framing human action, he did not thinkthat those conditions necessarily determine it. The difference betweenorganic and chemical metaphors is that former implied a cyclical modelof natural repetition. Furthermore, the biological preformation theoryimplied that history consisted of the imitation of pre-conceived forms. 44But according to Schlegel, modern history is not pre-determined. It is amovement to an open future. Therefore modern history is not an organic(that is, teleological) process although it may become so in the future.42 See KFSA XIV, p. 6.43 Schlegel [1800] 1997, p. 122; KFSA II, p. 367.44 According to Hans Dietrich Irmscher, the background for Herder’s organic metaphorswas the debate between preformation and epigenesis theories. The epigenetic interpretationof history means that it tends to produce more and more complicated formsby dividing itself into divergent cultural forms. It is a movement from original naturalunity to modern fragmentation. Irmscher 2001, pp. 109–110. Cf. Kapitza 1968, pp.23–24. See also Turunen 2006 (for English summary see p. 541).Asko Nivala: The Chemical Age: Presenting History with Metaphors. In: Bruce Johnson & Harri Kiiskinen (eds.): They DoThings Differently There. Essays on Cultural History. Cultural History – Kulttuurihistoria 9. k&h, Turku, 2011. Pp. 81–108.93
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The Chemical Age: Presenting history with metaphors∗

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