The Modern Intellectual Hero
Jean-Antoine Houdon's portrait of Voltaire (fig. 1), from 1781,[2] is perhaps the most celebrated monument of a European intellectual of the moderm era. It shows the subject, who had died two years before, seated on an "ancient," thronelike seat, wearing a philosopher's robe and the "wreath of immortality" in his hair. Thus did Houdon himself characterize Voltaire, who had sat for his portrait shortly before his death. The statue combines in extraordinary fashion the intellectual lucidity and physical frailty of the aged Voltaire with his own apotheosis. The monument was originally intended to stand in the Académie Française, not only to commemorate Voltaire himself, but as testimony to the self-conscious pride of the Academy membership. The
statue of Voltaire celebrates the Enlightenment as the highest moral and spiritual authority, and the leaders of the Enlightenment here lay claim to a position of authority in the state and society. They set the philosopher, in the guise of Voltaire, on a throne—not just any throne, but an ancient one, as an ancient philosopher. In this way classical antiquity is invoked to legitimate the self-conscious political claims of the intellectual élite. Needless to say, no ancient philosopher ever sat on a throne.
It was, by contrast, an entirely different complex of values and necessities that inspired nineteenth-century Germany to honor its culture heroes in a veritable cult of statuary. After the wars of liberation in German lands had brought neither political freedom nor national unity, the citizenry began to seek in cultural pursuits a substitute for what they still lacked. For example, they erected monuments to intellectual giants, usually at the most conspicuous location in the city, an honor that until then had been reserved for princes and military men. These monumental statues were planned and executed by local and national committees and associations, and their unveiling was accompanied by dedication ceremonies and even popular festivals. There arose a true cult of the monument, which included broadsheets, picture books, and luxury editions of "collected works." With all this activity, the Germans began to see themselves, faute de mieux, as "the people of poets and thinkers."
This is especially true of the period of the restoration and, in particular, the years after the failed revolution of 1848, when monuments to famous Germans, above all Friedrich von Schiller, sprouted everywhere. These statues were not just objects of veneration amid national pride but served the populace as models of citizen virtues with which they could identify. The great men were deliberately rendered not in ancient costume, and certainly not nude, but in contemporary dress and exemplary pose.
Perhaps the most famous of these monuments—and the one considered most successful by people of the time—was the group of Goethe and Schiller by Ernst Rietschel, set up in 1857 in front of the theater in Weimar (fig. 2). A fatherly Goethe gently lays his hand on the shoulder of the restless young Schiller, as if to quiet the overzealous
Fig. 2
Monument to Goethe and Schiller by Ernst
Rietschel (1857). In front of the theatre in Weimar.
passion for freedom of the younger generation. The relationship of the two poets (which in reality was somewhat problematical) is thus stylized into a symbol of authentic German male bonding, a classical paradigm and standard of conduct for the citizenry.[3]
It is, however, no accident that the statue bases on which the poets stand are just as high as those of princes and rulers. We gaze up to them from the drudgery and confusion of daily life. "There is something higher than the daily routine,"[4] namely, the everlasting works of po-
etry and art, in which we can find consolation and edification. Although born of political disappointment, these monuments erected by the bourgeoisie in no way represent a call to political action, not even the Schiller monuments of the postrevolutionary period. On the contrary, they attest to an implicit attitude in which the political has been sublimated in favor of pragmatic citizen virtues. This process was facilitated by the fact that the great Weimar poets were in the service of the court and, like many other successful intellectuals of the time, proudly displayed the honors and medals bestowed by the prince.[5]
In the late nineteenth century, the cult of the monument spread throughout Europe. But the poets, musicians, and artists who are thus honored are turned into solitary, superhuman figures before whom posterity can only kneel in awe and wonder. The earlier images of the fellow citizen realistically depicted in contemporary dress give way to a new vision of giants and titans, nude in the manner of the antique. Statues like Rodin's Victor Hugo or Max Klinger's somewhat later Beethoven (fig. 3) render the apotheosis of the great mind in such exaggerated form that, not just for modern taste, it verges on the ridiculous. Contemporary reaction was also divided, unlike in the preceding period.[6] The French poet in his exile resists the reactionary storm breaking over his country, depicted as mighty waves threatening him in his rocky seat. The German composer, on the other hand, in his heroic detachment, is utterly divorced from the present. This is a remarkably complex cult statue that reflects more the feverish imagination of its creator than the beliefs of his contemporaries.[7]
Beethoven is enthroned high up on a kind of rocky outcrop, solitary and half-naked. The mighty eagle at his feet makes the allusion to Zeus obvious. But this hero, despite his vigorous pose, determined expression, and clenched fist, is not a ruler. Originally Klinger wanted a line fromn Goethe's Faust carved on the rock: "Der Einsamkeiten tiefste schauend unter meinem Fuss." Scenes from classical and Christian mythology are represented on the exterior sides of the throne, including the Crucifixion of Christ, the Birth of Venus, Adam and Eve, and the family of Tantalus. The great genius sees the unity of the world that is hidden from others. His music is a kind of religious revelation, and in this role as prophet he becomes a god himself. That this is truly the
Fig. 3
Max Klinger at work on his monument to
Beethoven (1902).
message intended is confirmed by the circumstance that Klinger carried out his work on the statue for many years without a commission, at enormous personal cost in expensive materials, and, when it was finished, wanted to have it displayed in a specially built cult place. (This was in fact done, first in the exhibition of the Vienna Secession and later in the museum at Leipzig.)
The creator of this gigantic vision, however, withdrew to play the role of priest in the cult. Like most artists and writers of this period, Klinger deliberately cultivated a bourgeois image and appearance. He had himself photographed, wearing the proper suit, with his titanic statue. He is just another adorant of the "immortals." There is a deep divide between the present and the great men of the past, who, with
their works, hover above contemporary life like guiding stars, unattainable and unwavering, like spiritual revelation. The educated look up to them and derive sustenance from them. They enhance the quality of our leisure time but otherwise deliver no categorical imperatives, like the earlier monuments of the artist as model citizen. Art and life had become completely separate realms. Appropriately, many of the later monuments were not displayed in city squares, but rather in parks and public gardens, put there as part of local beautification campaigns.[8]
I shall resist the temptation to pursue this line of inquiry and develop a full typology of the imagery of intellectuals in the modern era. These few examples were intended simply to illustrate my approach and the kinds of questions I wish to pose. Each of the three, almost randomly chosen, instances that I have dealt with could easily find a parallel among the portraits of Greek intellectuals that would be in one way or another equivalent. But this would not get us very far, for when we look closely, the historical framework is as different as the portraits themselves. The point I wish to stress most is that in both cases a successful interpretation is utterly dependent on how well we can reconstruct the specific context in which a particular portrait was created and displayed. As with modern portraits, we have to ask where the monument was set up, who commissioned it, and what circumstances obtained in a particular society. Specifically, what value was attached to intellectual activity, and what was the relationship between society at large and the individual intellectual or group of intellectuals? In light of the extremely fragmentary and incomplete nature of the evidence, as will shortly become clear, it is much easier to pose these intriguing and, in recent years, increasingly fashionable questions than to answer them.
Archaeologists have thus far dealt with the material at our disposal from this perspective either in very restricted instances or not all. Positivist scholars, who laid the groundwork over a century of intensive and detailed scrutiny, concentrated primarily on problems of identification and dating. The culmination of this approach is Gisela Richter's admirable 1965 corpus The Portraits of the Greeks, in which the portraits
are ordered chronologically according to when the subjects lived, rather than when the portrait type was created, as if the goal were to produce a set of photographs for a modern Who's Who . Those scholars who were more interested in the content of the portraits have devoted themselves almost exclusively to questions of the "character" and "spiritual physiognomy" of each individual and have sought in the portraits a reflection of spiritual and intellectual qualities. Chief among these is Karl Schefold, whose book Die Bildnisse der antiken Dichter, Redner und Denker of 1943 is the only study that deals with the most important portraits of Greek intellectuals in chronological order.[9]
What makes my approach different from Schefold's is that my focus is not on the figure of the individual intellectual, but rather on the position and image of intellectuals as a class within a particular society and the changes we can detect in periods of transition from one era to the next. What I propose is a history of the image of the intellectual in antiquity. For this reason I shall proceed basically chronologically, even though much of my text retains the essaylike flavor of the lectures on which it is based. Nevertheless, I believe this method has a certain distinct methodological advantage, given the problems of identification that beset so many portraits. That is, even anonymous portraits and those that can be dated only approximately retain their interest as evidence for the question of general attitudes within a given period. In most instances it matters less who is represented than how he is represented—though admittedly it is frustrating to acknowledge that even in the case of some portraits of evidently key figures we are still groping in the dark.