Abstract
“No work in the German language is as difficult to understand as any one of the writings of Hamann.”1 No discussion of Hamann can proceed even for a few moments without introducing the problem of his style. When the Socratic Memorabilia appeared (end of 1759) the reviewer in the Hamburgische Nachrichten commented on the style:
No alchemist, no Jacob Boehme, no insane fanatic can speak and write more senseless and unintelligible stuff than what we have to read here.(Quoted by Hamann; II, 86).
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References
H. A. Salmony, Johann Georg Hamann’s metakritische Philosophie, I (Zurich/Zollikon: Evangelischer Verlag, 1958), p. 15. If this statement is true, it does not apply to his “private” writings, i.e. his “diary” and his correspondence.
“If it so happens that I cease to be clear to myself as soon as I have cooled off, how little should I be surprised that I am not sufficiently clear to others.” (To Jacobi, 18 Feb. 1786).
Lessing to Herder, 25 Jan. 1780.
Seren Kierkegaards Papirer, ed. by P. A. Heiberg and V. Kuhr, 1909 ff. (I A 234). (Translated by Walter Lowrie and quoted in Johann Georg Hamann: An Existentialist, p. 7, n. 2.).
“One instant I am a Leviathan, the monarch or prime-minister of the oceans, on whose breathing depends the ebb and flow of the tides. The text instant I see myself as a whale which God created to sport in the sea, as the greatest poet [the psalmist! cf. Ps. 104: 26] says.” (To Kant, 27 July 1759).
Cf. I Cor. 14: 22–25. Hamann has combined “tongues” and “prophecy”. His style is speaking in tongues and prophecy for the purpose of reaching the “outsider”.
In which he informs us that Hamann’s “Kommata zuweilen aus Planetensystemen und deren Perioden aus Sonnensystemen bestehen und deren Worte — ganze Sätze sind.” Jean Paul (pseudon. for Johann Paul Friedrich Richter), Vorschule der Aesthetik, Part II, nr. 45.
Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans, by David F. Swenson and Walter Lowrie (Princeton: University Press, 1944), p. 224.
“I hope yet to see the Preacher in the Wilderness [favorite term for himself] transformed into a burning and shining light [Jn. 5: 35] and to see come true the promised joy in the gift of clarity.” (To Jacobi, 15 January 1786). The “promised joy” is that of seeing the Messiah through him.
Book 12, Wahrheit und Dichtung.
Hamann carried out this theme of outward offense and inwardly concealed truth even in his moral theory. One must be better than one appears: i.e. one’s faults should be admitted and exposed; one’s virtues should be modestly concealed (like the prayer in private — Mt. 6:6). “A strict moralism appears to me more vile and stale than the most capricious ridicule and scorn. To turn the good inward, and to show the evil outwardly — to appear worse than one actually is, to be better than one appears: this I hold for one’s duty and way of life.” (To E. F. Lindner, 1st day of Easter, 1783).
Cf. Yahweh and Israel in Hosea, and in Ezekiel 16; Christ and His Church in Ephesians 5: 21ff.; the Hebrew verb to “know,” for example, in Genesis 4:1; the figure of childbirth in Galatians 4: 19. Also cf. Hamann’s allusion to the “Mother of God”, when he speaks of the “womb of language, which is the DEIPARA of our reason”, III, 239. Hamann uses sexual imagery for the work of the Holy Spirit in creating faith, to express the tenderness and intimacy of the personal relation: “This Spirit of love seeks solitude, the dark, the shadows, the secret place, just like earthly lovers. He speaks through glances, hints and sighs.” (To J. G. Lindner, 5 June 1759). Even the distortion of man’s reason in his fallen estate is expressed in terms of a wrong sexual relation and sexual seduction: the reason, which was to be impregnated by the Divine Word and was to live under the same roof with the same as man and wife, has been seduced by Satan and tickled by sytems, dreams, etc. so that the legitimate seed of the divinely intended union (“truth” and “virtue”) have been kept to a minimum. (Cf. I, 52, 53). He can also speak of this distorted reason using the figure of an aberration in conception (which rests upon a sexual aberration?). (III, 210). Cf. Hamann’s Sibyl on Marriage and the Skirts of Fig Leaves, III, 197-213.
Cf. this part of a letter to a woman! “It is noon and I enjoy what I eat and what I drink and also just as much the moment when I become free of both and give back again to the earth what has been taken out of her. Forgive this rude natural language …” (To S. M. Courtan, nee Toussaint, 24 Nov. 1787).
Hamann is misunderstood exactly in the way that the “offense” is misunderstood, if it is thought that he is ascribing sexuality to God. God is the “I” (Ego) nullius generis (III, 179) who becomes a sexual being. But this is a KOINONIA without transubstantiation! (To Herder, 18–19 Dec. 1780).
Salmony, I, 106.
See Salmony, Chapter 3i.
For example, in the Crusades of the Philologian (II, 113ff.) Hamann writes for the “reader under the rose” (i.e. in the spirit of Luther: Nadler, II, 398) as the desperate lover of the LOGOS who under the ultimacy of this conviction passionately preaches Him who has become flesh. The book was reviewed by three scholars in different intellectual journals. Hamann reviews his own book anonymously in reply to these, as if his great concern is to become an accredited author: “The first and foremost intention of a writer is to get published; after this, to be read by a hundred people; and finally to be reviewed by three or four. Herein consists the birth, life, and death of a writer.” (II, 243). Hamann had been reviewed by three, and when he reviewed his own book he would be the fourth! For the problem of the meaning of Kierkegaard’s designation of Hamann (Papirer II A 75) as “the greatest humorist in Christianity”, see Martin Seils, Theologische Aspekte, pp. 20, 21.
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© 1966 Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands
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Alexander, W.M. (1966). Hamann’s “Authorship”: Form (Style). In: Johann Georg Hamann Philosophy and Faith. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-9237-8_3
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