The phenomenon of Napoleon in the German spirit of Napoleon’s age

• Main Author: Gilmanov V. Kh.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University 2013-01-01
• Series: Слово.ру: балтийский акцент
• Subjects: romanticism; historical personality; napoleon; hegel; goethe
• Online Access: https://journals.kantiana.ru/eng/slovo/1371/3911/

This article considers judgements about Napoleon in the culture of German pre-romanticism as signs of literary diagnostics indicative of the contradictory dialectics of artistic consciousness in distinguishing the “codes” of life and death in arts. The completely opposite assessment of Napoleon in the history of German romanticism identifies the problem of a human being as a “field of fate” — a site of the battle between the Light and Darkness. The author emphasises the transformation of the legend of Napoleon in the German romanticism from the idealisation of the “world spirit” (G. W. H. Hegel) to defining it as a “symbol of social unnaturlaity” (H. von Kleist).