Monday, August 27, 2007

Rudolf Kassner

Rudolf Kassner

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Rudolf Kassner (1873–1959) was an Austrian writer, essayist, translator and cultural philosopher.

Rudolf Kassner is not a well-known author, hence this article proceeds initially by way of an introduction to Kassner’s life and works to an elaboration of specific areas of study. Rudolf Kassner: A Biographical Sketch

Unfortunately, there exists till date no authentic biography of Rudolf Kassner. The life-sketch I am providing here is based on his three major autobiographical works, which broadly coincide with the three major phases of his productive life. Further I have made good use of the extensive notes and critical comments provided by the editors of his collected works, Ernst Zinn and Klaus E. Bohnenkamp. I have also gleaned some information about his life from the odd article on his writings.

His Early Years

Rudolf Kassner was born on 11 September 1873 in Gross-Pavlowitz in southern Moravia. His maternal ancestors were peasants from Silesia. On the paternal side, also from Silesia, they were townsmen, officials and businessmen. A little after Kassner’s birth, his father Oskar Kassner moved to Nikolsberg in southern Austria, where he leased imperial property, profitably cultivated beet, and ran a sugar factory. In his old age he moved to Vienna where he died in 1906.

Rudolf Kassner had seven brothers and two sisters; of the ten he was the seventh. The children did not attend the local village school. Kassner’s primary education was through a governess, Miss Bache. After her a tutor named Spatni prepared him for the annual examination meant for private students. In his later autobiographical writings we find some extremely intense recollections of this period of his childhood. His high school education was in the neighboring calm provincial town of Nikolsberg. Much of his early life was spent in the countryside. This gave his ideas and visions an extraordinary freshness and rustic charm.

Student Life

In 1892 Kassner enrolled at the University of Vienna. He set out to study German Philology, Latin, and Philosophy. He spent the last two semesters (1895-96) at Berlin. This was the period when the theatre in Germany flourished and held great public appeal. Kassner too was an enthusiastic theater-goer. This formed the basis for later reflections on acting and the role of the actor, important for his physiognomic worldview. In 1896 he returned to Vienna and completed his study with a doctoral dissertation on Der ewige Jude in der Dichtung. Strangely, by a remarkable coincidence, his life too resembled that of a Wandering Jew, in spite of a major physical handicap.

His Travels

When he was only nine months old, Kassner contracted poliomyelitis, which affected both his legs. All his life he lived with this disability. But through his remarkable will power and the hard training given by a physiotherapist, he achieved extraordinary mobility. Prof. Zinn remembers in his commemorative lecture that Kassner could move faster on crutches than most normal humans on foot and he seldom required help . It is with this disability that Kassner traveled throughout the world. It is a fact that he traveled more widely than most of his contemporaries. Between 1898 and 1912 Kassner traveled far and wide. In the years 1897,1898, 1908, 1910 and in 1912 he was in England. His first book Die Mystik, die Künstler und das Leben is about English poets of the eighteenth century. The English writer Lawrence Sterne influenced Kassner; in fact he appears as a character in one of Kassners important works Die Chimäre. He translated Sterne’s Tristram Shandy and Cardinal Newman’s Apologia pro vita mea into German. All these and his essays on Sterne, Thomas de Quincey and Thomas Hardy as well as his brilliant sense of humor are proof of the influence of English literature and culture on him. In 1900 he traveled for the first time to Paris. Here he met Andre Gide, whose work ‘Philoktet’ he translated into German. He also met Maurice Maeterlink in Paris. His involvement with French culture is reflected in his essays on Baudelaire, Rodin, Abbe Galiani and Diderot and in his translations of the works of Gide and St. John Perse. We also know that T. S. Eliot visited Kassner in Paris. Paris was also the place where his great friendship with Rilke, the extraordinary poet of German Modernity, was formed. In many histories of German literature, Kassner finds mention at best as a friend of Rilke and Hofmannsthal. Yet, the two poets have testified amply to Kassner’s profound influence on them. In fact Rilke dedicated his eighth Duino Elegy, the most important elegy, to Kassner. In a letter to Princess Marie von Thurn and Taxis, Rilke says of Kassner: “…is not this man, I say to myself, perhaps the most important of all those who are writing today?” Even on his deathbed Rilke would recall with great fondness his association with Kassner. Kassner’s association with Hofmannsthal commenced in 1902. He visited the poet in Rodaun. Both of them belonged to that generation of Austrians who were witness to the steady decline of the west and the inexorable erosion of its institutions. Hofmannsthal wrote about Kassner in 1904: “ I believe that he is perhaps the most important literary man, the most important culture critic that we have ever had in Germany” Kassner also knew Houston Stewart Chamberlain, the notorious racial theorist and anti-Semite, to whom he had sent his first book. At Chamberlain’s House in Vienna Kassner often met Count Ulrich von Brockdorff-Rantzau, Count Hermann von Keyserling and the Indologist Leopold von Schröder. In 1905 Kassner traveled through Spain. From Spain he traveled towards Tangier in Morocco. His father passed away in Vienna in 1906 and Kassner spent that year in Vienna. In 1907 he traveled again to Italy, further to Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco and by motorcar through the Sahara desert. On 16th October 1908 Kassner’s great Indian journey began. From London he proceeded by sea to Bombay. On board he got to know the Maharaja of Kapurthala and one Mr. Inder Choudhary, a judge at the Calcutta high court. In the first week of November 1908 Kassner traveled from Bombay to Jaipur; then to Thaneswar and arrived on 24th November 1908 in Kapurthala to take part in the birthday celebrations of the Maharaja. From there he went towards Lahore and Peshawar, also a jaunt to the Khyber Pass. He came back southwards through Delhi and Agra to Lucknow. In a train accident on 3rd December Kassner lost his baggage. Ten days after that he reached Benaras via Allahabad. Next he proceeded to Calcutta, where, incidentally, he met Stefan Zweig. In Calcutta he stayed with his friend Inder Choudhary. On 1st January 1909 he went to Darjeeling, from where he viewed the Kanchanjunga. He went by steamer to Burma and traveled up to Bhano on the Chinese border. From Calcutta Kassner went by sea to Colombo, from there he reached South India in mid-February; setting out most likely from Tuticorin to Madras via Madurai and Thanjavur. He reached Madras on 24th February 1909. He also visited Hyderabad and Ellora and journeyed home from Bombay on 6th March 1909. On the return journey he spent some time in Egypt; from there he proceeded to Rome and spent the rest of that year in Italy. We do not know much about Kassner’s experiences in India or about the sources of his knowledge about India, apart from what he himself says in his writings. But it is evident that India has deeply influenced Kassner. Kassner himself confessed later that he became a philosopher through the Indians. Besides his two major works on India, Indian themes constantly recur in Kassner’s writings. Kassner’s Indian journey and his experiences in India are of immense importance in understanding his life and works. In 1911 he traveled to Russia. He started from Vienna in May 1911 and traveled to St Petersburg; then to Moscow and from there along the Volga up to Saralow. He went southwards to Yalta and then to Kieslovodsk, north of Caucasus. In an automobile he crossed the Caucasus and went along the route that leads via the Caspian to Samarkhand in Turkestan. He returned after a brief stay in St. Petersburg and Moscow to Berlin towards the end of October 1911. Soon translations from the Russian followed : Pushkin, Gogol, Dostoyevsky and Tolstoi.

Kassner married in 1914. About his wife no information is available except that she might be Jewish, for because of her non-Aryan origin the publication of Kassner’s works were prohibited by the Nazis in 1940. During the war years Kassner passionately studied Mathematics and Physics; for this was the period when Einstein’s great work was published and much of the work on the foundations of mathematics were taking place. We know that he met Einstein once in Vienna. Kassner tried to understand in his own way, new ideas such as the concept a four dimensional space and the concept of Number etc. His book Zahl und Gesicht is the result of this deep engagement. During this period he was often in Berlin were he met Georg Simmel, Gerhart Hauptmann and Walter Rathenau. After the war and the dissolution of the Austrian monarchy followed the inflation period. In 1924 and in 1931 Kassner was again in Rome. From 1926 to 1931 he traveled every year to Paris and he spent every late summer in the castle Schönhausen, where Princess Herbert Bismarck lived. During the interwar period also Kassner published many books. From 1938 when Nazis occupied Austria till the end of the world war Kassner remained in his home in Vienna. Out of his year long work in isolation emerged a monumental work Das neunzehnte Jahrhundert: Ausdruck und Größe. Through the intervention of some of his Swiss friends he could escape to Switzerland. There he lived in Sierre, Canton Wallis, till his death after a long period of illness, on 1st April 1959, persisting in his calling viz., writing, till the day before his death.

Kassner’s Impact: Kassner the “Die unbekannte Größe”

Switzerland honored him in 1948 (by then Kassner was already seventy-five years old!) with the Gottfried- Keller Prize. His homeland Austria awarded him the highest literary award in the country. He was also awarded the Schiller Memorial Prize of the state of Baden-Wittenberg. On the occasion of this award Theophil Spoerri spoke of Kassner as Die unbekannte Größe , the unknown eminence. Anyone who tries to understand Kassner’s work has to confront this paradox. Kassner is remarkably great and yet unknown. Here is a person, of whom it can be said without reservation that he is one of the greatest minds of the twentieth century; and some of the greatest writers, poets and philosophers of Europe have acknowledged their indebtedness to him. “A new Nietzsche has appeared among us. He is called Rudolf Kassner and he speaks in antitheses, contradictions and paradoxes, deep and mystical, here and there in the tone of a prophet. Whether ‘the Modern’ places him above, below, or beside Nietzsche one does not know yet, but as far as I am concerned he is to me dearer than Nietzsche” hailed a reviewer of his first published work in 1900. Congratulating Kassner on his eightieth birthday T. S. Eliot writes: “To contribute to the chorus of praise and thanks which should greet Rudolf Kassner on his eightieth birthday is a privilege which confers greater honour to the contributor than to the recipient. I am happy to have the opportunity on this occasion to salute and pay homage to so distinguished an author and so great a European who has every reason to look back with pride upon his life-work.” In the same volume W. H. Auden writes on Kassner’s book Zahl und Gedicht: “Among all the books which a writer reads over the years, the number which have so essentially conditioned his vision of life that he cannot imagine who he was before he read them is, naturally, very small…. Zahl und Gesicht was for me, and still is, such a book; in such a case discussion is not called for, only gratitude and homage.” Ludwig Curtius wrote to him: “You were to me always a ‘sage’ like the sages of the ancient times, whom I approached as a child, which I still do today.” In Kassner’s writings on system and order in the work Zahl und Gesicht the Swiss dramatist Dürrenmatt could read a premonition of later inhuman totalitarian regimes. Yet Kassner is unknown; most histories of literature and philosophy do not even mention his name. Kassner discovered the mystic William Blake for Germany. He discovered the Christian poet in Baudelaire. In 1903 he made the German public aware of the works of Andre Gide through his translation. Even before the existential philosophy and its jargon came into vogue, Kassner in his essay on Kierkegaard, which incidentally is the first German writing on Kierkegaard, had spoken about the existential predicament, the thrown-ness of man in the World. He translated from Greek, English, French and Russian. His understanding of the Indian society is full of rich insights quite different from that of a philosopher like Hegel, who had never set foot in India but who relying on slender information attributed to Indian thought a dreaming irrationality. Nor was he an Indologist, whom the critics of ‘orientalism’ à la Said and Inden accuse of imagining the other of Europe (with imperialist designs!). Despite his physical handicap, Kassner traveled to India, met people here, saw for himself how people live here and learned from this land, which forced him to say that “ich wurde Philosoph durch die Inder”. Kassner’s insights into India are an admirable example of his distinctive approach to cultural understanding and anthropology. In his own unacademic way he was one of the most learned men of the last century. He traveled far and wide, even to inaccessible regions. He was more widely traveled than most of his contemporaries. His knowledge of the classical world, of the oriental and occidental texts, of religion and philosophy, of history and culture, of literature and art is profound and comprehensive. He had a deep knowledge of the cultural history of modern man. He saw, as perhaps no one else saw, the internal contradictions and discontents of modernity. In his writings he delineated the psycho-gram of the modern man. Kassner was immensely productive; his literary activity extends over sixty years and he was writing till the day before his death at the age of eighty-five. He is considered one of the greatest essayists and “the only German essayist who processed humor.” In his writings he judges severely his contemporaries and his criticisms are provocative. Given his vision and his relentless focus on man even his silences are telling! Kassner was no less an iconoclast than Nietzsche, though temperamentally he is the exact opposite of the overwrought philosopher. Mason wonders: “How little there is in the post-renaissance mental activities and achievements that he does not abominate!” But he adds, “There is something curiously authoritative about these denunciations of his…. They raise important issues, which have hitherto been overlooked; one cannot afford to ignore them.” But this criticism of his never ended up in nihilism. He was above all an anti-nihilist. Kassner speaks of being a mystic in order not to become a nihilist. Though Kassner says that he is a conservative due to the exasperation and consternation that modern world caused him, he is in no sense a reactionary, cynic, pessimist or defeatist and had no romantic yearning for the past, and no escapist delusions. Yet he is unknown. Could it be that Kassner’s works were ‘out of season’? In as early as 1929 Hofmannsthal wrote about Kassner’s writings that “a not too distant future will wonder how our period that is craving for new forms and contents could neglect such fresh content in such novel forms.” Forty years later in 1969 Michael Schmidt comments that “this ‘staunende Zeit’ cannot of course be ours.” Still a generation later in 2005 in the latest article published on Kassner Prof. Subramanian writes that even today “fame has eluded Kassner.” Kassner is variously described as ‘Philosopher’, ‘Thinker’, ‘Culture–Historian’, ‘Platonist’, ‘Dichter–Denker’, ‘Philosopher–Poet’, ‘Physiognomist’. One may call him a ‘culture–philosopher’, for the primary object of his studies were cultures and their symbolic representations. His contributions to the understanding of Greek antiquity, ancient India and European Modernity form an essential part of his writings. It is indeed appropriate to call him a ‘seer’, in the multiple sense of the term, for ‘seeing’ and ‘vision’ are central to his physiognomy. Whenever he observes, he conveys unfailingly his sense of wonderment, as he stands ‘astonished’ before, to speak with Rilke, “die gedeutete Welt.” It is this wonderment of the seer that sets in train his deep probing inquiry bordering on the mystic, which yet again to Kassner becomes manifest when poetry affiliates to philosophy. It is his vision, his “Anschauung” that gives his works an incomparable intensity and luminosity. For as Kassner himself said “I should regard every line of my work suspect… if the knowledge and the feeling desert me that any enlightenment of man from them must work like a physical light; out of this desire arose the form, style and the language of the whole work”. His works present a distinctive way of seeing, totally different from the current empirical methods of the social sciences. With the onset of individualism and the ‘fall of the public man’ there are no existential characteristics that define human beings in general. The social scientist or the anthropologist is forced to study his object only from the standpoint and the perspective of his own culture. Any claim of objectivity is suspect and any alleged universality rests solely on act of seeing. It is in this context that we must understand Kassner. He never approaches his object of his enquiry with a readymade set of concepts. He lets the object speak for itself, that is he avoids all history of ideas. Concepts define neither the flow of history nor the varied expressions of culture over time. But it is indeed possible to obtain through a regressive procedure the matrix of a culture from its actual manifestation. This matrix often finds its expression in an intricate manifold of ideas and symbols. These are indeed the symbols which accompany the progress of a society from merely living together to a distinctive way of life, viz., its culture.

For Kassner the physiognomy is basically a ‘phenomenology of Being’. It is based on the Goethe’s anti-Kantian statement “The highest is to understand that all facts are already theory. One need not search behind the phenomenon, for they themselves are the theory”. Kassner’s physiognomy is an attempt to portray the world in all its manifestations. Of course, Kassner’s teachings are not easy to understand. But one must recognize that it is because of their depth and not obscurity. Kassner’s physiognomy is not a science - in the everyday sense of the word. It may even be said that it is a protest against the overwhelming orthodoxy of science. Kassners physiognomy though is distinct from the traditional rational physiognomy from pseudo-Aristolte to Lavater. Rational science objects to physiognomy thus: How can one draw conclusions about the inner character of anybody from his external features? Can one? Yet, physiognomy tried to be ‘scientific’. We can identify three phases in the history of modern science. The first, began in the eighteenth century; freed from the religious shackles, science was empirical systematic, with the belief in the complete self-sufficiency of reason and a closed world-view. In the second phase, phenomena surface, which question the closed world-view of science. Attempts were made to explain them by causality. The focus shifts to the means of knowledge. In the third phase, that of Quantum Theory, the very idea of truth is replaced by probability (and verisimilitude) and statistics. During these three phases, physiognomy came to be devalued. Even in the eighteenth century Lavater tried to reduce the differences among the human faces to certain common denominators and tried to build a system of symbols to interpret it. (Kant considered it too pretentious a task for mere mortals). Nevertheless the idea was to build a system and to give a scientific explanation. In the second period physiognomy was studied using experimental empirical methods. Causal explanations were sought for every case. It resulted in failure. Why? Simply because explanations were not readily available. The individual aspects of human face lost their importance. In the third period, the period of technology, physiognomy lost its importance altogether. The face of the individual was no longer examined to arrive at his/her character or morality. But physiognomy was studied to understand the structure of the body and its usefulness to the “speed-up”. Other investigations were also made for racist reasons. The individual lost his importance in the rationalized, standardized collective. Till now, physiognomy studied men as static, not dynamic entities. This abstraction in favour of the system destroys the essence of the face. The face of a person is not fixed from cradle to grave nor is his character unchangeable. Were it so, all his expressions were only a mask, as it were, an appearance masking a reality. Nothing on a face is fixed and nothing permits identification. Same facial features means different things at different times. For example hate causes different expressions in the same face at different times as also in different faces. So Kassner’s physiognomy studies the rhythmic and changeable aspects of the face, which are not accessible to the rational physiognomy characteristic of its early period. In the second period one tried to explain the facial aspects using deterministic causality. For example Freudian psychoanalysis, which considers every face a mask and tries to unravel what lies behind it. This is a far cry from Kassner’s physiognomy. Of course psychoanalysis has recognized that “man no longer appears as he is”. But Kassner’s physiognomy asserts, “ Man is just as he appears to be because he does not appear as he really is.” This is the basic axiom of Kassner’s physiognomy. Kassner has developed a style suited to the articulation of this physiognomy: the frequent use of zeugma for example is characteristic of his writing; he brings together things that appear to be contradictory on the surface in order to show not immediately evident interconnections between them. The seemingly contradictory phenomena combine to give a total image of the whole. One distinct advantage of this method is its usefulness in avoiding of the tendency to reify. Kassner uses many ideas such as form, gestalt, whole, order, idea etc. in order to emphasize the holistic aspects of his approach. The activity that forms the basis of this type of perception is seeing and interpreting (deuten). It calls for seeing–together, for a synoptic vision. This is why Kassner rejects the ‘thing-in-itself’ that never manifests itself in phenomena. Kassner holds that the image includes the thing along with its movement, its dunamis. The phenomena are not the external covering of content. Form and content yield a unity, held together by imagination, whereas critical reason separates them. Imagination is synthetic; reason is analytic. The paradox as a form of thinking is very important to understand Kassners diagnosis of modernity. The incongruence between the external appearance and the internal disposition of man, the surface and deep structure of humans, as it were, forms the basis of his understanding of the modern individual. Psychoanalysis and other theories of human nature, analyse the appearance to unmask the reality. Kassner avoids all reification and takes that which appears first to his sight, his vision, namely human action and behavior, as the basis for his searching physiognomic enquiry. Phenomena considered purely externally call for a rational explanation for establishing causal nexus, whereas to understand authentic form requires imaginative interpretation. To be able to see the “form”, one need to fuse critical and creative faculties, in short ‘räsonnieren’ as Kassner terms it. Hence, the conscious use of paradoxes that characterizes much of Kassner’s writing. This indeed produces a shock-effect, much like the stunning effect of the Socratic elenchos. His zeugmas confront the reader to provide him a surprisingly new perspective. Like a Zen master with his counter-rational sayings, Kassner shakes the reader’s rational, analytic thought processes in order to make him aware of the dynamic whole, the whole reality of the appearance.

Kassner’s works are difficult to understand; even his reminiscences contain passages, which are not easy to follow because of their idiosyncratic terminology. But many great modern texts are difficult (who will not vouch for enigmatic intricacies of Eliot and Pound, Joyce and Heidegger to mention but a few). “Works of this kind with their closely woven thoughts, are not easily accessible”, wrote Hofmannsthal. “It consists of a number of unconnected writings…the contents are new and important, the title is unobtrusive. In the writings there is no system or definite terminology nor does the author mention about the unity of the work” . Surely Kassner does not provide an easy approach to his works. One cannot build a system out of his works. As he himself says “I have no system and hence not the language of the system”. The characteristic of Kassner’s knowledge is an abundance of enchanting images, invoked out of a primary wonderment. Instead of analytic concepts he deliberately employs paradoxes and zeugmas that meaningfully bring together the small and the big, the near and the distant to obtain deep insights. In this context one needs to investigate Kassner’s key terms such as Middle, Measure, Magic Body, Personality, Imagination, Vision, Seeing, Order, Umkehr, Saint, Chimera etc. “His concepts are not really concepts,” writes Usinger “… not defined, the ideas occur again and again.” One of Kassner’s characters says, “You know very well my weakness and understand that I cannot define and all my definitions are false.” His works have no linear development and do not yield swiftly to rational analysis. The same themes recur in Kassner again and again, in their prismatic break-up as essays, parables, dialogues and reminiscences. He visits the same zone time and again with profit. It is not as though there is no progress, indeed the progress in thought can be said to have a spiral movement, as his dogged, unflinching gaze winds itself around the phenomena.

But as Eudo C. Mason suggests, Kassner’s texts, given their importance and greatness are justifiably difficult. For when we seek the source of their difficulty we cannot say that his style is pedantic or jargon-filled. His sentences are always clear and sober sans rhetoric flourish but laced with gentle humor and irony. It is in a sense unfortunate that he labeled his worldview physiognomy, for it was a discredited discipline and Kassner has had to an explain over and again how his physiognomy differs from traditional physiognomy. Kassner’s physiognomy is not about naïve inference of individual characteristics from physical features. It is a seeing-together of the soul and cosmos. Kassner uses the word ‘Gesicht’ (an untranslatable word which refers to what sees, namely face or countenance, and also what is seen, the vision.). This physiognomy is also a cosmogony. For Kassner all that can have a form: animals and humans, ideas, philosophies and religions, concrete things and products of pure fantasies, things of the present and the remote past all these can be ‘Gesicht’. In this ‘Gesicht’, rather than behind it, is the relationship of the soul to the entire cosmos and it needs interpretation. For Kassner the physiognomist is the mystic of the whole created world.

Kassner’s world is a world without masters and disciples. It is not built upon his predecessors, he had no precursors, hence the difficulty of categorizing his work. From the viewpoint of a traditional Indian one can designate him a ‘Gnanayogi’. His life as second birth, as second sailing was the journey of a soul to realization, an unending journey of the quest for knowing. It is not as though his physical disability prompted an inward journey. No, in Kassner the elemental and strong power of the senses and the spiritual energy is unmistakable. Kassner’s world is a paradox. In it there is suffering and that makes it very Christian, there is in him the drama of the soul, a deep, unresolved tension; every feeling call forth its denial, with every thought its contradiction. There is also unity in division. With every division there is also a crossing. It is lived paradox, not dialectics. It is tension, not antitheses. No dialectic, no millennium, no utopia, no synthesis, no telos, only the ‘middle’ and one has to live with it. Hence the absence of any revolt in him. This is ‘titiksha’ in the real sense of the term. It is also very Christian.

Kassner’s View of History

In his keen inquiry into human history Kassner differentiates two worlds– ‘the world of the father’ and ‘the world of the son’. ‘The world of the father’ is the world of the ancient man. Kassner says that ancient man with his magic hieratic cultures had no sense of individuality. These myth-dominated cultures, like that of the Greeks, are also a space world (Raumwelt). It is a world without division. It is also the world of identity. In this finite world, the polis with its norms regulates the tension between the individual and the group and the word approximates the thing designated by it. The divergence between the word and the thing occurs in ‘the world of the son’, which is a time world (Zeitwelt), the world of individuality. The conflict between inside and outside, form and content, soul and body, dream and reality, begins in this ‘world of the son’. Here myth and mystery part company. This is also the Christian world. The magico-mythical world, the unified but repetitive world gives way to the world of individual, divided but unique in history. But in Kassner we find no theories about the philosophy of history, no conflict of nature versus civilization as in Rousseau, no progress in history as in Hegel. In Kassner there is no dialectic but drama. The figure of Christ and the Word becoming flesh are of central importance to Kassner’s thoughts. Kassner says that the hold of the myth held sway as ‘grand form’, as order, rank and institution even in the ages of Christian dogma. The complete dissolution takes place in the age of baroque. Then in the nineteenth century, the French Revolution, Kant’s Critiques and Goethe’s Faust inaugurate the real chronicle of the individual. Through a ‘Gleichgewichtstörung’, to use Kassner’s phrase, the individual is loosened from tradition and becomes a slave to the collective. Kassner diagnoses the individual of his times as dilettante, achiever, speculator, actor, dialectician, materialist, mediocre, indiscrete humans lacking altogether the sense of measure. But the world of the individual is also the world of freedom. The isolated derailed individual seeking his counterpart finds him in the ‘Gerechte’ (the just man). The notion of the der Heilige is absent in the western world. Kassner says the counterpart of the Indian Rishi in the West is the Just Man. Kassner sees the saviour of the modern times in the Just man, in the pilgrim, in the Christian and the child like man. According to Kassner the contradiction between thought and action is Christian. This state of being at odds with oneself, induced no doubt by the elemental tension occasioned by the psyche’s experience of contradictory, or even conflicting experiences, is what prompts Kassner to rehabilitate Platonic periagoge in a Christian context. In other words, the want of alignment with the temporal world leads to the profound onset of imagination –Einbildung, restored by Kassner to the transitive sense of the Middle High German– the boundless imagination, i.e. its “lack of measure” holds for today’s humans the only promise of accomplishing the amalgam of truth and justice. Steigerung and Umkehr (antilepsis) are the twin features of this transcendence in immanence.

Kassner’s Major Works: Kassner himself has divided his writings into three phases. The first phase, that of the early works stretches from 1900 to 1918. The second phase from 1919 to 1938 may be called the period of physiognomic writings. In the last period from 1938 onwards till his death, he published his autobiographical writings. I think that we can say that the works published between 1910 and 1919 represent a period of transition.

The first book by Kassner Die Mystik, die Künstler und das Leben was published in 1900. The broad examination of the poetic understanding features in his inaugural essay to the book Der Dichter und Der Platoniker. Apart from another general essay in the middle of the book titled ‘Der Traum der Mittlealter (The Dream of the Middle Ages) ’ which speaks about the English pre-Raphaelites, and a dialogue at the end ‘On style’ between a German and an English student, the rest of the work deals with English poets of the eighteenth Century- William Blake, P. B. Shelly, John Keats, D. G. Rossetti, A. C. Swinburne, William Morris, Edward Burne-Jones and Robert Browning. As the title suggests, Kassner seeks to bring together three things, namely, mysticism, art and life. Kassner says that the “mystical thought is intuitive…. The artist provides the rhythm of life and the mystic thinks that”. Kassner had not yet developed his idea of imagination (Einbildungskraft), which would account for the mystical intuition more adequately. The book speaks of the mysticism inherent in the poetic vision, the underlying unity of life and poetry and mysticism as the supreme expression of this unity

In 1902 appeared Kassner’s book of parables Der Tod und die Maske was published. The twenty-three parables are all divided into six groups- that of the seducer, of the adventurer, of the dreamer, of the fatal liar, and of the mirrors and masks. In a later edition in 1913, twelve parables were dropped and added a new one Maria und Martha. Central to all these parables is the idea of Umkehr (conversion/inversion) as the inmost decision of the individual and which is beyond all reason. Kassner’s next book ‘Die Moral der Musik’ was published in 1905which contains as the subtitle of the book suggests ‘six letters of Joachim Fortunatus to a certain musician along with a preface titled: Joachim Fortunatus’ habits and sayings’. Already in this book ideas appear such as ‘allegory’, ‘symbol’, ‘der Einzelne’ and ‘All-Ein’ which are of immense significance for Kassner’s later work. This book specifically deals with ‘the order of the visible’, an important indicator of Kassner’s physiognomic world-view. Kassner says in his book that allegories consist of reason as against symbols that consist of forms. This opposition pair allegory and symbol form the seed of later ideas in Zahl und Gesicht. In symbol one cannot distinguish form and content. As in music the content is also the form. The juxtaposition of the moral and the music, the ethical and aesthetical, bear the indelible stamp of Kierkegaard’s influence. Kassner’s essay on Soren Kierkegaard appeared in the same year. The primacy of music and the influence of Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Wagner characterise these early works of Kassner. Later as Kassner distanced himself from these influences, he edited many of these early works drastically and omitted all that related to the preponderance of music. Even before he visited India, he published his study on Indian idealism, Der indische Idealismus in 1903. However, he never republished this work. After his travels in India he retracted this publication, modified his earlier insights and probably under Hegelian influence wrote Indische Gedanke in 1913. This was a very productive phase in Kassner’s early career. A small monograph on Denis Diderot and a volume of essays Motive, both published in 1906 also belong to this period. During this period Kassner also translated Andre Gide’s Philoktet (1904) and the Platonic dialogues Symposium (1903), Phaedros (1904), Phaedo (1906), Ion, Lysis and Charmides (in 1905). In 1908 was published his volume of parables Melancholia. This volume betrays a systematic construction. This was edited and republished in 1915 and for a third time in 1953. In the first parable Der Doppelgänger, a nobleman lives in absolute loneliness with his ‘double’ and in the end commits suicide. His madness isolated him from others and his environment. In the last parable Er also the actor, who is outside all societal orders, as one without measure and as one who knew only to exchange masks commits suicide. The second parable Zwei Schwätzer, is a dialogue, in which two horses Hans and Fritz pulling a beer wagon quarrel with each other about a mare Mathilde, who for them is the embodiment of a beautiful carefree life. And in the penultimate dialogue Die beiden Brüder, two monks quarrel about faith which both of them lack. Another parable Der Helfer is about a philanthropist who helps all others but could not help himself. All these characters live in a world governed by pure chance. When that artificial world tumbles down, they flee to sleep, death or suicide. In the middle of these parables there is Ein Gespräch über Einbildungskraft, a dialogue between a man and a jointed-man. Kassner says in his ‘Buch der Erinnerung’ that “the ‘Melancholia’ has for its core the idea of the ‘Measure’; lacking measure, man is eaten up by melancholy.” In 1910 Kassner published an essay Dilettantismus and in 1911 the book Von den Elementen der menschlichen Größe. About this work Kassner says in his reminiscences: “With this small volume, I believe, I have ended the period of my youthful writings and have begun a period of ripeness. In the ‘Elemente’ I wanted to get out of the antithetical that confines and cramps youth and move towards what I called ‘Maß’.” Here he examines modern man, calls him the individualist without measure and compares him with the ancient man and the Christian man. The ideas that Kassner uses in this work, ‘Maß’, ‘Umkehr’ ‘Einbildungskraft’, ‘Chimäre’ etc., are of central importance to the understanding of his insights into modernity. In his own dense formulation Kassner delineates the socio-gram and the psycho-gram of the modern man. The book Der indische Gedanke was published in 1913. This book was republished along with the Von den Elementen der menschlichen Größe as a single volume. This volume forms the core text of my research work. Kassner’s thoughts on India and the Indian mind, on the Indian representation of the saint, sacrifice and suffering, and his insights into the social reality of India that he gained by direct personal experience will be examined in detail in my research thesis. The dialogues Die Chimäre and Der Aussätzige were published in 1914. Kassner’s most ambitious work Zahl und Gesicht is published in 1919. This marks his second phase of writing. This is the most difficult of Kassner’s works and is considered difficult even by many professional philosophers. Kassner speaks in this work about the impossibility of numerical beings; he treats the fourth dimension, further system and order, and the world of identity and the world of individuality. All these concepts shall be taken up in detail in my study. Die Grundlagen der Physiognomik was published in 1922. In this work Kassner compares his dynamic physiognomy with the traditional static physiognomy of Aristotle to Lavater. His work gives an overview of Kassner’s Weltanschauung and serves as an introduction to his more difficult works, especially to Zahl und Gesicht. Kassner categorises three types of ‘Grenzmenshen’. ‘The Anarchist’, ‘the Mediocre’ and ‘the Childlike’. Of the three, he considers the childlike man as the redeemer of our times. Kassner’s next work, published in 1925 is Die Verwandlung. He dedicates this book to Rilke. This work consists of 35 physiognomic studies all examples of Kassner’s seeing that also interprets. Each study is devoted to the examination of face, leading, laterally speaking, to the explanation of the entire human world. Narziss oder Mythos und Einbildungskraft was published in 1928. The ‘imagination’ is central to this conversation among five persons, the poet, the doctor, the statesman, the thinker and the silent one. Narciss represents the transition from myth to imagination, from the magical man to the man with an I. In 1930, the essayistic collection Das physiognomische Weltbild appeared. The first two essays Über das Dämonische are followed by parables and various philosophic essays, including seminal essays on Goethe and Hoffmannsthal. In the essay Die drei Reiche Kassner divides the world history into two periods, namely, the ‘Reich des Vaters’ and the ‘Reich des Sohnes’. This division and Kassner’s treatment of these periods contain Kassner’s greatest insights into the cultural history of man. Kassner also speaks about a third ‘Reich des Geister’. Kassner sees the development from the movement ‘Reich des Vaters’ to the ‘Reich des Sohnes’, from ‘space-world’ to the ‘time-world’ from ‘magic’ to ‘freedom’ as not only happening in world history but also in every man as the movement from childhood to old age. Kassner’s ideas should be contrasted with the then prevalent theories of psychoanalysis, which Kassner criticised severely. The essays Zahl und Persönlichikeit and Das Europäische Gesicht discusses among others the relationship between Individual and collective. Die Quadratur des Zirkels is an essay by Kassners on his own work. The speech Das Ebenbild und der Einzelne contrasts the ancient with modern man. Kassners lecture Der Einzelne und der Kollektivmensch given in March 1931 at Zürich University, provides certain fundamental sociological insights. It was part of a series of lectures by eminent scholars including C.G. Jung and Carl. J. Burckhardt. Kassner compares in this lecture the ancient and modern forms of social and political living. In the work Physiognomik that appeared in 1932, Kassner interprets the faces in photos and portraits. It also features Kassners polemic against psychoanalysis. In his next book Von der Einbildung Kraft (1936) Kassner writes on ‘imagination’ in four essays. These four essays can be considered as forming part of a physiognomic aesthetics. The imagination is studied here in its relation to faith, dream, number and drama. These essays also contain insightful studies on Da Vinci and Shakespeare. In 1938 he published a small tract Anschaung und Beobachtung. Here Kassner speaks about the contrast between ‘seeing’ and ‘observing’. The man of imagination sees but the researcher observes. To him these tow ways of viewing are very different. With this work Kassner completed his writings on physiognomy in the widest sense of the term as a theory of ‘Gestalt’. During this second phase Kassner also published his masterly translations from Russian, English and French: Nicoloi Gogol: Der Mantel (1912), Tarus Bulba (1922); Lev Tolstoi: Der Tod des Iwan Iljitsch (1912), Dostojewski: Der Grossinquisitor (1913), Alexander Pushkin: Der Mohr des Zaren (1923), Pique Dame (1923), Cardinal Newman: Apologia pro vita mea (1920), Lawrence Sterne: Das Leben und die Ansichten Tristram Shandys (1925/1936), St. John. Perse: Preislieder (1938).

The first book that appeared in 1946 after the war Transfiguration contains essays written in the thirties. The introduction) with the subtitle In Hinblick auf die Atombombe reveals Kassner’s response, albeit with his own characteristic sensibility, to contemporary events. Transfiguration is for Kassner the transformation through imagination. It also contains essays on Michealangelo, Plotinus and Thomas de Quincey. Wandlung is a lecture given to the students of Zurich University in 1946. Kassner wrote his book Das neunzehnte Jahrhundert between 1940 and 1944, and it was published after the war in 1947. This is a physiognomist’s study of the signature of the nineteenth century. In Kassner’s diagnosis this century is characterised by a ‘Gleichgewichtstörung’ and the ‘hiatus’ between man and his work, which also characteristic modernity. This book is monumental in its scope and the full implication of this work has not yet been explored. The third epoch of Kassner’s life also saw the publication of his autobiographical books, namely Buch der Erinnerung (1938), Die Zweite Fahrt (1946), and Umgang der Jahre (1949). Together, they give expression to his intense memories of his childhood, his travels in Europe, his contemporary European world and those extraordinary human beings who were associated with him. During his last years Kassner’s writings acquire a theological tone. He took to the religions of the Far East, notably Zen, and wrote in 1959 Der blinde Schütze which bears the subtitle ‘ the sayings of an imaginary Zen-adept’ (dedicated to the soul of Laika, the dog killed in outer space). His other works Der Gottmensch (1938), Die Geburt Christi (1951), Das inwendige Reich (1953), Der Zauberer (1935) and the posthumously published Der Gottmensch und Weltseele (1960) together appear to constitute a form of ‘esoteric’ Christianity, which except for an essay by Eudo C. Mason is still unexplored.   Bibliography

A. Primary Literature

Collected Works:

1. Rudolph Kassner, Sämtliche Werke, Bände I – X, Ernst Zinn und Klaus E. Bohnenkamp (Eds), Günther Neske, Pfüllingen, (1969-1991).

Correspondence:

1. Rudolph Kassner, Brife an Tetzel, Ernst Zinn und Klaus E. Bohnenkamp (Eds), Günther Neske, Pfullingen, 1979. 2. Bohnenkamp, Klaus E. (Ed.), Rainer Maria Rilke und Rudolph Kassner, Freunde im Gespräch: Briefe und Dokumente, Insel, Memmingen, 1997.

B. Secondary Literature 1. Acquistapace, Eva: Person und Weltdeutung: Zur Form des Essayistischen im Blick auf das literarische Selbstverständnis Rudolf Kassners, Peter Lang, Frankfurt a. M., 1971.

2. Andreas, Willy: Das Neunzehnte Jahrhundert, Ausdruck und Größe von Rudolf Kassner, in: Historische Zeitschrift, 169, Leibnitz Verlag, Munich, 1949, pp.127-131.

3. Bachmann, Dieter: Rudolf Kassner (1873-1959), Essay und Essayismus, Kohlhammer, Stuttgart, 1969, pp. 44-65.

4. Baumann, Gerhart: Rudolf Kassner, Goethe-Sehen und Gesicht, Entwürfe zur Poetik und Poesie, Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1976, Munich, pp. 147-163.

5. Baumann, Gerhart: Rudolf Kassner, Gericht und Gegengericht- Aus den Schriften- Auswahl mit Nachwort, Insel Verlag, Frankfurt a. M./ Leipzig, 1992, pp. 342-367.

6. Baumann, Gerhart: Rudolf Kassner- Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Kreuzwege des Geistes, Rede zum 90. Geburtstag Rudolf Kassners gehalten am 30 Oktober 1963 in Wien, W. Kohlhammer Verlag, Stuttgart, 1964.

7. Bock, Werner: Rudolf Kassner und die moderne Physiognomik, in: Universitas, 10.Jg., Heft7, 1955, pp. 715-719.

8. Bohnenkamp, Klaus E.: Ein wenig bekannter Aufsatz von Rudolf Kassner über die Prosa des jungen Hofmannsthal, Für Rudolf Hirsch, (Ed.) J. H. Freund, pp. 295-309.

9. Bohnenkamp, Klaus E.: Kassner und Rilke im gegenseitigen Urteil, in: Rilke Symposium, 'Rainer Maria Rilke und Österreich' , im Rahmen des Internationalen Brucknerfestes'83, (Ed.) Storck, Joachim W., Bruckner Haus , Linz, 1986.

10. Bohnenkamp, Klaus E.: Rudolf Kassner und Andre Gide, in: Germanisch - Romanische Montatsschift, 29 / 1979, Carl Winter Universtätsverlag, 1979, pp.94-102.

11. Bong-Hi Cha: Das Erstlingswerk Rudolf Kassners, Ansätze zu seinem 'physiognomischen Weltbild', Doctoral Dissertation at Eberhard- Karls University, Tübingen, 1976.

12. Borchart, Rudolf: Rudolf Kassner, 'Melancholia', eine Trilogie des Geistes, in: Prosa I, Stuttgart, Ernst Klett Verlag, 1957, pp.485-487.

13. Böschenstein, Bernard: Stefan George vu par Rudolf Kassner, Melanges a David, 1986, pp.171-188.

14. Brunnemann, A. Brandl: Kassner's " Die Mystik, die Künstler und das Leben", Book Review, in: Frankfurter Zeitung, 06 January 1901 & Deutsche Literaturzeitung, 21April 1900, Nr17, pp1133-34.

15. Büchler, Franz: Schizoider Zeitgeist, Wasserscheide zweier Zeitalter, Essays, Lothar Steihne Verlag, Heidelberg, 1970, pp.102-121.

16. Burnke, Eduard (Ed.): Rudolf Kassner, Die Mystik, die Künstler und das Leben, Book Review in: Literarisches Centralblatt, 51Jg.,Leipzig, No.27, July 7, 1900, pp.1135-37.

17. C.J.: Künstlermystik, Review of Kassner's work Die Mystik, die Künstler und das Leben, in: Die Grenzboten, Zeitschrift für Politik, Literatur und Kunst, 59.Jg., Leipzig, 1900.

18. Burckhart, Carl Jakob: Rudolf Kassner, Bildnisse, S. Fischer, Frankfurt a. M., 1958, pp. 268-273.

19. Chapple, Gerald: 'Diese drei Jahre München', Rudolf Kassner writes to Rilke, in: Modern Austrian Literature, Volume15, Numbers3/4, 1982, pp.221-237.

20. Chapple, Gerald: Aus Rudolf Kassners Reisebriefen an Lili Schalk, in: Neue Zürcher Zeitung , 9 September 1973, zum 100. Geburtstag Rudolf Kassners.

21. Chapple, Gerald: Rudolf Kassners Platonismus, in: Neue Zürcher Zeitung , 9 September 1973, zum 100. Geburtstag Rudolf Kassners.

22. Eisenreich, Herbert: Kassner und keine Nachwelt 1959, in: Reaktionen, Essays zur Literatur, 1964, pp.271-276.

23. Enzink, Willem: Erinnerungen an Max Picard 1888-1965, in: Neue Deutsche Hefte 35.Jg. 1988. pp. 189-205.

24. Enzink, Willem: Erinnerungen an Rudolf Kassner, in: Neue Deutsche Hefte, 31, 1984, pp.288-297.

25. Glasnapp, Helmuth von: Das Indienbild deutscher Denker, K. F. Koehler Verlag, Stuttgart, 1960.

26. Hecht, Hans: Rudolf Kassner. Englische Dichter, in: Beiblatt zur Anglia, pp. 32-33.

27. Heinecke, Hans: Rudolf Kassner, Dichtung und Dasein, Gesammelte Essays, Karl H. Hensel Verlag, Berlin, 1950.

28. Howes, Geoffrey C. : Emerson's Image in Turn of the century Austria, The cases of Kassner, Friedell and Musil, in: Modern Austrian Literature, Volume 22, Nos. 3/4, 1989, pp. 227-240.

29. Janitzer, Hermann: Rudolf Kassner. Englische Dichter: Book Review, in: Zeitschrift für Englischen Unterricht, 21.Bd. 1.Heft, Breslau, 1922, p.132.


30. Kamper, Dietmer: Rudolf Kassner: Kuturphilosoph und Schriftsteller, in: Neue Deutsche Bibliographie, pp.320-21.


31. Kassner, Rudolf: Erinnerung an Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Worte des Gedankens, Nachrufe aus dem Todesjahr 1929, Sign HOF 120/138, Lothar Stielem Verlag, Heidelberg, pp. 41-55.

32. Kassner, Rudolf: Die Hände des Joghi, in: Merkur, 3/1949.

33. Kassner, Rudolf: Vom Grunde, in: Merkur, VII Jg. 9. Heft, September 1953, pp.801-02.

34. Kemp, Friedhelm: Der Schauende schaut immer nur das Leben, in: Süddeutsche Zeitung, Wochenende 8/9 September 1973.

35. Kensik, A. Cl.: Narziss, Aus den Gesprächen mit Rudolf Kassner, in: Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Sonntagausgabe, 12 Mai1963, Blatt 6.

36. Kensik, A. Cl.: Gedenken an Rudolf Kassner: Rudolf Kassner im Gespräch, in: Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Sonntagausgabe, 04 April 1959, Blatt 10.

37. Kensik, A. Cl.: Zwischen Frage und Antwort , Aus Gesprächen mit Rudolf Kassner, zum 85. Geburtstag Rudolf Kassners, in: Neue Zürcher Zeitung , 06 September 1958.

38. Kensik, A. Cl. und D. Bodmer (Eds.): Verzeichnis der Werke Rudolph Kassners, in: Rudolph Kassner zum achtzigsten Geburtstag. Gedenkbuch. Im Eugen Rentsch Verlag, 1953, pp. 243-250.

39. Keyn, Ulrich: Rudolf Kassner's Physiognomik, in: The Gate, vol. II, No 3 /4.

40. Keyserling, Hermann Graf von: Rudolf Kassner :Die Moral der Musik, in: Kensik, A. Cl. und D. Bodmer (Eds.), Rudolph Kassner zum achtzigsten Geburtstag. Gedenkbuch. Im Eugen Rentsch Verlag, 1953, pp.243-250.

41. Keyserling, Hermann Graf von : Rudolf Kassner, Reise durch die Zeit I : Ursprünge und Entfaltungen, Lichtenstein Verlag, Vaduz, 1948, pp.148-188.

42. Kiss, Endre: Über Wiens Bedeutung für die essayistische Periode des jungen Georg Lukas, Die Österreichische Literatur, Ihr Profil von Jh. wende bis Gegenwart , Germanistik, 31, 1990. pp.371-383.

43. Kraft, Wener: Rudolf Kassner's 'Zweite Fahrt', in: Hochland, Jg. 63/1971, Koesel Verlag, Munich, pp.44-59.

44. Langer, Norbert: Rudolf Kassner, Dichter aus Österreich 4.Folge, Österreichischer Bundesverlag, Wien, Munich, 1960, pp. 72-78.

45. Lennartz, Franz: Rudolf Kassner, in: Deutsche Schriftsteller des 20.Jh im Spiegel der Kritik, Band 2, pp.899-905

46. Ludes, Käte: Der Dichter im Welt- und Menschenbild Rudolf Kassners, Doctoral Dissertation at Albert Ludwigs University, Freiburg, 1951.

47. Mason, Eudo C.: Rudolph Kassner und England, Rudolph Kassner zum Gedächtnis, in: Exzentrische Bahnen, Studien zum Dichterbewusstsein der Neuzeit, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen, 1963, p 132-141, 168-180.

48. Mason, Eudo C.: Der Erlöser Gottes, Rudolf Kassners esoterisches Christentum, in: Wort und Wahrheit, 07-01-1952.

49. Mason, Eudo C.: For Rudolf Kassner’s Eightieth Birthday, in: German Life and Letters, vol VIII, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1953-54.

50. Mell, Max: Über die Schriften Rudolf Kassners, in: Das Inselschiff, 6, 1925, pp.68-78.

51. Meyer, Richard M.: Rudolf Kassner, Die Mystik, die Künstler und das Leben, Book Review, in: Euphorion, Bd.8, Leipzig/Vienna, 1901, pp.138-39.

52. Meyer, Richard M.: Essayisten, in: Das Literarische Echo, Bd.15, Berlin, 1912/13, pp.757-762.

53. Meyerfeld, Max: Ein Stilsucher, 'Die Mystik, die Künstler und das Leben' von Rudolf Kassner, in: Das Literarische Echo, Halbmonatschrift für Literaturfreunde, 3.Jg., 1900-1901, pp.178-179.

54. Michael, V. Albrect: Praktische Philosophie im Zeichen des Sokrates- zwischen römischer Daseinbewältigung und moderner Physiognomik.

55. Mühlberger Josef: Der Mensch mit Eigenschaften, Zum Tode Rudolph Kassners, in: Welt und Wort, Literarische Monatsschrift, Heft1, (Ed.) Dr. Ewald Katzmann, 14 Januar 1959, pp136-138

56. Neumann, Gerhard, und Ulrich Ott (Eds.): Rudolf Kassner: Physiognomik als Wissensform, Rombach Verlag, Freiburg, 1999.

57. Paeschke, Hans: Rudolf Kassner, in: Merkur, VII Jg., 9. Heft, September 1953, pp. 802-833.

58. Paeschke, Hans: Rudolf Kassner, Neske, Pfüllingen, 1963.

59. Paulsen, Wolfgang: Das Neunzehnte Jahrhundert. Ausdruck und Größe, von Rudolf Kassner, in: Modern Language Notes, June 1949, pp.430-31.

60. Pellegrini, Allesandro: Begegnung mit Rudolf Kassner, in: Literatur und Kritik 18, 1981, pp. 4-13.

61. Peukert, Hans: Rudolf Kassners Gleichnisse, in: Wort und Wahrheit 13, II/1958.

62. Picard, Michael: Annährung an die Physiognomik Rudolf Kassners von der Erfahrung aus, in: Antaios XI, Stuttgart, 1969, pp.48-65.

63. Rilke, Raine Maria: Briefe an Fürstin Marie von Thurn und Taxis, in: Rudolph Kassner zum achtzigsten Geburtstag, Gedenkbuch, Eugen Rentsch Verlag, 1953, pp. 7-11 64. Rougemont, Denis de: Rudolf Kassner und die Größe, in: Monat, 12.Jg., Berlin, 1959-60, pp.22-30.

65. Rudolf Kassner Gesellschaft: Deutsche Dichtergesellschaften, in: Jahrbuch für Int. Germanistik, Jg. VIII/ Heft1, p.157.

66. Rychner, Max; Rudolf Kassner, Arachne, Aufsätze zur WeltliteraturMänesse Verlag, Zürich, 1957, pp.194-205.

67. Schmidt, Michael: Autobiographie und Physiognomik, Probleme der Selbstdarstellung im Werk Rudolf Kassners, Munich, 1970.

68. Schmidt, Michael: Rudolf Kassner, in: Handbuch der deutschen Gegenwartsliteratur.

69. Schmidt, Michael and F. Ke: Rudolf Kassner, Kindlers neues Literaturlexicon, Munich, 1996.

70. Schröder, Jürgen: Rudolf Kassner im Gefängnis -Bau des 'Doppelgänger', (Typescript).

71. Siebels, Eva; Sprache und Dichtung im physiognomischen Weltbilde Rudolf Kassners, DVLG, 19, Jg., XIX Bd., Halle/ Salle,1941.

72. Siebels, Eva: Rilke und Kassner - Ein Versuch, in: Euphorion, Dichtung und Volkstum, Bd. 37, 1936, Stuttgart, pp. 23-35.

73. Sieber, Karl: Rilke's aüßerer Weg zu Goethe, in: Euphorion, Dichtung und Volkstum, Stuttgart, Band 37, 1936, pp. 51-60.

74. Spoerri, Theophil: Das Vermächtnis Rudolf Kassners, in: Schweizer Monatshefte 41/1961, Zurich, 1961,pp. 55-63.

75. Spoerri, Theophil: Rudolf Kassner, Rede bei der Verleihung des Schiller- Gedächnispreises des Landes Baden-Wüttenberg an Rudolf Kassner in den Wüttenbergischen Staatstheatern in Stuttgart am 10. November 1955, Stuttgarter Zeitung.

76. Spoerri, Theophil: Rudolf Kassner, in: Europäische Revue, Stuttgart, 1943, pp.334-335.

77. Steffensen, Steffen: Kassner und Kierkegaard: Ein Vortrag, Obis Litterarum, 18, 1963, pp. 80-90.

78. Sternberger, Dolf: Einsichten Rudolf Kassners, Europäische Revue, Stuttgart, 1940, pp. 673-681.

79. Subramanian, B.: Der Weg zur Innigkeit: Zur Konstellation Rilke- Tagore- Kassner, in: Jahrbuch für internationale Germanistik, Jg. XXIX, Heft 2, Bern/Berlin, 1997.

80. Subramanian, B.: Die Umkehr als der Maßbegriff, Kassners Entwürfe zu einer physiognomischen Geschichtsphilosophie, in: Gerhard Neuman, und Ulrich Ott (eds.), Rudolf Kassner, Physiognomik als Wissensform, Rombach Verlag, Freiburg, 1999.

81. Subramanian, B.: Zwischen Maß und Maßlosigkeit, Zur physiognomischen Kulturphilosophie Rudolf Kassners, in: Millennium Band, (ed.) Dorothea Jecht, Iudicium Verlag, Munich, April, 2005.

82. Sueskind, W. E.: Ein Essayist wird zum Klassiker, zum Erscheinen von Rudolf Kassners sämtlichen Werke, in: Süddeutsche Zeitung, Buch und Zeit, Ostern 28/29/30, March 1970.

83. Theologia Deutsch ( Lexikon), Rudolf Kassner, Lexicon entry.

84. Usinger, Fritz: Ausdruck und Größe des 19. Jahrhunderts: Zu einem Buche von Rudolf Kassners, In: Welt ohne Klassik, 1960, pp.87-96. 85. Usinger, Fritz: Rudolf Kassner, Denker und Deuter im heutigen Europa, (Eds.) Hans Schwerte and Wilhelm Spengler, Oldenberg Verlag, Hamburg, 1954, pp. 212-225.

86. Usinger, Fritz: Das inwendige Reich, in: Deutsche Rundschau 80/1954, Baden – Baden, pp.404-407. 87. Usinger, Fritz: Rudolf Kassner und das Physiognomische Weltbild, in: Geist und Gestalt, Aufsätze, 2. erweiterte Auflage, Karl Rauch Verlag, Dessau, 1941.

88. Usinger, Fritz: Rudolf Kassner und die Deutung der Wirklichhkeit, in: Das Wirkliche, Aufsätze, Darmstadter Verlag, Darmstadt, 1947.

89. Usinger, Fritz: Rudolf Kassner und die Deutung des Menschen, in: Das Wirkliche, Aufsätze, Darmstadter Verlag, Darmstadt 1947.

90. Usinger, Fritz: Verwandlung und Wandlung, zur drei neuen Büchern von Rudolf Kassner, in: Merkur, 3/1949, pp.293-301.

91. Wierzejewski, Achim: Die Auflösung einer Legende, Rilke in seiner Beziehung zu Kassner und Hofmannsthal, in: Literatur und Kritik 14. 1979, pp. 491-495.

92. Wierzejewski, Achim: Lebensspur und Ichbezogenheit, zu Rudolph Kassners autobiographischen Schriften, in: Jahrbuch des Wiener Goethe-Vereins, Neue Folge der Chronik 79,. Robert Mühler (ed.), 1975, pp. 100-119.

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[edit] Life

Kassner's family immigrated to Moravia (at the time part of Austro-Hungary) from Silesia in Germany. His father, Oskar Kassner, was a landowner and factory owner. Kassner regarded himself as a German-Slavic mixture, having inherited German "blood" from his mother and a Slavic "spirit" (Geist) from his father (Das physiognomische Weltbild, 116ff.).

Rudolf was the seventh of 10 children. At nine months he contracted polio which left him lame for the rest of his life. He grew up in a strict Catholic milieu and was schooled at home. He studied national economy, history, and philosophy in Vienna and Berlin where he attended the lectures of the nationalist historian Heinrich von Treitschke. He received his doctorate in 1897 with a dissertation on Der ewige Jude in der Dichtung ("The Eternal Jew in Literature").

Despite his physical handicap, Kassner traveled extensively in Russia, North Africa, and India. He lived in Paris, London, and Munich for short periods of time. His first publications found favor among fin-de-siécle poets and artists. He was a member of the bohemian circle in Munich to which Frank Wedekind und Eduard Graf von Keyserling also belonged. Kassner was acquainted with Ulrich Graf von Brockdorff-Rantzau, Paul Valéry, and André Gide. From 1900 to 1906 he was a regular member of the Viennese group around the cultural philosopher and antisemite Houston Steward Chamberlian. Kassner later distanced himself from Chamberlain.

In 1902 he met Hugo von Hofmannsthal and in 1907, Rainer Maria Rilke with both of whom he developed deep and lasting friendships. Rilke dedicated the eighth Duineser Elegie to Kassner. For a time both Hofmannsthal and Rilke considered Kassner to be the most far-sighted contemporary cultural philosopher. His close friendship with Rilke has received a great deal of scholarly attention. Schmölders (in: Neumann/Ott 1999) speculates that at least on Kassner's part this friendship was latently homosexual in nature.

After the outbreak of World War I Kassner moved to Vienna. The Nazis officially prohibited his writings in 1933. Nevertheless, his books continued to appear until he was forbidden to write (Schreibverbot) after the Nazi annexation of Austria in 1938. Kassner's wife who was Jewish was able to escape from Austria with the help of Hans Carossa.

Kassner emigrated to Switzerland in 1945. In 1946 he moved to Sierre (Siders) in Valais where his Rilke had also spent the last years of his life. He lectured at the University of Zurich and lived in Sierre until his death in 1959

[edit] Works

Kassner himself divided his work, which is extremely individual and shows his wide reading, into three periods: aestheticism 1900-1908; physiognomy 1908-1938: and after 1938 autobiographical writings, religious and mystical essays, and "meta-political" interpretations of world events. Kassner rejected rigid philosophical systems and thus preferred looser literary forms such as essays, aphorisms, prose sketches, parables, and allegories. Nevertheless, his works revolve around certain coherent contexts and returns again and again to the same themes.

Kassner can be characterized as an antirationalist. His writings deal with themes and concepts of medieval mysticism, hermetics, and Indian philosophy. For him the most important ability of the mind (Verstand) is not reason (ratio) but rather the imagination (Einbildungskraft)which he believed make "living perception" possible. He believed that he had overcome the analytical and rational dissection of the world by means of a "totality" of perception.

According to Schmölders (1999) Kassner's essays have a "predatory component." His early adversary was the "dilettante," that is, modern man who overestimates himself and his place in the world, who would be an artist without being able to the recognize the "whole" of the world, who is a victim of relativism and individualism. He accuses modernity of being without "standard" (Maß), no longer able to show man his place in the world. The only way to attain "standard" and "greatness" is through passion and suffering. Kassner further denounces the "actor" who only plays with social roles and turns himself into the accomplise of modernity.

Kassner's post-1908 writings on physiognomy are probably the most original part of his work. His physiognomy is not a system for reading character from facial features; rather it is at its core a conservative cultural philosophy. Kassner saw in modernity a cultural crisis that leaves traces of alienation and uprootedness in human faces. In the intellectual landscape of the 1920's Kassner's world-view thus reflects the "conservative revolution."

According to Kassner's physiognomy, in the old, aristocratic corporate society every person had a face that resulted from his connection to his estate. Modern man has, however, lost the "standard" that anchored him in the community: the face of modern man is thus "gaping" like a wound because it is no longer anchored in the world. Kassner uses "face" in its dual meaning as vision and visage, seeing and countenance. Physiognomic interpretation is, however, not something that can be learned; Kassner believed that the "seer" alone is called to physiognomy. "Imagination" becomes for Kassner the most important human ability, for it alone makes it possible to see the world as a unity or "form" and "to see things together."

Kassner addressed the important intellectual movements of his time. He is a pronounced opponent of psychoanalysis which for him is a further symptom of cultural crisis. It tries to discover in man the most extreme appetites - parricide, incest - and turns the great into the banal. On the other hand, Albert Einstein's theory of relativity was for him the most important confirmation of his philosophical thought. In Zahl und GesichtKassner even tried to make Einstein's theory compatible with his own understanding of "space world" and "time world."

Although Kassner again and again alludes to currect events in his writings and analyzes contemporary society, this is done in his later work increasingly in a kind of private mythology that makes use of ambiguous, enigmatic and often unclearly defined ideas that often cannot to attributed to a political stance.

Politically, Kassner saw himself early on as a European who tried to characterize the peoples of Europe without favoring his own. His sharpest criticism is often reserved for the Germans. In spite of his youthful enthusiasm for Treitschke and Chamberlain he was never openly antisemitic; he married a woman of Jewish ancestry. Nevertheless, derogatory comments about Jews and Jewish stereotypes can be found in his writing (cf. Schmölders in Neumann/Ott 1999).

In his late work the tendency toward mystical and religious syncretism comes to the fore: Kassner sees himself as the "magician" who employs a magical and inaccessible language to point to "mysteries" and "secrets" of the world: he plays with themes of Buddhism and Indian religions that he mixes with Christian ideas.

Kassner regretted his early admiration of Friedrich Nietzsche. As early as 1910 in Dilettantismus he accuses Nietzsche of having contributed to "everyone wanting to be an artist." One of the greatest influences on Kassner was Søren Kierkegaard to whose Christian anthropology he refers again and again. Other named role models are Blaise Pascal and Plato.

Intellectually, Kassner is closest to his contemporaries Hofmannsthal and Rilke, Karl Wolfskehl and Marx Picard (who also produced physiognomic works), but there are also clear philosophical parallels to Oswald Spengler.

Georg Lukács, Georg Simmel and Walter Benjamin admired Kassner's early works - although Benjamin also sharply criticized Kassner. He was praised by his contemporaries: in 1908 Rudolf Borchardt called him the "only genuine mystic of quality;" in 1911 Friedrich Gundolf attested to his "purity and loftiness of sentiment;" Dolf Sternberger, Fritz Usinger, Hans Paeschke were among his admirers. But Kassner also encountered criticism and a lack of understanding, for example, by Rudolf Alexander Schröder. Thomas Mann characterized his book Zahl and Gesicht as "hair-splitting and precious;" Friedrich Dürrenmatt reported that for him a meeting Kassner had "broken Kassner's spell."

Kassner received the Gottfried Keller Prize in 1949; the Great Austrian State Prize for Literatur in 1953; and the Schiller Memorial Prize of the State of Baden-Württemberg in 1955.

[edit] Bibliography

  • Der ewige Jude in der Dichtung. Dissertation 1897
  • Der Tod und die Maske: Gleichnisse. Leipzig: Insel 1902
  • Motive: Essays. Berlin: Fischer (1906)
  • Melancholia: eine Trilogie des Geistes. Berlin: Fischer 1908
  • Der Dilettantismus. 1910
  • Von den Elementen der menschlichen Groesse. Leipzig: Insel 1911
  • Der indische Gedanke. Leipzig: Insel 1913
  • Die Chimäre. Leipzig: Insel 1914
  • Zahl und Gesicht: nebst einer Einleitung: Der Umriss einer Universalen Physiognomik. Leipzig: Insel 1919
  • Die Grundlagen der Physiognomik. Leipzig: Insel 1922
  • Die Mythen der Seele. Leipzig: Insel 1927
  • Narciss: oder Mythos und Einbildungskraft. Leipzig: Insel. 1928
  • Physiognomik. München: Delphin 1932
  • Transfiguration. Erlenbach-Zürich: Rentsch 1946
  • Die zweite Fahrt. Erlenbach-Zürich: Rentsch 1946 - autobiographisch
  • Das neunzehnte Jahrhundert. Ausdruck und Grösse. Erlenbach-Zürich: Rentsch 1947
  • Das inwendige Reich: Versuch einer Physiognomik der Ideen. Erlenbach-Zürich: Rentsch 1953
  • Das Antlitz des Deutschen in fünf Jahrhunderten deutscher Malerei. Zürich; Freiburg: Atlantis 1954
  • Buch der Erinnerung. Erlenbach-Zürich: Rentsch 1954
  • Geistige Welten. 1958

Kassner also translated works by Plato, Aristotle, André Gide, Gogol, Tolstoi, Dostojewski, Puschkin and Laurence Sterne.

[edit] Complete works

  • Sämtliche Werke, 10 Volumes., edited by Ernst Zinn and Klaus E. Bohnenkamp, Pfullingen: Neske 1969 - 1991
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Kassner"
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