12 - Virtuosity

Summary

SEID IHR WOHL GAR EIN VIRTUOS?” is the question put to Mephistopheles by Frosch in Auerbach's Keller (2201), in an effort to embarrass the uncanny intruder. “O nein! says Mephistopheles with a quick rhyme on Frosch's word, “die Kraft ist schwach, allein die Lust ist groß” (2195–2204). Goethe's (and Mephisto's) power over language is anything but “schwach.” Linguistic dexterity may seem to presuppose no ideology or epistemology. Fun is fun. Still irony, paradox, and virtuosity are all dyadic (not triadic, for instance), and suggest a reliance on binary choices, even if God transcends all opposition between contraries. Irony and paradox subvert, contradict, or modulate more or less specific terms of reference, while virtuosity depends on a renunciation of reference to things beyond the prison house of language in favor of play within the system. Many, different maneuvers are employed in virtuosic performance, as in any other kind of game. Irony and paradox may themselves be among the tools and tricks of a virtuoso, as my colleague Gitta Hammarberg has pointed out to me. Any game, however, is self-contained and governed by local rules. It may make gestures toward a world beyond its artificial universe, but it is ultimately modest, foregoing metaphysical statements, or making them only with a twinkle in its eye. The same is true of virtuosity in language. Skeptical of the iconicity of language, Goethe was the freer to exploit its possibilities.