Goethe and 'Greek love'

这项研究将是歌德思想中关于“同性恋”的第一本学术著作。在几乎任何关于德国民族认同的论述中，我们都很难高估歌德的重要性。歌德在他的一生中，几乎被每一个意识形态运动所动员和利用，被认为是一个特定事业的倡导者。比起将歌德政治化，这项研究将更加谦虚，但或许与我们的时代更相关，它表明，他可以向现代讲述对传统上被敌意看待的少数民族文化的辩护和宽容。事实上，他的态度在很多方面都预示了现代平等主义的同性恋关系，以及对他们更自由的态度。我之所以用“希腊之爱”这个词，是因为1)它是18世纪最常用来指代“同性恋”的词（另一个历史术语是“鸡奸”，但它带有贬义）；2)它的“他者性”标志着现代对同性恋的理解（在19世纪后期发展起来）与早期对同性恋的理解之间的根本区别，后者并不意味着对性格、性身份和病理的基本判断；3)从概念上讲，它既包括平等伴侣之间的互惠关系，也包括同性恋关系（尽管在分析中必须加以区分）；4)歌德对同性欲望的理解——就像他同时代的人一样——是由古希腊和古罗马的古典知识决定的（事实上，这本书的许多材料都被学者们忽略了，因为他们没有在这些古代话语的背景下看到它）。歌德的观点具有明显的开放性和自由主义的特点。他对希腊爱情的一般性评论通常伴随着对其所谓的“不自然”的保留意见（通常指的是它对生殖和人口增长的威胁，这是18世纪的一个普遍问题），但这些警告通常被他评估的总体积极基调所掩盖。他有时把希腊人的爱情归结为男性更美（这种观点在他的时代和古代都很普遍）。这项研究的主要主题之一将是歌德努力将自己的思想从18世纪将希腊的爱简化为鸡奸（一种倾向得到“Knabenliebe”一词的支持，“男孩的爱”一词经常被错误地应用于成人同性恋）中解放出来，并描述平等地位的成年人之间的关系，换句话说，向现代性迈出决定性的一步。歌德对同性恋者的评论缺乏他在一般性评论中所表现出来的保留，而这些评论正是歌德在书中所表达的。他公开支持两位著名的“同性恋者”：一位是著名的历史学家约翰内斯·冯·米<e:1>勒，另一位是现代艺术史的奠基人约翰·约阿希姆·温克尔曼。

This study will be the first scholarly book on 'homosexuality' in Goethe's thought. It is difficult to overestimate the importance of Goethe in almost any discourse on German national identity. Goethe has been mobilised and exploited by almost every ideological movement since his lifetime as a supposed advocate of a particular cause. This study will, more modestly but perhaps with more relevance to our times than such politicising of Goethe, suggest that he can speak to the modern age about the justification for and tolerance of a minority culture that has traditionally been viewed with hostility. In fact, his attitude in many respects anticipates modern, egalitarian homosexual relationships and the more liberal attitude toward them.I use the term 'Greek love' because 1) it is the term most commonly used in the eighteenth century for 'homosexuality' (the other historical term is 'sodomy,' but that has pejorative connotations); 2) its 'otherness' signals the fundamental distinction between a modern understanding of homosexuality (as it developed in the later nineteenth century) and earlier understandings that did not imply a fundamental judgement of character, sexual identity and pathology; 3) it includes conceptually both reciprocal relationships between equal partners and pederastic relationships (though these must be distinguished in the analysis); and 4) Goethe's understanding of same-sex desire - like that of his contemporaries - was decisively informed by knowledge of Classical antiquity, both Greek and Roman (in fact, much of the material for this book was neglected by scholars who had not seen it in the context of these discourses from antiquity).Goethe's views are characterised by a marked openness and liberalism. His general comments on Greek love are often accompanied by reservations regarding its supposed 'unnaturalness' (which usually referred to the supposed threat it presented to reproduction and thus population growth, a common concern in the eighteenth century), but these caveats are generally overshadowed by the overall positive tenor of his assessment. He sometimes attributes Greek love to the supposedly greater beauty of the male (a view common in his time and in antiquity). One of the major themes of the study will be Goethe's struggle to free his thinking from the eighteenth-century reduction of Greek love to pederasty (a tendency supported by the term 'Knabenliebe', 'love of boys', which was often wrongly applied to adult homosexuality) and to describe a relationship between adults of equal status, in other words, to take a decisive step toward modernity. Goethe's comments on particular homosexuals lack the reservations found in his general remarks, and these comments were the ones that Goethe voiced in print. He publicly supported two known 'homosexuals': a famous historian, Johannes von Müller, and especially the founder of modern art history, Johann Joachim Winckelmann.