Goethe and 'Greek love'

这项研究将是歌德思想中第一本关于同性恋的学术书籍。在几乎任何关于德国国家认同的论述中，歌德的重要性怎么估计都不为过。自他作为一项特定事业的所谓倡导者以来，歌德几乎被每一场意识形态运动所动员和利用。这项研究将表明，与歌德的政治化相比，这项研究更温和，但可能更切合我们的时代，他可以向现代讲述对传统上被敌视的少数群体文化的正当和宽容。事实上，他的态度在很多方面都预示着现代的、平等主义的同性恋关系和对它们的更自由的态度。我使用“希腊爱情”这个术语是因为1)这是18世纪最常用的术语“同性恋”(另一个历史术语是“鸡奸”，但有贬义的含义)；2)它的“他性”标志着对同性恋的现代理解(就像它在19世纪后期发展起来的那样)和早期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)它在概念上既包括平等伴侣之间的对等关系，也包括平等关系(尽管在分析中必须区分这些关系)；4)歌德对同性欲望的理解--就像他同时代的人一样--决定性地受到古希腊和罗马古代知识的影响(事实上，这本书的许多材料被没有在古代这些论述的背景下看到的学者所忽视)。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往往伴随着对其所谓的“非自然性”的保留意见(这通常指的是它对生殖和人口增长造成的所谓威胁，这在18世纪是一个普遍关注的问题)，但这些警告通常被他评估的总体积极基调所掩盖。他有时将希腊的爱情归因于被认为更美丽的男性(这在他那个时代和古代都很常见)。这项研究的主要主题之一将是歌德努力将他的思想从18世纪希腊人的爱情简化为同龄人(这一趋势得到了Knabenliebe一词的支持，这一趋势经常被错误地用于成年同性恋)，并描述了地位平等的成年人之间的关系，换句话说，向现代迈出了决定性的一步。歌德对特定同性恋者的评论缺乏在他的一般性评论中发现的保留意见，这些评论是歌德在印刷品中发表的。他公开支持两位著名的“同性恋者”：著名历史学家约翰尼斯·冯·穆勒，特别是现代艺术史的创始人约翰·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.