Wackenroder and the Doctrine of the Soul

Abstract

The writings of Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder (1773–1798) constitute perhaps the most powerful and original source in the early German Romantic discourse on autonomous music, itself a spearhead of a European trend that matured at he turn of the eighteenth century. Wackenroder's perfervid yet strangely lucid and insightful observations on art and music are founded on the notion ofKunstreligion(‘art religion’), which he uses to replace the rational explanations of art, based on knowledge and representation of the external world, and derived from classical philosophy.