O LIVER G RILL Weather - or Not? Meteorology and the Art of Prediction in Humboldt’s Kosmos and Stifter’s Der Nachsommer 1 A Study in Weather In Adalbert Stifter’s novel Der Nachsommer, published in 1857, the two protagonists get to know each other by way of a dispute about an approaching thunderstorm. Due to his meteorological knowledge Heinrich Drendorf is convinced that there is “ein Gewitter im Anzuge” (N I: 49). 2 His interlocutor Gustav von Risach on the other hand emphatically proclaims: “Das Gewitter wird nicht zum Ausbruche kommen” (N I: 49). The subsequent discussion about this weather forecast is conducted at the unprecedented length of more than eighty pages. Thus, weather dominates “Die Einkehr” and “Die Beherbergung”; those two chapters in which the course for Heinrich’s life is set. Later, again in key scenes, a considerable number of weather situations accrue: For example, the sleet before Heinrich’s visit to the theatre, in the course of which he sees his future wife for the first time - Natalie, is “schneebleich” on account of the stormy night in King Lear (N I: 198). Or the thunderstorm, when lightning illuminates the beauty of an antique sculpture for Heinrich to see, whereby he reaches a new understanding of art and beauty (N II: 99). Or the risky ascent of a mountain in winter, the success of which entirely depends on the correctness of Heinrich’s weather forecast. This adventure gives him “ein erhabenes Gefühl […], fast so erhaben wie [s]eine Liebe zu Natalie” (N III: 111). Heinrich receives this feeling in the right time, namely before Risach tells him about his failed “gewitterartige Liebe” for Natalie’s mother Mathilde (N III: 223). 3 Thus, weather is undoubtedly the main topic of Nachsommer, as Gerhard Neumann points out (“Wolkenspuren” 304). Heinrich Drendorf’s story al- 1 A slightly different German version of this essay was published recently in: Zeitschrift für Germanistik XXVI (2016). I kindly thank Annalisa Fischer for the translation. 2 Stifter’s Nachsommer is here and will henceforth be cited parenthetically in the text by ‘N vol. no.: p. no.’ The text quoted in the footnotes by ‘InS p. no.’ is taken from Indian Summer, the translation of Wendell Frye: “there’s a thunderstorm coming up”, “The thunderstorm won’t come” (InS 35). 3 “pale as the driven snow” (InS 115), “A sublime feeling […], almost as sublime as my love for Natalie” (InS 382); “gewitterartige Liebe” means ‘stormy love.’ In the cited edition it is not translated literally (cf. InS 445). O LIVER G RILL 102 most seems to be designed as a ‘study in weather,’ but why? Why is the weather in Stifter’s text not leading the usual, so to speak, atmospheric existence in the background but becomes the focal point of the diegesis? 4 In the following I want to pursue this question, taking a detour to contemporary meteorology via the example of Alexander von Humboldt. Aside from the fact that this approach accommodates the currently increased interest of cultural studies in weather and climate, 5 it is also crucial to my argument. Humboldt’s Kosmos, on which I will concentrate, not only represents the state of meteorology around 1850 in summa - it also reveals a tension essential to the meteorological discourse: Humboldt hopes to find some kind of determinism for atmospheric phenomena but those hopes, however, are thoroughly disappointed by the unpredictability of the weather. This tension is part of the basic aporia of the Kosmos-project and essential for the understanding of the weather’s role in Nachsommer as well. 6 Here and there, weather proves the idea of a cosmic order of the world to be incompatible with the experience of irreducible contingency specific to modernity. It will turn out that both Humboldt’s and Stifter’s claim to totality is put to a test when the integration of weather into the respective world order is attempted. 7 On the one hand, since the unfulfillable desire for totality has always been a problem of the novel as such, focusing on the weather in the cosmological attempts of Kosmos and Nachsommer provides a deeper understanding of the novel as a genre. On the other hand, the question of meteorological prognosis itself leads to problems of safeguarding, prevision, and precaution - and thus leads to cultural concepts of dealing with the future particular to modernity. Therefore, I will interpret the ‘non-cosmic’ weather with regard to the discourse of the future in modernity, with regard to the genre of the novel in general and with regard to the narrative structure of Nachsommer in particular. Progress - or Not? One has to see Humboldt’s activities within the field of meteorology against the background of a characteristic feature of the weather: As subject of empiricism it repeatedly puts empiricism itself in an epistemic crisis. In the nineteenth century the subsequent uncertainty obviously was so profound that 4 According to Neumann, in Nachsommer weather and love are inseparably linked (“Archäologie” 72). My reading picks up this observation. 5 Cf. the articles in the topical issue “Rätsel der Atmosphäre - Nicht-Wissen zwischen Himmel und Erde” of the journal Zeitschrift für Germanistik 24.2 (2014) as well as Horn. 6 The relevance of Kosmos for Der Nachsommer has often been stressed, e.g. by Stockhammer 173-77. 7 Regarding the experience of being embedded in a cosmic order in the epoch of realism see Koschorke 269. Weather - or Not? 103 important thinkers of the twentieth century could state for their own time (the time after the uncertainty principle) that the world is the exception and the meteorological the rule (Serres 8) or that now all clocks are clouds (Popper 214-68). That these points seem to be well illustrated is because meteorologists until then could not provide clocks but with their attempts to that effect mainly emphasized the weather’s disorder. This disorder is phrased particularly significantly by Goethe in his Versuch einer Witterungslehre from 1825. In weather one thing is: immer noch von einem anderen durchdrungen […]; es verursacht und erleidet Einwirkungen, und wenn so viele Wesen durch einander arbeiten, wo soll am Ende die Einsicht, die Entscheidung herkommen, was das Herrschende was das Dienende sei, was voranzugehen bestimmt, was zu folgen genötigt ist? (Goethe 275) 8 For Goethe weather virtually implies chaos and anarchy. This assessment marks the major problem of a meteorology, which still thinks in the paradigm of classical mechanics in desirable clarity. It shows how the dominion over the meteorological discourse threatens to slip away to the extent to which the question of causal links remains unanswered. As long as no law of cause and effect can be established, weather in its non-linearity disturbs the order of the scientific discourse. With this uneasiness in terms of disorderly weather conditions comes a shift of connotation whose reference point mostly is the French Revolution: When metaphors of weather since time immemorial served to symbolize divine or secular power (Demandt 135, Jäger 29-32), in modernity they in contrast illustrate all kinds of revolutions (Demandt 136). Now, as one might guess, there is little trace of any revolutionary chaos of weather in the meteorological portion of Humboldt’s Kosmos. In this portion Humboldt lists the established meteorological parameters of observation and afterwards explains them step-by-step. The ideas of a global overview, of a synopsis and of a harmonic arrangement of physical knowledge - all of which are central to the Kosmos-project (Böhme 19) - seem to be executed in an exemplary way. Merely the remarks on temperature appear disproportionately long and detailed. This is because Humboldt explicates his method of comparative climatology. For this purpose he lists the average temperature of various regions of the world and additionally talks about the consequences for each region’s vegetation, farming, and “das Gefühl klimatischer Behaglichkeit” (K I: 169-70). 9 Despite the confusing amount of data Hum- 8 “[In weather] everything is permeated by something else […]; it causes and suffers influences. And when so many beings work simultaneously, where is the insight, the decision supposed to come from, what is the dominant and what the serving? What has been created to precede, what is forced to follow? ” (Translation A.F.). 9 Humboldt’s Kosmos is here and will henceforth be cited parenthetically in the text by ‘K vol. no.: p. no.’ Humboldt’s numerous emphases are not rendered. The text quoted in O LIVER G RILL 104 boldt piles up here, it would be inapt to speak of an empirical excess. In light of the mass of information which Humboldt manages to compress so effectively, one rather has to talk about the success of his statistical method which he initiatively elevates to the ideal way of physics: Bei allem Beweglichen und Veränderlichen im Raume sind mittlere Zahlenwerthe der letzte Zweck, ja der Ausdruck physikalischer Gesetze; sie zeigen uns das Stetige in dem Wechsel und in der Flucht der Erscheinungen. (K I: 39) 10 Since the meteorological portion of Kosmos rests completely on these mean numerical values, Humboldt’s assessment of scientific progress is rather optimistic. In contrast, for example, to Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck - who noted in 1802 that meteorology until then had only accumulated enormous amounts of data but not made any progress whatsoever (Lamarck 102-03) - Humboldt speaks of the fast development of meteorological knowledge (K I: 166). And he does so precisely because he is able to statistically condense these enormous amounts of data. There are also clear ideas about the contents of the progress: Humboldt announces that one will “im eigentlichsten Sinne lernen […], woher der Wind komme” (ibid.). In the future, he adds, due to comparative climatology it will be possible “unermeßliche Reihen scheinbar isoliert stehender Tatsachen mit einander durch empirische, numerisch ausgedrückte Gesetze zu verbinden und die Nothwendigkeit ihrer gegenseitigen Abhängigkeit zu erweisen” (K I: 168). 11 Thus, Humboldt seems to be surprisingly successful in integrating the weather into the order of his Kosmos. There is no sign of an epistemic crisis. In fact, the statistical reduction of complexity raises high hopes for meteorological progress which Humboldt announces in the form of an imminent understanding of necessary, linearly ordered causal connections. But there is a serious snag: One method contradicts the other. The formation of mean numerical values thwarts the search for causal links. In the second half of the nineteenth century meteorology will problematize precisely this contradiction. For example, the physicist Johann von Lamont severely criticizes the statistical method in 1867: Aus der Vereinigung vieler Beobachtungen geht […] eine Elimination der Zufälligkeiten nicht hervor, und auch nach hundertjährigen Beobachtungsreihen lassen sich noch keine arithmetischen Mittel ableiten, die man im wahren Sinne des Wor- the footnotes by ‘C p. no.’ is taken from the translation of E.C. Otté: “the feelings and mental condition of men” (C 318). 10 “In all that is subject to motion and change in space, the ultimate aim, the very expression of physical laws, depend upon mean numerical values, which show us the constant amid change, and the stable amid apparent fluctuations of phenomena” (C 81). 11 “we may learn, in the strictest sense, whence the wind cometh” (C 317). “it may some day be possible to connect together, by empirical and numerically expressed laws, vast series of apparently isolated facts, and to exhibit the mutual dependence which must necessarily exist among them” (C 320). Weather - or Not? 105 tes als meteorologische Konstanten zu bezeichnen berechtigt wäre. (Lamont 245- 46) 12 The German-Russian meteorologist Wladimir Köppen on the other hand absolutely recognizes the need for arithmetic means in meteorology, “um in der unendlichen Komplikation der Witterungs-Erscheinungen sich zurecht zu finden” (3). 13 But at the same time he is certain, dass eine ausschliessliche Anwendung dieser Methode […] die Erkenntnis des Kausal-Zusammenhangs in den Witterungsvorgängen unmöglich machen würde, denn das arithmetische Mittel, in welchem die allerverschiedensten Vorgänge vergraben werden, ist Nichts Wirkliches, sondern eine abstrakte Grösse. (ibid.) 14 Thereby Köppen negates Humboldt’s assumption that necessary natural laws can be deduced from the formation of mean numerical values. He also provides an important criterion for the differentiation between climatology and meteorology. As we have seen, for Humboldt arithmetic means are not at all “Nichts Wirkliches,” but exactly the most real, “der letzte Zweck, ja der Ausdruck physikalischer Gesetze.” However, in Humboldt’s summary of the meteorological part it is obvious that the laws of causality he so optimistically promises are not that easy to obtain. In contrast to the preceding optimism of progress his summary turns out surprisingly pessimistic. Humboldt repeats Goethe’s weather-problem almost literally when he declares, daß alle Processe […] welche das unermeßliche Luftmeer darbietet, so innig mit einander zusammenhangen, daß jeder einzelne meteorologische Proceß durch alle anderen gleichzeitig modificiert wird. Diese Mannigfaltigkeit der Störungen […] erschwert die Deutung der verwickelten meteorologischen Erscheinungen; sie beschränkt und macht größtentheils unmöglich die Vorherbestimmung atmosphärischer Veränderungen, welche für den Garten- und Landbau, für die Schifffahrt, für den Genuß und die Freuden des Lebens so wichtig wäre. (K I: 177) 15 12 “The combination of many observations does not lead to an elimination of contingencies and even after series of observations that lasted for hundreds of years one cannot derive an arithmetic mean which one could call a meteorological invariable in the true sense of the word” (Translation A.F.). 13 “to orientate oneself in the endless complications of weather” (Translation A.F.). 14 “that an exclusive application of this method […] would render the insight into the causal link in weather processes impossible, because the arithmetic mean, in which the different processes are buried, is nothing real but an abstract quantity” (Translation A.F.). 15 “[…] the processes […] of the vast aërial ocean are all so intimately connected together, that each individual meteorological process is modified by the action of all the others. The complicated nature of these disturbing causes […] increases the difficulty of giving a full explanation of these involved meteorological phenomena, and likewise limits, or wholly precludes the possibility of that predetermination of atmospheric changes which would be so important for horticulture, agriculture, and navigation, no less than for the comfort and enjoyment of life” (C 337-38). O LIVER G RILL 106 Immensity and diversity, complexity and disruption, impeded analysis and unpredictability… Nothing in this summary corresponds to the hope that in the future one will be able to formulate “numerisch ausgedrückte Gesetze” and “die Nothwendigkeit ihrer gegenseitigen Abhängigkeit.” The successively created impression that weather could be overviewed globally, concentrated statistically, and in the near future dominated by the means of physics, is profoundly undermined with a view to the “einzelnen meteorologischen Proceß” itself. Each elimination of contingencies, addressed by Lamont, does not only not happen in Humboldt’s Kosmos, but the unpredictability of the weather positively gets out of hand in the “Vervielfältigung und Complication der Störungen” (K I: 178). 16 The unforeseeable detail withstands the statistical normalization. Thus, even in Kosmos the weather remains an endless complication, as Köppen puts it. This tension between irreducible irregularity and statistical normalization in particular manifests itself in Humboldt’s skepticism towards the weather forecasts. The announced insight into necessity and regularity actually should entail the possibility of calculating the upcoming weather. The opposite, however, is the case. As cited, Humboldt rejects this prognosis as almost impossible; not even a prognostic calculus seems conceivable to him, even though it would be so important “für den Genuß und die Freuden des Lebens.” With this he marks the negative end of a scale of ratings the weather forecast around 1850 is subject to. The positive end is defined by John Stuart Mill who in 1843 proclaims some kind of Laplace’s demon for meteorology. In A System of Logic, Mill states (factually correct) that, when all preconditions are known, it should be possible to “predict […] the state of the weather at any future time” (843). But these preconditions, “diese Mannigfaltigkeit der Störungen,” are precisely Humboldt’s problem. And that is why the weather portion of Kosmos ends with the recommendation: meteorology should look for its “Heil” in “jener glücklichen Region, wo immer dieselben Lüfte wehen; ” in those areas where the “problematische Vorherbestimmung” reduces itself to the periodic return of weather conditions (K I: 177-78). 17 All in all, Humboldt emphatically announces progress for meteorology but is pessimistic in regard to the technique of prognosis itself. Albeit on different levels this makes for an ambivalent outlook on the future in Kosmos. On the one hand Humboldt believes himself to be able to read the weather with certainty, but on the other hand he rates it as completely indeterminable in specific cases. Ultimately, the meteorological portion of Kosmos oscillates between the inextricable singular case of the weather and its statistical 16 “the manifold nature and complication of disturbances” (C 339). 17 “meteorology must first seek its foundation and its progress in the torrid zone, where the variations […] are all of periodic occurrence”; “this problematic species of prediction” (C 338-39). Weather - or Not? 107 (dis)solution, between meteorology and climatology as well as between uncertainty and certainty about the future. These contradictions are symptomatic in two ways: First of all for the basic aporia which is intrinsic to the Kosmos-project. And second for modernity’s open horizon of expectation as Reinhart Koselleck has described it (349- 75). Regarding the first aspect, research has shown that the intended totality of Kosmos continually gets into an irreconcilable conflict with the empirical details (Böhme 20). Humboldt himself addresses this problem more than once: “Das Auffinden der Einheit in der Totalität” for the time being remains “unvollständig,” as he writes in the introduction. And nature itself is a “nicht zu fassendes und in allgemeiner ursächlicher Erkenntniß von dem Zusammenwirken aller Kräfte ein unauflösbares Problem” (K I: 39). 18 Seen in this light, weather is the paradigmatic case of Humboldt’s idea of nature in Kosmos. In the meteorological portion the interdependency of powers remains a truly indissoluble problem; in the end there is no possibility of any “Einheit in der Totalität” or “allgemeine ursächliche Erkenntniß” of weather conditions, even though it is announced so resolutely. On the contrary, as we have seen, weather rather than a cosmic side brings forth the modern side of Humboldt’s world - the weather-side of a world which has to do without causal unity and without final conclusion of insight. Probably based on such observations, Hans Blumenberg proposes that Humboldt thought the readability of his world “von der Metapher des Romans her” (Lesbarkeit 283). 19 This somehow surprising proposal becomes more plausible if one takes into account modernity’s specific concept of reality as Blumenberg described it in his essay “Wirklichkeitsbegriff und Möglichkeit des Romans”: Modern reality is characterized by the physical experience in its open-endedness and no longer by a divine unity in totality (12). This implies a “niemals endgültig und absolut zugestandene Konsistenz” without any intuition of the truth in the sense of evidentia (ibid. 22). 20 Hence the dilemma of the modern novel, which is trying to depict this reality as a whole, lies in the desire to evoke “als endlicher Text die Vorstellung eines unendlichen Kontextes.” 21 This puts the basic problem of Humboldt’s Kosmos in a nutshell. Even the difficulty to include the infinite turbulences of the weather and to integrate them seamlessly into the cosmic order is thereby indicated. If thus both - the Kosmos and its weather - can be characterized 18 “The attempt perfectly to represent unity in diversity must […] prove unsuccessful”, “nature […] presents itself to the human intellect as a problem […] whose solution is impossible, since it requires a knowledge of the combined actions of all natural forces” (C 80). 19 “from the metaphor of the novel” (Translation A.F.). 20 “a progressive certainty which can never reach a total, final consistency” (Translation by Wilson 33). 21 The attempt of “a finite text” to “evoke an infinite context” (Translation by Wilson 42). O LIVER G RILL 108 with the metaphor of the novel, then conversely a poetology is conceivable which characterizes the novel with the metaphor of the weather. This will lead to the weather’s role in Nachsommer. But before, it is important to see that the (im)possibility of prediction and the open horizon of expectation are closely related to the modern concept of reality as described by Blumenberg. For the new, non-derivable can enter at any time into a certainty which can never reach a final consistency (Blumenberg, “Wirklichkeitsbegriff” 12-13). “Die Lehre von den letzten Dingen,” says Reinhart Koselleck, is replaced by a “Wagnis einer offenen Zukunft” (362). 22 Being such a venture the future of modernity at the same time calls into action new methods of prevision, projection, and precaution which no longer operate prophetically but rather prognostically. They do not in the least consist of the search for causal and stochastic links (Luhmann 133). Humboldt holds out the prospect of exactly those two forms of the calculation of the future, but - in the specific case of the weather forecast - assesses them to be nearly impossible. His belief in progress is based on an open future of the possible, the contents of this possible progress however are directed at the future closure of the horizon of expectation by means of statistics, law of nature, and causal necessity. The practice of the weather forecast itself is rated as almost impossible which restricts the future of meteorology in so far as its possible progress becomes doubtable. But at the same time this assessment keeps the future wide open, since for the time being it has to remain completely unclear what tomorrow’s weather will be like. Thus, the weather and its prognosis prove themselves to be exemplary for a modern future which even from a cosmological point of view is never completely foreseeable. I now return to the dispute about prognosis in Stifter’s Nachsommer. Keeping Humboldt’s meteorology in mind, three questions are obvious: Firstly, the question to what degree weather as a subject is compatible with the claim to totality of the diegesis or the novel respectively. Secondly, the question which concept of the future Stifter implements with the weather in regard to his ‘conservative’ narration. 23 And finally, the question how this concept relates to the narrated order as well as the order established by the narration. Is something like a cosmic harmony, which Nachsommer seemingly tries to evoke, possible at all if the weather (and not the stars) provides the novel’s crucial constellation? Or could one consider weather and meteorology rather important means of reflection with which Stifter raises the issue of the impossibility of a cosmic harmony in a ‘natural’ way and thus, quasi 22 “the doctrine of the Final Days,” “the hazards of an open future” (Translation by Tribe 278). 23 About the tension between progress and the Restoration in Nachsommer see Borchmeyer and Bulang. Weather - or Not? 109 through the backdoor, inscribes the signatures of modernity - the signs of his time - into the novel, the dominant narrative medium of this time? Weather - or Not? At first glance the already mentioned unshakeable certainty with which Risach assesses the upcoming thunderstorm seems like a solution of Humboldt’s dilemma of prognosis in the rehearsal room of fiction. Neither Austria in general nor the House of Roses in particular (where most of the story of Nachsommer takes place) are part of those lucky regions “wo immer dieselben Lüfte wehen” which for Humboldt imply the prognostic salvation of meteorology. Nevertheless the area of the House of Roses - as a harmonic microcosm on the one hand and as a place of ritual recurrence of the neverchanging on the other - obviously provide the demanded but doubted security of weather forecasts. Risach predicts with great certainty “daß heute auf dieses Haus diesen Garten und diese Gegend kein Regen niederfallen wird” (N I: 50), and the absence of the thunderstorm proves him right. Furthermore he is able to explain in detail to Heinrich how he could predict this absence with “fast völliger Gewissheit” (N I: 120). 24 Consequently, Risach acts optimistic concerning meteorological progress: Mir kommen diese Dinge [i.e. the indications of weather] so zufällig in den Garten und in das Haus; ihr [Heinrich] aber werdet sie weit besser und weit gründlicher kennen lernen, wenn ihr die Wege der neuen Wissenschaftlichkeit wandelt, und die Hilfsmittel benüzt, die es jezt gibt, besonders die Rechnung. Wenn ihr namentlich eine einzelne Richtung einschlagt, so werdet ihr in derselben ungewöhnlich große Fortschritte machen. (N I: 125) 25 Deviating from Humboldt’s point of view, in Stifter’s novel there is a convergence of optimism for progress and optimism for forecasting. The insistence on the detail - “dieses Haus diesen Garten und diese Gegend” or the “einzelne Richtung” - seems to be almost an alternative concept to the meteorology of Kosmos: Instead of an entanglement in the unforeseeable incident of the “einzelnen meteorologischen Prozeß” in spite of a global weathersynopsis, there is a locally bound knowledge of weather in Nachsommer which allows for the reliable calculation of each individual case. But on closer inspection, Risach’s certainty is not as certain as it seems. It has not only been gained by chance but is also the product of a complicated 24 “that today no rain will fall on this house, this yard, or the whole area.” (InS 33) “almost complete certainty” (InS 72). 25 “I encounter these things by chance in the garden and in my house; you, however, will know them far better and more thoroughly if you tread the paths of the new sciences and use the aids now available, especially mathematics. If you have now taken a particular direction, you will make unusually great progress in it” (InS 75). O LIVER G RILL 110 trial based on circumstantial evidence. Risach indeed explains that the established measuring instruments would deliver “Anzeichen” and “ein kleines Wölklein an einer bestimmten Stelle des Himmels” might even be “ein sicherer Gewitteranzeiger” (N I: 119). However, the “Schauplaz, auf welchem sich die Witterungsverhältnisse gestalten” is very large - “Die Anzeichen können daher auch täuschen” (ibid.). 26 Against these deceiving signs Risach cites the sensorium of human nerves; not a really scientific but for someone who once despaired of “gewitterartige Liebe” an all the more important ‘meteorosensitivity.’ But this too does not offer any certainty, for the nerves “sprechen zu [dem Menschen] nicht mehr so deutlich” (N I: 120). At least, Risach continues, “die Thiere machen in Folge [einer] Vorempfindung Anstalten für ihre Zukunft” from which one could draw conclusions (ibid.). For this technique of prognosis insects would actually be most suitable but they are very hard to observe. Risach explicates that instead one has to gather the behavior of the insects from the behavior of bigger animals which in turn “die Gefahr zu irren größer macht, als sie bei der unmittelbaren Betrachtung und der gleichsam redenden Thatsache ist” (N I: 121). 27 One can see what this amounts to: Apparent certainties are cited almost obtrusively only to be exposed as uncertain clues and hints in the next step (Begemann, Die Welt 30). The ‘almost’ of Risach’s almost complete certainty weighs heavy: Prophetic evidentia, any “gleichsam redende Thatsache” of the upcoming, is nowhere to be found! Instead the never-ending enumeration of weather signs exemplarily demonstrates the physical experience in its openendedness; an open-endedness on which the ‘form’ of the novel is based as well as defined by Blumenberg. Instead of an immediate certainty, Risach only has the indirect link to a myriad of signs at his disposal. The longer Stifter exposes Risach fabricating this consistency the clearer he brings this to light, by means of the endless context named weather, the “niemals endgültig und absolut zugestandene Konsistenz” of modern reality and the modern novel, respectively. This meteorological erosion of the diegesis - which is intent on safety and certainty - affects the logic of events in Nachsommer. It is not even irrevocably certain, whether the thunderstorm occurs or not. Although the rain feared by Heinrich fails to appear for the time being, it is thundering a lot. And since Heinrich falls asleep in exactly the moment the wind comes up, even the 26 “signs”, “a small cloud hovering in a certain place in the sky […] is a sure sign of a thunderstorm”, “the stage on which the weather conditions are formed is immense […]. Therefore, the signs can be deceptive” (InS 71-72). 27 “they no longer speak to him [the human being] […] clearly”, “the animals make certain preparations as a result of these perceptions [of their nerves]”, “which makes the possibility of error greater than is the case of direct observation when the facts speak for themselves” (InS 72-73). This “animal meteorology” goes back to the influence of Andreas von Baumgartner’s Naturlehre (Begemann, “Metaphysik” 123). Weather - or Not? 111 absence of rain has to be reconstructed laboriously. Heinrich tells Risach the next morning: “Ich habe noch den Wind gehört, der sich gestern Abends erhoben hat, was weiter geschehen ist, weiß ich nicht; aber das weiß ich, daß heute die Erde trocken ist, und daß ihr Recht gehabt habet.” (N I: 84) Instead of an evident proof - which is per se unavailable for something nonappearing - Heinrich only has a self-conscious certainty of derivation at his disposal. Consequently, weather becomes a matter of belief: “Ich glaube, daß nicht ein Tropfen auf diese Gegend vom Himmel gefallen ist,” Risach answers, and Heinrich counters: “Wie das Aussehen der Erde zeigt, glaube ich es auch” (ibid.). 28 So when Risach invites Heinrich to come into his house “mit oder ohne Gewitter” (N I: 51), 29 it isn’t clear even the next day whether he brought severe weather with him or not. Stifter delays the decision of whether the thunderstorm will take place or not to the point of intolerability. He virtually makes it undecidable. This undecidability however ultimately implies a spectacular annulment of the weather as an event of narration as well as the impossibility of any ‘visionary’ knowledge of the future. Risach’s certainty, appearing to be prophetic, secretly proves to be a prognostic uncertainty; it proves itself to be a narration of the gradual fabrication of the probable in the medium of the novel. Within this narrative construction, not even the programmatic absence of an event (cf. Schuller) is an actual event since it is only presumably absent. This observation leads back to the initial question of the structural meaning of the meteorological calculus. In order to answer it, we need to remind ourselves of the conditions under which Risach and Drendorf meet at the House of Roses: Risach is retired. He gave up his position as a clerk and retreated from the city to a country house. There he keeps his romantic relationship with Mathilde alive - which failed in his youth - in an unvarying cult of roses. This love once came over him like a “Sturmwind” and a “Wetterstrahl,” admits Risach - hundreds of pages after the initial meteorological dispute (N III: 189). 30 But due to the objection of Mathilde’s parents, this story-within-the-story ends in misery. When the two reconcile decades later, they don’t end up getting married. “Nach den Tagen der feurigen gewitterartigen Liebe,” Risach tells Heinrich, he and Mathilde would instead be 28 “I heard the wind that came up last evening, but what happened after that, I don’t know; but I do know that the ground is dry today and that you were right about the storm”, “I don’t think that a drop fell on this area”, “Judging from the appearance of the earth, I don’t think so either” (InS 52). 29 The implication of undecidedness in this ‘with or without a thunderstorm’ is crucial here. In the cited edition Risach’s words are not translated literally (cf. InS 33). 30 “the winds of a storm”, “a bolt of lightning” (InS 426). O LIVER G RILL 112 living “in Glück und Stettigkeit [! ] gleichsam einen Nachsommer ohne vorhergegangenen Sommer” (N III: 224). 31 With this delayed look back on a “gewitterartige Liebe” Stifter expects his reader to re-read the thunderstorm of the first volume in the light of the third volume’s thunderstorm. If one does that the oppressive feeling arises that with his prognosis in the first volume Risach says more about himself than about the atmosphere. One wants to assume that the thunderstorm not only will not occur, but - as a literalized metaphor of affect - must not occur. Under the surface of meteorological shoptalk the avoidance of a repetition of Risach’s past is subliminally dealt with. This past (contrary to the present of the novel) includes the risky moment of love, strokes of fate and catastrophes. Thus, on the one hand it acknowledges the “Vervielfältigung und Complication der Störungen” because of which Humboldt thinks the weather forecast to be almost impossible. On the other hand, with the incident of the stormy love it picks up again the eruptive, more or less life-threatening weather-events which like a leitmotif are noticeable throughout Stifter’s oeuvre: thunderstorms, floods, hail and snow in Bunte Steine, lightning bolts in Abdias or the ‘cloud of war’ in Hochwald are illustrative examples. 32 It is these novellasʼ use of weather as an event which Nachsommer - whose origin is traceable to a novella - is trying to avoid with the presented techniques of calculation, narrative delay, and the undecidability of occurrence. In the end, Stifter with the aid of meteorology intends not to let the novella-like weather, the “gewitterartige” catastrophe in Risach’s life, become the trauma of the novel. 33 In this broad sense, Risach, his complex technique of forecast, and the novel itself prove to be meteorosensitive - intra-fictional in terms of Risach’s past and extra-fictional in terms of Stifter’s earlier stories. Nobody could have diagnosed this sensitivity as well as the corresponding trauma better than Friedrich Nietzsche, who in Die Fröhliche Wissenschaft wrote the following about “prophetische Menschen”: Ihr habt kein Gefühl dafür, dass prophetische Menschen sehr leidende Menschen sind: ihr meint nur, es sei ihnen eine schöne “Gabe” gegeben, und möchtet diese wohl gern selber haben, — doch ich will mich durch ein Gleichniss ausdrücken. Wie viel mögen die Thiere durch die Luft- und Wolken-Electricität leiden! Wir sehen, dass einige Arten von ihnen ein prophetisches Vermögen hinsichtlich des Wetters haben […]. Aber wir denken nicht daran, dass ihre Schmerzen — für sie 31 “After the first ardent days of passionate love that are like a thunderstorm […] we are living in happiness and with a sense of constancy as if in an Indian Summer without the preceding summer” (InS 445). 32 Begemann already points out Stifter’s obsession with weather (Begemann, Die Welt 85). It recently received increased attention, see e.g. the works of Gamper or Schuster. 33 The reverse relationship between a novella-like core and a novelistic cover for Walter Benjamin famously is existent in Goethe’s Wahlverwandtschaften. Weather - or Not? 113 die Propheten sind! Wenn eine starke positive Electricität plötzlich unter dem Einflusse einer heranziehenden, noch lange nicht sichtbaren Wolke in negative Electricität umschlägt und eine Veränderung des Wetters sich vorbereitet, da benehmen sich diese Thiere so, als ob ein Feind herannahe, und richten sich zur Abwehr oder zur Flucht ein; meistens verkriechen sie sich, — sie verstehen das schlechte Wetter nicht als Wetter, sondern als Feind, dessen Hand sie schon fühlen! (Nietzsche 229) 34 For Nietzsche, prophecy isn’t a visionary gift but rather a combination of the memory of pain and the resulting sense of danger. Stifter closely links Risach’s art of prediction to such a pain-induced need for prevention, even though if you look at the initial situation between Risach and Heinrich it does not seem to require any. After all Heinrich is only concerned with a rather harmless thunderstorm of which, for the time being, neither he nor the reader knows the emotional ‘charge.’ By the end of the novel however it’s clear that said “Anstalten für [die] Zukunft” apply to much more than just the behavior of spiders or ants. Risach’s preparation for the future exemplarily tested on the weather is, as Humboldt would put it, “so wichtig” “für den Genuß und die Freuden des Lebens” in Nachsommer in general. It is explained to and is effective on the very person who shall not be befallen by “gewitterartige Liebe,” Heinrich Drendorf. From the very first dialogue onwards, it is all about the circumspect closure of Heinrich’s future, who is “nur des anziehenden Gewitters willen von der Landstraße abgewichen, und zu diesem Hause heraufgestiegen” (N I: 51). 35 Through attraction and deviation, Heinrich, who enters Risach’s world “mit oder ohne Gewitter” by accident, signifies the incalculable possibility of a recurrence of “gewitterartige Liebe.” Heinrich possesses not only insufficient meteorological knowledge and therefore is wrong about the upcoming weather but is generally troubled by a largely undefined future. His childhood days were controlled by the “regelmäßigen Verlauf der Zeit, von dem nicht abgewichen werden durfte.” Heinrich’s mother would indeed have allowed his “Abweichen von dem angege- 34 “Prophetic human beings. — You have no feeling for the fact that prophetic human beings are afflicted with a great deal of suffering; you merely suppose that they have been granted a beautiful ‘gift,’ and you would even like to have it yourself. But I shall express myself in a parable. How much may animals suffer from the electricity in the air and the clouds! We see how some species have a prophetic faculty regarding the weather […]. But we pay no heed that it is their pains that make them prophets. When a strong positive electrical charge, under the influence of an approaching cloud that is as yet far from visible, suddenly turns into negative electricity and a change of the weather is impending, these animals behave as if an enemy were drawing near and prepare for defense or escape; most often they try to hide: They do not understand bad weather as a kind of weather but as an enemy whose hand they already feel” (trans. Kaufmann 251). 35 “since only because of it [the thunderstorm] did I turn off the highway and come up to this house” (InS 33). O LIVER G RILL 114 ben Zeitlaufe zu Gunsten einer Lust,” but “Furcht vor dem Vater” prevailed (N I: 12). 36 In the midst of this patriarchal-structured daily life the open future approaches him quite literally: “Endlich trat in Bezug auf mich die Frage heran, was denn in der Zukunft mit mir zu geschehen habe” (N I: 17). The perplexity prevailing with regard to this question is quite intense: Mir schwebte auch nicht ein besonderer Nuzen vor, den ich durch mein Bestreben erreichen wollte, sondern es war mir nur, als müßte ich so thun, als liege etwas innerlich Gültiges und Wichtiges in der Zukunft. Was ich aber im Einzelnen beginnen […] sollte, das wußte weder ich, noch wußten es die Meinigen. (N I: 18) 37 When Heinrich and Risach meet for the first time, it is the encounter between a man who knows too little about the upcoming weather and a man who knows too much about it. It is also the encounter between one who is helpless in the face of his all-too-little-determined future and another whose future is carefully impregnated against unforeseen events and therefore overdetermined. Following the dispute, both enter into a sort of alliance concerning the shaping of their future. Starting with the thunderstorm debate, Risach is going to profoundly influence Heinrich’s life. After Heinrich’s first deviation from his route due to the “anziehenden Gewitter” - which seems to be related to the different kinds of deviation “zu Gunsten einer Lust” that Heinrich refrained from in his childhood - there is simply no other derivation in his life. In fact, Risach gently guides him along the path of his life which regularly leads him to the House of Roses. Conversely, the ‘open future’ Heinrich brings with him wakes Risach’s well-regulated world from its Sleeping Beauty slumber. For with the slowly initiated marriage between Natalie and Heinrich, a marriage precisely without stormy love, Risach at the end of the novel overcomes his own failure. He ‘heals’ the catastrophe of his life in the next generation inasmuch as he provides himself and Mathilde a socially acceptable direction with a genealogical future that biologically was never before granted to them (cf. Zumbusch 268). So far I basically have read the meteorological beginning of Nachsommer in the light of its ending, that is to say with Risach’s previous history of his failed romantic relationship with Mathilde in mind. In the text itself the characters opt for the reverse direction of reading. The initial thunderstorm is hermeneutically revised in the end, whereby Natalie’s and Heinrich’s wedding obtains a surplus of “Bedeutung” (N III: 266) in a rather forced way. In 36 “she would have liked to let us [Heinrich and his sister] deviate from our routine so we could enjoy ourselves more but was prevented from doing so because of Father” (InS 11). 37 “Finally, the question arose concerning my future,” “I also did not have a specific purpose in mind; rather, it just seemed as if I had to keep on, as if I had something within me that would prove to be true and significant sometime in the future. Neither I nor my family knew specifically where I should begin” (InS 14). Weather - or Not? 115 the “Abschluß”-chapter, Risach not only claims to have recognized at first glance - “so schnell wie die Electricität” - Heinrich to be the right man for Natalie (N III: 265) but he also declares the thunderstorm the initial determinant for all further events: “Und alles hing davon ab, daß du [Heinrich] hartnäckig gemeint hast, ein Gewitter werde kommen, und daß du meinen Gegenreden nicht geglaubt hast.” Heinrich responds: “Darum, Vater, war es Fügung, und die Vorsicht selber hat mich zu meinem Glücke geführt” (N III, 266). 38 And on top of these strong words Heinrich’s biological father adds an old woman’s obscure prophecy from Heinrich’s childhood days which vaguely enough predicts Heinrich a bright future (ibid.). In short, a lot of meaning has to be created to read Heinrich’s accidental deviation into the cosmic order of the House of Roses - and at the same time, there is the scandal of a contingency of weather that is not completely resolvable by meteorology. What here has been called the laborious fabrication of the possible in the medium of the novel is exactly what the characters decidedly try to deny. The traditional registers of absolute certainty about the future - prophecy, fatherly foreordination, destiny etc. - try to negate the prognostic “almost” in Risach’s certainty about the weather; not to speak of Humboldt’s diagnosis of an impossible “Vorherbestimmung atmosphärischer Veränderungen.” Were one to engage in this intra-textual interpretation, it would result in a love story or novel structure conspicuously docile for the year 1857 which visibly in the style of Heinrich von Ofterdingen leads from expectation to fulfillment (and which different from Ofterdingen was able to narrate this fulfillment to the end). However, the formulation “Vorsicht selber” is ambiguous. For Heinrich is obviously not talking about a divine plan of salvation. Rather the sacred semantics are undermined by the most profane topic of conversation: the directly preceding memory of the weather-dispute. This “Vorsicht selber” superficially seems to be meant as a pathos formula for divine providence. But the context of the conversation reveals that it’s mostly aimed at the ideal but nevertheless immanent “father” Risach, his meteorological talent and his cautiousness, since “Vorsicht” here means both prevision and caution. This talent itself is quite the opposite of any ‘visionary’ knowledge or salvation-historical providence inasmuch as it is based on a calculus of consideration, a chain of circumstantial evidences and on a painfully personal meteorosensitivity. Thus, the sacralizing interpretation remains nothing more than a reminiscence: Though Stifter’s characters bring ‘expectation and fulfillment’ as a 38 “significance”, “as quick as lightning”, “And everything depended on your stubbornly believing that a thunderstorm was coming and not accepting my arguments to the contrary”, “Therefore, Father, it was Providence and caution itself that brought me to my happiness” (InS 469). O LIVER G RILL 116 typological mode of narration or interpretation into play, the novel itself provides a strictly secular view of the future which does not address the ether - the cosmically well-ordered realm of stars and gods - but operates on a lower level striving to ascertain a ‘modern’ degree of certainty in the realm of atmosphere. Correspondingly, the storm front obscures “manchen weißen Punkt des Landes, der Wohnungen bezeichnet, von denen [Risach] sprechen möchte” (N I: 72); 39 that is to say it obscures Mathilde’s Sternenhof of whose inhabitant Risach will speak of a few hundred pages later. That this subliminally expressed ‘expectation’ of a narration can reach its ‘fulfillment’ at all presupposes its contents not returning as the plot of the novel. In other words: In order for Risach to be able to narrate his ill-fated love story to Heinrich it must not repeat itself with Heinrich as its protagonist. Furthermore Heinrich first has to prove himself as weatherproof - for example as the recipient of a stormy love story - as Risach who is by now able to walk, figuratively speaking, “einmal eine kurze Strecke im Regen ohne Kopfbedeckung” (N III: 125). 40 Heinrich’s ‘study in weather’ is then hereby completed. Initiated in Risach’s meteorology and exposed to the weather in continuous augmentation, he has proven himself as a subject of a “Wetterpädagogik” of which Jean Paul writes that its measures - among them the “Donnerwetterbad” - are adequate to cause a “langsame […] Abhärtung” “gegen den Windstoß der zufälligen, unberechneten, wehrlos findenden Gefahr” (279). The end of Nachsommer doesn’t want its success to be doubted: Heinrich is optimally resistant to the kind of gust that once blew him off track. Meteorology - the Discipline that Matters To follow the “anziehendes Gewitter” for Stifter means a “Abweichung” from the ideal state of cosmic order which is the weather’s antipode already insofar as it has been described as unpredictably chaotic by nineteenth century meteorology. At the same time Stifter’s weather is something that lies ‘in the nature of men’ and as such, even when it befalls them seemingly and solely from the outside, connotes uncontrollable affective states. Both incidents - the real thunderstorm and the stormy love - nevertheless are conditions of possibility for the narration of Nachsommer: They link Heinrich and Risach, they anchor the text’s narrative energies over long passages and above all they represent those events whose invalidation the whole story amounts to. 39 “many little white dots on the lower land that are houses I would like to mention” (InS 45). 40 “to walk for a short stretch in the rain without something on my head” (InS 390). Weather - or Not? 117 In this connection meteorology in the full sense of the word is the discipline that matters. It is supposed to call to order both forms of weather disturbances and make them foreseeable for a diegesis which has the “Vorsicht zum Geseze gemacht” (N I: 178): 41 Heinrich’s ‘study in weather’ is pedagogic disciplining, because he brings an all too vague future into the determined structure of the House of Roses which for Risach means the potential return of weather-like events or feelings. Underhand these meteorological techniques are not only used for real weather forecasts but also counter a contingent and mercurial deviation from the path of life. Although Nachsommer suggests something different (as its bored readers know), the risk of eventful coincidences is not excluded at the outset. 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