Speaking Silences: The Incompleteness of Tacitus’ Annals and Gustav Freytag’s Die verlorene Handschrift
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Bettina Reitz-Joosse
Abstract
This chapter approaches the incomplete transmission of Tacitus’ Annals through the lens of a 19th-century German novel by Gustav Freytag entitled Die verlorene Handschrift (“The Lost Manuscript”), which deals with a Latin professor’s hunt for a lost manuscript of Tacitus’ historical works. First, I argue that the characters in Freytag’s novel model a range of different responses to Tacitean incompleteness, challenging readers to question the characters’ - and their own - motives for wishing to fill Tacitus’ gaps. Second, I suggest that the novel in its entirety proposes a different way of responding to the incompleteness of the Tacitean works: to understand and embrace silence, including the silence produced by the lost sections, as an essential characteristic and as an integral and meaningful feature of Tacitus’ work. Freytag’s novel performs a constructive response to Tacitus’ silences: it treats them as the inviting pauses of an interlocutor who falls silent to allow his readers to speak.
Abstract
This chapter approaches the incomplete transmission of Tacitus’ Annals through the lens of a 19th-century German novel by Gustav Freytag entitled Die verlorene Handschrift (“The Lost Manuscript”), which deals with a Latin professor’s hunt for a lost manuscript of Tacitus’ historical works. First, I argue that the characters in Freytag’s novel model a range of different responses to Tacitean incompleteness, challenging readers to question the characters’ - and their own - motives for wishing to fill Tacitus’ gaps. Second, I suggest that the novel in its entirety proposes a different way of responding to the incompleteness of the Tacitean works: to understand and embrace silence, including the silence produced by the lost sections, as an essential characteristic and as an integral and meaningful feature of Tacitus’ work. Freytag’s novel performs a constructive response to Tacitus’ silences: it treats them as the inviting pauses of an interlocutor who falls silent to allow his readers to speak.
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Frontmatter I
- Preface V
- Contents VII
- List of Figures XI
- Introduction 1
-
Part I: Facing Unfinishedness
- From the Authorial to the Editorial tour de force: How to Read Callimachus’ Aetia and Hecale 21
- How to Walk Along a Pioneer’s Fragmentary Track: Theophrastus’ Meteorological Studies 41
- Fragments of Roman Sexuality in Petronius’ Satyricon 59
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Part II: Questioning (In)Completeness
- The “Alexandrian End” of the Odyssey 89
- Reconsidering Closure in Ovid’s Fasti 115
- Statius’ Achilleid: How to Break off a carmen perpetuum 127
- Literatura Incompleta: Borges’ Antiquity between World and Universe 143
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Part III: Constitutive Unfinishedness
- Sed redeo ad formulam (Off. 3.20): Completeness and Imperfection in Cicero’s De officiis 165
- Relativizing Unfinishedness: Lucretian Textuality and Epicurean Therapy 189
- The Fragment as a Form: A Reading of Fragments d’un discours amoureux by Barthes 211
- Arrhythmic Historiography, Lost Letters and Broken Meanings: Fulgentius’s De aetatibus mundi et hominis 225
- “This City Will Always Pursue You”: The Impossible End of Rutilius Namatianus’ Return 241
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Part IV: Reading Unfinishedness
- Finishing Iphigenia in Aulis 261
- Seneca’s Phoenissae: In Search of an Ending 275
- How to Read Hyginus’ Fabulae? Theories and Practices 289
- The Rest was not Perfected: Platonic Endings and their Modern Echoes 311
- War as a Permanent Civil War: The “Unfinished” History in Pasolini’s Petrolio 331
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Part V: Searching for Completion
- The Missing Conclusion to Valerius Flaccus’ Argonautica 353
- Speaking Silences: The Incompleteness of Tacitus’ Annals and Gustav Freytag’s Die verlorene Handschrift 383
- Putting an Unfinished Novel Back into Motion: A Digital Tool to Create Possible “Second Volumes” of Bouvard et Pécuchet 405
- List of Contributors 419
- General Index 423
- Index of Passages 427
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Frontmatter I
- Preface V
- Contents VII
- List of Figures XI
- Introduction 1
-
Part I: Facing Unfinishedness
- From the Authorial to the Editorial tour de force: How to Read Callimachus’ Aetia and Hecale 21
- How to Walk Along a Pioneer’s Fragmentary Track: Theophrastus’ Meteorological Studies 41
- Fragments of Roman Sexuality in Petronius’ Satyricon 59
-
Part II: Questioning (In)Completeness
- The “Alexandrian End” of the Odyssey 89
- Reconsidering Closure in Ovid’s Fasti 115
- Statius’ Achilleid: How to Break off a carmen perpetuum 127
- Literatura Incompleta: Borges’ Antiquity between World and Universe 143
-
Part III: Constitutive Unfinishedness
- Sed redeo ad formulam (Off. 3.20): Completeness and Imperfection in Cicero’s De officiis 165
- Relativizing Unfinishedness: Lucretian Textuality and Epicurean Therapy 189
- The Fragment as a Form: A Reading of Fragments d’un discours amoureux by Barthes 211
- Arrhythmic Historiography, Lost Letters and Broken Meanings: Fulgentius’s De aetatibus mundi et hominis 225
- “This City Will Always Pursue You”: The Impossible End of Rutilius Namatianus’ Return 241
-
Part IV: Reading Unfinishedness
- Finishing Iphigenia in Aulis 261
- Seneca’s Phoenissae: In Search of an Ending 275
- How to Read Hyginus’ Fabulae? Theories and Practices 289
- The Rest was not Perfected: Platonic Endings and their Modern Echoes 311
- War as a Permanent Civil War: The “Unfinished” History in Pasolini’s Petrolio 331
-
Part V: Searching for Completion
- The Missing Conclusion to Valerius Flaccus’ Argonautica 353
- Speaking Silences: The Incompleteness of Tacitus’ Annals and Gustav Freytag’s Die verlorene Handschrift 383
- Putting an Unfinished Novel Back into Motion: A Digital Tool to Create Possible “Second Volumes” of Bouvard et Pécuchet 405
- List of Contributors 419
- General Index 423
- Index of Passages 427
