The greatest literature is always travel literature. Or a trip. We read to escape or so that our spirits can do the only truly worthy tourism. For this reason, of all the contexts or moments in history that can be covered through narration and words, few more powerful circumstances occur to me than those portrayed by Andrea Wulf in her 'Magnificent Rebels'. The coordinates in your book are extremely precise. The place: Jena, a small university town 30 kilometers from Weimar. The moment: the time between the summer of 1794 and October 1806. Unless among its citizens are counted, and often in the same shared scenario, characters of the stature of Ficthe, Goethe, Schiller, the Schlegel brothers, the Humboldts, Novalis, Schelling, Schleiermacher and, of course, Hegel. Anyone who wants to know what happened in those days and how the Jena Circle came to be, should read this book. ESSAY 'Magnificent rebels' Author Andrea Wulf Editorial Taurus Year 2022 Pages 600 Price 24,90 euros 4 History gave us the Athens of Pericles, the Bloomsbury group or the Paris of the 20s. However, Jena had a singularly relevant value not only for its exceptional intellectual fertility but also for the way in which science, art, philosophy and poetry tried to create a definitive perspective from which to contemplate the world and, above all, subjectivity. The book begins with an anecdote, Goethe's coincidence with Friedrich Schiller at a meeting on botany of the Natural History Society. And, let's face it, as much as the meeting between these two giants of Germanic letters supposes a content of true magnitude, I suspect that many readers could imagine more tempering circumstances to indulge in a reading of average attention. Its first great quality is, in fact, that attachment to the anecdotal and circumstantial as essential ingredients in any biography. but as light as some of the characters in this story could be imagined, the reading of 'Magnificent Rebels' is enviably rhythmic. His first great quality is, in fact, that attachment to the anecdotal and circumstantial as essential ingredients in any biography. From that meeting, the script will be riding characters to make the cultural and intellectual environment of the city of the Saale river palpable —almost chewable. The first bars of this journey through time are devoted to Fichte, the great charismatic figure of philosophy who, taking up Kant's baton, revolutionized his time from a new and radical conception of the self (Wulf will always keep the German term " Ich”, also in the original English). Such was the influence of Fichte that a student came to call him the Bonaparte of philosophy. Those were the years in which German intellectuals took a position around the French Revolution; the time in which the magazine 'Die Horen', financed by Schiller, began to prelude the defense of a German nation united by a common language and culture. Common thread The figure of Caroline Böhmer-Schlegel-Schelling is planted as a common thread through each relationship that is intellectual, of course, but also affective, loving and sensual. Polyamory, the youngest will discover, is not a recent invention. Andrea Wulf's level of documentation is detective and yet not overwhelming. I know neat researchers and agile narrators, but the fact that historiographical and documentary accuracy coincide with superlative literary ability is something out of the ordinary. And Wulf gets it. 'Magnificent rebels' is the portrait of a context in which the dialogue, not always peaceful, between the Enlightenment and Romanticism was celebrated. A relationship in which science and letters had to measure their forces. For Goethe, the interest in the study of nature was strictly autonomous and genuine. For Novalis, however, poetic saying maintained a private dignity that it could not share with any other skill. Think of an auditorium where Goethe himself, Fichte, Alexander von Humboldt and Auguste Wilhem Schlegel can sit in the same row. If something like this interests you, this book will be essential. And as in any journey, there is a destination. If in 'Moby Dick' one turns the pages waiting for the whale to appear, in Andrea Wulf's book the main course comes at the end of the story. I don't spoil anything. This is a story of giants, but the last two closing characters overwhelm just with their enunciation: Hegel and Napoleon. If Jena was once the center of the world, it was at the moment when the eyes of those two men met. But, then, the context was already different. And as in all great stories, the end will be tragic. The auditoriums where one day the voice of the most in-demand spirits was heard ended up being converted into warehouses where the wounded were piled up. The Saale River, witness to the walk of wise men and poets, was crowded with mutilated corpses.
