“Devilishly Human”. Adorno and the Fractures of Classicism in Goethe’s Iphigenia

Abstract

The present paper analyzes the issues Adorno explored in his short essay “On the Classicism of Goethe’s Iphigenia”, published in 1967. If Goethe’s drama is considered one of the highlights of the bourgeois institution of art and an exemplary exponent of the revisitation of Antiquity in early Classicism, here we intend to focus the ambivalences Adorno detected in Classicism itself from the analysis of this piece. According to his interpretation, the tension between civilization and barbarism is at the core of the piece itself, and it is articulated from the very notion of myth and the possibility of its reconciliation. Adorno’s analysis of Goethe’s drama is to be understood within the framework of the Dialectic of Enlightenment, showing the moments in which the ideals of classicism crack, revealing their inner contradictions. It is from here that the female figure of Iphigenia becomes significant, as “devilishly human”.