Nathan Magnusson | Hex and the City: Carnival as Social Space in Tieck’s Liebeszauber
The rise of the modern European city redefined the expectations of social distance and intimacy. The isolation and anonymity of urban life figures prominently in Ludwig Tieck’s fairy tale Liebeszauber and represents a radical departurefrom Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of the carnival as a cultural practice that suspends the boundary between spectator and performer. In this context, the carnival functions as a social space in which mutual participation brings forth the possibility of rebirth and renewal. In my essay I examine how Tieck’s narrative distorts Bakhtin’s positively connoted carnival and suggests instead a disturbing vision of the relationship between subject and object. Tieck’s city provides an alienating backdrop for the voyeuristic desire of his melancholic protagonist, whose only form of social interaction remains an entirely visual pursuit. The urban window represents a spatial barrier between Emil and the anonymous woman he watches from across the street, and his passive observation reveals a fragile distance that comes under constant threat from the carnival element. Emil’s gaze into the intimate space of his neighbor becomes the occasion for the performance of a gruesome act of destruction. An abrupt shift to a rural estate signals not only a transformation of Emil’s relationship to the object of his desire, but also the inescapable presence of the urban carnival space. What unfolds is a grotesque spectacle in which Emil’s visual passivity is replaced by violent physical interaction, and in contrast to Bakhtin’s carnival brings about destruction without the possibility of rebirth. By addressing Tieck’s construction of space in Liebeszauber, my essay demonstrates how the conflict could not be set in motion outside of the threatening and isolating landscape of the city.