Affirmation and Resentment Short Essay on the Poetics of Goethe's Egmont

Goethe's Egmont stages the process of modernization not merely in historical-sociological terms, but as a transformation of the very significance of life. The conflict between Egmont and Alba is at its root a clash between an affirmative, active, spontaneous form of life (affirmation), on the one hand, and a negative, devious, and vengeful form of life (Ressentiment), on the other. This dramatic structure establishes a semantic configuration that achieves its theoretical articulation a century later in the work of Nietzsche.