Doubled Figures, Doubled Infinities: Der Mönch, “Der Leiermann,” and the Kantian Mathematical Sublime

Art historians, musicologists, and performers have long drawn connections between the music of Franz Schubert and the paintings of Caspar David Friedrich; this affinity of the arts is rooted in the rise of landscape painting during the early nineteenth century, which was pioneered by Caspar David Friedrich. Using Friedrich’s Monk by the Sea as a visual counterpart to Schubert’s “Der Leiermann,” this article examines how the Kantian mathematical sublime may take shape in the form of both works. Bringing together the literature in art history on Monk by the Sea with a re-reading of “Der Leiermann,” I will suggest how the technique of doubling—realized through the doppelgänger figure and its perspective and musical harmony and form—gestures at the infinite by creating the effect of boundlessness on two levels: within the artwork and between the audience and the aesthetic object. Moreover, I submit that this two-fold sense of boundlessness is only accessible through the subjectivity of the doubled figure. Concluding with the ambiguous ending of “Der Leiermann,” the article reflects on the sublime’s kinship with the uncanny and how together they portend the condition of the modern subject.