Notes on Corbin & Hamann

In 1937 the young Henry Corbin taught a course at the l'Ecole pratique des Hautes Etudes on the influence of Luther on Johann Georg Hamann (1730-1788). (I have discussed Hamann & Corbin in this earlier post).

He followed with the publication of a short piece in the Annuaire de l’ Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Section des Sciences Religieuses 1938-1939, pp. 77-81, Conférence temporaire : « L’Inspiration luthérienne chez Hamann ».

In 1935 he had written a substantial essay and had planned a book which would include this, plus his translations of a few short pieces by Hamann. One of these translations was published as J.G. HAMANN, « Aesthetica in nuce. Rhapsodie en prose kabbalistique », trad. de l’allemand par H. Corbin, Mesures, janv. 1939, 27 p.
This translation appeared also in Henry Corbin, edited by Christian Jambet, Cahier de l'Herne, no. 39. Consacré à Henry Corbin, 1981.

In 1985 Corbin's larger essay and three translations of pieces by Hamann were at long last published as Hamann, philosophe du luthérianisme, introduction by Jean Brun. Paris, Berg International, 1985, reissued in 2005.

Hamann's essay "Aesthetica in nuce, " "Aesthetics in a Nutshell," is a remarkable piece of Romantic literature in itself and is not readily available in English. I make it available here (in printable, if not screen-readable form & as yet at least, without the extensive notes provided by the translator) in a translation by Joyce P. Crick from Nisbet, Hugh Barr, German Aesthetic and Literary Criticism: Winckelmann, Lessing, Hamann, Herder, Schiller, Goethe. Cambridge [Cambridgeshire]: Cambridge University Press, 1985.

Aesthetica in Nuce Complete - Hamann