Ambiguities of the Priesthood

The unstable category of priesthood brought with it ambiguities and sometimes unfortunate implications. For Brahms the bachelor, whose own performances garnered occasional feminized rhetoric even from Eduard Hanslick, the priesthood could be interpreted as an avoidance of sexuality. This chapter contextualizes art-religious rhetoric of asceticism and martyrdom with burgeoning psychological approaches to artistic identity, including Max Klinger’s own psychological interpretation of the martyr Prometheus in his Brahms-Phantasie. Priestly abstinence is then contextualized with contemporary notions of chastity seen in Paolo Mantegazza’s studies of sexuality and with Friedrich Nietzsche’s ascetic ideals. The author suggests that, on one level, some of Brahms’s most heteronormative supporters such as Philipp Spitta and Josef Viktor Widmann wrote masculinized rhetoric in response to these negative implications.