Walter Pater's Essay "Diaphaneite" As a Bridge Between Romanticism and Modernism‪.‬

Pater's concept of the diaphanous character bears a striking resemblance to the idea of the transparent subject in the works of Novalis, as comparison of some passages shows. Pater's transformation of this Romantic idea reveals that he stands at the threshold to modernism: On the one hand he keeps up the Romantic and Idealist assumptions of the subject's ability to form itself and to maintain its wholeness; on the other hand he declares this to be only possible through the indefiniteness of the subject, which makes him a precursor of modernism. Pater's ambivalent / doppeltes concept finds there a reflection in the Chandos letter by Hugo yon Hofmannsthal. **********