Gedankenstriche

Back to school

2009-08-25T09:52:00.002-04:00

Now is the time for modest goals. I've been on a three-month hiatus from work and am beginning to dread trying to start back up next week. Classes (and teaching) start next Wednesday. Maybe it's a function of the change in the academic calendar (i.e. three weeks lopped off the end of Summer) or maybe it's because I decided not to feel guilty about not doing work for a while (that was a nice change) but I'm not having any of the traditional excitement about the start of a new year. Maybe it's just the nature of post-coursework life. I've just got this monolithic project looming ahead of me and I don't know how to cope with that.

Anyway, here's what I'm thinking. The first week (or two) of classes will be crazy, so I'm unlikely to get a great deal of outside work done, but I'll try to get started before then. I'm envisioning a plan of doing dissertation work for two hours a day on normal days (M-F) until my schedule settles. Then, I will attempt to have one day each week when I can do at least four or five hours of work on the dissertation. I'm going to try to read and take notes on/react to one pertinent article each day as well as starting to (re)read my primary literature. Also, once a month I'm going to try to go to the library: If it's a Widener day, I'll browse the new periodicals; if I feel like Houghton, I'll spend time with archival materials and landscape stuff (Humphrey Repton's Red Books, here I come!).

Most important will be the note-taking and writing. I need to get good at that if I'm going to churn out a dissertation in the next two years. (Three?)

Wish me luck, at any rate.

Words I've been tempted to use today, whose meaning I first had to confirm in the OED.

2009-04-28T15:08:00.001-04:00

polymorphous
connoted

Prospectus, Part the second

2009-04-23T10:22:00.003-04:00

Reading, revising, reading, revising, reading, revising. Time well spent, I hope.

It’s exciting, actually to be on the brink of beginning to become intimately familiar with a writer’s entire work. I also think it will become necessary if I’m to make any kind of serious statement about the poet’s relationship to the phenomenon of space/nature/landscape. I need to begin (in the summer, probably) undertaking a survey of Rilke's works, particularly the prose ones. I feel like I'm skootching closer to a project that I'll be happy spending my next few years thinking about, which is thrilling and dizzying.

Anxieties still abound, though. A brief list:

I really bristle at the idea of getting caught thinking too much about author intentionality.
I bristle even more at the idea of finding myself arguing along Freudian/psychological lines.
I also sometimes wonder whether I'm cut out for this work. I'm reminded of an old adviser's words: "If I had it to do over, I would definitely have chosen career over family." Do you have to have that unwavering devotion (obsession?) with work to succeed in this field? I've always thought that academia was a field that was specifically well suited to balancing work and life. Hopefully I'm not wrong? Can you be a 40 hour a week (and occasional weekend) academic?
I feel like I've actually gotten less smart since I came to grad school. That would be counterproductive, wouldn't it?

Without comment

2009-02-05T16:53:00.002-05:00

"So hatte man den Menschen empfunden zur Zeit, da man ihn groß malte; aber der Mensch war schwankend geworden und ungewiß, und sein Bild floß dahin in Verwandlungen und war kaum mehr zu fassen. Die Natur war dauernder und größer, alle Bewegung war breiter in ihr und alle Ruhe schlichter und einsamer. Er war eine Sehnsucht im Menschen, mit ihren erhabenen Mitteln von sich zu reden wie von etwas ebenso Wirklichem, und so entstanden die Bilder von Landschaften, in denen nichts geschieht. Leere Meere hat man gemalt, weiße Häuser in Regentagen, Wege, auf denen keiner geht, und unsäglich einsame Wasser. Immer mehr entschwand das Pathos und je besser man diese Sprache verstand, in desto schlichterer Weise gebrauchte man sie. Man versenkte sich in die große Ruhe der Dinge, man empfand, wie ihr Dasein in Gesetzen verging, ohne Erwartung und ohne Ungeduld. Und still gingen unter ihnen die Tiere umher und ertrugen wie sie den Tag und die Nacht und waren voll von Gesetzen. Und als der Mensch später in diese Umgebung trat, als Hirte, als Bauer oder einfach als eine Gestalt aus der Tiefe des Bildes: da ist alle Überhebung von ihm abgefallen und man sieht ihn an, daß er Ding sein will."

Prospectus, Part the first

2009-01-27T17:11:00.002-05:00

I'm beginning to try to write my prospectus. How is one meant to express in ten pages, the work one hopes to accomplish in the next two years, not knowing yet exactly where that work will take you?

I'm beginning to see that my topic is good if you take for granted the importance of my theoretical framework. If you don't, however, it looks amateurish and unacademic. So, what I need to do is demonstrate, really convincingly, that my mode of thinking is relevant and intelligent enough to merit those two years' work. Alternately, I need to find a way to conceive of my theoretical frame as a genre and undertake the project as a study of that genre. So, this is what I need to do in my introduction (of both the prospectus and the dissertation itself).

One way of establishing relevance is to illustrate my topic's historical trajectory. How far back do I reach in pursuit of this goal? Certainly back to Goethe - Die Wahlverwandtschaften is an obvious choice - but do I attempt to go further? And if I don't, do I have to come up with a rationale for starting with the Goethezeit? Is my topic a phenomenon of the Enlightenment? If it is, why am I focusing on the 20th century? Too many things to think about.

New Semester coming up...

2009-01-15T10:41:00.002-05:00

As noted, I'm not really very good at keeping resolutions and I'm only inconsistent at making them. My birthday falls perilously close to the holidays, so resolutions made at that time are generally derailed by New Years. New Years seems an arbitrary day to start a new leaf and starting either 1. Hung over from the night before or 2. Depressed from holiday let-down never seems like a good idea. So, maybe a list of new-semester resolutions?

I'm thinking a lot these days about how to structure my time so that I'm productive as well as relaxed and balancing work with life. I'm also thinking a lot about how to have a life outside work, but that's a topic for a different blog. The challenges I'm facing are these.

Not taking a full load of classes = less structured time, no discrete tasks to finish. This means no instant gratification.
Prospectus due at a stupid time (February 27 - three weeks into the new semester)
Adviser leaving the country at an even stupider time (January 25 - one month before Prospectus day)
Danger of TFing duties eating up spare work-time.
Danger of procrastination eating up all remaining time.
Lack of concrete direction in Dissertation research/writing threatens to derail entire project from the beginning.
Losing precious office space due to changing teaching duties. This is combined with:
Inability to be productive at home.

So, how do I deal with these things?

Try to keep my office. Failing that, create a good space for working at home (try to make the desk in the bedroom workable).
Try to schedule sections carefully. I have a teaching commitment from 5:30-7:30 Thursdays and lecture 1-2:30 on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Depending on when the Professor ideally wants sections to happen, maybe I could schedule them for Tuesdays after lecture - back to back? Then I would (theoretically, unless something else comes up) have MWF free.
Budget time carefully and stick to that budget. I.e. spend no more than 2-2 1/2 hours prepping for Extension School each week. Plan specific times and tasks for working on Prospectus/Dissertation.
Institute a system of goals/rewards. Set benchmarks to be passed before allowing myself to do something fun.
Institute weekends and stick to real days off and real days working, rather than half-assedly doing both all the time.

If anyone here does read, do you have any tips on dealing with unstructured time and nebulous tasks? Do share.

Luxury

2008-12-03T10:10:00.002-05:00

Being able to read slowly and carefully is such a pleasure!

Currently reading:

Gernot Böhme: Phänomenologie der Natur: Ein Projekt.
Adalbert Stifter: Brigitta
A paper I wrote on Austerlitz a couple years ago.

Stichworte zu Brecht

2008-11-13T15:52:00.002-05:00

Einfühlung vs. Verfremdungseffekt
Theater des Wissenschaftlichen Zeitalters
Theater = Hörsaal
Venue for Marxist ideology
Do away with the illusion of theater as real - no more curtain, show the musicians

Buell - The Future of Environmental Criticism

2008-11-06T14:42:00.001-05:00

Larry Buell – The Future of Environmental Criticism.
The first chapter of Buell’s third book of/on Environmental Criticism (the others being the Environmental Imagination and Writing for an Endangered World) is a history of the emergence of environmental criticism (aka ecocriticism). Buell offers a good overview of what he calls the first and second waves of environmental criticism (first: looking primarily at nature writing, as LB does at Thoreau in The Env. Imag.; second: begins to question “organicist” view of environmental criticism – begins to look at urban/toxic/non-natural landscapes. Also, other streams of criticism creep in) and introduces many different threads of criticism that have arisen: very interesting one, ecofeminism, which sees the history of man’s dominion over nature as analogous to the oppression of women. Problems: dependence of “eco”criticism on science, which most lit scholars are weak on. Also, he acknowledges that the “environmental turn” is a recent development (he places it in the 1980-90s), but that it pursues a line of questioning that is Ancient. Also, it asserts itself as important because environment is universal. He thinks it will attain the level of AfAm Studies, Gender studies, etc. He concludes with the suggestion that environmental criticism will have to go more “mainstream” and link back up with more “traditional” critical methods before becoming more accepted, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. There’s apparently already a rapprochement between hardcore ecocritics and other critical/theoretical techniques.

"Lieblingsblick" - Annette von Droste-Hülshoff

2008-11-05T16:21:00.003-05:00

Annette von Droste-Hülshoff – Lieblingsblick

Mostly pastoral description of the view of the Alps from a mountain hut in the woods. Mostly typical, but definitely has Romantic overtones – especially excurs at the end about the view of the mountains being most well suited to loneliness. She describes the view of the mountains as “der Tod in seinr grossartigsten Gestalt.”

Interesting aspects: she wanders through the mountains purely in her head, while looking at them. Experience through seeing and not doing. Also, heavy resonance with Prospect/Refuge theory. Mountain hut allows prospect with distance (refuge). Also, her favorite bench (she prefers to sit outside) is shaded/hidden by grapevines.

She's one of the few female writers on the list. Interesting that she seems so drawn to the mountains, which one would seem to see as a specifically male space. Perhaps her ruminations on them and insistence on her superior knowledge of them is in reference to the forbidden nature of the mountains to women. This frustration may also be reflected in her defiance in choosing the hard path to get to the hut (softened by reference to sin/religion, but still with a heavy defiant tone).

Period Notes

2008-10-31T08:36:00.002-04:00

Arno Holz

http://books.google.com/books?id=zN8qAAAAMAAJ&dq=Arno+Holz&pg=PP1&ots=xZBJ3D3-ko&source=an&sig=UZ8uWsTb2e4MjOafylJ_ode0HAo&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=8&ct=result#PPA3,M1

Gerhart Hauptmann

Arthur Schnitzler

Leutnant Gustl

Anti-Semitism in Vienna – but how?

Internal monologue, highly psychologically inflected

Novella

Fräulein Else

Internal monologue, highly psychologically inflected

Novella

Questions the merit of preserving bourgeoisie

Is a portrait of a Freudian hysterical episode, draws heavily on Freud’s ideas about the hysterical woman

?? possibly also shows a generational conflict/failed rebellion

Also an interesting look at the state of the woman in society at this time. Male author appropriating a female experience, but granted in a nuanced enough way that he makes it clear that she is not in control of her destiny – this is manifested by the family’s prospective benefactor assuming control over her body. At the same time that she’s not in control of her body or her life, her family’s livelihood depends on her in a way that seems as if it should be empowering, but isn’t.

Der Grüne Kakadu

Takes place on the eve of the French revolution. A revolutionary theater group puts on a performance of the beginning of the revolution (the assassination of a powerful bourgeois man), but fiction becomes reality when the main figure in the theater actually kills a man. The bourgeois audience is thoroughly entertained and doesn’t realize it’s real.

Reigen

Series of love scenes – scenes of seduction between unseemly partners.

Piece was perceived to be obscene, not performed until much later.

Trying to chip away at bourgeois sexual mores – See also Frühlings Erwachen.

Wedekind

Frühlings Erwachen

Chips away at bourgeois sexual mores, questions validity of preserving innocence (ignorance) about sex.

Also, generational conflict

Can also be pulled into the gender discussion. W. sexualizes his young female characters in a way that is shocking even to the modern reader. Similar to the sexual portrait we get in Erdgeist and Die Büchse der Pandora

Plays on a number of taboo topics, including sex (among teenagers), teen rebellion, suicide, societal/familial pressure to succeed. This play still reads as relevant today. See as evidence, the Broadway hit musical.

Erdgeist

The first of the Lulu plays

Highly stylized, formal language – conflicts with the coarse physical performance required by the play’s action

Die Büchse der Pandora

The second of the Lulu plays.

Highly stylized, formal language – conflicts with the coarse physical performance required by the play’s action

Hugo von Hofmannsthal

“Ein Brief.”

Published in two parts in a newspaper (WHICH?)

Fictional letter from Lord Chandos to Francis Bacon

Chandos is explaining himsef in response to a letter from FB which asks why he hasn’t written anything in the last several years. Chandos explains it is because he has lost the ability to think clearly, linearly, logically about anything, that his crisis of LANGUAGE has affected his ability to even think, let alone write.

Sprachkrise – The Brief is self-consciously contradictory. He bemoans his inability to express his experiences in words, but tries at the same time to express his experiences in words. The limits of a purely written/linguistic medium (the letter) force him to try to overcome the limits of language. See the scene with the water beetle.

Language is also connected to the ability of the human to unify the world and to connect to the world. When language fails, one loses the ability to connect.

After the publication of the brief, Hofmannsthal turns more to drama, which being an experiential medium, allows the audience to experience more directly the gestures/experiences of the characters/actors on the stage.

Collaboration with Strauss on Der Rosenkavalier seems also to connect with the Sprachkrise. Movement into opera allows music also to convey part of what language cannot anymore.

Der Tor und der Tod

Märchen der 672. Nacht

Der Rosenkavalier

Collaboration with Richard Strauss

Opera – comedy, but not without dramatic moments

Destroys notion of unified time – set in Theresian Vienna (Rococco), but includes musical motifs (some at the suggestion of HvH) from many different periods – Waltz, Wagnerian business, minuets, high operatic arias

Idea is that the past permeates the present – drawing on TONS of literary precedents from Moliere to Shakespeare

Marschallin is keenly aware of time marching on – her aging

“reflections on the paradoxes of outer change and inner continuity of subjective consciousness”

Der Schwierige

Poems

George

Algabal

Based in part on the decadent life of a Roman Caesar.

Symbolist, heavily influenced by French Symbolists, esp. Mallarme

Das Jahr der Seele

Freud

Das Unheimliche

Deals with a psychological phenomenon by looking at literature – E.T.A. Hoffmann’s Sandmann

Deals with Hoffmann perhaps as a way of lending historic credence to his theory, also working with a text that is familiar

Works with literature why?

Der Dichter und das Phantasieren

Thomas

Der Tod in Venedig

3rd person omniscient narrator

Much of the “action” is actually just thought

Pub. 1912, seems prescient of WWI

Artistic success connected with major failure/downfall

Doktor Faustus

Story of a German composer (Adrian Leverkühn) – specialist in 12-tone music (like Schönberg, who makes a deal with the devil, seals it by contracting syphilis from a prostitute, and is never allowed to love again. Blood pact is literally inscribed in him in the form of the disease living in his blood stream.

The story is narrated by Zeitblom, a music critic and humanist who is a friend of AL’s. He comes to represent a kind of Mitläufer figure. Not powerful or creative enough to be equal to AL, but still following his example or something.

Story becomes largely an allegory of Nazi Germany. Deal with the devil, timelines line up, and the last line of the book is “Gott sei eurer armen Seele gnädig, mein Freund, mein Vaterland.” Zeitblom seems to be praying for the soul of his friend as well as that of Germany.

It is emphasized that what AL really likes is the mathematical nature of the way in which he writes music – creativity wird technological. Mechanical nature of things during this period.

Rilke

Malte Laurids Brigge

1910 published

First Person – partially journal form, but mostly disjointed notes on urban life and reflecting on non-urban childhood.

Defies unified notion of time and space

Reminiscent of Baudelaire Spleen de Paris – prose poems

Dwells on issues of fragility – frequent references to body parts, fragmentation, the fear of falling to pieces – sees self as permeability and has no defense against onslaught of stimuli in the city.

Also, trope of inside/outside being swapped – formerly interior wall of house now on the outside when the house is demolished. Also, old woman whose face comes off in her hands. Permeability again – fear of showing one’s insides

Dwelling on death and dismemberment, disease.

Terrifying experiences – not just from the city, but also in childhood memories. Uncle’s death, getting stuck in layers of clothes while playing dress-up

Disjunctions in place and time are reminiscent/prescient of Berlin, Alexanderplatz. On the other hand, though, where B,A has a changing voice and tone, Malte has a consistent tone and narrator.

Critique of city life, but also examination of self. Evident of identity crisis in narrator (and z.T. in the author as well.)

In contrast to his Elegies and Sonnets, Rilke tries here to find a new form (rather than resorting to old form) for new experiences.

Tries to write urban experience, but is not essentially an urban person.

Modern death vs. dignified death – the idea of mechanized death – not mechanized killing, but mechanized death.

Duino Elegies

Written over 10 years, during which WWI happened.

Dwells on the untimeliness of death – alluding to young dead (soldiers) without becoming “war poems”

Modern life = transitory, temporary, fragile; antiquity = stable, lasting

Plays with classical elegiac meter, but these meters begin to decompose under the weight of modern concerns.

Images of money meaninglessly reproducing itself are shocking against the historical backdrop of German inflation post-war

“Wer, wenn ich schriee, hörte mich aus der Engel /Ordnungen” - SPRACHKRISE

Benn, Gottfried

Morgue

Pub 1912

„Mann und Frau gehn durch die Krebsbaracke“

Use of synechdoche and metaphor underscores depersonalization

Also evident in Gehirne – just handles brains, not people

Uses the image of a rosary for the cancerous nodules in a woman’s breast – inversion of religious image

Mixed vocabulary – poetic language with scientific/medical vocabulary

Undermines idea of human as pinnacle of creation – death of a girl makes possible the life of the rats that are living in her gut

Mostly unrhymed free verse

Constant breaking down of the whole into parts (body parts) – see Rilke: Malte

For the expressionists – Nietsche’s idea that transcendend values were a fiction, a human invention for the purpose of imposing power on others.

Expressionism – grossstadtlyrik

Benn is also an ambiguous figure, as he briefly flirted with NS, but then rejected it.

Attempt to express their experience of the world without trying to reproduce objective reality.

Benn’s mixture of everyday, clinical, religious and poetic language typical of expressionism (SEE Berlin, Alexanderplatz)

Gehirne

Stories about the surgeon Rönne – dissolution of reality and unified ich

Discontinuity

Menschheitsdämmerung

Reflects some of the messianic ideal of some expressionists. Foreign to Benn and Trakl (and others)

Sections: “Collapse and Cry”, “Awakening of the Heart,” “Exhortation and Indignation,” and “Love of human beings.”

Ambiguity in name –dämmerung = dawn or dusk

Appeal to renewal

“Call to fraternity, spirit, humanity, heart, and soul in the face of a bestial existence”

Social program does appear:

R. Becher’s “Der Sozialist”

Georg Heym

“Der Gott der Stadt” religious-ish tone. Steeples of churches become chimneys of factories

Kafka

Das Urteil

Written overnight 22-23 Sept 1912

Shows an affinity with Expressionism in its fascination with the grotesque and the more rigorous, intense expression of experience.

Generational conflict (see also Hasenclever – Der Sohn)

Important to remember historical context – eve of WWI, tension in Europe

Motifs of betrayal and writing of “false letters” (encoding of engagement in letter to his friend in Russia) anspielungen on the political atmosphere

Father’s claim to have been in touch with the friend in Russia = diplomatic relations between Austro-Hungary and Russia

Also – Yiddish Theater exaggerated gesture of father emerging from bed, and of Georg jumping off the bridge – also has an Expressionist flavor as well.

Oedipal undertones & repression à Freud

SIGNIFICANT: development of limited 3rd person narration – limited to perceptual field of the protagonist – i.e. NOT OMNISCIENT

Hofmannsthal - Ein Brief - 1902

2008-10-20T15:30:00.002-04:00

Hofmannsthal’s fictional Brief from Lord Chandos to Francis Bacon formulates a most eloquent complaint about the failure of language – or the failure of the speaker to harness his language. The irony is not lost on the reader, that a complaint about the inadequacy of language should be so beautifully written, but the impulse is not unfamiliar, especially to the reader of German literature. Granted, I haven’t undertaken a systematic study of English literature (or, indeed, of other literatures – even German, I’m ashamed to say), but this complaint does seem to particularly plague the German speaking world.

The Sprachkrise does seem to have something specific to do with the turn of the century and the ushering-in of modern life. However, this is a complaint that seems to reach throughout German literary history. The most famous example that comes to mind is Werther’s lament about his inability to recreate the world in drawing or in word – of course (as with most things) I blame this more on Werther than on language or any other outside force. One could also recognize this Sprachkrise in much later literature. Die Klavierspielerin comes immediately to mind, as the main character there resorts to physical violence (against herself or her mother) and music as her only outlets, while really not letting anything out at all. When thinking about that book, I think about it as silent except for the shrieking of her mother. One of my dear friends and colleagues suggested that there’s also a connection to the Sprachkrise in Kleist, but I’m ashamed to say I can’t really vollziehen that myself because I don’t know Kleist well enough. (Thanks to google, I can say now that it may be to do with the end of Amphitryon – Alkmene ends the play with a resounding “Ach!”) Really, though, you could argue that anytime a speaker in literature says “Ach!” it is a symptom of Sprachskepsis. (I’m taking Sprachskepsis and Sprachkrise as roughly synonymous… perhaps krise is more acute than skepsis?) That means you, Goethe.
Back to Modern Times, though, you can look at Rilke – Malte Laurids Brigge – for a couple of different moments where language become superfluous if not inadequate. I’m thinking especially of the vocal but inarticulate suffering during the uncle’s epic death sequence. His Stöhnen makes everyone else’s language practically inaudible and definitely irrelevant – during his days-long death, inarticulate moaning is all that counts for anything. Language could not satisfy his death-urge.

One other interesting thing about Hofmannsthal’s specific Sprachkrise is that language doesn’t just fail him in speaking, but instead also fails him in thinking. More than just his ability to express himself comes into question, then – his entire logical system is threatened when he loses a language in which to think.

In his article on Hofmannsthal’s Brief in The New History of German Literature, Nethersole points out an important aspect of the letter that seems indeed to have repercussions for the whole of the modern world. He laments the falling of the unified world into pieces –

“Es zerfiel mir alles in Teile, die Teile wieder in Teile und nichts mehr ließ sich mit einem Begriff umspannen.”

Hofmannsthal’s ability to reconcile the different parts of the world into a coherent whole (which sounds like Lacanian integration of the self, actually) fails with the failure of his linguistic/logical system.

Interesting contrast: Hofmannsthal shares many characteristics with his imaginary counterpart, Chandos. However, H. does not abandon his poetic career. Instead, he continues to write very successfully for years to come.

Nethersole also suggests that the Krise in Hofmannsthal’s Brief is more than linguistic. He suffers, according to N. under the weight of an inherited cultural tradition that is unable to satisfy any more. He is making a break with the tradition he came out of, more than with the language he first learned to think in. More than that, though, he is dealing with the realization that society is not based on anything solid any more. Industrialization and modernization destroy any kind of previously-held belief in a unity of society and encourage, instead, more fragmentation and multiplicity and uncertainty. “It can rest only on das Gleitende, and is aware that what other generations believed to be firm is in fact das Gleitende.” [H.v.H. quoted in the New History of German Language. P. 655]

“This revolt is directed against the pathological condition, the “serious illness” of mind, to which Chandos alludes, which has plagued a rationalist age, centered on the idea of a unitary self in control of the subject. Freud, in Studies on Hysteria (1895), dispelled these ideas by positing the laws of the unconscious for understanding the human psyche. The unconscious operates through a series of associations whre different trains of elements form veritable networks, with notdal points at the intersection of several lines. While Schnitzler articulated the life of emotions through the abivalence he saw between old morality and new psychological reality, Hofmannsthal, in the Chandos Letter, applies language and its ability to relate to things with semi-surgical precision.” [New History, 655]

In this letter, H. calls into question the validity of a unified self, but at the same time seeks the moment of epiphany (in Joyce), which he calls the moment of Revelation, where one experiences unity of the ego with the outside world. Nethersole also alludes to a posthumous fragment of HvH’s which says “That which is most profound in experience defies words, I always felt that words divide human beings instead of connecting them.” [New History, 656]

This critique of language was typical in fin de siècle Vienna, apparently. “First voiced by Fritz Mauthner (1849-1923), the philosopher and cofounder of the Freie Bühne Theater in Berlin, the critique of language inaugurates the linguistic turn in the 20th century, a turn from speculative philosophy and methaphysics toward a definition of philosophy as linguistic or conceptual analysis, which dominated philosophy for nearly a century.” [New History, 656] (see also Wittgenstein)

“Mindful of the oscillating quality and ultimately untenable demand of language to speak truth by which to create unity, Hofmannsthal’s plays, like the conversational piece Der Schwierige (1921), depend largely on gesture. Language reconfigured as gesture interrupts the flow of talk and opens a different kind of space where, caught up in the living flux of things, human beings glimpse the momentary possibility of togetherness. Converging on the nodal point of the various concerns with the limits of verbal expressivity that pervade the crisis of language, Hofmannsthal asks, in the voice of Der Schwierige, for ways in which a speaker can act, if speaking always already constitutes a form of cognition of the futility of action.” [New History, 657]

Expressionism 1910 - 1925

2008-10-20T12:17:00.001-04:00

Fairly easy to define: this movement was carried by people born between 1875 and 95, who witnessed the crises arising out of the First World War and were very engaged with and interested in the new political order that arose out of the Russian Revolution (1917) and the founding of the Weimar Republic (1919). Began as an aesthetically and philosophically oriented movement, but became politically motivated.

In the beginning, they suffered under modern life. They drew on Nietsche’s critique of European culture. Rejection of nature in the senses of Naturalism Realism, logic, causality, and psychology. Rebellion against the state and the older generation. Originally the movement was a negation of the “Welt der Väter”.

Finally, as a result of the crises of WWI, pacifism took center stage in expressionism, which was a change from the initial welcome distraction of the war from bourgeois malaise. The emphasis of the movement was to overcome patriotism and to think about menschheit instead of national allegiance. The war was increasingly recognized as criminal. This gave rise to a “Weltverbesserungsfanatismus” which also led to the individual experience being expanded to a mythic scale. Man needed to be saved from himself and the individual’s suffering was miniscule in comparison to that of collective mankind. The movement goes from this point in a socialist direction. Expressionism becomes a declaration of war against the Powers that Be – against mechanization and industrialization, capitalism and militarism, and against “Gewalt in jeder Gestalt.” Keywords: Socialism communism, pacifism, anarchism.

Fascination with the art of primitive civilizations and children. Also a fascination and identification with other historical periods whose problems mirrored the current ones – the Baroque with its brutal background of the 30 years war; transcendentalism of the Gothic period. Enthusiasm for the Lebensangst and religious ecstacy of those periods. – opposite of purely aesthetic appreciation of the past seen in impressionism. However, the rejection of the contemporary (modern) world was similar in both expressionism and impressionism.

VERY important influence: Nietsche, especially Also sprach Zarathustra.

“Auch die Auffassung Nietzsches, daß die Welt nur als ästhetisches Phänomen zu rechtfertigen und die Überwindugn des Nichts im künstlerischen Akt zu bewältigen sei, hat den Expressionismus beeinflußt. In dem „Expressiven“ überhaupt, bis in Wortstellung und Wortwahl hinein, zeigt sich das Weiterwirken von Nietzsches Sprache (Reinhard Johannes Sorge, Georg Kaiser, Gottfried Benn).” [DdD, 532]

Strindberg was a major forebear of expressionism.

“Die einzelnen Personen waren nur mehr Sprecher einer Beichte und Klage des Dichters, die Handlung löste sich in Visionen und Träume des Dichters auf. Die Anrufung einer neuen Menschheit, Schrei und Gebärdensprachen waren hier geprägt.” [DdD 532]

Also, Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky’s mystical and social commentary were brought into Expressionism.

Whitman’s humanism was very important for the character of lyric at this time. Also important: French symbolists – Baudelaire-Verlaine.

Also important for linguistic innovation – Italian Futurists. Concentration and simplification of language was called for. “Beschränkung auf Substantiv und Infinitiv, nach Analogie-Reihungen, die Kausalität und Psychologie überwinden sollten, ist vom Sprachstil der dt. Expressionisten erfüllt worden.” [DdD 533]

Innere Erlebnis > äußere Leben.

“Glaubenslose Destruktion und gläubiges Vertrauen in die Zukunft, Abbau der lit. Traditionen bis zum Primitivismus und artistische Strenge, Überschwant und Verknappung kennzeichnen das Doppelgesicht. Gemeinsam war den Expressionisten die auf das Wesenhafte gerichtete Intensität, die auf hist. und psychologische Einmaligkeit verzichtete, die Gestalten aus solchen Bedingtheiten löste und in der exkstatischen wie in der zynischen Darstellung zum Typus, zur Abstraktion und zum Symbol vorstieß. Die Konzentration auf das Wesentliche ergab eine im Gegensatz zum Naturalismus aussparende Darstellungsweise, und in zunehmendem Maße wurde das innerlich als entscheidend Erfaßte als Wirklichkeit gesetzt.” [DdD 533-534]

this lead to an intensivation of feeling, pathos à expressionist Schrei. Sprachkrise? This was an expression of the general rejection of the formal – especially as seen in George, Rilke, Hofmannsthal à full formal freedom.

Sprache goes in two directions – 1. Orgiastisch, barock, prefers free rhythms. 2. Rejects all decorative and explanatory padding, becomes a series or list of Hauptwörtern. Even the historical and atmospheric reality of mankind and experiences disappears. Abstraction, Typisierung und Mythisierung.

“Stil umfaßt alle jene Elemente des Kunstwerks, die ihre psychische Erklärung im Abstrationsbedürfnis des Menschen finden ... Schnelligkeit, Simultaneität, höchste Anspannung um die Ineinandergehörigkeit des Geschauten ... Eine Vision will sich in letzter Knappheit im Bezirk verstiegener Vereinfachung kundgeben ... Farbe ohne Bezeichnung, Zeichnung und kein Erklären, im Rhzthmus festgesetztes Hauptwort ohne Attribut ... Alles Erlebte gipfelt in einem Geistigen. Jedes Geschehen wird sein Typisches.” [DdD 534 – Theodor Däubler]

Ich à Wir. Thema: Untergang und Wiedergeburt der Zeit. Not des alten Menschen und Sehnsucht nach dem neuen Menschen.

Lyric poetry was central at the beginning of expressionsim. Frühexpressionisten came from Impressionism – Heym, Trakl, Stadler, Klemm, Else Lasker-Schüler. Symbolists – architektonisch bestimmt. Expressionists – rhythmisch bestimmt. Metaphors were ich-bezogen and not ding-bezogen (impressionisten – Rilke). Lots of interjections and very consonant-heavy. Feelings take control from thought. Short asyntactic sentences. Kabarett songs were continued with revolutionary tone.

Drama – toward the end of WWI, this becomes central. Early forebear – Woyzeck (Büchner). Expressionist drama takes critical/eccentric characteristics from Wedekind and mystical/visionary from Strindberg. In Wedekind’s tradition – Carl Sternheim. Stylized stereotypes of bürgerlichen Typen. In Strindbergäs tradition - Toller, Barlach, sort of Georg Kaiser – transformational and redemptive dramas. Expressionistischen Szenare – balladenhafte Aneinanderreihung von visionären Bildern. Stationen, Ringen eines Menschen, Dram. Sendung. Emphasis on lyric monologue. Protagonist usually only speaker and reflection of the author. “Statt die Kompliziertheit des allzu Zeitlichen untersuchen und analysieren zu wollen, sich dessen bewußt zu werden, was unzeitlich in uns ist ... So ist hier (im modernen Drama) der Mensch nichts als Geist und Seele, und darum haben diese Gestalten etwas von Rasenden an sich.” [DdD 537]

Novel was less important than lyric and drama. Romantheorien von Döblin und Lukacs – Entpersönlichung und Entfabelung, simultaneity, montage and collage, irone als selbstaufgebung der subjektivität. “In der expressionistischen Prosa scheint sich die gegenständliche Welt dem Zugriff entzogen zu haben, an ihre Stelle trat eine aus der Instrospektion entstandene, montierte Wirklichkeit.” [DdD 537]

Programmschrigen – result of revolutionary impulse.

Authors to consider: Barlach, Benn, Döblin, Kafka, Kaiser, Lasker-Schüler, Heinrich Mann, Toller, Trakl

Period Considerations: Part II

2008-10-14T14:30:00.000-04:00

Anti-Naturalism – Neuromantik und Neuklassik – 1890-1920

At the same time that Naturalism was getting going, there were movements against it. Authors like Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Stefan George (early works) saw the pure reproduction of reality as unproductive. Also some manifestos: Bahr: Kritik der Moderne (1890), Überwindung des Naturalismus (1891). This anti-realistic, anti-naturalistic movement manifested itself in the Heimatkunstbewegung and literary impressionism (taking the contemporary French painting school as a model and artistic ideal). These two directions unite in their attempt to overcome rationalism with intense feeling. There was a strong symbolic character to these groups’ works as a result of the impulse to stylize experience.

While both Naturalism and its detractors both criticized the bourgeoisie, they did it in very different ways. Naturalism attacked the bourgeoisie on an economic, social level, while the non-naturalists instead criticized the philistine disposition of the bourgeois (Bürgertum). Naturalism developed at the turn of the century in a more left-leaning direction, while Symbolism leaned right. All of the anti-naturalist movements shared a distaste for the philosophical background of Naturalism – they preferred a return to irrationalism, glorified death, metaphysics, the soul, and myth. (See here, Wagner’s music dramas, Schopenhauer.)

“An die Stelle von Positivismus und Optismus traten einerseits Lebensmüdigkeit, Resignation und Todesverherrlichung, ein pessimistischer Grundzug im Gefolge der Wirkung Schopenhauers, der in der Vermittlung durch die Musikdrr. Richard Wagners (1813-1883) eine romantische, rauschhafte Note bekam, andererseits Jugendlichkeit, Schönheitskult, Lebensgier, Tendenzen, die in der sog. Lebensphilosophie ihre Unterbauung fanden und das Dekadenzbewußtsein sowie den Nihilismus überwinden wollten. Leben erschien hier als dynamisch-ästhetischer Selbstwert, der weit über den Wert des Genusses hinausging.” [DdD, 484]

Very important: Nietsche’s Kulturpessimismus & Zukunftsphilosophie “Die Zukunft gebe unserem Heute die Regel.” Nietsche agreed with the Symbolists in his lifestyle as well as his philosophy. The world can only be saved by aesthetics; art is the only thing that has not fallen victim to the absurd, and is the sphere that lies beyond all worths and functions. à Jugendstil! And over-aestheticization of everything at this time. Parallels to this aesthetic Streben also in literature – George, Rilke, early Hofmannsthal, Hesse, Stadler, impressionistic Hauptmann. Sort of literary Jugendstil.

French Symbolists: Baudelaire, Verlaine, Mallarme, Rimbaud, Huysmans, Verhaeren, Maeterlink. Symbolism brought some ideals from the German Romantik back to Germany from France.

English language literature: Wilde (esp. Dorian Gray), Poe, Whitman (Formal importance. Content first appreciated by expressionism.)

Scandinavia: Strindberg influenced Wedekind. Became a more important influence in Expressionism.

Dostoyevsky was one of the biggest influences.

The antinaturalistic movements wanted to attain a level of art for art’s sake and praised not the reproduction of experience or facts, but rather of impressions, and impacts. When human beauty was praised it was seldom a beautiful strength, but rather a beautiful and interesting weakness that was praised (see Tadzio in Der Tod in Venedig). Neuromantik mixed in a Dionysian element. In one sense you could call the Neuromantik the Dionysian and Naturalism the Appolonian.

Lyric poetry was a particularly strong field at this time. First centering around Stefan George, then Rilke. Emphasis was less on formal perfection and more on word choice and rhyme. Metrically, poets were referring back to Hölderlin and Whitman’s free rhythms. There was also a renewal of the ballad – establishment of the literary cabaret furthered this fascination with the ballad/song. See Wedekind 1902 – joining the cabaret “Die elf Scharfrichter” in Munich.

The novel kept the microscopic vision of the Naturalistic novel, but had a more lyric, obscuring tone. Narrative works held onto a stylized idiom that had been rejected by the Naturalists and which almost became rhythmic prose. In drama, some romantic aspects recurred. One-acts by early Hofmannsthal signaled a new theater form. In this tradition are also Schnitzler’s dramas (the individual acts should stand more or less on their own, but work together as neighbors). Gerhart Hauptmann’s early impressionistic works show a mixture of naturalistic and romantic-symbolist characteristics.

Authors to consider: George, Hesse, Hofmannsthal, Mann, Rilke, Schnitzler, Wedekind, Zweig.

Period Considerations: Part I

2008-10-14T11:56:00.001-04:00

Jahrhundertwende – 1945

The period I’m learning about is defined somewhat arbitrarily. While other periods are defined by particular literary or intellectual movements (Romanticism, Enlightenment) or by specific historical events (post-1989), mine is sort of a mixture. The starting date is vaguely defined around the turn of the twentieth century, but reaching a bit further back to about 1890. By going back a little further, it becomes possible to look at some of the movements that inspired and anticipated developments in literature after 1900. Also, some of these early 20^th century movements started just prior to 1900 and carried over even into the late teens and twenties. Furthermore, the historical events of the last decade of the 19^th century in many ways influenced and anticipated the events of the first half of the 20^th century in Germany. 1888 saw Wilhelm II rise to become Emperor of Germany and there is a new movement of colonialism. His epic struggles for power with Bismarck (Wilhelm II eventually prevailed) seems in retrospect to foreshadow the machinations that led to Hindenburg naming Hitler Chancellor of Germany in 1933. Wilhelm II’s interventional and expansionary foreign policy and actions following the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, the Archduke of Austro-Este, did nothing to prevent and, in fact, may have hastened the development of WWI, which caused, in turn, the devastation of the German economy after war’s end, which, in turn, gave rise to the Nazis and WWII.

1945 becomes an obvious cutoff date for this period, being the end of WWII and marking a rather drastic shift in literature predicated to no small degree by Adorno’s polemic against art, but also impacted by the devastation of Germany and the division of East and West. But the time in between ca. 1900 and 1945 is a time of subtler shifts in literary styles and movements and a time of major schisms and political upheaval in Germany’s history. The literature that appears around the time of these upheavals seems to gain in significance by its relation to those historic events and, more obviously, becomes inextricably tied to those events by their response to the political and historical shifts that the authors themselves witnessed and experienced.

So, the period from 1900-1945 can’t be said to have a unified vision or approach in the way that Enlightenment or Classicism could, and its context can’t be narrowed to any single political/historical event. Looking at it this way, I would perhaps call it literature of upheaval? The literature itself reflects the political/historical ruptures and shifts in content and (in some cases) form – this is especially true in Expressionism (particularly in Expressionist film and theater), which developed as well as it could a new medium – as well as reflecting on the social and cultural inheritance of the past – here we can think about Thomas Mann’s dealing with an outmoded bourgeoisie in Der Tod in Venedig or in Wedekind’s criticism of outmoded social mores and ideas about education in Frühlings Erwachen.

In the period of time from 1900 to 1945, we find a group of movements that act in harmony or discord with one another. Starting in about 1880, Naturalism becomes a major literary movement on the German scene. Naturalism was a self-conscious movement and saw itself as a literary revolution. The word Die Moderne was used to describe Naturalism. This movement’s active grappling with the social problems which plagued the political system (the worker’s movement and socialist movements within Germany) and it’s self-conscious modern-ness seems to place it more at the beginning of the twentieth century rather than at the end of the nineteenth. Around this period there is also an acute awareness of Darwin’s theory of evolution, which gave rise to “die Hoffnung auf eine Aufwärtsentwicklung des Menschengeschlechts.” [Frenzel, H.A. and E. Daten deutscher Dichtung. p. 458] Naturalism is marked by a reliance on natural laws – “Auch die psychischen Äußerungen des Menschen seien eine Funktion des körperlichen Mechanismus. Die geistige Welt funktioniere wie die natürliche nach Kausalgesetzen.” [DdD, p. 459] They saw, as did the philosophers of the time (Mill, Spencer, et al.), knowledge as the product of experience. Important influence: Hippolyte Taine (1828-1893) transferred positivism also to the judgment of history and art and exposed the influence of race, milieu, and time on the artistic product. Hence, Naturalism moves away from transcendentalism and the transcendent. Instead a kind of fatalistic/deterministic impulse takes over – emphasis is only on the time we have on Earth and there is very little belief in free will. Politically, the state began to be seen as oppressive of the lower classes (see here the struggles between Wilhelm II and Bismarck about workers’ rights) a tendency that continues to be an issue well into the twentieth century (see the Russian revolution, socialist movements in Germany, nationalists’ attempts to crush socialist movements and the division of Germany). (aside: Marx’s Communist Manifesto – 1848) The naturalist movement in Germany looked to similar movements in other countries for inspiration in hopes of expanding their own literary borders and to achieve a renewed international appeal. International naturalists of impact include: Balzac, Flaubert, Guy de Maupassant, Emile Zola, Russian realists: Turgenyev, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Ibsen, other Scandinavians.

“Die Modernität dieser Welt wurde im wesentlichen in ihre Natürlichkeit und die Modernität der Literatur in der Wiedergabe dieser Natürlichkeit gesehen.” [DdD, p. 460]

“Moderner Nachfolger des traditionellen ‘Helden’ war der passive Held, der unentschlossene und schwankende charakter, der ‘halbe Held’. Das Natürliche trat auch auf dem Gebiet ds Gefühls- und Seelenlebens in den Vordergrund, die Liebe wurde in ihrer Abhängigkeit vom Trieb gezeigt, und die Wahrheit verlangte, daß auch das Perverse nicht ausgeschlossen blieb. Die Einbeziehung des nach alten Maßstäben Unschönen und Unsittlichen führte in oppositionellem Gegenschlag zu einer einseitigen Bevorzugung des Häßlichen und Niederen: Kranke, Geistesgestörte, Alkoholiker, die Dirne wurden beliebte Handlungsträger.” [DdD, p. 460]

Here, see Benjamin, “Der Autor als Produzent” on the commidification of the low and impoverished.

Naturalism also attempted to naturalize its form – authors made notes on their own experiences living in cities, searched the newspapers for material, the notion of Genius and Inspiration became suspicious. In Drama, especially, the form tried to reflect the content and considerations of the movement – “unnatural” gestures were rejected, including the aside and monologue, and verse as a form. Verse still appeared in some poetry, but was unrecognizable as such. Literary language became very colloquial.

Naturalism appeared first in the novel. Special influence: Zola’s Theory on the experimental novel. Most important forms: psychological novel, then other narrative forms. In Drama, a break with the French tradition and some aspects taken over from Ibsen (small number of characters, return to natural unity of time and place, slow revelation of a past crime, ineluctable approach of catastrophe). In lyric, pathos, beauty, and mysticism are banned. As in the Vormärz, lyric deals with themes of technology and begins to deal with the Großstadt, Großstadtmenschen. In form, stayed relatively traditional, very like the Vormärz. Arno Holz tried to develop a form that would combine form and content by “der innere Rhythmus des Auszusagenden zum Ausdruck gebracht wurde.” [DdD, p.462] He wanted to avoid rhyme, stanzas, and free rhythms. This developed further in expressionism.

Authors to consider here: Arno Holz, Gerhart Hauptmann.

Benjamin: Der Autor als Produzent

2008-10-05T16:29:00.001-04:00

This essay was actually a lecture delivered at the Institute for the Study of Fascism in Paris. It is essentially a manifesto on the role of the (literary) writer in the Revolution (Communist/Socialist/anti-Fascist/anti-Bourgeoisie).

He opens with the question of the role of the poet in Plato’s ideal Republic (banished) and wonders what the role of the poet/writer will be in the new socialist order. He suggests that if the author is to avoid the platonic author’s fate, he has to see himself as a producer – not in the film-industry sense, but in the way that a farmer or industrial worker produces a product. The product the author needs to produce is not necessarily a simple text, but should be a text that recognizes and reflects the “correct” political direction and spurs others to do the same. As in all media of art, the method used in writing must by needs also reflect the goal the text (author) is trying to accomplish. Benjamin discusses many media – he touches on the use of photography to present the world as it is, politically articulate photomontages produced by John Heartfield (Helmut Herzfeld), and the Epic Theater developed by Brecht, among others.

A problem is the tendency of photography and literature to commodify poverty – to glorify and make beautiful the ugly and abject in the world as we know it. This is most commonly the work of Neue Sachlichkeit. Even this has its use, though. Literature is basically produced for the bourgeoisie by intellectuals that are a product of bourgeois education. Being in the privileged position of being able to reach the bourgeois public, they have a duty to stand up for the proletariat and fight for the revolution from within the bourgeoisie. This will make the revolution itself faster and less bloody.

His reading of Brecht’s mode is very interesting – he says that the beauty of the Epic Theater is that it exposes “situations” rather than developing and relying on plots. Brecht uncovers situations that are otherwise unseen by the observer by interrupting the action – especially often by inserting a song into the scene. This rupture also opens up the possibility of generating laughter, which, Benjamin suggests, is the fastest way to inspire thought.

The question here is how to repurpose the means of literary production while recognizing that the author is a product of bourgeoisie.

In considering photography, Benjamin insists that photography itself must be accompanied by the caption that makes the photo’s revolutionary motive clear. (This reminds me of something that Vaget once said about Wagner: (I paraphrase)”Music itself can’t be racist or anti-Semitic or political. Music is a pure artform until it is invested with meaning from an external source.” I think this is what Benjamin is driving at. Literary production cannot be rejected in the context of the revolution. Instead it needs to be recognized as the text that accompanies the images of the revolution.

Interesting meta-moment: Benjamin quotes himself without attributing the quote. He just quotes “a left-wing author.”

Georg Simmel – Bridge and Door

2008-09-29T13:55:00.001-04:00

In his essay "Bridge and Door," Georg Simmel looks at a seemingly very simple object from everyday life and invests it with symbolic meaning in a manner that is enviable to anyone who wants to look at the symbolic heft of spatial phenomena. He obviously approaches the spatial problem with a sociological eye – he looks at the human experience of and impact on space more than he looks at the “natural” occurrence of space itself. The space that interests him is a human phenomenon and not an inorganic one.

Simmel acknowledges the bridge’s typical function of connecting two otherwise separate and diverse things. However, he prods this understanding a bit further to suggest that the real appeal of the bridge and the connectedness that it provides is that the presence of the bridge underlines the its own necessity. Seeing a bridge calls to mind the division that it bridges, for lack of a better word, while giving the viewer the sense that the two halves are connected. With the bridge, unity or connectedness is always eventually emphasized.

With a door, however, the emphasis falls on the division or differentiation of things rather than their unity. The door embodies both unity and division and is the ultimate expression of the human capability to determine how one’s space is configured. The human decides where to place a door and when to open or close it. The door emphasizes both human isolation (positive and negative) and confrontation with what lies outside the door (both positive and negative, again). The door empowers the human to take control of when the human is isolated.

Nice quote: “The human being who first erected a hut, like the first road-builder, revealed the specifically human capacity over against nature, insofar as he or she cut a portion out of the continuity and infinity of space and arranged this into a particular unity in accordance with a single meaning. A piece of space was thereby brought together and separated from the whole remaining world. By virtue of the fact that the door forms, as it were, a linkage between the space of human beings and everything that remains outside it, it transcends the separation between the inner and the outer. Precisely because it can also be opened, its closure provides the feeling of a stronger isolation against everything outside this space than the mere unstructured wall. The latter is mute, but the door speaks. It is absolutely essential for humanity that it set itself a boundary, but with freedom, that is, in such a way that it can also remove this boundary again, that it can place itself outside it.”

Related: the window does not provide the same satisfaction. The window emphasizes connectivity with the outside world, but is intended solely for looking from the inside out, and NOT the other way around (CONNECTION: think about Appleton – Prospect-Refuge theory… we feel vaguely unsafe in a dark house at night, lights on but curtains open. Why? Because we can’t clearly see what is outside, but the outside can see clearly in.)

Summary quote: “Because the human being is the connecting creature who must always separate and cannot connect without separating – that is why we must first conceive intellectually of the merely indifferent existence of two river banks as something separated in order to connect them by means of a bridge. And the human being is likewise the bordering creature who has no border. The enclosure of his or her domestic being by the door means, to be sure, that they have separated out a piece from the uninterrupted unity of natural being. But just as the formless limitation takes on a shape, its limitedness finds its significance and dignity only in that which the mobility of the door illustrates: in the possibility at any moment of stepping out of this limitation into freedom.

Ouch.

2008-09-16T13:21:00.002-04:00

Trying to wrap my mind around teaching Intensive Beginning German to more than 15 people at 9 AM. Oy.

In response to domestic sexism

2008-09-14T15:34:00.003-04:00

My loyal reader wjh linked to this article in Die Zeit, which is kind of maddening... Here's what we had to say about it, briefly. (This is my version of Crappy Hour.)

[3:08:49 PM] wjh says: did you read the article i posted in the comments? other blog, but egal [3:09:03 PM] Eej says: yes.
[3:09:06 PM] Eej says: MADDENING
[3:09:30 PM] wjh says: what exactly do you mean?
[3:09:43 PM] Eej says: oh, i don't know.
[3:09:46 PM] Eej says: let me read it again.
[3:09:53 PM] Eej says: i was generally frustrated when i read it
[3:09:54 PM] Eej says: :)
[3:09:57 PM] wjh says: yes, me too
[3:10:01 PM] wjh says: that's why i ask
[3:10:01 PM] wjh says: ;)
[…]
[3:19:31 PM] Eej says: and i don't know why the zeit article pisses me off so much...
[3:19:50 PM] Eej says: maybe because i feel like the obsession with american intellectuals at the moment is part of the problem.
[3:19:58 PM] wjh says: exactly!!!
[3:20:08 PM] Eej says: they have their german men and the american women take up the women's slot, so of course there can't be any german women.
[3:20:19 PM] wjh says: that's exactly what i was thinking.
[3:20:23 PM] Eej says: yeah
[3:20:45 PM] Eej says: it's also a great way for them to preserve domestic sexism while appearing progressive.
[3:20:54 PM] Eej says: "see, we like women... there just aren't any good ones here"
[3:20:57 PM] wjh says: also, i was kind of pissed off by the glorification of american intellectual women (while not wanting to disregard the achievements of sontag etc, but still)
[3:21:13 PM] Eej says: yeah.
[3:21:17 PM] Eej says: totally.
[3:22:20 PM] Eej says: also, i like how they discount hannah arendt as a german intellectual just because she buggered off to the US in the 30s
[3:22:23 PM] wjh says: (uh oh, tatort is getting gruselig!!)
[3:22:33 PM] Eej says: but they still lay claim to thomas mann, et al
[3:22:57 PM] wjh says: yes!
[3:23:23 PM] Eej says: yes. good. we are on the same page.
[3:23:28 PM] wjh says: :)
[3:23:29 PM] Eej says: i think i need to go back to smith.
[3:23:38 PM] Eej says: semester hasn't even started yet and i'm getting all angry.
[…]
[3:24:12 PM] wjh says: don't get angry. getting angry was for the 70s ;)
[…]
[3:24:22 PM] Eej says: i think getting angry is still good.

Conference Papers

2008-09-14T13:23:00.002-04:00

I'm trying to come up with abstracts (by tomorrow!) for the following panels:

Transforming Spaces: The Manipulation of Public and Private Spaces in 19th c. Women's Literature Many nineteenth-century domestic theories contend that women controlled society, but such theories also assert that women wielded power indirectly. By alleging that women influenced society obliquely, domestic ideologies reiterated rather than questioned the separate spheres. Many women writers, however, used domesticity to question their own second-class status. Such writers manipulate public and private spaces into sites of resistance by resisting the limitations of domesticity. They also revise domesticity and transform public and private spaces.

Jewish-German Dialogue Reconsidered Jewish-German Dialogue Reconsidered This panel seeks to explore how German and Israeli literature and film present the Jewish-German relationship in the post-wall period. Papers should address the connections between the failure of the "German-Jewish symbiosis" of the nineteenth century and the revival of Jewish-German-Dialogues today.

Text and Image in German Literature In response to the 'iconic turn' in cultural studies this panel seeks to examine text-image relations as a textual phenomenon in literature: Why do texts invite an "intrusion" of images and how does a visual aesthetics contribute to a rethinking of subjectivity, nature, and language? How does literature interact with the sister arts in a shared history (and critique) of the cultural image? Contributions might explore actual media change (images in the text; montage, cartoons, photo essays) as well as description of artifacts (ekphrasis) and production of visual spaces in language.

I'm really excited about the first one, but a little bit puzzled about what I should write about. The first authors that come to mind are all from the turn of the century (Elizabeth von Arnim, Edith Wharton) and I can't think of ANY German authors to use (see my previous post). Maybe I could go out on a limb and try my hand at Little Women? Or similar... This topic is SO what I'm interested... I need to come up with something good.

The second panel I'm less interested in, but it seems like I should be able to come up with something easily, given my past work on German/Jewish stuff. Could try to connect it to Sebald (not hard, but also not that interesting) or try to revive some portion of the research I allegedly did in Cologne or revisit some of my Senior Thesis authors (Biller, Behrens, Schlink). But I'm not sure I really care.

The third panel is being run by one of my former colleagues and, as such, should be relatively unintimidating to apply to, but my only idea for it is REALLY REALLY obvious, so I'd be kind of embarassed about that.

Post-feminism

2008-09-11T17:33:00.003-04:00

Since I left Smith and since I stopped dictating my own reading, I've moved away from reading women's writing. I'm looking for some potential conference paper topics and am absolutely appalled by my lack of knowledge of German women authors. What the fuck is up with that?

So, as soon as I can, I'm going to undertake a thorough independent study of German women's literature.

Reading Notes: Kracauer - On Employment Agencies: The Construction of a Space

2008-08-18T13:56:00.004-04:00

Social strata are reflected in the spaces that the members of different strata occupy. Suburbs are a result of the growing middle class. Employment agency is the space assigned to the unemployed – opposite of a home.

He sees the Employment agency as a physical manifestation of an economic reality. Employment agencies are necessary as places for the unemployed to go instead of work or home – a kind of anti-home. He mulls their locations at length, describing the locations of a number of different specialized employment agencies, finally settling on the metal workers’ employment agency, which is situated in a back courtyard (two layers deep into the heart of the building), behind the offices where work is contracted and the areas in which the work is done. In this world, the power, economic and social, of a person is measured by his distance from the street. The powerful are at the front of the building and the abject are in the guts of the building, waiting for the job-makers to give them some work. Kracauer maps the economic reality of the workers’ situations onto the physical layout of the building.

Also, lengthy discussion of the irony/suckiness of how work is distributed. Some professions prefer to hire those who have been unemployed the longest, others prefer to hire those most recently unemployed.

Spatial Authority also enters in the form of signs governing the use of the space: “Protect the common property” and “In the interest of a smooth flow of persons, the orders of the hall porter must be unquestioningly followed.” Though he is, you could say, only barely more employed that the unemployed around him, and though they share the same space, the hall porter gains a great deal of authority over those waiting around him.

Also, some discussion of decoration: “Ostensibly out of the need to brighten up the place a little, the walls have from time to time been adorned with coloured prints. Do landscapes interrupt the misery or artistic portraits? Not at all. Rather, pictures that are dedicated to the prevention of accidents. ‘Think of your mother’, stands under one of them that, like the rest, warns of the dangers to which the worker is subjected when working with machines. Astonishingly enough, the couple of illustrations of gloomy happenings shimmer in a friendly manner above the heads. Yet nothing typifies the character of this space more than the fact that in them even pictures of accidents become picture postcard greetings from the happy upper world. If the unemployed could be immediately transferred there from the employment agency, then the poster announcing ‘Unnecessary waiting on the steps is not permitted’, that adorns many staircase walls, would not be required. It sounds like an afterword to the collection of texts that is prefaced by the door plate at the entrance to the courtyard.”

Kracauer sees the economic/social reality of the workers’ existence exemplified by the space they have to inhabit while waiting for a job. This space is further governed not only by its situation in relation to the spaces occupied by those that have the power to give jobs, but also by the disembodied authority of the posted signs warning of the dangers of work as well as the admonishments not to loiter. All in all, rather bleak.

Reading notes: Siegfried Kracauer – The Hotel Lobby

2008-08-18T13:41:00.003-04:00

Kracauer - primarily known for film theory – Theory of Film and From Caligari to Hitler. This essay is an extract from Mass Ornament. He fled Germany under the Nazis and worked afterward in America. He was a student of Simmel and was influenced by him. Early in his career looked and daily phenomena and their impact on and significance in human life.

In the Hotel Lobby, he sees the lobby as an “inverted image” of the House of God – any house of worship. These spaces, he says, are both specifically equipped by their function to create equals of the people that inhabit them, despite their divergent functions. In a religious congregation, the differences between them disappear because of their united focus on god – they see their lives as serving the same destiny. Equality in the hotel lobby is instead established by a relationship to nothing. The sitters in a hotel lobby are, in the act of sitting in the lobby, focusing their energy on nothing at all, whereas in the church, the congregation’s members focus their energy entirely on the same object. The House of God is a place where people congregate to encounter a certain unknown Someone, whereas the Hotel Lobby is a place where people congregate to become anonymous and encounter no one. He emphasizes the importance of Silence as it is observed in those places (example from Der Tod in Venedig), and the aims of those specific silences – in the lobby, it underscores the anonymity of the people occupying the space and acts almost as a barrier between the individuals, whereas in the house of god, silent prayer unites the anonymous worshipers in their attempt to find god. Both spaces also allow for a detachment from daily life – one with meaning in the case of the church and one entirely without meaning in the hotel lobby. Silence underlines the sense that the people in those spaces regard one another as equals.

The hotel lobby has no specific purpose “dictated by Ratio,” but does accord a certain distance from the everyday – a kind of perspective that allows the inhabitant to regard daily life from afar. Kracauer is fascinated by the recurrent role of the hotel lobby in detective novels and seems to imply that the hotel lobby is the ideal setting for action performed by the detective novel’s “emptied-out individuals” (“who, as rationally constructed complexes, are comparable to the transcendental subject”). The congregation emerges, seeing itself as having a purpose, while the individuals in the hotel lobby are stripped of a purpose. Thus, the lobby-sitters approach a kind of existential nothing. The house of god creates a community where there had been none before.

Beautiful passage:

“But if the meaning of this anonymity becomes nothing more than the representation of the insignificance of this beginning, the depiction of formal regularities, then it does not foster the solidarity of those liberated from the constraints of the name; instead, it deprives those encountering one another of the possibility of association that the name could have offered them. Remnants of individuals slip into the nirvana of relaxation, faces disappear behind newspapers, and the artificial continuous light illuminates nothing but mannequins. It is the coming and going of unfamiliar people who have become empty forms because they have lost their password, and who now file by as ungraspable flat ghosts. If the possessed an interior, it would have no windows at all, and they would perish aware of their endless abandonment, instead of knowing of their homeland as the congregation does. But as pure exterior, they escape themselves and express their non-being through the false aesthetic affirmation of the estrangement that has been installed between them. The presentation of the surface strikes them as an attraction; the tinge of exoticism gives them a pleasurable shudder.”

Kracauer uses a SPATIAL model to explain the effect of a space on the people who occupy it.

Reading Notes - Die Leiden des jungen Werther

2008-07-17T12:12:00.002-04:00

Characters

Werther
Charlotte
Wilhelm – addressee of all the letters
Editor

Spatial analysis

Many different aspects of human interaction with landscape: impulse to control the landscape through gardening, desire to reproduce nature in all its glory through painting or writing – compare to Wackenroder’s letter where he despairs of being able to describe the landscape – the insufficiency of human art to do justice to nature. Also, there is a major rift between “culture” and “nature”. This is especially evidenced in the ball scene when Werther and Lotte go onto the balcony to watch the storm. They leave “culture” behind them in the house and enter a kind of liminal space between “tamed” culture and “wild” nature, whose power is represented by the storm’s intensity. However, their understanding of the natural is mediated by their cultural associations. Klopstock is the (human) filter through which they observe and understand nature. Klopstock = Claude glass

Also, this "flight from society" is symptomatic of the larger context of the novel. Werther's entire experience in Wahlheim (hello, placelessness!) is the result of his inability to function in society. Much of his movement is outward - going out to Wahlheim, going out of the ballroom, going out into the woods - and away from civilization. The problem with his experiences in nature, though, is that his experiences are always mediated through someone else's experiences and ideas - first Plato, then Klopstock, then Ossian (whose own writings were fictional, it turned out). There are layers of artificiality in Werther's behavior that make any kind of authentic experience impossible.

Also, Werther’s experience of landscape is marked by his own moods – or his moods are marked by what nature is doing around him. In the letter of 10. Mai, he feels at peace with nature – its peacefulness and happiness mirrors his own. At other points in the novel, though, nature takes on a dangerous, violent force that mirrors changes in his own attitude/experience. Landscapes are specifically created in Werther to mirror and echo his attitudes. Floods –Abgründe, etc.

Formal/stylistic notes

Epistolary Novel – however, also framed by the fictional editor. The reader almost takes the place of Wilhelm, the friend to whom Werther addresses his letters. We only get half of the correspondence which also reflects the entirely self-absorbed nature of the protagonist.

Frequent allusions to other writers assume a reader that is educated and informed in a similar way as Werther and Lotte are. The references don’t mean anything without their context intact in the reader.

Reading Notes - Goethe - Die Wahlverwandtschaften

2008-07-17T12:04:00.003-04:00

Characters

Charlotte
Ottilie
Hauptmann
Eduard

Spatial analysis

Here the emphasis is almost exclusively on cultivation of nature. There is very little of “wild” nature to be seen, though the castle is situated in a very natural setting. Hills, gardens, surround the castle and there are bits of water here and there, some of which are naturally occurring, but some of which are man-made or manipulated. Created lake eventually causes death of the (UNNATURAL) child. There is much talk of the natural order The cultivation projects undertaken by the Charlotte and her husband are seen as the epitome of the unity of cultivation and nature. Charlotte builds a garden house in just the spot that suits it – there is almost a sense of spatial predetermination in their landscaping projects. They plant/create things just where they ought naturally to have been. Introduction of the notion of elective affinities in Chemistry reflects interest in scientific pursuits, but also seems to predestine the couples to reconfigure themselves. The explanation of the chemical property of elective affinity introduces a geometrical configuration into the non-scientific/mathematical sphere of personal relationships. The scientific principle is explained geometrically, but the geometry (the square with diagonals cutting across it) is superimposed upon the personal relationships at stake.

Also, the interior space is very interesting. The castle itself seems to be partitioned off with feminine and masculine spaces. The unnatural child is conceived when Charlotte’s husband first transgresses those boundaries and enters her (feminine) space. Then there’s the renovation project that Ottilie undertakes with the tutor. They undertake to restore and redecorate the church and churchyard. Ottilie paints a lot of new paintings for the church which clearly weren’t original to the space but seem as if they belonged there – parallel to the gardening pursuits.

Unity between cultivation and nature is introduced right from the start with Wilhelm’s comment that some of his happiest hours were/are spent in his Baumschule. The cultivation of trees has a natural effect but is, in itself not a natural act. He talks about propfen – forced propagation of trees. The word Baumschule itself contains both the height of natural expression – Baum – and the height of sophisticated civilization – schule.

Formal/stylistic notes

Narrated in the 3rd person omniscient.

2008-07-14T14:36:00.001-04:00

Characters
Bertha
Die Alte
Der Vogel
Strohmian
Eckbert
Walther
Hugo

Plot points

First of all, I will never understand why this story is called Der Blonde Eckbert. He seems to be definitely a secondary figure to Bertha. We don’t know his back story and we don’t really care. He does spend the last part of the story as the protagonist, but the action of the story is motivated solely by Bertha’s actions as a child. Very strange.

Frame story: Bertha and Eckbert living in bliss, but without children. Walther is the only person who regularly visits them. Eckbert tells Bertha to tell Walther her story one night. Story: Bertha leaves abusive family with the fantasy of returning one day to give them riches. She wanders for a few days, then finds the old woman, who takes her home to her small house in the middle of the woods. Bertha is supposed to feed the bird (which lays eggs with jewels and sings the song Waldseinsamkeit), and the dog as well as spin. She stays there for four years and the old woman leaves her to look after things for weeks at a time. Finally, Bertha steals some of the jewels the old woman had stockpiled over time, takes the bird, leaves the dog, whose name she can never remember, to starve to death, and runs away. She wanders for a while, the bird stops singing, she eventually comes to her hometown, but learns that her parents are dead. She moves on, rents a house, the bird starts singing a new song about missing the woods, Bertha kills it and buries it in the garden. Eventually she meets and marries Eckbert. After hearing the story, Walther mentions the dog’s name which Bertha could never remember. She falls into hysterical breakdown. She tells Eckbert what it’s about and he goes on a ride to clear his head. On the ride he sees Walther and kills him. When he gets back to their castle, Bertha is dead. Eckbert moves to a new town, befriends Hugo, who he eventually confesses his murder to. Hugo seems to suddenly look just like Walther. Eckbert rides all night to get home and meets the old woman after his horse dies. She confesses that she was Walther and Hugo all along. She says that she had warned Bertha all along that she’d be punished for her bad deeds and tells Eckbert that he and Bertha are actually siblings. Random ending.

Spatial analysis

Similar to the Runenberg, the woods function as a kind of adolescent testing ground. They are still associated with threatening, magical powers and mystery. Bertha only gains awareness at the expense of her innocence. Definitely an allegory of adolescence. There is also a lot of emphasis on Einsamkeit as a positive experience. Waldeinsamkeit, obviously, but also the Einsamkeit in which Bertha and Eckbert live together. There is also value placed on the idea of living in harmony with nature, but this isn’t entirely borne out. This story is less interesting landscape-wise, than the Runenberg, for sure.

Formal/stylistic notes

Narrated in the 3rd person, omniscient. Preterite. Also, in many places, subjunctive is used to cause uncertainty in the reader about the reality of what’s happening.

Reading Notes - Tieck: Der Runenberg

2008-07-14T14:13:00.004-04:00

Characters
Christian
Christian’s father
Elisabeth
Der Fremde (Wald)
Der Fremde (Dorf)
Die Frau im Berg/die Schöne/das Waldweib

Plot points

Christian leaves home (doesn’t want to be a gardener like his father), planning to be a hunter. Meets der Fremde who tells Christian of treasure to be found in the mountains (in a kind of mine). (Much talk of Bergwerke – technical things, unnatural space, magical potential, downward motion.) He goes into the cave/mine and sees the beautiful woman (she undresses in front of him), singing her song about precious stones and power. He awakes as if from a dream, outside the mine, remembers the Tafel he left behind and begins to wander. Comes to the Dorf where Elisabeth lives, goes into church (holy space, opposite to mine, heavenward motion). He has a spiritual awakening and eventually settles in the village, working as a gardener (taming, organizing nature), marries Elisabeth and establishes a successful life. At some point, he goes on a journey in search of his father, who he meets not far into the forest. He had set out shortly before in search of his son and on the way found a sign of his son’s approach in a flower that he had only seen once before and had always searched for. The two return to the village and continue living peacefully. A stranger comes and stays with them for long enough to be counted as one of the family, then leaves his riches, saying he was going in search of something in the mountains, and if he did not return in a year, then Christian, et al should keep the money. This happens, but Christian becomes obsessed with the money, counting it and worrying about whether he will get to keep it. Onset of sleepwalking, disturbed sleep, dreams, but wild happiness during the days. Elisabeth is freaked out and we learn from Christian’s father that he had always been obsessed with metal (read money?) as a child. More talk of Bergwerke. (opposition of metal and earth, money and nature) Finally, Christian sees an old woman (identified with the beautiful woman from the Bergwerk), who tells him to come back to the woods. He finds the Tafel. He wanders off into the woods in search of the riches promised him by the Waldweib (kind of Gaia/Mother Earth/pagan figure). Father tries to stop him, but fails. Family falls apart, Elisabeth marries a cruel drunk, their money disappears. Father dies. After a few years, Christian comes back, but is not recognized. Reveals himself to Elisabeth and tries to get a kiss from his daughter, who is afraid of him. Leaves them and returns to the Waldweib.

Spatial analysis

The most important contrast here is between the Mountains/Woods and the plain. Christian grew up in the plain and found it unbearable, felt a compulsion to go into the woods (repeatedly). Contrast between relationships to nature: gardener/miner/hunter. There is a push-pull between taming nature and being drawn into its wildness. Seems to be overtones of Christianity vs. paganism (hence also the name Runenberg – Runes being aligned with pagans). Christian descends (down/hell) to meet the Waldweib and be seduced by the riches buried in the earth, but has a spiritual awakening in the Church, which is associated with upward verticality, heavenward motion.

One could also read this in a Freudian manner – Christian goes into the mountain through a tunnel at the end of which he has his first sexual awakening – seeing the Waldweib as a highly sexualized figure. His attempt at becoming a sexual being is aborted, however, and he finds himself back outside and quite disoriented. Also, his leaving the mine through the tunnel, with a powerful female force behind him, could be a scene of rebirth. All in all, the journey into the woods and mountains and exit to the other side seems to be a coming of age allegory. The mountains and his experiences there are meant to stand in for adolescence and sexual maturation.

This is another story that deals with the technical in conjunction with the supernatural. Could be interesting for the potential dissertation project. It doesn’t dwell on the technical, but does mention it enough that it’s noticeable.

Wild nature in general is associated with riches, mystery, and vaguely threatening forces. Ordnung and cultivated nature/civilization is definitely preferred over venturing into the unknown and the wilderness is seen as forbidden to humans. The woods/mountains and Christian’s journey through them are taboo.

Formal/stylistic notes

Narrated in the 3rd person, omniscient. Preterite. Also, in many places, subjunctive is used to cause uncertainty in the reader about the reality of what’s happening. Tieck also does this in Der Blonde Eckbert.

Author notes

Tieck was leader of Romanticism – one of first to show romantic enthusiasm for old german art. Assoc. with Wackenroder, others. Wrote Märchen, poems, dramas, and a few novels.

Googlebooks to read

2008-07-09T15:27:00.001-04:00

Hirschfeld, CCL: Theorie der Gartenkunst
http://books.google.com/books?id=7mQCAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA86&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=0_0#PPA1,M1

Chicken or egg?

2008-07-05T13:58:00.003-04:00

I was searching today for blogs similar to mine... i.e. other blogs where people work out their academic ideas and interests, but it seems that there are only a very few.

Granted, I didn't do an exhaustive search, but all the candidates I ran across seemed to have either given up blogging (ran out of things to say, got jobs and were now too important) or left academia altogether.

So, my question is whether the blogging-inclined among us tend to leave academia or if the field itself makes it less productive/enticing to blog? Is there something incompatible about the worlds of grad school and blogging?

I do know of one academic blogger who does what I want to do in this space, but better. But, she's very deeply ensconced in History, which is not at ALL where my interests lie (yes, yes, important, etc., but it doesn't ring my bell), so I'm still looking for other literature nuts. Any tips? Anyone? Does anyone even read this?

Where are all the bloggers?

Reading Notes - Storm: Immensee

2008-07-03T15:54:00.004-04:00

Characters

Reinhard – best friend of Elisabeth, five years her senior. The novella is centered on his character and narrated as a flashback to several points in his life. He is already an old man at the beginning of the narrative, and returns to old age at the end, in the quasi-frame story. He is described as a Wanderer and his main physical characteristics are his hat and walking stick, markers of his migrant character. He has a very authoritative tone even as a child talking to Elisabeth. He presumes that one day they will be married and travel together to India (Orientalist fantasy). Their relationship is predicated on this assumption and hope. Reinhard has a taxonomical interest. It is unclear what his specific field of study is, but he dabbles in Botany (and teaches it to Elisabeth), and undertakes a Grimm-style task of collecting Märchen and other linguistic Merkmale of the regions through which he travels. Oddly, as a child and young man, he wrote his own Märchen, though some of them are very reminiscent of other stories (Biblical reference: story of Daniel in the Lion’s den, Classical reference: die drei Spinnerinnen – the fates). Ends up writing verse and his gift of a volume of poems to Elisabeth after his first year of study seems to mark the end of their relationship, although the poems are all clearly dedicated to her. He seems very tuned in to his surroundings, but often finds himself going awry and having surreal, Märchenhafte experiences in nature. He seems placeless, but simultaneously at home everywhere. A typical wanderer figure
Elisabeth – best friend, worshiper of Reinhard. Clearly still a child for the first parts of the story, but acts and is portrayed as strangely mature for her age. She also has a very strong attachment to her mother and relies heavily on her mother’s input for decisions – she claims that she will not be allowed to travel to India (Reinhard assures her that by that time they will be married and no one will be able to tell her what to do, although by positioning himself as the authority at that point, he assumes the same power that he begrudges her mother), and it is implied that her mother convinced her to marry Erich instead. While she is not entirely without free will, Elisabeth’s life seems to be largely the result of other people’s actions. Platially, Elisabeth seems very much to rely on others’ directions. The one time that she does wander into nature on her own (as a five year old), Reinhard calls her back into the house (domesticity) that he has finished building for them. She allows herself to be steered spatially and directionally just as much as she allows herself to be steered in her life decisions. Here, her spatial helplessness seems to be a symptom or symbol of her willingness to surrender her own agency.
Erich – very much a supporting actor. He assumes the position that Reinhard leaves vacant when he leaves to study. After his third proposal, he convinces (with the help of her mother) Elisabeth to marry him. He notably replaces the bird that Reinhard had given Elisabeth with a more stylish, less wild bird in a golden cage. He brings Elisabeth out of her rustic surroundings into a much more manicured, wealthier lifestyle. He seems to represent civilization/Bourgeoisie/manicured life, whereas Reinhard seems more to represent the wilder, less constrained life they had had as children.
Elisabeth’s mother – she only speaks a couple of times, but is a constant presence. She seems to have steered Elisabeth away from Reinhard and toward Erich. However, at a crucial moment (after Reinhard’s recitation of a song about a mother steering her daughter away from the man she loved), she keeps Erich from following the visibly upset Elisabeth into the garden saying “she has things to do in the garden” or similar. She acts as a foil to Reinhard’s mother, whom Elisabeth gives a portrait of herself for Christmas, and who facilitates Elisabeth’s sending letters and gifts to Reinhard, as if she couldn’t send them on her own (was her mother forbidding it?).
Die Zigeuner – they appear twice in the novella. Once, when Reinhard is away studying, at Christmas. He sees the woman singing a song about a love affair gone awry, which ends “allein soll ich sterben” or similar. She seems to try to seduce Reinhard, who is, at that moment, told that a Christmas package has arrived from his home. The smell of the Christmas cakes that his mother and Elisabeth have baked him fill his room (she seems to fill the room, in a way) and spill into the hall. The cakes have the letters of his name put on them with sugar – by Elisabeth, who seems to be affirming Reinhard’s identity in lieu of her own – and he gives half of them to a beggar. The second appearance of the Zigeuner is at the very end of his visit to Immensee, when they appear begging at the house as Reinhard and Elisabeth return from rowing on the lake. Elisabeth gives them all her money and Reinhard asks what else they could want. The woman answers that they could want nothing else and then repeats the last line of her song about dying alone. At this, he recognizes the woman (unheimlich) and seems also to realize that he has to leave Immensee.

Plot points

His visit to Immensee to see Elisabeth and Erich is punctuated by a number of experiences in the landscape. He is caught in a rainstorm on his way back to the house and sees a seeming apparition of Elisabeth and is infuriated by her turning her back and going ahead of him back to the house. He goes walking along the banks of the See in the evening and swims out to see a Wasserlilie that seems to recede further away from him as he swims toward it. This results in a terrifying spatial confusion. The combination of his confusion and the belief that he is being pulled under by the water plants around him cause him to panic and head back for the shore, at which point he sees that the flower is exactly as far away as he originally thought it to be. This is a surreal almost Märchenhaft moment in the story. Finally, Elisabeth has been charged by Erich, with the task of showing Reinhard all the most beautiful places on their estate, while Erich and Elisabeth’s mother are mysteriously away on business. On their way back (with him steering, but Elisabeth still in charge of showing him the way – perhaps the only time they’re on equal footing, really), Reinhard has insights into Elisabeth’s character just from looking at her hand resting on the edge of the boat. When she realizes he’s staring at her hand, she lets it trail in the water. Later that night, he retraces their steps and ponders whether or not to leave.

Spatial analysis

Here, the question seems to be not where people are at home or what places seem to have the most importance or symbolic weight, but instead a question of who has authority in space. Reinhard is certainly the most authoritative when it comes to navigating space, doing most of the leading and almost never following. When he is following direction (given by Elisabeth at Immensee), he is still in physical control of their movements, piloting the boat. He also underscores his authority over natural space by undertaking natural historical/botanical categorization. This organizing impulse is carried over and he seems also to take control of language by trying to organize and categorize linguistic patterns and stories. His creative impulse seems to decrease after Elisabeth marries Erich – in the beginning, he composes his own Märchen and verses and clears new paths down which to guide Elisabeth (while they’re looking for strawberries, for instance – in that particular instance, however, his urge to move forward results in him leaving her behind.), whereas he ends by only categorizing others’ Märchen, sayings, and songs, and asks directions while on his approach to Immensee.

Formal/stylistic notes

Narrated in the 3^rd person, omniscient, although this seems illogical with the story playing out, as it does, in the context of Reinhard’s memories. He couldn’t know all he seems to remember. The novella is largely realistic, but has some romantic overtones, with a number of unheimlich moments and apparitions. There are many moments where one expects a magical occurrence, but Reinhard always seems to shake off any romantic/magical action.

Temporal tension. Frame narrative takes place in the Present, where Reinhard is an old man. In the space of a few moments, perhaps, of real time, he revisits his ten year old self, his seventeen year old self, and himself as a young-middle-aged man before returning to his present self in old age.

Mix of genres - Lyric moments are very important and take the place of narration for major moments in the story.

A purpose

2008-07-03T14:30:00.002-04:00

I need to remember that the generals process, while it is a hoop to jump through, can also be of great use. It's not just an exercise in agony (that was the M.A. exam, ha.), but is instead a first step toward focusing my thoughts for the prospectus and hypothetical dissertation. And I've been clever enough to craft at least one of my lists to play to that particular goal.

In sum, I'd be a fool to not take advantage of this process as best I can.

Summer of Productivity: Day 1

2008-06-30T14:51:00.007-04:00

Reading: Lindemann, Prause / Rüter: Umbrüche: Blicke auf Landschaft in Literatur und Kunst: 1800, 1900.

In the Enlightenment, the landscape plays a dual role in literature: On the one hand, its grandeur makes the viewer aware of her weakness and mortality in the face of God's creation. On the other hand, there is a great deal of emphasis on the usefulness of nature (as regards farming, etc. - in a different time, one might suggest the use of nature to generate solar, hydroelectric, or wind power as well) as well as a compulsion to describe the landscape/nature as accurately as possible. These things lead to a quite literal experience of the landscape. The near removal of symbolic elements from the Enlightenment thinker's perspective makes the creation of imaginary landscapes and the psychological/symbolic understanding of nature improbable. Nature was less a subject of art, but instead an object upon which science was practice. Another symptom of the literal, non-symbolic approach of the Enlightenment thinker to the landscape was the rise of precise travel literature where before - and indeed after - there was a more poetic approach to the landscape. See Haller "Die Alpen."

Also, land only becomes landscape when it is aesthetically present - when it is appreciated aesthetically without regard to its concrete usefulness or potential threats. Otherwise, it is a set of challenges or resources. This underlines the whole idea of the Claude-glass. To fully appreciate a landscape, you have to put a frame around it. See Ritter, "Landschaft - zur Funktion des Ästhetischen in der modernen Gesellschaft" in Subjektivität - sechs Aufsätze.

Also see: Brockes: Das Irdische Vergnügen in Gott, "Die durch Veränderung von Licht und Schatten sich vielfach verändernden Landschaften." Landscape in a didactic/moralistic context. (Poetry) Use of poetic forms to mirror the natural phenomena he is dealing with. Constantly changing perspective is employed in the effort to give as complete and accurate an image of his subject as possible. He only introduces an “ich” and a “du” when introducing the moral, as it were, in the last two lines of the poem. “Die Landschaft wird in hundert Einzelaspekte atomisiert und damit vom sprechenden Dichter auch isoliert und trotz der vielen Worte schließlich distanziert.” (p. 18) Although he tries to give accurate, objective descriptions of nature, he uses many positively-inflected adjectives to describe it – throwback to the Brock? Relates to visual art in that the descriptions of the landscape are exclusively visual descriptions. Not at all a complete impression.

Friedrich Nicolai: Beschreibung einer Reise durch Deutschland und die Schweiz im Jahre 1781. This is a very precise, complete Reisebericht full of descriptions of the landscape, remarks on the contrast between Nature and cultivated land, and highly educated etymological, historical, and cultural footnotes. Interesting is his perspective as a “Stadtmensch” who prefers civilization to “Wildnis” and qualifies his descriptions thusly.

Rokoko writing: These writers rebel against the Pietistic writing of people like Brockes (early Enlightenment – moralizing) and remove religion entirely from their descriptions of nature. Saw itself as a Secularization of Pietism, while taking elements directly from pietistic poetry (i.e. Klopstock). They set nature in motion. Idyllen of Salomon Geßner (Schweiz). (Slushy, slimy, syrupy dreck.) Schäferwelt des Rokoko. “Der Kontrast zwischen der durchaus liebevoll geschilderten Natur und LAndschaft auf der einen und der mit dem Lieblingsmöbel des Rokoko, dem “Spiegel,” naturvergessen beschäftigten “schönen Belinde” sowie dem die Natur “verächtlich” und “neben … hin” durchstreifenden Gecken in Gestalt des “jungen Hyacinthus.” (barf - p. 26) Still an Enlightenment style when the harmony between beauty and utility is celebrated or some moral is drawn out of the industriousness of the bees, for example.

Most important contrast between Geßner and Brockes: Geßner focuses on a small, focused part of nature, while Brockes deals with the grandiose whole of nature. Is this also true of the movements?

Empfindsamkeit: Friedrich von Mattisson (eg. Abendlandschaft: “Goldner schein / deckt den Hain...”– celebrated by Schiller as a great landscape poet. This kind of poetry has Klopstock as its source.

Sturm und Drang: eg. Goethe – Werther (Brief vom 10. Mai und 18. August). Sympathy/empathy/identification with nature. Also, Wilhelm Heinse – Brief an Fritz Jacobi:

Transformative, epiphanal experience of nature.

Klassik: Goethe – after his Sturm und Drang period distances himself from dwelling on the apparent conflict between cultivated and “wild” nature. Movement toward Klassik: Italienische Reise – he sees a unity of classical architecture and landscape. This unity of cultivation and nature is exemplified by the idea of a nursery – eine Baumschule – see also die Wahlverwandschaften. Klassik idealizes nature. See also Schiller’s “Spaziergang,” which also shows an idealized, unspecific, unlocatable landscape. Also Schiller’s “Sehnsucht” (1801). See also Hölderlin’s works from this time – idealized landscapes, but also classical forms – particularly elegies. Aesthetically pleasing synthesis of antique and modern.

Jean Paul: Titan – here the landscape functions as a backdrop for the narrators own feelings to be projected. But what’s the deal with him? He’s dropped into this timeline without an epoch, without any context or connection to the other authors. Does he defy categorization? Learn more about him.

Romantik: Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder – letter to his parents in 1793, describing a trip taken with Tieck: “Leider werde ich immer mehr überzeugt, daß es unmöglich ist, durch Worte in einem anderen die getreue Darstellung diner Gegend mitzuteilen, wie man sie beim eigenen Anblick ,und zum teil auch noch nachher hat. Wenn ich auch genau aufzähle, so kann ich doch nie die Idee von der individuellen Gegend lebhaft erwecken, die ich dem andern vor die Augen bringen will.” (p. 49) – this is reminiscent of the Sturm & Drang notion of the inexpressibility of nature/natural beauty, especially as exhibited in Werther. However, here, the inexpressibility comes from the power of the landscape and not from the inadequacy of the artist attempting to render it. Also, and extremely importantly, there is here an emphasis on subjective experience. Werther despaired of being able to record the beauty and power of the landscape in and of itself. Here, Wackenroder acknowledges that at least part of the difficulty of recording it comes from the complex personal relationship of the narrator to the landscape the narrator is trying to describe. One’s own experience of the landscape cannot be transmitted to someone else without losing part of its value, if not its content.

This letter is also significant for its mention of “romantische Aussichten” and its description of what comes to be our stereotypical understanding of a romantic landscape, complete with forests, mountains, cliffs, and ruins. Erhaben – sublime – is also an important word that pops up here. He also makes an implicit jab at the more “enlightened” narrators of landscape measuring and scientifically describing things, saying that it’s pointless, more or less, because in doing so, you still fail to actually capture the feeling of a landscape.

Tieck- Franz Sternbalds Wanderungen & Der Runenberg. In the Kunstmärchen, interesting description of a landscape with ultimate prospect. One can see everything. There are no secrets, no hidden corners, no barriers to view between the viewer and the horizon. All a very typically pleasing description with fields and gardens all lovely and clean, but, the narrator says, verhasst and hopeless. This is described by the protagonist, Christian, to a stranger, while in the mountains. The description of these plains seems very out of place in the mountains… strange. READ this. Also, Tieck: System des transzendentalen Idealismus (1800).

Eichendorff: Ahnung und Gegenwart (1815): emphasis on the importance of the forest. See also poem “Abschied”. Also Aus dem Leben eines Taugenichts – good comparison – compare description of Rome to that of Jean Paul and Goethe! Read lots of Eichendorff – also article by Richard Alewyn on Eichendorff.

Library hitlist:
Brockes: requested from Depository
Haller: Widener 47536.26.2
Ritter: BD450 .R54
Nicolai: full-text first edition online: http://books.google.com/books?id=UrMFAAAAQAAJ&source=gbs_ViewAPI
Print: requested from Depository
Tieck: PT2540 .L83x 1987
Alewyn article: Euphorion 1957, 51.

Yet another paper

2008-05-18T15:27:00.013-04:00

15:27 - Haven't started writing. Don't really have a topic. Must start now.
16:00 - start writing
16:44 - have ca. one page and an outline. Faith is waning. Must write 10 pages tonight.

17:00-19:00 - Dinner "break"
19:00-19:30 - finished reskimming Schiller. Need now to write the damn paper.
21:11 - 3.5 pages. I may gag.
22:00 - almost 4 pages. Quits for tonight. Extension to Tuesday secured. Am a loser.

19 May 2008

14:59 - Am still a loser. Also, when did it become okay for people to sit on each other's laps in the library? Not even hidden in the stacks... more like in the main reading room. Bullshit.
15:32 - 5 1/4 pages, not all of which are bad. Someone's cell phone just rang (in the Loker reading room, for goodness' sake) for a minute and a half and I'm having odd reminiscences of a trip to the St. Louis Art Museum. I have the same sort of anxious energy now that I had then, though under COMPLETELY different circumstances. Also, these paper posts remind me of a particularly ridiculous livejournal post from years ago.
16:45 - after a brief break, I'm back to work. Now at almost 8 pages. The guy across the table from me has decided to take a nap in his chair. Ugh.
17:45 - one more hour and no more pages. I think this is a sign I need to do something else for a while. Back after dinner for more bullshitting.

20 May 2008

8:03 - I guess this is all evidence that I work much better and more efficiently when I am interested in my current project. 7 more pages to go. 5 if I use Palatino.
11:17 - Not working very hard, but have 12 pages now. Just. Three. More.

Evolution of a paper - Celan, Sprachgitter

2008-05-13T21:13:00.012-04:00

Goal: 17+ pages
21:13 - actually writing for an hour now, 2.5 pages. Yikes.
22:35 - writing for two hours and twenty minutes: 6 pages. Feel like a rockstar.

--ten minute break -- peanut m&ms and Monty Python.

23:50 - working for 3.5 hours. Now 9.5 pages. No more energy Continuing in the morning

13 May 2008
16:16 - starting back up. Painful
17:37 - now at 12.5 pages and may actually be brilliant.
18:10 - 13.5 pages. Break.
21:41 - Wow. Plus-sized ANTM. Now finishing this goddamned paper.
22:20 - At this point, I know for sure that I can finish this paper tonight, but I have to face the harsh reality that I just don't want to. But I have to. *whimper*
23:30 - minor disaster with wedding planning happened on the phone. Derailed. Still need 5 more pages.
23:50 - ohhhhh yeah, tonight's Primal Scream, which is anything but primal, but does make me want to scream

14 May 2008
24:26 - 18 full pages dealing with three poems in depth. I could stop now and be okay, but tomorrow I will edit and write a conclusion. Now, one episode of Six Feet Under and I will be ready for bed.
approx. 11:00 - turned in 21 pages of text, about five pages of illustrations. Not a bad paper at all.

It's that time of year...

2008-04-29T14:52:00.004-04:00

To-Do (due dates up front)

(5.2.08) Grade papers for Modern Jewish lit
(5.5.08) Presentation for Poetry after Auschwitz
(5.14.08) Paper for Poetry after Auschwitz
(5.19.08) Paper for The Limits of Elightened Discourse
(5.21.08) Finish all grading and Grade exams for German A
(5.29.08) Grade exams for Modern Jewish lit

Italic = done

Notes and Wordlist from a Discussion of Paul Celan

2008-04-29T11:43:00.006-04:00

Suggested Theme in Celan: Tradition

I suggested that, in order to look at Celan as independent of the Holocaust, we look at his injection of tradition into his poems as evidence of a more generic kind of disorientation about tradition (religious, cultural, familial). It struck me that this is also a topographical/spatial word - disorientation as it applies to physical disorientation/being lost/having no direction.

Our local theory-hack brought disorientation from the topographical sphere to the linguistic and suggested that disorientation could also be related to the issues of misaligned language and referentiality in Celan. This, he suggested, is clearly related to the madness (for what is madness if not a state of false or confused referentiality), which was so interesting to Celan (see references to Hölderlin, for example). The Prof, in her infinite wisdom, brought us back to the imagery (natural/spatial) of madness - Umnachtung, Finsternis, (Celan neologism Verfinstrung), Dunkel (also causing a lack of orientation - absolute darkness making orientation impossible).

This all refers, said our famous progeny, to the paradoxicality of the testimonial itself. All these issues are contiguous (spatial) to the issue of the Holocaust. Prof asks whether we can speak about metaphor in Celan at all or if it isn't all an issue of metonymy (I think she was hängengeblieben at referentiality).

Thinking about words that pop up repeatedly in Celan (also with spatiality in mind) Licht came up, which led us to Lichtsinn, which points up the importance of Sinn, not in the sense of sense, but in the sense of direction.

All of this tangled network of words and meanings and topoi in Celan underlines the fact that learning Celan's language is not like learning a straight code (where x = 7 and y = 4). Instead one must become a spider in some sense (not spinning meaning from seeming-nothing), negotiating (navigating) a network of seemingly random connections, some related morphologically, some semantically, some related purely by context or proximity (spatial).

[Insert reference to Roland writing wordlists in Possession]

What all this complex network of reference(s) does is it creates a sense of intimacy. What Celan does is he internalizes the external sphere. Think of the German Erinnerung (n. memory), erinnern (v. to remember), sich erinnern an (v. to remind oneself, to remember), ER-INNERN. To internalize.

The Prof interjects that the Romantics were particularly interested in this kind of interconnectivity - the idea that everything is connected and the interactions between interconnected elements propel the thinking/feeling human ever upward toward a greater awareness. But Celan reminds us that there is also the danger of becoming ensnared (as in a net) and going down/under.

Interconnectivity is also a modern/post-modern/post-post-modern interest, though. Think about Six Degrees of Separation, (and this, and this, and this), visual representations of friendship webs, Venn Diagrams, the idea of the internet - LINKS, networking (in business and computers as well as social lives/hives), webs drawn to show the progression of theories through time, persistent fascination with evolution - the idea that everything proceeds (vertically) more or less directly from something else, but that everything is also (horizontally) connected with other contemporary issues, objects, ideas, people.

Wordlist: morphology, teliology, semantics, referentiality, organicism, interconnectivity, anabolic, Lichtsinn, disorientation, Erinnerung, traditional, topography

Library Hitlist

2008-04-28T20:53:00.006-04:00

To get from the library, besides the multitude of books I already requested from the depository:

Widener

PN6071.W3 W35 2000x - The Walker's Literary Companion
PR6019.O9 U624 1996 - Bely, Joyce, and Döblin : peripatetics in the city novel
WID-LC AM7 .M39 2007 - Museums of the Mind: German Modernity and the Dynamics of Collecting
PT139 .D483 2003x - Deutsche Landschaften
GN495.6 .B65 1998 - Borders, Exiles, Diasporas
HU90.12583 Harvard Depository - Landscape Through Literature: Caspar David Friedrich and three German Romantic Writers
PT749.N36 L3 - Landschaft und Raum in der Erzählkunst
46533.40.15 - Landschaftserlebnis und Landschaftsbild; Studien zur deutschen Dichtung des 18. Jahrhunderts und der Romantik.

Loeb Design

Special Collections Thesis SB470.55.G4 L44 2004 - The German "Mittelweg": Garden theory and philosophy in the time of Kant

Lamont

Microforms - Film A 440 no. 802, reel 150. - Die Gärtnerey, so wohl in ihrer Theorie oder Betrachtung als Praxi oder Übung

Academic Pet Peeves

2008-04-23T17:09:00.004-04:00

People who talk too much about Dramentheorie
Medievalists
People who use the word Teleologie/teleologisch too often
Department Politics

In the Presence...

2008-04-04T18:17:00.002-04:00

It’s unsettling to be in the presence of someone who is perceived as a rockstar in our field. Every time Professor K. has a question everyone holds their breath, trying to hear what he has to say and the speaker who is attempting to answer his question tries to make a joke, in order to diffuse the tension that arises from that strange little moment. Often a little mild defensiveness creeps in while addressing his question. Everyone is deferring to him.

And yet he seems down to earth, really humble. I wonder if he wanders around with the same kind of self-doubt that the rest of us have?

Mill River, Smith College, October 2007

2008-03-18T10:42:00.006-04:00

The flash makes for a rather horror-movie-like blue value, but the orange and yellow of this fungus - I think it's a Laetiporus sulphureus caught my eye. The blue haze caused by the flash plays up the bright color of the fungus, but it's also not unlike the dusky hue the woods took on that afternoon of one of my happiest days ever. We had been walking and talking and taking pictures all along the way and I knew that we would make it. I could wax poetic about brightness in the dark, but then I'd be likening our burgeoning happiness to a chunk of fungus
growing on a dead tree. It doesn't seem quite fitting.

The Laetiporus sulphureus is also called the "chicken of the woods," as it is apparently edible and very common. It grows on dead and decaying wood, in the summer and fall, usually. It also apparently has a strong, fungusy smell and a pleasant sourish taste. It doesn't quite work as an analogy, you see.

Also, for the record, this site is very useful for identifying fungi. This one, too.

Creativity flagging.

2008-02-21T16:28:00.001-05:00

I HATE that I'm not being creative any more.

Things that resonate...

2007-12-26T00:39:00.000-05:00

Things that resonate. Natural History Museum. The bugs remind me of A.S. Byatt. Also, such a proliferation of different shapes and colors, but in our perception, these little guys are all basically the same: six legs, enough antennae to make us nervous. See relevant photos under "Places that Resonate."

Renewing thoughts and in search of Place

2007-10-22T23:51:00.000-04:00

Went to a talk tonight by Kate Rigby and thought a lot afterward about Place. Thus the newly added Photo Album, Places that Resonate, to which I will be adding and about which I will be commenting. Go here: Places That Resonate

Hello

2007-09-10T23:43:00.000-04:00

Long absence as a result of a complete and total lack of interesting thoughts or work-related news. Now I'm reading a Beginning German Textbook as I get ready for bed. Never thought that would be bedtime reading for me. Hopefully my brain will return from its hiatus soon.

Don't give up on me yet!

Space, Place and the Child: More Tuan

2007-06-20T10:49:00.000-04:00

Some more notes from Space and Place, specifically Chapter 3: Space, Place & the Child.

“The infant has no world. He cannot distinguish between self and an external environment. He feels, but his sensations are not localized in space.” p. 20

This suggestion smacks of Freud and/or Kristeva’s (check which) theory of the Oceanic stage/feeling. The Oceanic feeling is the earmark of a developmental stage in which the infant feels wholly at one with the mother. This feeling makes it impossible for the infant to see herself as a self within the world/environment, but I’m not at all sure that it means the infant is the world/environment, even from the infant's perspective. There is probably a vacuum of information, a complete unawareness of the world. I suppose it’s a question of how much emphasis you want to put on Freudian psychoanalysis (not much, is my general opinion). In any case, this suggestion of Tuan’s does interact with these particular thoughts of psychoanalysis in an intriguing way.

“The picture of a road leading to a distant cottage seems easy to interpret; yet the road makes full sense only to someone who has walked on it. An immobile infant can have no sense of distance as the expenditure of energy to overcome spatial barriers.” p. 22

Upon reading this, I go back to the notion (of which I am rather fond) of visual vs. spatial (or actual) vs. temporal distance. By temporal distance I mean that distance is mentally measured by the time required to move from A to B. ‘Actual’ distance would be measured by standard means, and visual distance would be ‘measured’ purely by the eye. It seems, taking Tuan’s suggestion into account, that all of these different perceptions of distance have the prerequisite of actually traversing a distance. But must one have traveled – i.e. walked – the very one we’re talking about or another, comparable distance? Is all distance perception comparative?

Thinking about my own (inconsistent) description of distance, I usually rely on temporal means. “It’s about a twenty minute walk.” I also almost always underestimate the actual time necessary. Or, I think comparatively in terms of the driving trips I know best. A trip isn’t far if it isn’t longer than the drive from my hometown to St. Louis. If it’s as long as the drive to Indianapolis, it’s less appealing, but if it’s as short as to Louisville or Nashville, it’s very short indeed. Conversely, if it's as far away as a seven hour plane ride, I'm much more inclined to make the trip.

Opposites are most important to children: empty and full, near and far, inside and outside, home and away.

“Of special interest in these observations is the child’s apparent concern with the remote and the proximate. He points to the horizon and plays with stones at his feet, but he shows little interest in the middle ground.” p. 24

And

“The geographical horizon of a child expands as he grows, but not necessarily step by step toward the larger scale.” p. 31

This is perhaps symptomatic of children (and people in general) trying to overreach their boundaries. It’s much more interesting to think about far off places than to think about the neighboring county or state. It’s much like my inclination to say “Yes! I’m going to write my dissertation on the 18th century!” without really knowing anything about it. It’s appealing to jump headlong into the unknown, until you get a taste for what it actually is.

Tuan describes the parent as the child’s environment. This description is fascinating on a number of levels. First, Tuan has a fluid understanding of what place is. Geographical locations clearly do not cover all facets of place (or space, for that matter) for Tuan. Place is at times an object, at times a person, at times nonexistent. And then, in looking at infants’ and children’s perception of space, he defines place as a “focus of value, of nurture and support,” which he equates with the function and child’s perception of the mother. This is not controversial, once you have accepted that a person can be a place.

However, it makes me wonder whether a perpetually absent parent or one that is unable to fulfill the needs of the child could negatively impact a child’s ability to attach to places. What about orphans? Their needs are not met by any single person and their homes are not (I imagine) the most comforting or positive spaces. Do they not develop attachments to them? And then there’s the question of whether place has to imply a positive connotation. Could not a negative or emotionally difficult experience turn a space into an emotionally potent place just as much as a positive experience can create place? I guess what I’m wondering is whether place can be negative or whether place itself is invested with solely positive associations.

“The child also learns to associate persons with specific places. He is bewildered when he meets his nursery-school teacher downtown, because she seems to him dislocated; she upsets his system of classification.” p. 30

I would suggest that this remains true for adults. Perhaps our “system of classification” is not thoroughly rattled by seeing someone out of context, but we are certainly bewildered by running into people in, say, an airport or a foreign city. Or, perhaps even moreso, when they show up at our homes to pay an unexpected visit.

Finally, Tuan suggests that children have a desire to be in places that “conform to their own size.” As a rather tall person, I can agree with that. I’d much rather be in a room with a tall ceiling than in a tent.

Other ideas I liked:

“Human beings live on the ground and see trees and houses from the side. The bird’s-eye view is not ours, unless we climb a tall mountain or fly in an airplane.”
p. 27

“We more readily assume a God-like position, looking at the earth from above, than from the perspective of another mortal living on the same level as ourselves.” p. 28

“These highly charged moments from the past are sometimes captured by poets. Like candid snapshots out of the family album their words recall for us a lost innocence and a lost dread, an immediacy of experience that had not yet suffered (or benefited) from the distancing of reflective thought.” p. 20

Allow me to draw your attention to...

2007-06-16T15:53:00.000-04:00

... this: Paul Shepheard.

When you click to enter, definitely click on the ? in the lower left.

Space and Place

2007-06-16T10:37:00.000-04:00

I started reading Yi-Fu Tuan's book Space and Place (1977) today, which is something I've been meaning to do for four or five years now. It is proving to be just as satisfying as I had hoped and I really really want to retain what I've read, so I'm going to keep notes on it here.

"The approach is descriptive, aiming more often to suggest than to conclude."
(p. 7.)

I think I've written before about "muscular" scholars. It seems to me that Tuan is familiar with the phenomenon of scholars bashing you so hard over the head with their ideas that you can't properly argue with them (when they have merit), and that he's chosen to not go there. I think his ideas are strong enough that you could bludgeon someone with them, but he's chosen the higher road of writing more simply and subtly and just letting the reader conclude for herself that he's right.

"The ideas 'space' and 'place' require each other for definition. From the security and stability of place we are aware of the openness, freedom, and threat of space, and vice versa." (p.6)

I like this kind of codependence of ideas. It's as if space and place are two sides of the same coin, so to speak. He says at a different point that we long for the freedom of space because we are used to the narrowness of home (place), as if it's the proverbial forbidden fruit we're seeking all the time. On the topic of codependence, all my reading on space/place/landscape is tinted (tainted?) by Jay Appleton's theories. I've made a hobby of using his prospect-refuge theory in as many of my papers as possible and it seems likely that it will play some role in my dissertation. Anyway, I am not at all sure that I would have understood what Tuan meant by the "threat of space" without having read about prospect and refuge and habitat theory, i.e. the importance of being able to see your predators coming and being able to hide from them. It seems (to me, at least) that Appleton hit on something of major importance with that theory.

Tuan describes different kinds of spatial/platial (Larry Buell's word) experience:

a longtime resident of a city knows the city
a cab driver learns to find his way in the city
a geographer studies the city and knows it conceptually

I like the idea that different people have different relationships with cities. I like to imagine the intimate knowledge of a city vertically, like layers of phyllo dough accumulating, but that seems possibly too narrow. The geographer's knowledge of a city may be less intimate than the resident's knowledge of it, but it is perhaps deeper conceptually than even the most seasoned resident's. Perhaps a kind of Venn diagram would be more useful for conceptualizing the types of city-knowledges. (I think I may be [trying to become more] visual in my thought processes. See shoddily drawn Venn diagram to the right.)

You'll note that I added the tourist to my diagram. This is only because I'm slightly troubled by something that Tuan says later on: "Another place may lack the weight of reality because we know it only from the outside--through the eyes as tourists, and from reading about it in a guidebook." (p. 18) As an avid tourist myself, I squirm at this. Some of my travel memories seem more real to me than memories of my hometown, the place that I have lived longest in my life, and memories of college (a place where I was a bit more than a tourist) seem as if I dreamed them - they have no "weight of reality." I think that the tourist has access to a unique experience of a place - perhaps they don't have the depth or intimacy of knowledge that comes with living in a place, but they have access to it from a purely aesthetic perspective, which a longtime resident cannot have, as all the same places are likely tainted with experience. Furthermore, tourists often have a deeper understanding of history and cultural context, as they are slightly more likely than your average citizen to do research on the city in question. I also wonder whether the intensity of a person's experience (however short) could compensate to some degree for the duration of experience, with regard to the depth of knowledge? Doesn't one who is in a city for only a short time (say a month or two), try harder to get to know the city than some residents who know their corner of town extremely well, without bothering about other districts?

Some odds and ends from the text so far:

Tuan suggests that emotional range corresponds directly to potential intellectual capacity:

"The emotional repertoire of a clam is very restricted compared with that of a puppy; and the affective life of the chimpanzee seems almost as varied and intense as that of a human being. A human infant is distinguished from other mammalian young both by his helplessness and by his fearsome tantrums. The infant's emotional range, from smile to tantrum, hints at his potential intellectual reach." (pp.9-10)

He mentions a theory of Susanne Langer's (to-do: Susanne Langer's Mind: An Essay on Human Feeling.), that odors of decay act as memento mori for adult human beings.

He describes place as a physical object, albeit one that can't be picked up and carried around (p. 12) and neighborhoods as geometric shapes, claiming that it takes time to learn a neighborhood, just as it takes time to learn a geometric shape (pp. 17-18), as in the case of Cheselden's newly-sighted man.

More to come later.

Open Archives

2007-06-14T06:30:00.000-04:00

It looks as if Sebald's papers are open now (they probably have been for a while, but I'm unsure of how to inform myself about these things). I found a book the other day while poking around at Dussmann that was meant to be published for Sebald's (would have been) 60th birthday. It's a collection of primary sources, commentary on the primary stuff, and readings of his texts, some critical, some personal.

The editors claim that the book is committed to both the author (and his texts) and to critical treatment of the texts. This is, I suppose, the sort of work that I would ideally do. I'm always worried about critical readings sucking the enjoyment out of reading the texts I would deal with. This is especially worrisome in the case of Sebald, whose books I love so so much.

All I've read so far is Sebald's (short) correspondence with Adorno (1967-68) and the beginning of the commentary on it (I'm woefully slow at reading academic German). It's pretty remarkable, actually. He wrote to Adorno with a question about Carl Sternheim when he (Sebald) was working on his Masters thesis (at some ridiculously young age, for a German student). Adorno responded and Sebald eventually wrote him again asking for a recommendation. It should be noted that they never met.

Anyway, I'm in awe of the ballsy young Sebald asking Adorno for help getting into a Ph.D. program.

The commentary on the letters, though, is a little troubling. I know pitifully little about Sebald, actually (to-do: read a good biography and much much more secondary work on him), but I find the rather biographical approach of the editors a little disconcerting. They cross reference the (very little) biographical information included in Sebald's letters to Adorno with the (very little) biographical information included about the title character in "Max Aurach" (Die Ausgewanderten, 1992), as if trying to prove from those few details that Max Aurach is an autobiographical character. While I don't wholly believe that the author is dead, I don't think that it is always the most significant facet to focus on in interpreting a text. Furthermore, I definitely don't think that you can use the biographical details included in a fictional work to expand our knowledge of the author's biography, which may be a slightly radical description of what the editors were trying to do, but it is the unsettling impression I got.

Anyway, it is interesting to have a bit more insight into Sebald and these primary sources are quite thought-provoking.

Also to-do: I want to learn a bit about Carl Sternheim, as a means of understanding a bit more what they're talking about in these letters and commentary.

I'm feeling yet again the difficulty of having a fairly shallow/narrow grasp on German literature. Yes, I know all about the Holocaust in contemporary German lit, but I don't know about Carl Sternheim, so that part of Sebald is still off limits to me, even if I do have a little insight into Austerlitz.

To-Read/See/Do

2007-06-11T09:01:00.000-04:00

Spengler: Untergang des Abendlandes
A good history of Romania
Dos Passos: Manhattan Transfer
Slavoj Žižek: Looking Awry
Goodfellas
Works by Kate Rigby
Familiarize myself with Gernot Böhme (landscape theorist)
Familiarize myself with Tadeusz Bobrowski
Peck: Being Jewish in the New Germany
Laszlo Krasznahorkai: Krieg und Krieg
Laszlo Krasznahorkai: Im Norden ein Berg, im Süden ein See, im Westen Wege, im Osten ein Fluss
works by Michel de Montaigne
Will Waters: Poetry's Touch
Elkins: The Object Stares Back

The Wider World

2007-06-11T08:43:00.001-04:00

"More than fifty years have passed since I first consulted a Baedeker, and I still look upon almost any guidebook as a book of revelations; I feel a bond with every tourist I see reading the pages of fine print and condensed prose in an effort to interpret the surrounding world. There are obnoxious tourists just as there are obnoxious children, but there is a strong element of snobbery, it seems to me, in our criticism of tourist groups, the condescension of those who belong -- who are at home -- to those who are strangers without recognizable status. Yet we are all of us strangers, tourists at one time or another, and from our own experience we should recognize the individual impulse for self-improvement that is back of so much tourist travel. At the risk of exaggerating, I would say that the inspiration of tourism is a desire to know more abut the world in order to know more about ourselves. If we offend public taste, that is only incidental to our search; the Swiss cuckoo clock, the bumper-sticker from Carlsbad Caverns is a type of diploma -- proof that we have at least tried to improve." J.B. Jackson - The Necessity for Ruins, p. 3.

It seems to be a good exercise for me to shed my usual snobbery, as Jackson calls it, and become a tourist from time to time. I often scoff at the tourists wandering through my Yard, taking pictures and walking slowly down the paths that I generally rush down. So, it may be healthy to feel as if I have all the time in the world and perhaps get in a few locals' way for a while. And this summer, in Berlin, I'm feeling more deeply foreign than I have for a while. Recently I've traveled mostly to other places whose language is, at least, my own. While German is familiar to me, it is still removed a bit from my daily life. And the last time I returned to Germany after a protracted absence, it was to a familiar city, one I feel is as much my home as the city I live in usually. But this time, both language and city are relatively foreign. And so I am more foreign than I have felt in a long time.

The neighborhood I am living in is filled with immigrants and expats and there is at least one other English speaker living in my building (unless this particular Thompson is German). Only a few days back in this country and I'm feeling the familiar contradictory urges to both meet the "natives" and to find other wanderers with whom to speak English and to talk about familiar things. It's almost as if, when I come to this country, I can more easily appreciate my home - as if it's easier to enjoy it in an almost nostalgic light.

I'm trying to work my way into a new city this summer and trying to rejuvenate some small part of myself, intellectual and personal, that seems to have shrivelled a bit in the last two years. I've tacked a map up on the wall, to trace my wanderings, and have begun a new journal and various creative efforts and intend to dig deep for the next few weeks, at least.

Crossed Wires

2007-05-25T11:44:00.001-04:00

Whenever I try to write Maurice Merleau-Ponty, I write Marcel Merleau-Ponty. Why is that?

The side-effects of education

2007-05-18T23:56:00.001-04:00

If I hadn't gone to my particular small liberal arts college of choice, I wouldn't have met these fabulous women.

2007-05-14T11:50:00.000-04:00

Anyone who knows me knows that I find Freud deeply distasteful. I don't like what he says and I don't really like him. This has the effect of compounding my frustration when doing any kind of character analysis. I think I'm pretty good at character analyses, but I realize (and am frustrated by) the fact that everything I do as far as analyzing is based in Freud-style psychoanalysis.

Maybe this is why I've become obsessed with spatial stuff? (Not that that's entirely free of psychoanalysis either...)

Lacan in the morning

2007-05-13T10:40:00.000-04:00

“For example, a certain society might decide to make a certain activity, quality or distinguishing mark a characteristic of man or of woman, that is, a difference according to which men and women should be recognized. There will always be one woman, not incidentally lacking in supporters, to show that this difference is no difference: for instance, a woman learned in Greek, in a society which restricts the study of this language to young boys, as was indeed the case during the Renaissance. But the point of this effective demonstration is always missed, for instead of admitting that being a woman is no handicap for learning Greek – which after all has no need of demonstration – it is concluded that because she is learned in Greek, she must be a man.”

(From Lacan: "Feminine Sexuality in Psychoanalytic Doctrine," 1975, p. 125)

On the creativity of Yiddish

2007-05-05T21:59:00.000-04:00

From Max Weinreich's book, History of the Yiddish Language (translated from the Yiddish by Schlomo Noble, University of Chicago Press, 1973):

“Any Jewish community could partake of honey on the eve of the New Year to portend a sweet year. A similar custom could be found also among non-Jews. But the consumption on Rosh Hashanah of carrots (mern) in allusion to the verb zikh mern (to increase) and its combination with a prayer to the effect that “may our merits increase”—this could only be an invention of Ashkenazic Jews. Kol mevaser (a voice proclaiming) is recited by Jews on Hoshana Rabbah everywhere, but only speakers of western Yiddish have the custom of eating cabbage soup on that day in allusion to the German Kohl mit Wasser (cabbage and water). In a township near Rovna, Volhynia, water carriers used to celebrate on the Sabbath of the weekly lection of Emor (speak) in allusion to the emer (bucket, in Yiddish).” (p.5)

This makes me wonder if the creative and clever traditions that arise out of homophones (or near-homophones) are more effective or appealing when they have to do with food. Also, I think it's wonderful that Yiddish pronunciation is just far enough from the German that mehren and Möhren become the same, and that mevaser is just close enough that someone probably chuckled and said, "wouldn't it be funny if..." and then it became a tradition.

Nervous Conditions

2007-05-01T10:07:00.000-04:00

Any energy that I had been saving up for extracurricular academizing has now been reassigned to the task of doing my end-of-semester work/keeping me from failing out of school. Random thoughts on those projects may be posted here occasionally, but are unlikely to be fleshy and/or interesting.

In other words, I'll be back full-force in a few weeks.

Until then, I leave you with a to-do list:

For The Five Senses in the 18th Century: Annotated Bibliography on Sensory Perception of Space and Landscape. (hopefully by 5/18)
For The History of the German Language: A paper on Yiddish. (by 5/18.) And an exam. (ugh.)
For German Poetry: A paper on something having to do with Nature. And an exam (ugh.)
For Gender Theory and Narrative Fiction (from last semester): A paper on Jelinek's Die Klavierspielerin. (ASAP)

Trying out...

2007-04-18T11:27:00.000-04:00

... Library Thing, after a long discussion in class yesterday about the merits of social networking sites and the potential uses of Library Thing in doing this annotated bibliographpy project. In any case, my user name is eejones. Link on the lower left.

The beginning of something beautiful...

2007-04-13T09:54:00.000-04:00

This week I've begun work on one of my final projects for the semester: an annotated bibliography. At first, I was unsure what the use of this project would be, but then I realized that I do know at least a part of what my dissertation will eventually be about. I don't know which direction I'll take it in, but I do know that my interest in spatial and landscape theory will certainly be involved somehow.

Sooo, I've taken the assignment and run with it, treating it as a preliminary bibliography for the theoretical framework I hope to work in. All in all, it's very exciting. My professor suggested that we have between 40 and 50 works involved and while I sat down to come up with some initial ideas, I made a list of 40 works. Now, they won't all be interesting or useful, but it is encouraging that I was able to compile such a list, however preliminary.

In other news, I've been clicking around on ECCO (Eighteenth Century Collections Online), at first looking for particular essays by Francis Bacon, then just to see what I could see. I came across a number of fun things.

A Francis Bacon essay on travel (not what I was looking for, but fun nonetheless), in which he wrote, "Travel in the younger sort is a part of education; in the elder a part of experience. He that travelleth into a country, before he hath some entrance into the language, goeth to school, and not to travel."
The Artist's Repository and Drawing Magazine exhibiting the Principles of the Polite Arts in their various Branches, which has essays on perspective and the use of various elements in painting (or drawing) and includes a bunch of example drawings. Most charmingly, at the end of the book is a sheet of instructions "To the Binder" describing where the illustrations are to be inserted into the text.
The Philosophical History and Memoirs of the Royal Academy of Sciences at Paris, which has a number of fascinating articles, including: "Of a bottle of water kept for a great many years," "Of a storm of hail of an extraordinary size," "Of the effect of vinegar on some stones," "Of a puppy, which had only one eye in the middle of his face," "A description of the heart of a sea-tortoise."

In reading these accounts, it's easy to feel superior and condescending to their interest in seemingly insignificant things, but then I realize this was in 1742, relatively early in the age of science and these (in many cases) amateur scientists were laying the groundwork for everything we know now, starting more or less from scratch. Then I feel a bit humble. For all their quaintness, these essays were right at the beginning.

Weekly To-Read

2007-04-09T12:05:00.000-04:00

Trojanow: Der Weltensammler
Kehlmann: Die Vermessung der Welt
Guthke: Die Erfindung der Welt
Alexander von Humboldt: Amerikanische Reise
Brydone: A Tour Through Sicily and Malta
Oken: Grundriss der Naturphilosophie

2007-03-21T11:13:00.000-04:00

Where do we draw the line between literary/poetic texts and philosophical/scientific texts?
Is the difference between fiction and philosophy that one "beckons" us to read it as fiction and one "beckons" us to read it as philosophy? But where does fictional autobiography or fictional journaling passed off as reality fit into that definition? For instance, is James Frey's book a novel just because it turns out that some of the passages didn't actually come from his experience? Or is it nonfiction because that's how it wants to be read?

My professor (of the aforementioned literary studies discussion) said yesterday that willful misunderstanding is our business. I don't really know what that means, except that it seems a coy little definition of what we do. (According to the Russian Formalists, incidentally, "The literariness or artfulness of a work of literature, that which makes it an aesthetic object, resides entirely in its devices, which should also form the sole object of literary studies." Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism: "Russian Formalism.")

In my classes here, there has been a lot of talk about estrangement without a very clear definition of that concept or an etymology of its development.

According to Wikipedia, it comes from Russian Formalism -- Eichenbaum, Jakobsen, Schklovsky and co. Shklovsky apparently came up with the idea of ostraneniye - defamiliarization or, more literally, estrangement, meaning "one of the crucial ways in which literary language distinguishes itself from ordinary, communicative language, and is a feature of how art in general works, namely by presenting the world in a strange and new way that allows us to see things differently." (my emphasis)

Using the Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism as my guide, I compiled the following thoughts: The Russian Formalists suggested that familiar things that we may take for granted be modified with the goal of making them novel and unfamiliar again. This is the goal of all literary devices. Additionally, this should have the effect of slowing the reader and drawing her attention to the form of the work and its devices.

(I did have much richer material collected from the JHU guide, but became paranoid about copyright law.)

Phenomenology of Reading is another phrase that's been tossed around a lot lately and about which I've been too embarassed to ask.

After careful consultation with the OED and Wikipedia, what I've gathered about phenomenology is that it has several sources:

Hegel: phenomenology is an approach to philosophy that begins with an exploration of phenomena (what presents itself to us in conscious experience) as a means to finally grasp the absolute, logical, ontological and metaphysical Spirit that is behind phenomena.
Husserl: phenomenology is an approach to philosophy that takes the intuitive experience of phenomena (what presents itself to us in phenomenological reflexion) as its starting point and tries to extract from it the essential features of experiences and the essence of what we experience.
Heidegger: the phenomenological vision of a world of beings must be bypassed toward the apprehension of the Being behind all beings, that is, as an introduction to ontology, albeit an ontology that remains critical of metaphysics.

Unrelatedly, in reference to the essay on Goethe's "Willkommen und Abschied" by David Wellbery we read for one of my classes, the words "muscular" and "powerful" were used to describe his reading of the poem, meaning that his argument seems implausible on some levels, but that it's so convincingly and confidently crafted that you can almost not argue with it. There seems to be implicit in this a glorification of "Burly Scholars." I guess another instance of a "muscular" reading would be Freud's reading of "Der Sandmann." He was cocky enough about his reading and formulated it so convincingly that no one has been able to read "Der Sandmann" since Freud without thinking about the Uncanny. I can't decide if this kind of forceful criticism is a good thing or not. We say there are thousands of plausible readings for any work, so should we want these excessively burly readers to make it difficult for us to find our own readings? They are usually pretty good, though. There's no denying it.

To-Read

2007-03-21T10:51:00.000-04:00

Collected titles from the last ten days or so:

Zahavi & Zahavi: The Handicap Principle
Montesquieu: Persian Letters
Oliver Sacks: "To See and Not to See"
H.G. Wells: "In the Land of the Blind"
Johnson: The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination, and Reason
Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Phenomenology of Perception
Oken: Grundriss der Naturphilosophie
Dorrit Cohn: Transparent Minds

What we do.

2007-03-20T17:38:00.000-04:00

In a recent workshop on "The Discipline of Literary Studies," a professor of mine discussed with a group of us just exactly what it is that we do, why we do it, and how it ought to (not) be justified.

This (unfortunately only visiting-) professor had a number of insights about the state of and nature of our field. A few of the more compelling ones are:

He told us that a recent trend he's noticed in young literary scholars fresh out of graduate school (applying for jobs) is their attempt at distancing themselves from moral questions and, perhaps correspondingly, a renewed interest in earlier periods (the 18th century and earlier), whereas in previous years there had been a heavy emphasis on the 20th century. I believe this holds somewhat true in my department... there is a pretty heavy concentration of interest in the 18th and 19th centuries, but probably equally many people are studying the 20th, even late 20th century.

The most important things to come out of Germanistik in the last century are:

The Frankfurt School
System Theory (to a lesser degree)
Holocaust/Memory Studies

He also believes that it is of singular importance that the different disciplines preserve the integrity of their theoretical framework and not venture too far into interdisciplinarity.

Instead of handwringing about the fate of our discipline, he suggests that discussion can produce "productive friction." Projecting our troubles onto other agencies undermines our autonomy as a social unit.

A groundbreaking field that will greatly impact literary studies in the future: neurobiology and neuropsychology. He likens cognitive science and neurobiology to the new psychoanalysis.

Without trying to summarize or synthesize the entire conversation, which went on for almost two hours and had no real conclusion, I'd like to make the following observations.

I haven't discussed the nature and fate of our discipline in such detail with anyone. Ever.
I haven't heard professors (or fellow students, often) discuss our field in such big-picture, sweeping terms.

I worry a great deal about the motivation of studying literature and whether or not I'm actually going to be making any kind of positive difference in the world with my work. I believe very strongly in the capability of ordinary people to make changes in the world and I worry fairly often that by climbing the Ivory Tower to read for a living I've taken myself out of any kind of useful position. Is this not something that other people think about? Am I the only scholar of my generation worrying about this? Surely not, but it's certainly not something we discuss very often.

This talk clearly touched a couple of people's nerves, in clearly different ways. One bristled visibly at our discussion of moralizing scholarship dealing with the Holocaust (a.k.a. "the period between 1939 and 1945") and one seemed to see the moral tack as one possible way of justifying our field. I don't know where I stand on the moral question. I want to immediately say that yes, I do believe that scholarship ought to distance itself from a moral standpoint and that yes, I do write critical works without bringing morals into it, but then again, I think I may be drawn to study the things I study specifically because of their moral weight and thrust.

And why don't our professors and advisors talk about this? Presumably because they've settled their own worries (if they ever had them). The professor leading this workshop said that we don't have to have a world-saving, life-saving motivation to justify our discipline. We can study for the sake of study. And, furthermore, we can study something just because we find it interesting. "And if it doesn't interest you, I can't do anything for you." So much for my critique of the word interesting, I suppose.

Tracks and Bones

2007-03-11T14:55:00.000-04:00

From Sebald's Austerlitz:

"Geradeso wie die Lebendigen ziehen die Toten, wenn es ihnen zu eng wird, nach draußen in eine weniger dicht besiedelte Gegend, wo sie in gehörigem Abstand voneinander ihre Ruhe finden können. Aber es kommen ja immer neue nach, in unendlicher Folge, zu deren Unterbringung zuletzt, wenn alles belegt ist, Gräber durch Gräber gegraben werden, bis auf dem ganzen Acker die Gebeine kreuz und quer durcheinander lieben. Dort, wo einmal die Bestattungs- und Bleichfelder waren, auf dem Areal der 1865 erbauten Broadstreet Station, kamen 1984 bei den im Zuge der Abbrucharbeiten vorgenommenen Ausgrabungen unter einem Taxistand über vierhundert Skelette zutage. Ich bin damals des öfteren dort gewesen, sagte Austerlitz, teilweise wegen meiner baugeschichtlichen Interessen, teilweise auch aus anderen, mir unverständlichen Gründen, und habe photographische Aufnahmen gemacht von den Überresten der Toten, und ich entsinne mich, wie einer der Archäologen, mit dem ich ins Gespräch gekommen bin, mir gesagt hat, daß in jedem Kubikmeter Abraum, den man aus dieser Grube entfernte, die Gerippe von durchschnittlich acht Menschen gefunden worden sind." (Sebald, W.G. Austerlitz. Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer, 2003. p. 192)

From City Secrets: London

"The area behind St. Pancras Station is rich in atmosphere and history, if in little else. It used to be called Battle Bridte, this being where the recalcitrant Queen Boudicca led the Iceni to their doom against Caesar's legions. Legend has her buried beneath Platform Seven of St. Pancras."

"Wander up Pancras Road, past the car-washes and bakeries that occupy the vast arches beneath the track and you'll find St. Pancras Old Church, allegedly one of London's most ancient holy sites, and named after a fourth-century martyr. The mediaeval church was restored beyond salvation by Victorian do-gooders, but its churchyard, its garden freshly planted, is a treasure. Forging the Midland line required levelling the old, tightly packed burial ground, and a scandal arose when early passenges espied bones and skulls poking from the trackside. The young Thomas Hardy helped relocate the remains and gravestones, many of which are swirled and stacked around the churchyards London planes, and later wrote about it:

We late lamented, resting here,
Are mixed to human jam,
And each to each exclaims in fear,
'I know not which I am.'

Somewhere below, along with the uncharted dead, lies the buried Fleet River, whose passage from Hampstead to the Thames is now contained entirely in an iron pipe. Of the "spa and wells" of old St. Pancras, there is no sign." (Adams, Tim, ed. City Secrets: London. New York: The Little Bookroom, 2001. pp. 100-101.)

Cities are, by their very nature, layered places. Is it a particular characteristic of train stations, though, to be especially brutal in churning up and paving over the layers of the past? Is it coincidence that train stations were both brought into the context of the displaced dead in both of these very different works? Of course, what to do with the dead is a persistent problem of modernizing and expanding cities. (Only tangentially related: The New York Times recently ran a story about Colma, CA, "a Town of 2.2 Square Miles, Most of It 6 Feet Deep," which was founded as a necropolis for neighboring cities, whose graveyards were all full up.)

What interests me, though, is the deliberate allusion in Sebald to the skeletons under Broadstreet Station. Though train stations and their surroundings are frequently employed as highly symbolic liminal spaces throughout the novel, this one instance is particularly poignant. The novel deals largely with exile, but no other passage about displacement speaks so directly to the hopelessness of the exile's wish of finding a place.

Another strange consonance between my snooty travel guide and Sebald's novel:

"At least Norman Foster's 1989 plan to flatten the graceful curve of the Great Northern Hotel remains scuppered." (City Secrets: London, p. 100)

"[Austerlitz] habe den Nachmittag, sagte er, damit verbracht, sich in dem Great Eastern [Hotel], das nächstens von Grund auf renoviert werden solle, ein wenig umzusehen, hauptsächlich in dem Freimaurertempel, der um die Jahrhundertwende von den Direktoren der Eisenbahngesellschaft in das damals gerade erst fertiggestellte und auf das luxuriöseste ausgestattete Hotel hineingebaut worden ist." (Austerlitz: p. 65)

He proceeds to describe (over several pages) the Masonic Temple itself and the (many layers of) labyrinthine cellars of the Great Eastern Hotel (which stands near Liverpool Street Station) where food is stored and prepared (ein kleines Totenreich für sich - p. 67).

It's not a new revelation that Sebald is interested in layers (his narrative itself is structured in layers and layers of heresay, which call the reliability of the entire narrative into question), train stations (Austerlitz is named after one, for heaven's sake), and architecture (the novel contains more than a little architectural history, clearly), but it seems that there is a good paper (book) to be written about these themes. And how interesting that other people (like the dear writer in my snooty guide, and good old Thomas Hardy) are also interested in graveyards being buried under train tracks.

Daily to-read, to-research list

2007-03-08T20:20:00.000-05:00

Looking today at Hölderlin's "Hälfte des Lebens" and especially at the manuscript from which it presumably (organically?) emerged and thinking about the grand struggle between nature and the "Man-Made," especially in "Heidelberg," a hopeful paper topic began to take root:

Could I not look at Goethe's "Im Herbst 1775," Hölderlin's "Hälfte des Lebens," and Rilke's "Herbsttag" together? Goethe's text is an apostrophe, urging the grapes to ripen and plump before frost falls, Hölderlin's shows fat pears dipping from their trees and the world settling rather suddenly into winter, and Rilke's conjures up the specter of winter's solitude descending on the poet. They all show the world at it's tipping point and both feature elements of nature at their center (Rilke somewhat more tangentially: he, too, has grapes that need ripening and their cultivation is only accompanied by the trees' fallen leaves blowing through the streets. Natural imagery is much more prominent in both of the other poems, but is that indicative of the time in which the poets were working? Is there a trajectory away from nature and toward a more anthropocentric understanding of the world?)

Another tack: Look at Hölderlin, Rilke, and Klopstock (Klopstock!) with regards to syntax. I know for a fact that Hölderlin and Rilke both use convoluted syntax to create an uneasy, breathless tone (that's the Hölderlinton, no?) and I believe that Klopstock does as well ("Frühlingsfeier?"). How does the syntax function in the poems? How innovative were each of them with their syntax at the time?

Non sequitur: an old gripe inherited from an even older advisor. The word "interesting" doesn't mean anything. Stop using it.

Daily to-read/research list:

look up Mallarmé and the French symbolists
learn Greek

On sight and the division of the senses: From Cheselden's account of the boy whose vision was restored and from Berkeley's new theory of vision

2007-03-08T20:13:00.000-05:00

" I will relate; Having often forgot which was the Cat, and which the Dog, he was asham'd to ask; but catching the Cat (which he knew by feeling) he was observ'd to look at her stedfastly, and then setting her down, said So Puss ! I shall know you another Time. " (William Cheselden)

"It is thought a great absurdity to imagine that one and the same thing should have any more than one extension, and one figure. But the extension and figure of a body, being let into the mind two ways, and that indifferently either by sight or touch, it seems to follow that we see the same extension and the same figure which we feel." (George Berkeley)

It seems to me to be obvious that the senses work hand-in-hand, that they interact and that they depend on one another. But now I learn that from Aristotle through the 1940s or so, it was most usual to ponder the senses as independent of one another and to theorize them as separate entities. It is as strange to me to think of the synthesis of the senses as an "absurdity" as it is to think about the senses' ability to compensate for one another... for example, hearing or touch for sight.

Introducing...

2007-03-08T19:42:00.000-05:00

I used to always start my journal entries with the same line, "This page is my vessel," followed by some sentiment of honesty and completeness. I don't plan this space to be used as such a confessional catch-all, but rather as a musing space and a venue to track my thoughts as they progress toward some sort of culmination, some original thought that merits being put to paper. Many, if not most of my thoughts, will be related to my academic work, but some may bleed into more creative and personal areas. Be warned, nothing that will follow will necessarily be polished, well-formed, or edited to any degree.

Finally, credit where credit is due: I have unashamedly stolen the idea to create this blog from http://idlethink.wordpress.com/, whom I do not know, and who does not know me, but whose blog http://www.idlethink.com/ I've been reading for a year or so now. (Though our fields are not the same, I think the results of such a format may be fruitful. Thanks for the idea!)