Transatlantische Germanistik

As a prospective academic (is this terminology suitable?) I am continuously confronted with the "crisis in the humanities" (I would prefer not to use this terminology because it is too liable to allow us to slip into thinking other prepositions, attributing blame -- the crisis of the humanities, for example: das steht aber auf einem anderen Blatt).

I suppose having your ontological and financial status in the hands of those who dictate what departments stay and what departments go can be a kind of thrill. Will we still exist next year? In what form? Exciting! Like a Magic-8 Ball. And, if we wanted, we could draw this enquiry out, spread it out, ask other questions that at first glance have nothing to do with why it is important to learn German in a German Department (instead of say a Modern Languages Department, or, far worse, No Department At All). N.B. This is not to say German Departments should deal exclusively with German.

I am still youngish (I think), and young people often have a rebellious streak -- hopefully they keep it as they age! --  and maybe this is mine. I get angry when I see doors to dialogue being closed because they seem unnecessary. I was on my way to becoming a neurobiologist at one point in my life -- then I read Goethe's Faust (I know, I know...), and, having also, at that period in my life, been psychologically and emotionally enthralled by Kafka and Dostoevsky, this was a decisive moment. I realised that reading something like Faust in translation wasn't enough for me. My appreciation for language is very sensual; I'm a sucker for what we call in choir Vokalausgleich -- there isn't an English equivalent I've yet come across, but I think it would be something like the smoothing out and equalisation of vowels. When this happens in poetry -- when there's an internal rhyme or assonance (see previous post for the over-application of assonance that gave up on itself in the last line) that matches, that compensates, that complements or that even heightens the meaning of a word in a line -- something funny happens to my neurons and, to be rather cliché for a moment, it makes me appreciate the sophisticated and subtle potential of human creativity (whereas the incredibly technically demanding creation of Zyklon B does not). When I read an English translation of Faust for the first time, it asked something of me that translations of Kafka and Dostoevsky had not (although Kafka, I would come to see, is also incredibly difficult to translate). It asked me to move beyond the text I had, and beyond the culture I knew. And I am thankful I had a translation to tell me that! (I like translating too, and I see it as playing a valuable role in cultural mediation.)

For this reason, I want to read Paul Michael Lützeler's book Transatlantische Germanistik, and I want to consider recommending it before I've even read it. It lays out a story of the development of the discipline of Germanistik in North America (primarily the States); and maybe I am hoping to find in it reasons I can give others to keep those doors to humanities departments open.

Sehenswürdigkeiten

Eine bunte Welt
Betrunken Luft (der Geist des Glühweins)
Der bellende Junge
Die hustende Frau (ich glaub sie hat den Geist ausgehustet)
Und noch dazu:
der Mann, den ich nicht mehr sehe, der mir einmal ein Kunststück reichte, aus Papier, Farbstift und irregeführter Dankbarkeit

savour this

"Mein Walhspruch ist: wähle, empfinde, überdenke und geniesse. Wähle: unter den Gegenständen, die dich umgeben, erlies dir solche, die deiner Wohlfahrt zuträglich sind. Empfinde sie: verschaffe dir hinlängliche Begriffe von ihrer Beschaffenheit. Überdenke: stelle dir alle einzelne Teile deutlich vor, und erwäge ihre Verhältnisse und Beziehungen auf das Ganze. Alsdenn genieße: richte deine Aufmerksamkeit auf den Gegenstand selbst. Hüte dich, in diesem Augenblick an die Beschaffenheit einzelner Teile zu gedenken. Laß die Fähigkeiten deiner Seele walten. Durch das Anschauen des Ganzen, werden die Teile ihre hellen Farben verlieren, sie werden aber Spuren hinter sich lassen, die den Begriff des Ganzen aufklären, und dem Vergnügen, das daraus entstehet, eine größere Lebhaftigkeit verschaffen."

Moses Mendelssohn. Über die Empfindungen. Vierter Brief. Palemon an Euphranor.

Dieses Baums Blatt, der von Osten Meinem Garten anvertraut, ...

Ja, schön gelbgrüngold sind sie, wenn sie gefallen sind. Überall in Heidelberg findet man solche Beispiele. Nur muss man die Blätter sofort zusammenrechen und nicht verfaulen lassen (wie eine Freundin von mir sagte), denn aus dem Gestank ist kein Gedicht zu machen.

...


Dir mit Wohlgeruch zu kosen,
Deine Freuden zu erhöh'n,
Knospend müssen tausend Rosen
Erst in Gluten untergeh'n.

eventueller Abschied eines Unbekannten

On a rainy evening a week or so ago I walked past a woman lying in the street at the end of the Theodor-Heuss-Brücke. Police officers had surrounded the corner and blocked off one lane. They had covered her with a plaid blanket, and beyond her general build, only her limp feet were discernible. Two cars, it seemed, were also involved. No one stopped, a few slowed down.

The beginning of Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften came to mind, only this time the title character was not Ulrich, but this woman. The novel would then have ended some thousand-plus pages earlier.

I saw nothing about this on the news.  I kept checking the police reports daily, searching for confirmation that the woman was either dead, injured, or alive, but above all I wanted confirmation that it had happened, because, curiously, I did not see it just once. A half an hour or an hour earlier, I had imagined it. The person in my thoughts was -- like the person lying in the street -- faceless, anonymous, n'importe qui. The French phrase returns to me again and again, sometimes in my dreams after watching an episode of French in Action in a rather half-hearted attempt to retain what French I managed to apprendre; interestingly, the whole show in the first 10 episodes is dedicated to characterising, to naming and giving features to the names -- Mireille, Robert. Indeed, I stared, but I couldn't marvel at this unknown, unglorified being.

N'importe qui.


But the anonymous always seems to have an inner drive towards being named -- it doesn't matter what name. It is incitation, if not incantation. And the reflex to fill in the blanks is an unpleasant one, like cringing in response to a sharp pain. Anxiety stirs thought, and the cipher body became filled with personal meaning -- though it never lost its shape. Scenarios sliced through my thoughts -- (and always the pleading voice of self-preserving 'reason' interposing: But I don't even know her, how can I be affected this way? I have no right to be affected this way! It has nothing to do with me!) -- and morphed into hypothetical mourning. But who was it that I was mourning?

A few days before that I had been in London at a conference. I spoke about death and purposiveness and beauty -- or I tried to. I feel like my paper was more eulogistic in tone than academic, but this blog isn't perhaps the best place to reflect on that, except that it seems to be part of the constellation of this entry.
London for me is and has always been an unheimlich city; it is where I can be alone, and often where I find my eyes have been opened in ways I know they can be, but rarely are. I always end up in the same places: Bloomsbury might as well be home; the rest of London is a labyrinth to me.

The National Gallery, however, was on my itinerary this time because there was an exhibition there that interested me, called "Facing the Modern: The Portrait in Vienna 1900". The exhibition's inclusions ranged from the marvellous colours of Makart to a row of death masks, including Gustav Mahler's.

So I don't know how the story ends, if the end has been reached, or if I dreamt it all while wake.

Wohin ich geh? Ich geh, ich wandre in die Berge.

And then there was Yeats

This other man I had dreamed

A drunken, vainglorious lout.

He had done most bitter wrong

To some who are near my heart,   

Yet I number him in the song;

He, too, has resigned his part

In the casual comedy;

He, too, has been changed in his turn,   

Transformed utterly:

A terrible beauty is born.

Das Kleinwesen bedroht unbewusst: Mich wirst du nicht halten können! Ich sprenge die Grenze deiner alt werdenden Hände, schön wie sie doch sind. Aber nein, das waren zwei Stimmen in diesem Satz; eine Andere hat von den schönen Händen gesprochen, nicht das Kleine. Das Kleine ist durchdringender, spricht wie ein Mensch am Ende seines Lebens, der plötzlich die Macht der Prophezeiung besitzt und diese Macht dann übt. Das Kleine aber braucht keine Worte, es hat sein Wesen, sein Wesen ist sein Beweis, und Du brauchst auch eigentlich keinen Zeichendeuter. Die Zeichen sind Dir klar. Sie sind nicht mal wirkliche Zeichen -- eher immer wieder neu geformte Bestätigungen. Ja! Wir brauchen keine Zeichen: So denkst Du von Zeit zu Zeit.
Und trotzdem deutet das Kleine mit den Fingerspitzen nach der Kerzenflamme, nach welcher der Schmetterling mit Sehnsucht wallt, denn es will die Wärme und das Licht prüfen. Und dann bist Du, schwaches Geschöpf, wieder von den Wörtern des Kleinen abhängig. Du wartest, und hoffst, es sagt aus seinem schönen Mund die Wörter die Du eben gesagt hast -- ein Speigel der Dich erkennt. Und wenn sie ausbleiben, so bleibt Deine Hoffnung verborgen im Dunkel der Unsicherheit. Edelsteinige kleine Wörter, nur Kieselsteine wenn es sein muss, kleine kieselsteinige Wörter -- aber nichts? Das gibt zu bedenken, ob Du wirklich keine Zeichen brauchst.