Peter Weiss's Fluchtpunkt, Language and the Search for Authentic Being

Abstract

The relationship between language and reality has intrigued many literati and philosophers, albeit that well into the 19th century, this relationship was still relatively unproblematic. For the enlightened thinker, mankind had access to reality through language, since the act of perception of the world, any intellectual activity, took place concomitantly with the linguistic act, i.e. in verbalizing one's perception. As Wilhelm von Humboldt's Schriften zur Sprachphilosophie show paradigmatically for 19th century German idealism, the structure of language was found to be congruent with reality, which resulted in a stable and perfect harmony between world, language, and the individual. According to Humboldt, language was an entirely logical Zwischenwelt, a mediator between individual and world whose grammatical structure shaped and organized the individual's Weltansicht (Humboldt, Schriften... 434) and to which each generation was able to contribute, for instance by way of semantic alterations and expansion of vocabulary. By the end of the 19th century, Humboldt's idealistic philosophy of language had given way to a growing Sprachskepsis—an erosion of confidence in the language-world congruence—which found early expression in the writings of German naturalist authors such as Arno Holz and Johannes Schlaf. They questioned language's ability to convey precisely and directly the minute and intricate details which naturalist writing, concerned with the painstakingly accurate depiction of the human condition, called for. Their skepticism found a forceful echo in the reflections of writers like Rainer Maria Rilke, both Heinrich and Thomas Mann, and Hugo von Hofmannsthal, whose views on language clearly showed a radical break with the notion of apriority of language in favor of a critical, skeptical, and ultimately pessimistic attitude towards the linguistic act: language was dissected, its nexus to reality scrutinized, resulting in a growing disenchantment with language as it was used, the deterioration and fossilization of words which ultimately rendered them meaningless, and the limitations that language as an historical, diachronic medium – implying semantic stability and linguistic continuity – forced upon what was increasingly