Stimmung as an Aesthetic Category: On Influx & Efflux

Abstract

Stimmung as an Aesthetic Category: On Influx & Efflux Friederike Reents (bio) In order to “add something to the aesthetic” within the “formative process” (Bennett x) of “influx and efflux,” I would like to engage not only with Walt Whitman, but with Jane Bennett on the aesthetic category of the German word Stimmung, which is not widely used in English-language criticism and lacks a one-word equivalent in this language. As a “half-thing” (Schmitz 21) between the “inside and outside,” the aesthetic category Stimmung seems to offer an answer to the question being posed in Influx & Efflux: “how to think about human agency in a world teeming with powerful nonhuman influences.” Stimmung seems to be very close to the idea of Jane Bennett’s book: it represents the “hover-time of transformation” (x), the “interval between the impression and the expression” (Thoreau, qtd. in Bennett x), between the “influx and efflux.” Via Stimmung, the I becomes “absorbent and creative”; Stimmung, just like Influx & Efflux, “sketch[es] out another mode of subjectivity and action.” Stimmung, usually translated as “mood” or “atmosphere,” on the one hand, or “attunement,” on the other,1 has had a remarkable comeback not only in critical discourse of the past decade but in contemporary literature and poetics as well. This comeback seems [End Page 1042] to be connected to the bridging function possessed by Stimmung and its intellectual, potentially highly connective idea between subject and object. Stimmung belongs to the history of music theory, where it can mean simply “tuning,” but where it was also used to describe the psychological effects of the medium. The word has since been used metaphorically (intermedially) to describe everything from landscape paintings to Romantic poetry to modern art. In existential and neo-phenomenological discourse, Stimmung is understood as a “half-thing” (“Halbding”), one that can be physically sensed but which is neither visible nor touchable, etc. Through a reading of the collaborative poem State of Gunk. Swine in Full Mourning (from Helmet of Phlox, a nineteen-chapter treatise by a collective of five German poets), I will attempt to show that by means of Stimmung, to use Bennett’s words, the “forces of nonhuman agencies and the ubiquity of stupendous, ethereal influences are acknowledged, become more felt, and given more of their due, become slightly more susceptible to being inflected”—maybe even “toward an egalitarian politics” (116). The concept of Stimmung tries to add something to the idea of “influx and efflux” in order to be open and attentive, susceptible to others and welcoming influences, perhaps even to realize the idea of an ecological democracy. In the treatise Helm aus Phlox, Ann Cotten, Daniel Falb, Steffen Popp, Hendrik Jackson, and Monika Rinck include in their discussion of problems that they encounter while writing poetry the (un)translatability of the word Stimmung(en), as exemplified by their collaborative poem Status Matsch. Schweine in Volltrauer (State of Gunk. Swine in Full Mourning; 92). It is worth reading that text against the background of Jane Bennett’s explorations of “the experience of being continuously subject to influence and still managing to add something to the mix” (xiii): State of Gunk. Swine in Full MourningPig brain in the air, pig brain in the air!Who is there? Who is there?Disembodied heads on a conveyor beltblow blow mush!blow blow mush! then along came a clever little translatorthen along came a clever little translator why, you’re ill!pins and needles in the arms, pins and needles in the legsthe brains are wobbling, and flying from brain to brain!No one understands except the translator!No one understands except the translator!2 [End Page 1043] Status Matsch. Schweine in VolltrauerSchweinhirn in der Luft. Schweinhirn in der Luft!Wer nach mir ruft? Wer nach mir ruft?abgetrennte Köpfe auf einem Förderbandpust pust Brei!pust pust Brei! da kam eine kluge Übersetzerin daherda kam eine kluge Übersetzerin daher ihr seid ja krank!die Arme kribbeln, die Beine kribbelndie Hirne schwabbeln, und fliegen von Hirn zu Hirn!Das versteht nur die Übersetzerin!Das versteht nur die Übersetzerin! (92) The poem perplexes the reader with what seem to...