The Avant-Garde Sprachkritik of Paul Hatvani: Mysticism, Eroticism, and Heterodox Religious Experience

Abstract

The works of the Austrian-Jewish author and theorist Paul Hatvani (1892–1975) have often been overlooked, but his Nachlaß suggests that he was a significant figure in the Wiener Moderne literary circles. Having been influenced by the quietist-linguistic philosophy and language crisis of the period, his version of Sprachkritik was unique in its indebtedness to Jewish mysticism, the Kabbalah. Hatvani’s Sprachkritik distinguishes scientific and philosophical knowledge from poetical and mystical experientiality, and his poetics establishes a modern variant of mysticism. Owing to the link with the Jewish tradition, the gender dimorphism of kabbalistic theosophy becomes omnipresent in his theoretical thinking about language and evokes symbolic eroticism. Such eroticism echoes the heterodox religious experiences of mysticism, such as inexpressible ecstasy, which Hatvani posits at the heart of his language criticism and poetics.