The Picturesque as Art of the Average: Stifter's Statistical Poetics of Observation

Abstract

In his famous preface to the Many-Colored Stones (1852), Adalbert Stifter situates the work of the modern poet within a progressive history of scientific observation. Like the scientist, the kind of poet Stifter strives to be is someone who collects and assembles experiences. And just as progress in mankind's knowledge of nature is reflected in the progress of science, so the progress in mankind's knowledge of man is reflected in poetry. The modern poet is a researcher of humankind, a Menschenforscher (Stifter 2.2: 13), 1 and his methods of research keep pace with the historical improvement of knowledge. In man's childhood, when his was still untouched by science, men's attention was captured by the proximate and (11), by great and striking exceptions: in the natural realm, thunder, lightning, volcanic eruptions (10); in the moral sphere, physical strength, courage, violent emo- tions (15). Later, with the advent of a scientific eye of the mind—das geistige (Auge) der Wissenschaft (11)—men became less distracted by conspicuous singularities and began to perceive the whole and the general (das Ganze und Allgemeine, 10). By patiently collecting after grain and obser- vation after observation (11) of recurrent and unremarkable phenomena, man was able to open his mind's eye to the hitherto overlooked realm of the usual and the common. The result for both science and poetry is a reversal in the valuation of natural and moral phenomena. What is great are not storm winds, crashing waves, earthquakes, but Das Wehen der Luft das Rieseln des Was- sers das Wachsen der Getreide das Wogen des Meeres das Grunen der Erde (10); not mighty movements of the soul like wrath, the thirst for vengeance, an inflamed spirit that strives for activity, but (e)in ganzes Leben voll Ge- rechtigkeit Einfachheit Bezwingung seiner selbst Verstandesgema ¨sheit Wirk- samkeit in seinem Kreise (12). The sublime is now found in what had earlier seemed small, in the gewohnlichen alltaglichen in Unzahl wieder- kehrenden Handlungen der Menschen (14). The task for the poet is to show the greatness of the usual and the everyday, to make the common appear as