The Queer Voice and Gaze in Eichendorff’s Das Marmorbild

Abstract

This essay investigates the alliance of ocularcentrism and cis-heteronormativity as canonical formations in Joseph von Eichendorff’s 1819 novella Das Marmorbild, which enact a process of masculine subjectivity development through silencing the protagonist’s queer voice of difference. Furthermore, this essay argues that the novella transposes the esthetic encounter of viewing and listening to mimoplastic performances such as tableaux vivants into the narrative and shows how the male protagonist’s ability to articulate his desires vis-à-vis both male and female figures is calibrated through these mutual performances’ queer temporality. Drawing on tropes from the Western visual canon, this essay demonstrates how the story’s visual configurations work in tandem with a cis-heteronormativity to eliminate the disruptive potential of queer voices to cis-heteronormative sensory order. Nevertheless, this discussion problematizes the condition of the possibility of the canonical alignment and influence of cis-heteronormativity and visuality as it locates their motivation in patriarchal culture’s organization around homosocial desires.