German Poetry Research Articles

‘What lies beyond’: Mimesis and transcendence in the portrait poetry and poetic translations of Peter Dane

Abstract A former professor of English, Peter Dane spent the last years of his life as a poet and environmentalist in the Bay of Islands, New Zealand. In his poetry, unlike that of many (post) modern writers, this revolutionary traditionalist celebrated form and beauty as a means of realizing and contemplating the limited and contingent, yet potentially transcendent and universal liberty of the arts. In his portrait poetry, the transcendental ‘beyond’ is ‘firmly rooted in the everyday’. I argue that according to Dane’s portrait poems, a poet is not a genius by dint of their superior skill or of their calculating or knowing mind, but on the strength of living the tension between the human experience of transience and the intended but never fully obtainable telos of art, which is not perfection but ‘its own indicative stillness [...] and a stillness beyond it’. Assisted by Walter Benjamin’s and Lawrence Venuti’s theories, this article also looks at Dane’s renderings of German poetry into English. For Dane, translation of poetry does not consist primarily in the accurate rendering of propositions or poetic devices but in invoking those ‘transcendent moments’ that touch and alter our being. Based on readings of Dane’s poetry about Michelangelo and August Kekulé and Dane’s translation of Novalis’ poem ‘Wenn nicht mehr Zahlen und Figuren’, this article analyses, contextualizes and celebrates Dane’s transcendental poetry.

Meditations in a churchyard: An exploration of Afrikaans graveyard poets and graveyard poetry

The term ‘kerkhofgedig’ (‘churchyard poem’) does not feature in academic discussions on Afrikaans poetry, neither does it appear in Cloete’s authoritative work of reference, Literêre terme en teorieë (1992). There are mainly three reasons for this omission in Afrikaans literature. In the first place the Afrikaans word ‘elegie’ (elegy) has become a superordinate for most poems dealing with grief or melancholy about a certain event or condition, for example, a lamentation, obituary poem, dirge, requiem, et cetera. Secondly, graveyard poetry is associated with (English) poems and poets from the 18th century, not with more contemporary Afrikaans poets. In the third place, the elegy and the churchyard poem are related poetic forms which share many characteristics, making it difficult to distinguish between the two genres. In Afrikaans literature the churchyard poem is therefore not regarded as an independent poetic form with unique features, as is the case with churchyard poetry in English, French, German and Dutch. Nevertheless, a number of Afrikaans poets have written churchyard poetry over the decades. In this article it will be determined whether Afrikaans graveyard poetry does in fact exist. This will be accomplished by providing a historical background to graveyard poetry and by comparing traditional graveyard poems to modern poems. Then churchyard poetry will be compared to the elegy. In conclusion a clear definition for graveyard poetry will be formulated. The following questions will consequently be answered: What is graveyard poetry and does it exist in Afrikaans?

НЕМЕЦКАЯ ПОЭЗИЯ: ЛИНГВИСТИЧЕСКИЕ И СТИЛИСТИЧЕСКИЕ ОСОБЕННОСТИ ПЕРЕВОДА НА ЧУВАШСКИЙ ЯЗЫК

Цель. Статья посвящена особенностям перевода немецкой поэзии на чувашский язык. На примере стихотворения Г. Гейне «Lorelei» и его перевода на чувашский язык, выполненном чувашским поэтом Г. Шевкен, проводится сравнительно-сопоставительный анализ перевода и оригинала, определяется качество перевода произведения. Цель исследования заключается в комплексном анализе перевода стихотворения Г. Гейне «Lorelei» на чувашский язык, рассмотрении лингвистических и стилистических особенностей перевода поэзии.Метод или методология проведения работы. Основными методами данной работы являются сопоставительный, лингвистический, описательный, историко-литературный методы исследования.Результаты. В статье проведен сопоставительный лингвистический анализ перевода и оригинала стихотворения Г. Гейне «Lorelei», показано качество перевода произведения.Область применения результатов. Полученные результаты могут найти свое применение в учебных курсах по общему и сравнительному языкознанию, типологии языков, теории художественного перевода, стилистике, а также на практических занятиях по иностранному языку.

German Poetry in African Languages: The Translation of Selected German Poems From an Intercultural Perspective

German Poetry in African Languages: The Translation of Selected German Poems From an Intercultural Perspective

Inimkonna hämarus: Marie Under ja saksa ekspressionism / The Twilight of Humanity: Marie Under's Translations of German Expressionist Poetry

Teesid: 1920. aastal avaldas Marie Under eestikeelse tõlkevalimiku saksa uuemast lüürikast, milles suurim osakaal on ekspressionistlikel luuletajatel. Koos selle vaatlusega käsitleb artikkel Underi hinnangut ekspressionismile kui kultuurinähtusele ning ekspressionistlikke siirdeid kahes Underi luulekogus, „Verivalla“ ja „Pärisosa“. Luule tõlkimine võib toita luuletaja loomingulisi allikaid, kuid huvitavad on ka need juhtumid, kui luuletaja neist läbitöötatud vormidest lõpuks loobub. In 1920 Estonian poet Marie Under published an anthology of translations from recent German poetry, the largest number of which were expressionists. Most of the poems were chosen from Kurt Pinthus’ anthology Menschheitsdämmerung: Symphonie jüngster Dichtung, published in 1920, a carefully composed summa of German expressionist poetry. Under’s first examples of expressionist translations, published in the album of the Siuru group of poets in 1919 met with arch and scathing criticism, particularly on the level of style: ostensibly she had “beautified” expressionist rhetoric. She was not deterred, but persisted, and alongside the volume of translations published a short critical article on expressionism and its ethical dimension in the newspaper Tallinna Teataja, where she outlined Kurt Pinthus’ justifications for the composition and structuring of his edited anthology. This paper explores Under’s part in the cultural transfer of German expressionist lyric poetry into Estonian: her selections of authors and individual poems, the periodization of the movement through the table of contents, the emphases and omissions of the resultant whole. Secondly, and more importantly the paper investigates the impact of expressionist topics and rhetoric on Under’s two next volumes of poetry, Verivalla (Land of Blood, 1919–1920) and Pärisosa (Portion, 1920–1922). The main focus of this analysis is on Under’s lexical experiments and stylistic registers, and the lyric strategies she adopted based on three poets: Ernst Stadler, Georg Heym, and Else Lasker-Schüler

„Himlische[s] beginen“, „trefliche[r] vortgang“

AbstractThis essay asks the question of why, in 1647, Jesaias Rompler von Löwenhalt ousts Martin Opitz from the primal scene of German poetry, replacing him instead with Georg Rodolf Weckherlin. According to one hypothesis whose plausibility must be verified, the latter published his odes precisely in the year in which the Thirty Years’ War began, namely in 1618. Rompler, in turn, needed this temporal parallelism between war and literature in order to situate his present within the framework of an apocalyptic scenario. With the conclusion of the Thirty Years’ War, he expects a time of salvation which exhibits both political and literary features.

Писать стихи в эпоху перемен: основные тенденции поэзии после 1989 года в России и Германии

The paper provides a review of the collection of scientific articles (in the German language) dealing with the study of the main trends in German and Russian poetry after 1989: Gedichte schreiben in Zeiten der Umbruche. Tendenzen der Lyrik seit 1989 in Russland und Deutschland / Hrsg. von Henriecke Stahl und Hermann Korte. Band 2. Leipzig: BiblionMedia, 2016. 676 S. This publication is an outstanding event in literary studies. The reviewed collection of scientific articles reflects mutual interest of German scientists in contemporary Russian poetry, and Russian philologists in poetic works by German authors. The articles in this collection cover the latest main trends and artistic landmarks of contemporary Russian and German poetry, reveal the new values and traditions in poetry, characterize the work of famous and significant poets of the last decades. Materials, presented in 5 sections, conceptualize the new trends in the development of contemporary poetry that appeared during historically significant periods for Germany and Russia (1989, 2000), the new nature of poetic texts (heterogeneity, performativity), determined by the accelerated socio-cultural changes and migration processes in the countries. In the new historical and aesthetic conditions, in the new information culture, new forms of existence of poetry are developing, determined by the art market, publishers’ interests and the new demands of readers. Contemporary poetry is increasingly living in the social media (Vkontakte, LiveJournal), acting as a platform for political discussions on the topic of the day. Today the trend of objectification of poetry is an important stage in its development. Free verse and experimental poetry, “primitivist” and political poetry with its protest potential, intermedia and visual poetry projects in Russia and Germany are perceived as a sign of that objectification. The main significance of the collection under review is determined by the theoretical understanding of poetic practices and artistic languages, coexisting today in the poetic landscape, as well as a two-way analysis techniques in the study of the latest Russian and German poetry.

Boris Pasternak and Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock (about Pasternak’s Poem The Starry River of a Week Ago)

The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that Boris Pasternak’s poem The Starry River of a Week Ago (1917) is a description of the creation process and a reflection on the nature of this process. To support this view, attention will be drawn to some significant sets of images and themes in this text that are found also in a group of five poems by Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock, in which ice-skating functions as a metaphor of creation. These poems will give rise to a specific tradition within German poetry where ice-skating is symbolic of both the rapture and the risk of inspiration. In the last part of the paper it will be shown that, although there is no evidence of Pasternak’s acquaintance with Klopstock’s poetry, his thorough knowledge of German language and literature leaves little doubt about this acquaintance. Moreover, it is possible to find a number of affinities in the way of thinking of these two writers.

Rainy Sun

Rainy Sun Ilma Rakusa (bio) Translated by Francesca Bell (bio) Keywords Ilma Rakusa, Francesca Bell, Rainy Sun, German translation, German to English, German poetry In the Maltese Church the American kisses her dark groom and the priest watches before he grants the blessing why did the choice land on Prague why on this rainy day white veils belie nothing but the girl in the wheelchair wants to make it over the bridge before the lightning gets going no easy task between the tourists and street performers before the row of saints shrouded in spider webs Make way! I want to shout as the thunder crashes from giant gray clouds now they are already running the unprotected and the girl spins the wheels even faster as far as I know it is Dora from Gdansk already soaking wet Nepomuk didn’t want to fix it for her not today poor sparrow And Kafka so I read in the Franciscan Church reassures his relatives they can take their time with the woolen vest he has a Fur vest that will do Just an easy three stitches every day That was in February twenty-four before he retrieved the Lebensbestätigung from the police and Hausfrau Dr. Busse set out a rocking chair for him veranda sun it was supposed to warm him I ran toward it as it rained itself out sat at the place of the pendulum with an open view of the tower a waiter rubbed his upper lip a Russian spoke to his suitcase no flies the sky was clear [End Page 307] Ilma Rakusa ilma rakusa is a celebrated Swiss author, poet, translator (from Russian, Hungarian, French, and Serbo-Croatian into German), and journalist (Neue Züricher Zeitung, Die Zeit). She has translated, among others, the works of Anton Chekhov, Marguerite Duras, and Joseph Brodsky. Recent books include Mehr Meer. Erinnerungspassagen (winner of the Swiss Book Prize), Einsamkeit mit rollendem “r,” and Impressum: Langsames Licht. Francesca Bell francesca bell’s poems appear in many journals, including B O D Y, New Ohio Review, North American Review, Poetry Northwest, Prairie Schooner, and Rattle. Her translations appear in Berkeley Poetry Review, Blue Lyra Review, Circumference, Poetry in Translation, and Laghoo. She is the Marin Poetry Center’s events coordinator and the poetry editor of River Styx. Copyright © 2017 The Massachusetts Review, Inc

Meeting Barthes at Fischer-Dieskau’s Mill

Scholars have traditionally analyzed Lieder from a perspective of relative objectivity, despite a longstanding recognition of the situated character of hermeneutic work within musicology and music theory. This research essentially suppresses the personal aspects that may condition it: for example, a scholar’s background in performance and tendency toward co-performance, or repeated encounters with a song, recording, and a specific singer’s voice. There has been one additional omission resulting from this tendency to project objectivity in Anglo-American scholarship. Native Anglophones have neglected to explore how our varied but pervasive roles as second-language readers or speakers inflect the way that we hear and write about German song. In response to these lacunae, this article offers a close reading of the song “Am Feierabend” from Franz Schubert’s Die schöne Müllerin (D. 795) in relationship to a 1971 recording by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Gerald Moore. I examine the role that my linguistic identity—as an Anglophone who enjoys an unsteady fluency in German—plays in an essentially co-performing understanding of the song’s poem, musical details, and the particular vocal decisions of Fischer-Dieskau. Beginning in conversation with Roland Barthes’s “The Grain of the Voice,” the essay introduces perspectives from literary theorists, linguists, musicologists, and music theorists to clarify the issues of materiality, meaning, linguistic identity, and rhythm that correspond to the experience of sung German poetry that the analysis traces. The analysis then focuses on the prominence of the German word “merkte” in Müller’s poem, Schubert’s setting, and Fischer-Dieskau’s rendering of the song. This account reevaluates traditional analytical practices concerning song, as well as past scholarship on Barthes’s claims within the “Grain” essay, by focusing on the issues of identity, linguistic materiality, meaning, and the love of the foreign in listening to Lieder.

Stylistics and the cultural context in literary translation

Considering the example of the translation of Njegoš’s The Mountain Wreath into the German language, the paper analyses the translational solutions that are dictated by the principles of the subject. The translator Alois Schmaus chose to take this step in order to bring home to the modern reader a world which appears to be archaic. He made this decision for two reasons. First, the German reader is unfamiliar with the historical context that is the subject of this poem; secondly the rules of prosody in Serbian and German do not match. By choosing to carry over the Serbian epic decasyllable, Schmaus favours the Serbian poetic tradition. From the historical point of view German verse, constructed as an Alexandrine, is burdened with the context of courtly poetics. The hexameter, meanwhile, which was introduced into German literature by Klopstock and later popularised by Voss and Goethe, appears in the context of the rise of the bourgeoisie. Both verses require changes while being translated, which affect the poem’s characteristics. In order to maintain authenticity, Schmaus pleads for the “Serbian trochee”: iamb and dactyl, metrical feet that are closer to the German language, would have impeded the setting the diaeresis and affected the syntax. Because of this, Schmaus places a spondee at the end of every verse and sets the historical context in the tradition of martyrdom.

Meremotiiv üleva pildikeeles: paari näitega eesti luulest

The article begins by explaining the background of sea motifs, which can be understood as sublime in the classical theory of arts, beginning with Pseudo-Longinus and continuing with Boileau and Burke, and the re-visitation of Aristotelian theory by the latter. This part of the article focuses on the observations of grandeur, dramatic change and danger in nature, which were defined as sublime in antiquity (based on examples from Homer and Genesis in Longinus or the Gigantomachy motifs in ancient art), as well as on the role of emotion (pathos) in the Sublime. The Renaissance and Early Modern Sublime reveal the continuation of these trends in Burke’s theories and the landscape descriptions of Radcliffe in the Mysteries of Udolpho. In the latter, we also see a quotation from Beattie’s Minstrel, whose motif of a sea-wrecked mariner represents the same type of sublime as Wordsworth’s Peele Castle (which, in its turn, was inspired by a painting by Sir George Beaumont). This sublimity is felt by human beings before mortal danger and nature’s untamed and excessive forces. In German poetry and art such sublimity can be seen in the works of Hölderlin or Caspar David Friedrich. However, 16th and 17th century poetry and painting rarely focused on such sublimity and preferred the more classical harmonia discors, in which ruins or the sea were just a slight accent underlining general harmony.The article continues, focusing on the sea motifs in Estonian art and poetry. In Estonian art (initially created by Baltic Germans), the reflections of the magnificent Sublime in the paintings by August Matthias Hagen can be seen as the influence of Caspar David. In poetry, we see sublime grandeur in the ode called Singer by the first Estonian poet, Kristjan Jaak Peterson, who compared the might of the words of future Estonian poets to stormy torrents during a thunderstorm, in contrast to the Estonian poetry of his day, which he compared to a quiet stream under the moonlight. The grandeur, might and yearning for sublimity is reflected in the prose poem Sea (1905) by Friedebert Tuglas, who belonged to the Young Estonia movement. This movement was more interested in modernity and city life than in romantically dangerous or idyllic landscapes. However, the main trends of Estonian poetry seem to dwell on idyllic landscapes and quietly sparkling seas, as for example, in a poem by Villem Ridala or sea landscape by Konrad Mägi. We also see this type of sublimity at the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st centuries in the soundscapes of the sea by Ester Mägi or paintings by Aili Vint.After World War II, the influence of the romantic ode genre and sublime can be seen in a translation of Byron’s Stanzas for Music (1815) by Minni Nurme (1950). In Byron’s gentle, sweet and serene picture of a lulled and charmed ocean, the underlying dimension of the divine, and the grandeur and power of the music is not expressed explicitly. Nurme tries to bring the translation into accord with the ode genre, thereby causing a shift from the serene to the grand sublime, by focusing on the depth of water and feelings, the greatness of the ocean, and most of all, the rupture of the soul, which has been the most important factor in the sublime theory of Pseudo-Longinus. Her translation also seems influenced by her era of post-war Soviet Estonia (so that Byron’s allusions to the divine word have been replaced by the might of nature). In the same period, Estonia’s most vivid description of the romantic sublime appears in the choral poem Northern Coast (1958) composed by Gustav Ernesaks, with lyrics by another Estonian poet, Kersti Merilaas.Coastline in a leap, on the spur of attacking; each other tightly the sea and the land here are holding The rocky banks, breast open to winds, are hurling downwards the pebbles and chunks. Its adversary’s waves now grasp for its feet, gnawing and biting into the shores. Stop now! No further from here, neither of you can proceed any more! Full of might is the sea, more powerful is the land.

Paul Celan in Conversation with Walter Benjamin: “The Secret Open”

This essay is focused on Paul Celan as a reader of Walter Benjamin. It analyzes Celan's poem, “Port Bou – deutsch?”, which consists almost exclusively of quotations from Benjamin's review of a book on German poetry written by a scholar from Stefan George's circle, Max Kommerell, in 1929. Benjamin's essay is an act of resistance against George's idolization of poetic purity and mythologization of the German tradition. In his poem, written decades after the collapse of the Third Reich, Celan re-reads Benjamin's review in light of contemporary events and reflects anew upon the problem of purification. Celan's poem, “contaminated” with quotations, is an attempt to purify Benjamin's essay and, at the same time, a condemnation of purity. Aware of these intrinsic contradictions, Celan does not consider publishing his poem. Citation, the ground for the poetic encounter, reveals itself in this poem as a political gesture.

Идиостилевые аспекты употребления ключевых структур в немецкой поэзии (на материале лирических произведений Г. Гейне)

Идиостилевые аспекты употребления ключевых структур в немецкой поэзии (на материале лирических произведений Г. Гейне)

Editor’s Note

Editor’s Note Carolyn Kuebler Sie liebt dich, ja ja ja, so the Beatles song goes. In terms of word-for-word translation, She loves you, yeah yeah yeah found its way relatively easily into the German language. The rest of the song, though, went less willingly, and it turns out that after singing two of their hits in German the Beatles threw up their British hands and abandoned this form of international outreach forever. The journey from German into English, and vice versa, comes with more guideposts than, say, the road from Chinese or Arabic, and yet the difficulty—or, as many translators would say, the fun—quickly rears its head. Even John F. Kennedy’s simple statement of solidarity with West Germany back in 1963—Ich bin ein Berliner—caused a kerfuffle, as some suggested that he had just called himself a jelly doughnut. It’s now the stuff of urban legend, but the story continues to get passed around, both because it’s hard to resist and because there really is a possibility for misinterpretation latent in that indefinite article “ein.” When we ask any work of art to make the jump from one medium—one language—to another, not only do the words themselves need literal, musical, and tonal translation, but the references, the implied history and culture, must go along with it. When a poet refers to Allied bombings or “old sentimental state-bees” in German, it means something very different from when an English-speaking writer does. To see things from another side we have to shift in our chairs, sometimes uncomfortably, and it can feel like listening in on a private conversation between strangers. But we also get a chance to see something of the Germany we don’t know from driving their cars or watching CNN, and to dismantle the loudest and most persistent stereotypes. The selection of writing from Germany assembled here came about as the result of both intention and accident—NER’s ongoing intention to offer an inspiring, provocative range of literary voices, and the happy accident of our own Ellen Hinsey’s living for a time in Berlin. While there, Ellen read a particularly intriguing essay about poetry, notebook-keeping, and Hannah Arendt, and she suggested it would be worth translating for NER. As you’ll see here, she was right. She also met the essay’s author, the writer Marie Luise Knott, who offered to share her familiarity with the scene to help us choose a selection of new German poetry. Add to that a call for submissions, a series of meetings in Berlin cafés, and several time-zone-jumping phone calls, and the result is that this issue contains not only a multitude of voices from the English-speaking world, as always, but also a multitude of voices from the German-speaking world. They meet here in our pages. While a group of dedicated and accomplished translators did the heavy [End Page 6] lifting here, we English speakers couldn’t resist occasionally dipping into the process ourselves. We puzzled, for instance, with translator Margitt Lehbert, over the idiom “mit dem Kopf durch die Wand” for longer than would seem prudent. Should we use another idiom—the similar but inaccurate “banging your head against a wall”—or should we just translate the words themselves? We noticed in the same essay that she translated the line “Der Stein, der vom Herzen fällt” to the idiom “the load off your mind,” even though the literal “The stone, from the heart falls” is much more lovely. But lovely language is not always the point. Sometimes a writer just wants to convey relief. When a German writer uses the word “kaput” it just means “broken,” but when we use it in English, it has a certain kind of panache, and implies, to my ear anyway, a more final kind of brokenness, also slightly comic. And then there are those words that we think of as quintessentially German, with their Romantic, brooding tones: Weltschmerz (world pain), Doppelganger (double goer), Treppenwitz (staircase wit), Sturm und Drang (storm and yearning). But I wonder, while we might hear quintessential Germanness...

Crossing Through the Present

Crossing Through the Present Ellen Hinsey and Marie Luise Knott (bio) It is difficult to situate poems in time and space. Some seem resolutely “of the moment,” presenting us with a reflective mirror of our present. Other poems situate themselves in an indeterminate space, simultaneously present and past. And others—as the Russian poet Osip Mandelstam once wrote—are always our future, always voyaging out ahead of us, whenever they were written. For this German poetry selection—which is not meant to be a definitive presentation of the vast contemporary scene, but only a small selection of its voices—the chosen poems partake of all of these categories. Above all, the dynamic and vibrant German poetry scene attempts to situate itself in the fragile present. The postwar period has passed, even though—as words and images in these poems attest—National Socialism continues, and will continue, to cast its long shadow. In the poem “Bee-Folk or the Good State,” as in many of Daniela Danz’s verses, the weight of history and myth is lifted by an almost physical feeling for rhythm and meter. Within her work—as well as that of others—we observe a merging of poetic and public spaces, and an attempt to discover a language that might decode the sources of power. In this selection the phenomenological present is also reflected in poems by Durs Grünbein and Jan Wagner, though they too are not devoid of warnings. Durs Grünbein’s “Artichokes,” whose descriptive accuracy Elizabeth Bishop would have appreciated, is nevertheless a catalogue of our potential savagery. In Jan Wagner’s at times disorienting space of the present, we are always at risk of sudden accidents and stalled trains. The effect of such poems is to heighten our awareness of what is directly before us, even if it remains difficult to interpret and full of encoded mystery. In other contributions, such as Lutz Seiler’s “homeward,” high stylistic intensity enacts a flight from dictatorship into the world of childhood—that unspoiled realm with its assumption of individual choices in life. Andreas Altmann’s language is simple and direct, yet the images hover like a profile briefly glimpsed in a dream. One of poetry’s most fundamental encounters is that with elemental nature, a force we will never fully master—neither its threat nor its creative beauty. Nature knows things that we do not. Against the backdrop of our repressed civilized world—in the poems of Sarah Kirsch or Esther Kinsky—this secret knowledge is magically evoked. The verses of Austrian poet Peter Waterhouse, however, translated by Iain Galbraith, revel in language’s materiality and possibilities, creating poetic works that defy gravity and directional orientation. Two poets of older generations, Christine Lavant—from the pre-war period—and Günter Kunert—a well-known poet of the postwar period— provide two types of codas for this selection. Kunert reflects on the vanity, follies, and terrors of the human condition, whereas Christine Lavant belongs perhaps to that group of poets who— while having existed before us in chronological time—are still somehow out ahead of us, in a future where a bit of the transcendent still breaks into our humanly realm. [End Page 38] Marie Luise Knott Marie Luise Knott has authored, edited, and translated over twenty books. She is a former editor-in-chief of the German edition of Le Monde Diplomatique. Knott has translated and edited volumes into German, including the work of poets Anne Carson and John Cage. Her recent books include Unlearning with Hannah Arendt (Other Press, 2014) and, as editor in both German and English, the Hannah Arendt–Gershom Scholem Correspondence (Suhrkamp, 2010; University of Chicago Press, 2017). She lives and works in Berlin. Copyright © 2016 Middlebury College Publications

Засади медієвістичного літературознавства у Львові в контексті сучасної германістичної медієвістики

The report noted the important scientific contribution of the World Literature Department of Ivan Franko National University of Lviv in medieval literature studies. It is emphasized that although the relevant literary school was not created, but there a serious foundation for literary phenomena of Western European Middle Ages research was laid, which was further developed. It is also indicated that primarily the publication of the textbooks The History of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance by M. S. Shapovalova, H. L. Rubanova and V. A. Motornyi, and The History of World literature. Western European Middle Ages (3rd – 14th cc.) by H. L. Rubanova contributed to this development. These textbooks are not only the source of information and guidance in the learning process, but also they convincingly demonstrated their scientific potential. The conception of the textbooks was analyzed, basing on the idea of comparative studies of Western medieval literature and the theory of historical anthropology, which developed under the influence of the Russian school recognized by western science. In relation with this complex and important area of interest for the department a number of current issues related to the latest medieval studies were outlined, which can be considered as vectors of investigation, namely the definition of historical knowledge, the understanding of otherness and modernity of medieval literature, highlighting the changing image of the Middle Ages within the great time, the interpretation of medieval culture world depiction. The analysis involved a review of known medievalist and literary critic I. Kachurovsky, who draws special attention to the need for providing the course in the history of Western medieval literature with relevant Ukrainian language materials, referring to the translation of the oldest monuments of Germanic poetry by Ivan Franko. The need for particular careful attention to the accumulated material for further development of this important field of literary research is ascertained.

The Cambridge Introduction to German Poetry by Judith Ryan (review)

Reviewed by: The Cambridge Introduction to German Poetry by Judith Ryan Charlotte Melin The Cambridge Introduction to German Poetry. By Judith Ryan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Pp. x + 238. Cloth $72.00. Paper $25.19. ISBN 978-0521687201. Conceived as a German studies approach to poetry, Judith Ryan’s solidly planned introduction is a reader-friendly history of literature designed for student audiences, yet also rewarding material for scholars and others interested in the lyric genre. Ryan, of course, is one of the leading authorities on German poetry and the depth of her knowledge in this area indelibly shapes the chapters, which deftly combine interpretations of poems in literary context with thoughtful treatment of historical connections and aesthetic movements. Thus, for example, in a chapter examining poetic roles in early poetic texts, Ryan begins with close readings of several works written in Middle High German to set the stage for analysis of the problem of poetic persona. The chapter concludes with an insightful discussion of the romantic nostalgia for all things medieval and Paul Celan’s appropriation of this tradition in the poem “Matière de Bretagne.” Other chapters have a similarly ambitious scope, reflecting Ryan’s obvious conviction that poetry functions as a dynamic site of knowledge production where issues of representation, subjectivity, ethics, and discourse abound. The volume is organized into thematically focused chapters that proceed overall in a chronological sequence through German literary history. An introductory chapter (“Exploring the Poem”) provides several models for how to approach a poem through different entry points or perspectives. Here Ryan describes poems as puzzles, emphasizing the openness of the interpretive process by displaying how varied approaches yield different readings of texts. Following the second chapter on “Poetic Roles in Early Song-Lyrics,” Ryan turns her attention to “Devotional Poetry,” “The Rhetoric of Passion,” “Classical Antiquity and Modern Experience,” “Romantic Poetry and the Problem of Lyric Unity,” “The Self and the Senses,” “Modernism and Difficulty,” “Poetry after Auschwitz,” and finally “Political Poetry.” Poems discussed in the volume are quoted in full text version and accompanied by an English prose paraphrase. The close readings Ryan performs of these examples are impeccably done and a pleasure to read—striking illustrations of how to interpret the complex interplay of form and meaning in works of the lyric genre. Some of the most compelling interpretations of individual texts explore the work of poets who have long occupied Ryan’s research (like Rainer Marie Rilke), but the readings of other poetry offer rich insights as well. Refreshingly, the volume incorporates a generous sampling of examples prior to the age of Goethe, including poems by Paul Fleming, Andreas Gryphius, and Walter von der Vogelweide. In addition to poets [End Page 407] whose work certainly would be expected in such a volume (from Goethe, Brentano, Eichendorff, and Heine to Benn, Brecht, and the postwar generation that includes Bachmann, Celan, Enzensberger, and Sachs), work by many other poets appears as well. An emphasis is placed on the lyric genre tradition, which means predominantly short poems with strong aesthetic orientation, thus Hofmannsthal, Hölderlin, Mörike, and Trakl receive treatment, alongside less conventional selections by Günter Grass, Ulla Hahn, and others. Poetry scholars will be pleased with the breadth of the selection, though likely to notice that it follows implicit criteria that no doubt reflect the pragmatic limitations that such a project faces in terms of space and inclusiveness. Ryan has, for example, written about the tradition of the long poem in German literature, yet wisely elects to exclude it from the present volume, mentioning for instance Durs Grünbein’s poetic cycle Porzellan: Poem vom Untergang meiner Stadt (2005) only briefly. Likewise experimental poetry, performance works, and multimedia productions, which play an increasingly important role in poetic discourse of the twenty-first century, are not a part of this survey. Faculty teaching courses about poetry would presumably find it useful to supplement this textual presentation with audio and visual materials found, for example, at the curated website Lyrikline.org. They would also be well advised to consult the growing body of research on teaching poetry in foreign language courses, including the forthcoming 2015 American Association of University...

Malory and His European Contemporaries: Adapting Late Arthurian Romance Collections by Miriam Edlich-Muth (review)

miriam edlich-muth, Malory and His European Contemporaries: Adapting Late Arthurian Romance Collections. Arthurian Studies LXXXI. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2014. Pp. 199. isbn: 978-1-84384-367-2. $99.Miriam Edlich-Muth examines five late Arthurian chronographies, including Sir Thomas Malory's Morte Darthur, the Italian Tavola Ritonda, Ulrich Feutrer's German verse Buch der Abenteuer, the Dutch verse Lancelot compilation, and Michael Gonnot's French BN.fr.112 manuscript, in order to show how the adaptation process of each author can offer a better understanding of the texts themselves. Much adaptation scholarship focuses upon identifying a text's sources, noting differences and similarities; however, Edlich-Muth's work digs into how those similarities and differences compare to other late Arthurian adaptations, more specifically an author's presentation of a story's chronology and its characters, as well as the solutions achieved in the problems of creating an adaptation. From this analysis, she outlines certain shared adaptation strategies. Through diligent, detailed, and well-organized comparisons, this work proves that how a text is adapted matters, thus contributing to our understanding of Malory's work most of all, but also opening new doors for discovery about the other late Arthurian chronographies. In this way, Edlich-Muth provides her readers with a different kind of context through which to access Malory and his contemporaries.Edlich-Muth consciously uses the word 'chronography' to describe these collections. In doing so, she resists the more commonly used word 'cycle' as it does not offer the best representation of her comparative method. For her, tracing the chronological developments of the story as they align with the biography of King Arthur provides a better way to distinguish between the chronological and structural consistency of the five texts, as she explains in the Introduction. After emphasizing the value of this better adaptation vocabulary, in Chapter One, she provides the general overview of the source use of each of the five authors. Edlich-Muth asserts the importance of placing too much focus on source identification as it obscures the text itself. Instead, she points to the value of reading prologues, noting divisions within the works, and marking the methods of compilation; each of these access points provides a place to begin recognizing the difference between source influence and adaptor innovation (31).Chapters Two, Three, and Four showcase Edlich-Muth's close reading of how the texts employ some of the adaptation strategies she has identified. …

The Romantic and Symbolist Sublime: A Review Essay

The Romantic and Symbolist Sublime: A Review Essay Phillip M. Richards (bio) One rarely thinks of the Romantic and Symbolist convention of the sublime in relation to the formal structures of African American verse. The expansive imagery of infinitude associated with the genre of the sublime is a crucial element throughout American as well as in African American poetry following the first two decades of the twentieth century. If aesthetic appreciation is grounded in the creation of interest by contrasting distinctive elements amidst regularly arranged or conceived patterns, then the sublime becomes an important formal device in black poetry. Such interest emerges inevitably as all-inclusive gestures of transcendence emerge from ordered intellectual and formal patterns. The articulation of this aesthetic phenomenon thus understandably provides a means of assessing the most recent group of contemporary black, female poets. Their achievement in this regard is a mark of their technical development contrasted to that of their immediate predecessors as well as to the central figures in the tradition of African American literature as a whole. Such an assessment has become necessary, largely because of the contemporary absence of a critical perspective that weighs the literary powers of the plethora of black women poets now multiplying from the available opportunities for publication offered by small presses every year. Just as importantly, we are failing to perform the act of critical evaluation by which we winnow out from a growing mass of writing what we wish to transmit from generation to generation in our classrooms, scholarship, literary journalism, and anthologies—which traditionally have figured in the selective assessment of African American literary tradition from generation to generation. These literary historical and evaluative discussions demand a formalist consideration of how the romantic and symbolist sublime has been deployed by the most recent crop of African American women poets to whom I refer above. In examining their use of the dominant conventions of Romanticism and Symbolism we see their connection not only with African American poetic discourse but also Anglo-European literary traditions—a continuity with distant roots in the highly metaphorical languages of early American culture, but also grounded in the literary transcendentalist writers: Emerson, Whitman, and Emily Dickinson—a group which in turn looks back to Romanticism as it developed in English and German poetry. From the second decade of the twentieth century, important black poets such as Langston Hughes and Sterling Brown assimilated black folk tradition into a literary language, which might carry the weight of essentially philosophical themes despite the fact that they often denied their engagement in the abstract reflection that these formulations demanded. At the heart of this philosophical tradition was their representation of the black folk’s angst [End Page 186] before an existential situation characterized by either infinite joy or infinite hope. This reflection upon the meaning of human existence in a rigorously secular culture rejecting the existence of a divine supernatural entity underlies a central project of Romanticism, Post-Romanticism, and Modernism. The search for transcendent meaning in these philosophical cultures has led many thinkers to rearticulate religious discourse in secularized social, psychological, and intellectual terms. These attempts to create ultimate meanings absent the sacred appear vividly in what Thomas Carlyle called “natural supernaturalism” and more recently in Lionel Trilling’s concept of the “secularization of the spirit.” Clearly, some of the most significant black writers have had a particular purchase upon this problem of African American life in modernity. The psychological and social traumas of the formation of the Northern ghetto and the Jim Crow South characteristically faced black writers with the task of shaping the language of black folk into a response to modernity’s crisis of a radically secular absurd and meaningless existence. And these writers did so through the conventions of the sublime in which they portrayed black folk confronting these abysses of meaning with the assertion of an infinitely expansive joy. Or these writers depicted the psychological condition of the folk facing the abyss in another form: the depiction of the feelings generated by a contracted spiritual emptiness. These feelings of despair might also emerge from a confrontation with another infinitude: a total loss often embodied in separation from significant others...