Ethical Code

Days and Deeds (Tage und Taten) embodies an ambivalence that is typical for the practice of putting the modern Poetic Self in relation to its present form. This contribution aims to analyse this unique short prose collection by Stefan George in the general framework of the vision devices which are peculiar to German Moderne and their perceptive paradigms, with particular reference to oneiric symbolism and physiognomy. This allows to reconsider the question of the modernity of George’s poetics with regard to the shaping of perception and its distortions. The key concepts that here lead to the understanding of the collection as a whole are Traum, i.e. dream, and Gesicht, which in George’s poetic idiom means “face”, “vision” and also “view”.

Richard Dehmel stands out within the ‘fin de siècle’ cultural plurality for his radical symbolism, animated by the sharpness of the poet’s perception. To Dehmel the typical symbolistic principle, according to which every object mirrors and refracts the others in a relation of correspondence with no continuity, does not require subjectivity to get lost in a multitude of divergent, incompatible impressions, as it happens in Mach and in some of Bahr’s, Schnitzler’s and Hofmannsthal’s critical writing. Dehmel projects the power to semantise reality onto the sensitive ability of the aesthetic individual. Such power draws from the premise that the symbol is the most suitable device to represent totality aesthetically with the aid of the fruitful associative connections it creates. This essay aims at summing up Dehmel’s theoretical writing on the matter, as well as to investigate how the aspiration to synesthetic empowering of the poetical word takes shape in a systematic hybridization between the sensorial fields.

The revival of the Schauerroman in the 1910s is marked by a mixture of elements resulting, on one hand, from the 19th century romantic, irrationaland occultist-esoteric traditions and, on the other one, from positivistic culture and concepts, i.e. the scientific and technological innovations and the psychical and psychological analytical investigations at the beginning of the century. In the works of authors like Hanns Heinz Ewers, (1871-1943), Karl Hans Strobl (1877-1946), or the group who edited Der Orchideengarten (1918-1921), fantastic impulses gathered and prompted ‘deceptive’ visions of reality. The goal of such writers was to grasp the sensation of other realms of reality where to get in touch beyond the common perception of the world, through an enhancement of artificial, chemical, alchemical or technological nature, and whereby the Modern and the Premodern conflated into each other. This contribution aims at analyzing Strobl’s 1900s and 1910s works as well as some short stories by other authors of the same period.

The paper investigates Hugo Ball’s aesthetic reflection on Modern art in his early essayistic works, starting from his reception of Futurist paintings (Die Reise nach Dresden, 1913) and Kandinsky (the lecture held in 1917) over his engagement with Wedekinds (1914) and Rudolf von Labans theatrical breakthroughs. By exceeding the conventional categories of vision and perception, and introducing the issue of energy and ‘presence’, Modern art undermines the linear understanding of time and the traditional notion of space and spatiality

The present paper aims at investigating the role that perceptual distortion had in Oskar Kokoschka’s (1886-1980) drama and painting. He was considered one of the most representative expressionist artists but his use of such device has a different meaning in the representation of reality. As it emerges from the analysis of his first drama Mörder, Hoffnung der Frauen (Murderer, Hope of Women) and his picture Windsbraut (The Bride of Wind), he uses distortions and deformations to re-signify reality. In this process a big role is played by the sight and the human body.

Peter von Matt opens and closes his Literaturgeschichte des menschlichen Gesichts (1983) with portraits taken from Franz Kafka’s diary which bear witness to a radical crisis of perception. These portraits, mainly found in the annotations of the years 1910-1912, represent one of the main impulses of Kafka’s writing in which a facial detail can become the symbol for an age. This paper aims at analyzing the perceptive distortions which characterize Kafka’s annotations, focusing in particular on the concept of Entstellung, which has a central role in Walter Benjamin’s poetics.

Starting from the discussion of the premiere of Ithaka (Landestheater Darmstadt 1967) and its context, the paper contends that the piece, written by Gottfried Benn half a century earlier, cannot be merely read as an essayistic dialogue about scientific debates of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as an autobiographic showdown behind the mask of Dr. Rönne or even as a sombre anticipation of Nazism. In fact, a close reading of the text and its multi-layered, masterly dramatic construction shows the avant-gardist openness of Ithaka, which can be considered as a theatrical experiment: the author tests on fictitious characters affected by ‘cerebral distortions’, reflecting disparate tendencies of the fin-de-siècle epistemology and philosophy, and observes the consequences of such a collision up to its tragic ending.

Dr. Werff Rönne, the protagonist of Gottfried Benn’s novella cycle Gehirne (1916), is a sort of solitary walker in occupied Brussels during World War I. Described by Helmut Lethen as the «eye of the hurricane », Brussels is hardly mentioned in Benn’s prose and the metropolitan dimension of the setting seems to be marginalized as well. Rönne is from the beginning of the cycle intellectually bankrupt, which prevents him from being a “blasé” à la Simmel, while Brussels is rather the stage of a «mise-en scene of the protagonist’s psychic state» (Huyssen). Focussing on the intersections between science, philosophy and poetics in some of Benn’s early works (Gespräch, Unter der Großhirnrinde) thematically connected to Rönne’s development, this paper shows how the delimited urban space in Gehirne is only the first step towards the aesthetic experience of the dissolution of the limits (Entgrenzung) in the project of a ‘new syntax’.

This paper intends to investigate, within the coordinates of the expressionist movement Der blaue Reiter, Franz Marc’s art (1880 -1916) in a constant and significant comparison between the visual and theoretical dimensions of his work (see also his correspondence with Else Lasker-Schüler, as well as his war writings). In line with Kandinsky’s position, Franz Marc believes each shape possesses its own ‘content- force’. Far from being objective content, each shape is rather left to be identified with a capability of acting as a psychological stimulus. This content is not captured by the normal eye, but by a ‘second sight’. It connects Umwelt and Innenwelt, which is closer to the heart of nature. Unlike abstract art, however, Marc utilizes shapes in the form of the Nervenkunst, whose metaphor is the animal, i.e. the undisputed protagonist of his art.

The paper investigates Alfred Döblin’s medical studies with respect to his first writings belonging to the so-called Frühexpressionsmus. By analyzing Döblin’s theoretical reflections proposed in his Berliner Programm (1913), the paper focuses on its relapses on the short-prose Die Ermordung einer Butterblume (completed in 1905, but published in 1910 in the Journal «Der Sturm» and in 1913 in a collection of short-stories named after it). In the attempt to demonstrate that in this narration Döblin exploited his medical and psychoanalytical studies on neurosis and the Korsakoff’s syndrome, the paper explores the role played by the gaze in Die Ermordung einer Butterblume and the meaning of the hallucinations experienced by its protagonist within the «Döblinismus», i.e. an epistemological, critical and literary method peculiar to the author.

The paper focuses on the reciprocal influences between visual arts and literature from the end of the 19th century up to the 1930s, notably with regard to geometric abstraction. Considering the statement of «the end of scientific perspective» (F. Novotny), Abstract Art and the Constructivism as well as Concrete Art and poetry, this essay examines the question of geometry and perspective within the scope of art and literature, thereby analysing two works of prose by Kurt Schwitters (1887-1948), Auguste Bolte (1922) and Horizontale Geschichte (1926), as well as some of his aesthetic works. Schwitters
pushes the experimentation with geometric abstraction to the extreme,
oriented by the Romantic Movement and the technical and scientific
discoveries from the 17th to the 19th century. He takes an interest in the invisible logics within matters which will be the subject of the so called «fractal geometry» in the second half of the 20th century. The way Schwitters deals with these issues and uses them as material for his literary works is a very interesting case study.

Over the last few years many studies have been carried out on the presence of a surrealist movement in the first half of 20th-century Germany. Publications to be mentioned here are, among few others,
Der Surrealismus in Deutschland (?) edited by Karina Schuller and Isabel Fischer (2016), Surrealismus in der deutschsprachigen Literatur
edited by Friederike Reents (2009), as well as Alltags-Surrealismus. Literatur, Theater, Film edited by Sven Hanuschek and Margit Dirscherl (2012). Unica Zürn (1916-1970) represents a particular case within this scenario: her psychophysical discomfort, in fact, ended up enhancing the formal suggestions derived from the French and German
Surrealism, which is also due to her tormented relationship with Hans Bellmer (1902-1975), one of the protagonists of the Parisian Surrealism. The paper aims to investigate Zürn’s autobiographical writings – such as Das Haus der Krankheiten – along with others like Der Mann im Jasmin and Dunkler Frühling. Despite their distance to the self, indeed, they contribute to sketch her life. By taking into account her drawings and paintings as well, the paper also analyses how the practice of a writing that records mental and physical upheavals alongside the use of the anagram and the intersections between words and illustrations, have assumed the value of a therapeutic self-control over the most acute crises, acting at the same time as a cultural testament that prefigures the tragic outcome of her existence.