A Transcendent View of Things: The Persistence of Metaphysics in Modern German Lyric Poetry, 1771-1908
Date
2022
Author
Advisors
Pfau, Thomas
Casarella, Peter
Betz, John
Pickford, Henry
Trop, Gabriel
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Abstract
My dissertation explores the lyric poetry of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Eduard Mörike,
and Rainer Maria Rilke, and it contends that these modern poets retain, albeit uneasily,
a view of things as symbols of the transcendent divine. It thus disputes the secularization
theory of post- Enlightenment aesthetics. This study specifically challenges the view
of symbolism as mere metaphor—an image constructed of arbitrary signs (Nietzsche)—by
showing how the epiphanies of modern lyric poetry remain grounded in the metaphysics
of analogia, even where (as in Mörike) the writer seems to have left such entanglements
behind. The modern poet’s desire to unveil a significant reality beyond subjective
impression reveals that symbolic vision necessarily unfolds within the difference
between the visible world and the transcendent divine. If signification entails likeness,
yet lyric poetry always signifies in and through difference, then a constitutive analogy—that
is, the simultaneity of likeness and even greater difference—emerges from within the
dynamism of the lyric image itself.
Part 1 begins by describing the symbolic image in Goethe’s lyric poetry to recover
his view of things as expressing the “holy open mystery” of the cosmos. I show how
his symbolism overcomes Enlightenment naturalism by drawing on the antecedent order
of analogia. Thus, it reveals the partial yet indisputable relatedness of things to
the transcendent. Turning to Mörike, part 2 charts his transition to an equivocal
understanding of the symbol that would sever the image from its numinous source of
significance by confining the image to the scope of the poet’s own gaze. Yet Mörike’s
poetry also evinces a counter-veiling tendency to de-subjectivize the image, thus
yielding a
vision of things as they are prior to epistemic concerns, sentiment, and subjective
preference. Part 3 contends that Rilke’s thing-poetry evinces a similar tendency to
neutralize modernity’s biases against metaphysics. For, his poetry recovers an apophatic
understanding of symbolism that draws on Dionysian theology. His poems thus focus
our attention on the thing’s unfathomable capacity for initiating a vision of the
divine, of which the thing itself is a partial and fleeting manifestation.
Type
DissertationDepartment
German StudiesSubject
German poetryPermalink
https://hdl.handle.net/10161/25043Citation
Jolly, John (2022). A Transcendent View of Things: The Persistence of Metaphysics in Modern German Lyric
Poetry, 1771-1908. Dissertation, Duke University. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/25043.Collections
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