Oldal 15 [15]
RITUAL AND AESTHETIC PRESENTIVITY
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WOLFGANG BRAUNGART
The ritual is a regulated and inherently structured act performed by or for a
community. It is one of the fundamental forms of social activity and a univer¬
sal cultural component that extends across all religions and societies. Ritual
is performative; it allows an aesthetic experience and takes place as an event
that carries sense and meaning, obviousness, and significance. Everything that
people do or create as a cultural act or expression is connected to cultural
semantics. It’s the same with the ritual. One can differentiate between the
various types of ritual on the basis of form, meaning, and social function. Lit¬
erature can participate in all types of rituals in various ways: semantically,
thematically, socio-functionally, and structurally. The dimension of under¬
standing a ritual is decisively connected with aesthetic explicitness, clarity,
the performativity of the aesthetic, and the convincing nature of its overall
appearance, which inscribe “significance” to the ritual. Literature makes use
of the entire spectrum of expression inherent to the ritual.
INTRODUCTION
Everything that is articulated culturally must show itself in a specific way:
clothes, furniture, texts, buildings, music, everyday objects, goods, actions
— everything. The way in which something appears and is articulated cre¬
ates aesthetic meaning: aesthetic, not conceptual meaning. This can never
be achieved by any concept (Kant); but it is no less important and significant.
All aesthetic meaning is inscribed in cultural-historical order of meaning.
The dimension of literature that relates to this aesthetic meaning or gener¬
ates aesthetic meaning is usually referred to as “form.” “Form,” of course, is a
category central to literature’ — as it is to ritual.
! Dieter Burdorf: Poetik der Form: Eine Begriffs- und Problemgeschichte, Stuttgart/Weimar,
Metzler, 2001.
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