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WOLFGANG BRAUNGART
mode of articulation, as was the case in the eighteenth century. Even Adorno
states that the solitude of lyric articulation “allows the voice of humankind to
be heard” (On Lyric Poetry and Society, 1958).
DIFFERENTIATION DURING THE HISTORY OF LITERATURE,
AND PROBLEMS RELATING TO THIS
Even in ancient times there was an awareness of literature in the sense that
literature was separate from other cultural discourses. In his Poetics Aristotle
makes a statement that remains influential in the modern age. He says that
poetry, which works with possibilities (fictions), is different from the writing
of history, which has to stick to the facts. But is it possible to distinguish the
social from literary practices this distinctly, as the separation of historia and
fabula implies? An argument that espoused this would suggest — particularly
in the modern era — that art is the clear opposite of ritual: free, self-deter¬
mined, individual. This demand to separate rite from literature led to tensions
with other discourses and social practices that, on the whole, have a produc¬
tive influence on the system of literature. However, this conception of viewing
literature and art as fundamentally opposed to the historical-social world is
too simplistic. The ritual is not simply a forced social event or “purely reactive
imitation” (Max Weber) holding within it the potential to lead to wholly con¬
ventionalised, formalised ritualism. (The student movement quickly developed
their own rituals to provide themselves with stability; it was often students
themselves who demanded the reintroduction of graduation ceremonies a few
years back.) In turn, literature is not autonomous and self-determined, in a
simplistic sense. Even in the modern age, ritual and literature or art, can pro¬
foundly relate to one another.
The arts can be used in ritual contexts even in the modern era. A particular
kind of aesthetic is required for this, however. This also applies to the field of
occasional poetry in its entirety, which, like rhetoric in antiquity, still lives
on in the present.’ It is not only “princes’ henchmen” who look for this social
release. Morike was the post-Goethezeit nineteenth-century poet most aware
of art and sensitivity, after Heine, and he wrote many joyful and “usable” oc¬
casional poems that were indeed intended to be used for all possible social
occasions (to mark a birth, a wedding, or a birthday; as a thank-you for a gift;
to cement human companionship). Some of these were highly poetic in parts.
They avoid any sense of gravitas and yet are able to be included within a ritual.
No matter how modest these poems may seem, they were highly symbolic acts
7 Wulf Segebrecht: Das Gelegenheitsgedicht: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte und Poetik der
deutschen Lyrik, Stuttgart, Metzler, 1977.
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