Page 20 [20]
OCR
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-determined, individual. This demand to separate rite from literature led to tensions with other discourses and social practices that, on the whole, have a productive 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 conventionalised, 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 profoundly 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” occasional 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. +18 +
