Page 24 [24]
WOLFGANG BRAUNGART
Even in the present day, art, music, and theater are still associated with
ritual. Nobody would seriously counter this, bearing in mind the close con¬
nections of these arts, in particular, to religion. Even modern music intensely
fosters these connections (sacred music, as well as gospel and soul); the visual
arts of the modern age are committed to using religious and ritual means of
expression (such as in Viennese Actionism, or in the case of Joseph Beuys, in
the performances of Marina Abramovié, or in the work of Christoph Schlin¬
gensief). Even in modern-day painting, the triptych is still an important for¬
mula for pathos.
The matter appears much more complex for literature. Nevertheless, the
same applies: literature’s history cannot be described as the process of eman¬
cipation from a cult. Nor does it follow a linear process of secularisation.
Literature can deal with anything which applies to cultural history. Of course,
literature does take up rituals as a topic, since rituals are so important for
political, social, and communal life — just as literature can pick up on every¬
thing and use representation to interpret what is important for us as humans.
Researchers within the field of literature studies have frequently drawn on
this material and thematic approach to ritual. Although existing within a
fictional framework, literature can approach the concept of comprehension,
particularly in a philosophical manner (for example, during Romanticism, or
in the work of Thomas Mann or Hermann Broch). As a linguistic work of art
it has an innately reflexive relationship with itself (provided that the intention
is to state that the medium of conceptual understanding is language, in line
with Gadamer’s hermeneutics). To this extent, its linguistic nature appears
to remove it from the realm of ritual: “There are many monsters, but none of
them are as monstrous as Man,” states the choir in Sophocles’ Antigone. This
provides a perspective from which the entire tragedy can be interpreted, a
perspective through which it moves away from its ritual context. But it does
not completely dissociate itself. Time and again, literature tries to release
itself from the inevitability of partaking in language as the general medium
of understanding and communication, thereby subverting understanding and
comprehension (language criticism, Dadaism, concrete poetry). Despite this,
literature’s linguistic nature is always saying something, and always comment¬
ing on something.
Since the eighteenth century, the more that art and literature have viewed
themselves as autonomous, differentiated discourses, the more likely it is that
they will in turn claim to strive to exert influence and impact, or to safeguard
their impact, by becoming fully explicit. This can be seen with Schiller and
Goethe, as well as with George and Rilke. Another way to safeguard impact
can be found in the ritualisation of literature, which can also be expressed as
the systematic, aesthetic production of meaning. Symbolism shows this very
+ 29e