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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 connections 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 Schlingensief). Even in modern-day painting, the triptych is still an important formula for pathos. The matter appears much more complex for literature. Nevertheless, the same applies: literature’s history cannot be described as the process of emancipation 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 everything 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 commenting 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
