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POETIC RITUALITY AND TRANSCULTURALITY a specific literary and dramatic adaptation of ritual patterns, types, genres, symbols, ways of speaking, and phrases. Poetic rituality can be recognized if the relation to a ritual determines the aesthetic construction and concept of a drama or theater performance in an essential way. Just because a funeral is being depicted on stage, does not mean that we can speak of poetic rituality right away. But if the play, for instance, follows the structure of the Catholic requiem, this reference opens up connotations that enrich the significance of what is happening on stage as well as the effect on the audience that the play is trying to achieve. Max Frisch’s drama Nun singen sie wieder — Versuch eines Requiems [Now they’re singing again: Attempt at a Requiem],”° first staged in 1945, for example, is profoundly related to the Catholic requiem, which determines the dramaturgy and structure of this play. At first glance, it seems plausible that Frisch, after the Second World War and in the face of violence and death, adapts the genre of the requiem, which is dedicated to symbolically dealing with death for those left behind. Yet Frisch’s drama reflects on the problematic continuity of the ritual in view of National Socialist propaganda, which made excessive use of genres such as the oratorio and the requiem. For Frisch, a non-reflective use of such religious genres is just as impossible as is a meaningful or even reconciling interpretation of the suffering experienced during the war. Therefore, the drama is related to the requiem in a fundamental way, and at the same time questions if the requiem is the right genre to deal with the experiences of the war. Similarly to rituals, poetic rituality also unfolds in a broad range of ritual forms. At one end of the spectrum, poetic rituality can evolve as the attempt of a drama or performance to present itself as being as close to a ritual as possible, aiming to eliminate the differences between art and ritual. At the other extreme, poetic rituality can be shaped as a distant, self-reflective, even selfcritical form of rituality. Due to the wide scope in which poetic rituality can occur, poetic rituality should not be seen as a restraint but as an expansion of the artistic and theatrical modes of expression. The category of poetic rituality emphasizes the productivity of an artistic adaptation of ritual. Building on Victor Turner, the adaptation of ritual in drama and theater can be described as an artistic and innovative liminal process.”' Turner sees rituals as actions “betwixt and between the positions as signed and arrayed by law, custom, convention, and ceremonial.”” He also stresses: “In liminality, new ways of acting, 20 Max Frisch: Three Plays. Santa Cruz - Now They’re Singing Again — Rip van Winkle, trans. Michael Bullock, Vancouver, Ronsdale Press, 2002. Victor Turner: Variations on a Theme on Liminality, in S. F. Moore — B. G. Myerhoff (eds.): Secular Ritual. A Working Definition of Ritual, Assen/Amsterdam, Van Gorcum, 1977, 36-52, 40. Victor Turner: The Ritual Process. Structure and Anti-Structure, London, Routledge 1969, 95; Arnold van Gennep: Les Rites de Passage. Etude systematique des Rites, Paris, Editions A&J Picard, 1981. + 37 +
