Torsten Pettersson, All Is But Fragments Devoid of Meaning? Semantic Oscillations in Three Poems by Hugo von Hofmannsthal.

This article studies three poems by Hugo von Hofmannsthal (1874–1929), but it has two further objectives: to describe the workings of a poetic technique termed “semantic oscillations” and to exemplify a literary reaction to secularization.

The first nineteen lines of “Ballade des äußeren Lebens” (1895) exhibit a tension or micro-oscillation between the desperate nihilism of a meaningless, fragmented world and the consolatory pleasure of the exquisite phrasing. The depressive world view then swings over to a will to live but a further swing back is introduced by the emptiness suggested by “hohl” in the last line.

In “Ein Traum von großer Magie” (1895) there are multiple semantic oscillations: the Magician is described as God, as Goethe, as a Dionysian dreamer, and as a man endowed with the gift of fantasy; “unser Geist” is seen as a personal daimon and as a God common to all; the dream is presented as true and as a hallucinatory projection; and the speaker in the final section of the poem as both reliable and unreliable.

The world of “Vor Tag” (1907) is fragmented and filled with anguish. The human mind forges links between phenomena and endows them with meaning, but this is revealed as gratuitous projection. The religious mini-narrative about the suffering of Christ is similarly presented as a projection – but equally as a true story determining the nature of the cosmos. Between these opposite perceptions the reader is left to oscillate.

Faced with these oscillations in the three poems, scholars have often reduced the meaning of the poems to one of the opposite poles in an attempt to render a unitary meaning. However, all disparate elements of meaning and the oscillation between them are essential to a complex poetic vision which offers solace in a fragmented and meaningless world, while concomitantly suggesting that this solace is an illusory projection. As well as adumbrating the splintered forms of modernism, the technique of semantic oscillations thus adequately embodies fragmentation and lack of meaning as a problematic kernel of secularized modernity 

Richard Wagner war nicht nur ein grandioser Komponist sondern auch ein bemerkenswerter Schriftsteller, in seinem Ring-Zyklus sogar ein hervorragender. Deshalb stellt sich die Frage: erscheint in den Libretti seiner zehn Hauptwerke als Ganzeheit betrachtet eine künstlerische Persönlichkeit – konsistent oder sich entlang einer erkennbaren Linie wandelnd – wie wir sie bei einem ernst zu nehmenden Schriftsteller traditionell voraussetzen?

Dabei wird eine andere, narratologische Vorgehensweise erprobt, wodurch dem wechselnden Erzählstoff ein übergreifendes dramaturgisches Modell zu entlocken ist. Es bezieht sich auf die ”Geschichte” im narratologischen Sinn (Schklowskijs “Fabel”, Genettes “histoire”), d.h. auf die Reihenfolge der Ereignisse der fiktionalen Welt. Dort wiederholen sich dieselben fünf Etappen eines festen Handlungsablaufes

Eine künstlerische Persönlichkeit aus einem Guß soll man also nicht an der Oberfläche bei Wagner dem existenziellen Denker suchen. Vielmehr ist sie in der Tiefenstruktur des Handlungsaufbaus bei Wagner dem Erzähler zu finden. Diese Entdeckung ermöglicht auch ein neues Verständnis der einzelnen Werke, z. B. der Meistersinger als Komödie und der Monumentalität des Ring-Zyklus.

Torsten Pettersson, The Patience of Eternities: The Self, the World, and God in the Poetry of Hjalmar Gullberg.

This phenomenologically inspired study of the Swedish poet Hjalmar Gullberg (1898–1961) argues that beneath the eclectic multiplicity of his motifs—embodying elements of Christianity, Graeco-Roman antiquity, and Hinduism—a coherent representation of a structure of consciousness can be discerned. It is characterized by a distinct differentiation between the self, the world, and God, as well as an effort to overcome the differentiation and achieve greater unity between these poles. This takes the form of three strategies: obliteration of the self, of the world, and of God, respectively. Their manifestations are first analysed in Gullberg's early work, seven collections of poetry published from 1927 to 1942.

Gullberg's last three collections published from 1952 to 1959 have generally been considered to differ considerably from his early work by abandoning its stance of—albeit qualified—belief in God. By contrast, this study seeks to demonstrate that the report of God's death in the later Gullberg is an exaggeration, even though God's gradual retreat from the human sphere can be observed. While some of its elements are exchanged or modified, the basic representation of consciousness in Gullberg's early work thus remains intact in his later period.