The Look of Things From 1949 to 2004, UNC Press and the UNC Department of Germanic & Slavic Languages and Literatures published the UNC Studies in the Germanic Languages and Literatures series. Monographs, anthologies, and critical editions in the series covered an array of topics including medieval and modern literature, theater, linguistics, philology, onomastics, and the history of ideas. Through the generous support of the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, books in the series have been reissued in new paperback and open access digital editions. For a complete list of books visit www.uncpress.org. The Look of Things Poetry and Vision around 1900 carsten strathausen UNC Studies in the Germanic Languages and Literatures Number 126 Copyright © 2003 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons cc by-nc-nd license. To view a copy of the license, visit http://creativecommons. org/licenses. Suggested citation: Strathausen, Carsten. The Look of Things: Poetry and Vision around 1900. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003. doi: https://doi.org/10.5149/9780807863237_Strathau- sen Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Strathausen, Carsten. Title: The look of things : poetry and vision around 1900 / by Carsten Strathausen. Other titles: University of North Carolina studies in the Germanic languages and literatures ; no. 126. Description: Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, [2003] Series: University of North Carolina Studies in the Germanic Languages and Literatures. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: lccn 2002152317 | isbn 978-1-4696-1516-5 (pbk: alk paper) | isbn 978-1-4696-5845-2 (ebook) Subjects: German poetry — 20th century — History and criticism. | German poetry — 19th century — History and criticism. | Rilke, Rainer Maria, 1875-1926 — Criticism and interpretation. | Hofmannsthal, Hugo von, 1874-1929 — Criticism and interpretation. | George, Stefan Anton, 1868-1933 — Criticism and interpretation. | Aestheticism (Literature). Classification: lcc pt551.s77 2003 | ddc 831/.91209 — dc21 Tseng 2003.3.5 06:23 6812 Strathausen / THE LOOK OF THINGS / sheet 7 of 339 To Valerie and Clara Tseng 2003.3.5 06:23 6812 Strathausen / THE LOOK OF THINGS / sheet 8 of 339 contents Acknowledgments xi Introduction 1 Part I 6812 Strathausen / THE LOOK OF THINGS / sheet 9 of 339 1. The Speaking Gaze of Modernity 35 2. Intuition and Language 73 Excursus Methods of Reading 107 Part II 3. Aestheticism, Romanticism, and the Body of Language 137 4. Hofmannsthal and the Voice of Language 146 5. Rilke’s Stereoscopic Vision 190 6. Other as Same: The Politics of the George Circle 237 Notes 275 Works Cited 297 Index 311 Tseng 2003.3.5 06:23 illustrations 1. Title page of the first edition of Der Teppich des Lebens by Stefan George, 1900 15 2. Editorial commentary on the first edition of Der Teppich des Lebens by Stefan George, 1900 16 3. Two poems from the first edition of Der Teppich des Lebens 6812 Strathausen / THE LOOK OF THINGS / sheet 10 of 339 by Stefan George, 1900 17 4. Photo of the train accident at the Gare Montparnasse in Paris in October 1895 36 5. Auguste Rodin, The Gates of Hell, 1880–1917 214 6. Auguste Rodin, The Gates of Hell, 1880–1917, detail 215 7. Paul Cézanne, StillLifewithCurtainandFloweredPitcher,ca. 1899 217 8. Table of contents of the first publication of the Blätter für die Kunst, October 1892 249 9. Photograph of Stefan George by Theodor Hilsdorf, ca. 1928 251 Tseng 2003.3.5 06:23 acknowledgments I am indebted to many of my colleagues and friends who have supported me during the many years that I worked on this project. First and foremost, many thanks to Roger Cook for his congenial support throughout my junior years at the University of Missouri as well as for his good humor and endless patience when working with me on early drafts of this book. Peter Gilgen, 6812 Strathausen / THE LOOK OF THINGS / sheet 11 of 339 Noah Heringman, Brad Prager, and Nancy West all provided detailed and extremely helpful commentaries on single chapters of the manuscript. Bill Kerwin, Karen Piper, and Jeff Williams always gave me good advice and kept my spirits up during the final stages of the project, as did the entire crowd at Teller’s (you know who you are!). Ulrich Baer and Neil H. Donahue offered valuable suggestions for revision of the final manuscript. This book would never have seen the light of day without the tireless efforts of Jonathan Hess, series editor for the University of North Carolina Studies in the Germanic Languages and Literatures, who always found the time to answer my ques- tions and helped me along at every stage of the publication process. Adam Gori did an excellent job copyediting the final version of the manuscript, correcting numerous stylistic and syntactical errors. Many thanks also to the various institutions that granted me permission to reprint photos and illustrations, in particular to Ute Oelmann from the Stefan George-Archiv in Stuttgart. Both the University of Missouri Research Board and the Re- search Council provided financial support for this project. Finally, I want to express my gratitude to Kenneth S. Calhoon. The most inspiring thinker I have known, Ken guided me through my dissertation years at the University of Oregon and helped me to get on track for an academic job. This book is dedicated to my wife, Valerie Kaussen, and our daughter, Clara, with all my love. Tseng 2003.3.5 06:23 Tseng 2003.3.5 06:23 6812 Strathausen / THE LOOK OF THINGS / sheet 12 of 339 Tseng 2003.3.5 06:23 6812 Strathausen / THE LOOK OF THINGS / sheet 13 of 339 the look of things Tseng 2003.3.5 06:23 6812 Strathausen / THE LOOK OF THINGS / sheet 14 of 339 Introduction Epistemology is true as long as it recognizes the inadequacy of its own approach and lets itself be propelled forward by the impossibility of the task itself. It becomes untrue by pretending it is successful. —Adorno, ZurMetakritikderErkenntnistheorie331 6812 Strathausen / THE LOOK OF THINGS / sheet 15 of 339 Question and Answer, or Aesthetics Revisited This study examines the relationship between poetry, philosophy, and the visual media around 1900. More specifically, it focuses on questions of aesthetic mediation in the poetic works of Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Stefan George. The question of mediation, of course, is central not only to German Aestheticist poetry, but also to literary scholar- ship and philosophical inquiries in general, which, as Jean-François Lyotard has recently argued, is characterized by its condemnation of all possible an- swers in favor of ever new and unanswerable questions.2 If a question can be answered, Lyotard caricatures the philosophical position, it was either not adequately formulated or merely a technical question, meaning that it should not have been asked at all. Unlike Lyotard, I am inclined to take the issue more seriously. Since the investigation into the essence of things and the concomitant notion of abso- lute truth is, by definition, located beyond the dichotomy of question and answer, it follows that a true question cannot be answered, or, put differ- ently: its answer would be superfluous, because it would already be inherent within the question itself. ‘‘[I]n philosophy,’’ Theodor W. Adorno remarks, ‘‘any authentic question almost always in a certain way includes its answer’’ (Sondern in Philosophie schließt stets fast die authentische Frage in gewisser Weise ihre Antwort ein) (Negative Dialektik 71).3 Adorno’s cautious formu- lation (‘‘almost,’’ ‘‘in a certain way’’) betrays a critical distance toward the metaphysical history of this kind of thinking, which he sees exemplified in Martin Heidegger’s ontology. Yet Heidegger is certainly not its only propo- Tseng 2003.3.5 06:23 2:introduction nent, as Walter Benjamin’s opening remarks in the Origin of German Tragic Drama may serve to illustrate. Writing before his serious engagement with and commitment to Marxism, he argues that the unity of truth is ‘‘out of ’’ or ‘‘beyond all question’’ (außer Frage), as he puts it, since otherwise one would necessarily become trapped in an infinite regress of question and answer: ‘‘For if the integral unity in the essence of truth were open to question, then the question would have to be: how far is the answer to the question already given in any conceivable reply which truth might give to questions. And the answer to this question would necessarily provoke the same question again, so that the unity of truth would defy all questioning’’ (Wäre nämlich die integrale Einheit im Wesen der Wahrheit erfragbar, so müßte die Frage lauten, inwiefern auf sie die Antwort selbst schon gegeben sei in jeder denk- 6812 Strathausen / THE LOOK OF THINGS / sheet 16 of 339 baren Antwort, mit der Wahrheit Fragen entspräche. Und wieder müßte vor der Antwort auf diese Frage die gleiche sich wiederholen, dergestalt, daß die Einheit der Frage jeder Fragestellung entginge) (Ursprung; Gesammelte Schriften I/1: 210).4 To a certain degree, Benjamin accepts the epistemological dilemma con- stitutive of philosophical thought, whose eternal quest for primordial mean- ing cannot succeed lest it were to lose its reason for being, and thus, para- doxically, its proper meaning. An answer found signifies truth lost, which is why Lyotard’s mockery of the entire philosophical tradition sells the real issue short. At stake is less the paradoxical (or tautological) nature of human thought, but the question of how to come to terms with it. This problem of presentation (Darstellung) is crucial to the history of philosophy, and both its formulation and its aesthetic ‘‘solution’’ take on a peculiar shape in mod- ernist poetry around 1900. The Look of Things focuses on precisely this shape in works by Hofmannsthal, Rilke, and George.