Helmut Muller-Sievers | University of Colorado, Boulder (original) (raw)
Uploads
Papers by Helmut Muller-Sievers
Germanic Review, Jul 3, 2022
J.B. Metzler eBooks, 1994
De Gruyter eBooks, Apr 20, 2020
In seinem Aufsatz über die "Töne" 4 unterläuft Joseph Berglinger, dem Erzkünstler im Wortsinne 1 ... more In seinem Aufsatz über die "Töne" 4 unterläuft Joseph Berglinger, dem Erzkünstler im Wortsinne 1 , eine merkwürdige Aussage: "Wenn wir von Freunden, von unsern Lieben entfernt sind, und durch den einsamen Wald in träger Unzufriedenheit dahinirren, dann erschallt aus der Ferne ein Hörn, und schlägt nur wenige Akkorde an, und wir fühlen, wie auf den Tönen die fremde Sehnsucht uns auch nachgeeilt ist, wie alle die Seelen wieder zugegen sind, die wir vermißten und betrauerten/' 2 Wenn uns auch der "Käfig der Kunstgrammatik" 3 dieses Satzes auf immer untersagt zu wissen, ob dieser Trost, daß "es keine Trennung gibt" 4 , uns immer, wenn wir in der selva oscura unserer Einsamkeit umherirren, erreichen wird, oder etwa nur gelegentlich, eines wenigstens ist sicher: daß ein Hörn, als Stimmverstärker, keine Akkorde anschlagen kann. 5 Wenn es das könnte, wenn es nicht dazu verurteilt wäre, die ewige Einsamkeit der Töne herauszuposaunen, dann gäbe es in der Tat keine Trennung mehr zwischen Präsenz und Abwesenheit, zwischen Ton und Akkord, zwischen Melodie und Harmonik. Dann hätte es für Berglinger keinen Grund für "den Kampf zwischen seinem ätherischen Enthusiasmus und dem niedrigen Elend dieser Erde"
De Gruyter eBooks, Dec 31, 2015
De Gruyter eBooks, Dec 31, 2015
Wallstein Verlag eBooks, 2022
De Gruyter eBooks, Jun 17, 2014
Modern Language Notes, 2006
This is a wonderful new translation, and a very handsome book. Cut-flush binding with a richly te... more This is a wonderful new translation, and a very handsome book. Cut-flush binding with a richly textured carton, it indeed fits into one hand, and thus affords the sensation of reading one’s palms, the left one for the German text, the right one for the English translation. This gesture of self-reading is certainly not alien to readers of Lenz from Canetti to Deleuze—everybody confronting the text, and in this case the translation, experiences almost bodily the disorientation issuing from it, a sensation that threatens to overwhelm any attempt at comprehending this short marvel in prose. The philological establishment has sought to neutralize this threat by naming it madness, more specifically: schizophrenia. Archipelago publishers (we hear in the name the title of a poem by Friedrich Hölderlin, another mad poet translated by Richard Sieburth) seem to support this attempt by calling the piece “a case study of three weeks in the life of a schizophrenic” (cover text); but the translation undoes the claim to illustrative purposiveness, and releases the text again into its restlessness and wandering. The disorientation radiating from Lenz is not the result of a tropological affectation, of compassion, say, for the sorry poet, or of indignation over the heartlessness of a society that first creates misfits and then drives them into madness. Trapped in the paradigms of scriptural exegesis, Büchner’s champions have often sought to found their claim for his canonical importance on the moral sense of his writings, and have understood morality exclusively as partisanship for the oppressed. The belief in a social genealogy of mental illness in general, and of schizophrenia in particular, was an inevitable consequence of this conviction. In the squalid Germany of the 1970s and 80s, bereft of any legitimate political perspective beyond the relentless defensiveness of the state, the schizophrenic became a messianic figure, spiritualized in equal measure by Hölderlin interpreters and editors, anti-psychiatry activists, and avant-garde artists. Werner Herzog’s Woyzeck film, but even more so Jean-Marie Straub’s mesmerizing Lenz visualized this searing tendency towards the truth of madness, as did many a rousing production of Büchner’s plays, and—inversely—Peter Schneider’s novella Lenz from 1973. Behind this politico-psychiatric genealogy of madness and civilization lurked a biographical genealogy, namely Büchner’s own development from revolutionary pamphleteer to political playwright, and
New Nietzsche Studies, 2017
Modern Language Notes, 2016
Seminar-a Journal of Germanic Studies, May 1, 2014
In the famous chapter "Sense-Certainty" of the Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel expends a great dea... more In the famous chapter "Sense-Certainty" of the Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel expends a great deal of dialectical energy to show that we make contradictory use of examples (Beispiele): on the one hand, we invoke the concreteness and distinctiveness of a singular datum; on the other, we imply that it has general significance. Examples confuse our thinking because they claim to be valid for a larger set of instances (thus approaching the validity of a concept), but unlike concepts they do not let us understand how this claim can be substantiated. I begin my contribution to the conversation "The Changing Face(s) of Graduate Studies" with this reference to Hegel for the obvious reason that our experiences with a new PhD program in German studies at the University of Colorado (CU) Boulder cannot readily be generalized. We had the fortune of being able to start, in 2013, with a clean slate and very few restrictions as far as the intellectual profile and the administrative format of the program were concerned. Not only were we able to think about what kind of interdisciplinary collaborations could be built into its design, what kind of students we wanted to attract, and what we could offer these students as a significant advantage over other existing programs; we could more fundamentally ask ourselvesand would be asked by the various committees through which we had to shepherd the proposalwhy a university in the United States needed a PhD program in German in the first place. The way this question was, and often still is, answered is the less obvious reason why I began with the trite and pointless reference to Hegel. It goes something like this: German philosophical aesthetics is foundational for all literary theory; literary studies without this foundation are blind. The question why a university in the United States needs a German Department must be stood on its head: without a German Department, other literature departments do not fully understand what they are doing. The first time I was involved in building a PhD program in German, almost a quarter of a century ago, that was the rationale with which we were able to convince administrators in a university without a strong tradition in the humanities. We also had the backing of faculty in other literature programs, who were relieved to send students interested in Derridean and de Manian deconstruction our way. It was already then a slightly embarrassing argument, for on the one hand it embraced the most hackneyed trope of German literary and cultural (not to mention musical) superiority, while on the other hand insinuating to administrators that universities could save money by letting one department do all the
Eighteenth-Century Studies, 1998
Germanic Review, Jul 3, 2022
J.B. Metzler eBooks, 1994
De Gruyter eBooks, Apr 20, 2020
In seinem Aufsatz über die "Töne" 4 unterläuft Joseph Berglinger, dem Erzkünstler im Wortsinne 1 ... more In seinem Aufsatz über die "Töne" 4 unterläuft Joseph Berglinger, dem Erzkünstler im Wortsinne 1 , eine merkwürdige Aussage: "Wenn wir von Freunden, von unsern Lieben entfernt sind, und durch den einsamen Wald in träger Unzufriedenheit dahinirren, dann erschallt aus der Ferne ein Hörn, und schlägt nur wenige Akkorde an, und wir fühlen, wie auf den Tönen die fremde Sehnsucht uns auch nachgeeilt ist, wie alle die Seelen wieder zugegen sind, die wir vermißten und betrauerten/' 2 Wenn uns auch der "Käfig der Kunstgrammatik" 3 dieses Satzes auf immer untersagt zu wissen, ob dieser Trost, daß "es keine Trennung gibt" 4 , uns immer, wenn wir in der selva oscura unserer Einsamkeit umherirren, erreichen wird, oder etwa nur gelegentlich, eines wenigstens ist sicher: daß ein Hörn, als Stimmverstärker, keine Akkorde anschlagen kann. 5 Wenn es das könnte, wenn es nicht dazu verurteilt wäre, die ewige Einsamkeit der Töne herauszuposaunen, dann gäbe es in der Tat keine Trennung mehr zwischen Präsenz und Abwesenheit, zwischen Ton und Akkord, zwischen Melodie und Harmonik. Dann hätte es für Berglinger keinen Grund für "den Kampf zwischen seinem ätherischen Enthusiasmus und dem niedrigen Elend dieser Erde"
De Gruyter eBooks, Dec 31, 2015
De Gruyter eBooks, Dec 31, 2015
Wallstein Verlag eBooks, 2022
De Gruyter eBooks, Jun 17, 2014
Modern Language Notes, 2006
This is a wonderful new translation, and a very handsome book. Cut-flush binding with a richly te... more This is a wonderful new translation, and a very handsome book. Cut-flush binding with a richly textured carton, it indeed fits into one hand, and thus affords the sensation of reading one’s palms, the left one for the German text, the right one for the English translation. This gesture of self-reading is certainly not alien to readers of Lenz from Canetti to Deleuze—everybody confronting the text, and in this case the translation, experiences almost bodily the disorientation issuing from it, a sensation that threatens to overwhelm any attempt at comprehending this short marvel in prose. The philological establishment has sought to neutralize this threat by naming it madness, more specifically: schizophrenia. Archipelago publishers (we hear in the name the title of a poem by Friedrich Hölderlin, another mad poet translated by Richard Sieburth) seem to support this attempt by calling the piece “a case study of three weeks in the life of a schizophrenic” (cover text); but the translation undoes the claim to illustrative purposiveness, and releases the text again into its restlessness and wandering. The disorientation radiating from Lenz is not the result of a tropological affectation, of compassion, say, for the sorry poet, or of indignation over the heartlessness of a society that first creates misfits and then drives them into madness. Trapped in the paradigms of scriptural exegesis, Büchner’s champions have often sought to found their claim for his canonical importance on the moral sense of his writings, and have understood morality exclusively as partisanship for the oppressed. The belief in a social genealogy of mental illness in general, and of schizophrenia in particular, was an inevitable consequence of this conviction. In the squalid Germany of the 1970s and 80s, bereft of any legitimate political perspective beyond the relentless defensiveness of the state, the schizophrenic became a messianic figure, spiritualized in equal measure by Hölderlin interpreters and editors, anti-psychiatry activists, and avant-garde artists. Werner Herzog’s Woyzeck film, but even more so Jean-Marie Straub’s mesmerizing Lenz visualized this searing tendency towards the truth of madness, as did many a rousing production of Büchner’s plays, and—inversely—Peter Schneider’s novella Lenz from 1973. Behind this politico-psychiatric genealogy of madness and civilization lurked a biographical genealogy, namely Büchner’s own development from revolutionary pamphleteer to political playwright, and
New Nietzsche Studies, 2017
Modern Language Notes, 2016
Seminar-a Journal of Germanic Studies, May 1, 2014
In the famous chapter "Sense-Certainty" of the Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel expends a great dea... more In the famous chapter "Sense-Certainty" of the Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel expends a great deal of dialectical energy to show that we make contradictory use of examples (Beispiele): on the one hand, we invoke the concreteness and distinctiveness of a singular datum; on the other, we imply that it has general significance. Examples confuse our thinking because they claim to be valid for a larger set of instances (thus approaching the validity of a concept), but unlike concepts they do not let us understand how this claim can be substantiated. I begin my contribution to the conversation "The Changing Face(s) of Graduate Studies" with this reference to Hegel for the obvious reason that our experiences with a new PhD program in German studies at the University of Colorado (CU) Boulder cannot readily be generalized. We had the fortune of being able to start, in 2013, with a clean slate and very few restrictions as far as the intellectual profile and the administrative format of the program were concerned. Not only were we able to think about what kind of interdisciplinary collaborations could be built into its design, what kind of students we wanted to attract, and what we could offer these students as a significant advantage over other existing programs; we could more fundamentally ask ourselvesand would be asked by the various committees through which we had to shepherd the proposalwhy a university in the United States needed a PhD program in German in the first place. The way this question was, and often still is, answered is the less obvious reason why I began with the trite and pointless reference to Hegel. It goes something like this: German philosophical aesthetics is foundational for all literary theory; literary studies without this foundation are blind. The question why a university in the United States needs a German Department must be stood on its head: without a German Department, other literature departments do not fully understand what they are doing. The first time I was involved in building a PhD program in German, almost a quarter of a century ago, that was the rationale with which we were able to convince administrators in a university without a strong tradition in the humanities. We also had the backing of faculty in other literature programs, who were relieved to send students interested in Derridean and de Manian deconstruction our way. It was already then a slightly embarrassing argument, for on the one hand it embraced the most hackneyed trope of German literary and cultural (not to mention musical) superiority, while on the other hand insinuating to administrators that universities could save money by letting one department do all the
Eighteenth-Century Studies, 1998