Arabesque (literature)
Friedrich Schlegel was the first to transfer the term arabesque to literature, in which it describes a form characterized by apparently chaotic, nature-like structures .
From Schlegel's different uses of the term in his theoretical-aesthetic text Conversation on Poetry (published in the Athenaeum in 1800 ), three types or levels of arabesques can be identified:
- the arabesque as a natural form, as the oldest and most original form of human fantasy ; even trivial novels can usually come to such a form on the path of the naive .
- the arabesque as a poetic genre in which the composition of matter and form are intertwined .
- the true arabesque , a romantic novel that contains a theory of the novel, a novel of the novel.
In his romantic novel Lucinde (1799), which has remained fragmentary , Schlegel created a true arabesque insofar as he made the romantic theory of storytelling the content of storytelling. The concept of the arabesque does not appear in the book, but a lush plant metaphor refers to it allegorically. Schlegel also repeatedly referred to Lucinde himself as an arabesque.
In her work Non-Epic Structures of the Romantic Novel , Esther Hudgins describes Lucinde ( early romanticism ) and ETA Hoffmann 's views of the life of the cat Murr, along with a fragmentary biography of the conductor Johannes Kreisler in random waste sheets ( high romanticism ) and Joseph von Eichendorff's poets and their journeymen ( late romanticism ) as arabesques.
The generic term "arabesque" can also be found occasionally in current contemporary literature. This is how nobody seems to have drowned. An arabesque by Norbert W. Schlinkert ( edition taberna kritika , Bern 2016. ISBN 978-3-905846-38-6 ) in the spirit of Friedrich Schlegel, an arabesque of the poetic genre, in which the composition of matter and form is intertwined.
literature
- Burdorf, Dieter / Fasbender, Christoph / Moennighoff, Burkhard (ed.): Metzler-Lexikon Literatur. Terms and definitions (Stuttgart 2007).
- Hudgins, Esther: Non-epic structures of the romantic novel (The Hague 1975).
- Polheim, Karl Konrad: Friedrich Schlegel's Lucinde . In: Journal for German Philology 88 (1969) special issue 61–90.
- Ders .: The arabesque. Views and ideas from Friedrich Schlegel's Poetics (Munich / Paderborn / Vienna 1966) 57.
- Ders .: Studies on Friedrich Schlegel's poetic terms . In: German quarterly journal for literary studies and intellectual history 3 (1961).
- Schlegel, Friedrich: Conversation about poetry . In: Athenaeum fragments and other writings , ed. by Huyssen, Andreas (Stuttgart 2005).
- Oesterle, Günter: Arabesque and Roman. A poetic-historical reconstruction of Friedrich Schlegel's "Brief über den Roman" . In: Studies on the aesthetics and literary history of the art period. Frankfurt / M. u. a .: Peter Lang, 1985. (= Gießen work on modern German literature and literary studies, vol. 1.)
- Ders .: Preliminary terms for a theory of ornament. Controversial problems of form between the Enlightenment, Classicism and Romanticism using the example of the arabesque . In: Ideal and Reality of the Fine Arts in the Late 18th Century. Edited by Herbert Beck et al. a. Berlin: Gebr. Mann Verlag, 1984. (= Frankfurt research on art, vol. 11.)
- Ders .: The fascination of the arabesque around 1800 . In: Goethe and the Age of Romanticism. Edited by Walter Hinderer. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2002. (= Foundation for Romantic Research , Vol. XXI.)
- Ders .: arabesque . In: Basic aesthetic terms. Historical dictionary in seven volumes. Edited by Karlheinz Barck u. a. Vol. 1: Absence - Presentation. Stuttgart / Weimar: Metzler, 2000.
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Werner Busch :
- The necessary arabesque , Berlin 1985.
- Outline drawing and arabesque as art principles of the 19th century .
Individual evidence
- ↑ in: Timm, Regine (ed.): Book illustration in the 19th century (Wolfenbütteler Schriften zur Geschichte des Buchwesens; 15), Wiesbaden 1988, pp. 117–148. Later also published in the Festschrift Günter Busch on his 70th birthday : PDF, 31 pages