Praise the vowels

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In Praise of Vowels is a linguistic essay by Ernst Jünger first published in 1934 .

Content and style

The treatise deals with sounds , their combinations and their meanings. To this end, Jünger analyzes on the one hand passages from famous poems (e.g. by Goethe , Schiller and Trakl ) and on the other hand presents his own thoughts.

Often connections are made to topics far beyond phonology and semantics , whereby the author refers, among other things, to non- empirical sources, such as his own dream-like insights and findings from these.

Criticism and self-assessment

Aphorisms reinforce the esoteric to pseudoscientific features of the text, for which it is also criticized. For example, the German scholar Peter Wapnweski wrote in an article in Die Zeit paraliptically about praise of the vowels that

"[...] to denounce these amateurish absurdities would be all too cheap."

It is questionable whether one should read the text as "(linguistic) scientific" at all. Adrian Widmann describes the analyzes of Jünger in his comprehensive commentary as "small-scale, philological approach to language". Jünger himself rates his work in a "note" in the same as follows:

"Personally, this work is especially valuable to me as proof that even in an age in which the mosaic of sciences almost completely covers the ground, connections can be made which are completely independent of the state of scientific determination."

expenditure

  • Ernst Jünger: Praise of the Vowels , Workshop for Book Printing / Eggebrecht-Presse, Mainz, 1937
  • Ernst Jünger, Peter Schifferli (Ed.): Lob der Vowels, Die Arche, Zurich, 1954
  • Ernst Jünger, Peter Schifferli (Ed.): Lob der Vowels, Die Arche, Zurich, 1979, ISBN 978-3-7160-1665-7 .
  • Ernst Jünger: Complete Works, Volume 12 Essays VI: Versions I , Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart, 2nd edition, 2004, ISBN 978-3-608-93482-3 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See: Ernst Jünger: Lob der Vowels . Ed .: Peter Schifferli. Die Arche, Zurich 1954.
  2. ↑ Ernst Jünger or The tone set too high. Die Zeit online, November 8, 1974, accessed on February 3, 2020 .
  3. ^ Adrian Widmann: Praise of the Vowels - Language and Body Structure. Two essays by Ernst Jünger on current affairs. Text commentary and version comparison. Ergon, 2011, ISBN 978-3-89913-813-9 .
  4. ↑ Ernst Jünger: Praise of the vowels . Ed .: Peter Schifferli. Die Arche, Zurich 1954, p. 48 .