Lyrical I

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The expression lyrical ego (sometimes also: generic ego ) denotes the fictional speaker or the voice of a poem or song ( lyric ) in a line of tradition in literary studies . Originally introduced to distinguish the formal or lyrical self from a real or empirical self, it has been equated again and again up to the present with the identity of the author, with the authenticity of what has been said and with the receptive reliving of it. The term has been and still is extremely controversial.

Concept history

The term was originally introduced in 1910 by Margarete Susman (in The Essence of Modern German Poetry ) to distinguish it from the author or empirical self. In Susman's work, the lyrical ego describes the form of an ego that the author creates from his given ego: The lyrical ego is “not an ego in the real empirical sense, but […] expression, […] the form of an ego.” The lyrical ego “To be the objective form of the I” is thus created by the empirical I, the subject, the author. Susman's understanding of the lyrical ego is already tending towards future attempts to conceptualize the separation of the empirical and lyrical ego.

In the 1920s, the term was adopted and differentiated from Oskar Walzel . He has “relativized the meaning of the I in poetry” by “pointing to the role of the other personal pronouns” and speaking of a “you” or “he” lyric. Depending on whether the poetry is singular or plural and in which person (the first, second or third), there are different possibilities.

Käte Hamburger turned against this point of view in the 1950s (with Emil Staiger in the idealistic tradition of the concept of experience and mood and the orientation towards classical-romantic poetry). It defines the concept of the lyrical ego as the subject of the experience of the author, as the authenticity of the poetic ego and the experienced, and as the recipient's real re-experience of this relationship between subject and object.

Examination of the concept of literary studies

For literary studies, the introduction of the concept of the lyrical ego therefore originally meant a departure from the biographical reading of literature by distinguishing between author and fictional speaker (see Susman). However, this meaning has also changed into its opposite and then refers to something that is 'poetic' in the aesthetic sense of experience, i.e. H. Emotional, apparently particularly authentic 'mood' of the author-and-poem-self (see Hamburger). Burdorf advises “to drop this term and to approach the problem with a new concept”. Through the structuralist approaches and later attempts at a systematic determination of formal and content-related elements of narrative texts, more differentiated analysis means have meanwhile been proposed in order to determine the speaker or speakers of a text and to distinguish a text-external author from text-internal characters. For example, Burdorf suggests a scheme of the instances. In doing so, he separates the empirical author from the poem. Within the poem, he distinguishes the text subject or the abstract author from the articulated self. Alternative terms , such as the speaking ego or the articulated ego, should only be used if the personal pronoun "I" or corresponding declension forms appear in the text and are not related to the author of the respective text.

example

To Luise

I often want to praise you in songs,
The wonderfully quiet goodness,
How you lovingly cherish a half-
wild heart and heal you in a thousand sweet ways,
The man's restlessness and confused life Smiled
through tears until death.

But as I turn
my gaze poetically, You sit in
front of me, the child in my arms , so beautiful and quiet ,
In the blue eye loyalty and peace without end,
And I leave everything when I look at you -
Oh, whom God loves he gave such women!

In this poem I is said four times , once to me . A biographical mode of interpretation would now look for a Luise in the poet's life and attempt to transfer the feeling that is expressed in the poem to a certain situation in the poet's life. In and of itself, this would be a possible interpretation, since Luise was the nickname of Eichendorff's wife Aloysia . He married her in 1815 and in the same year they gave birth to their first child.

However, if you isolate the lyrical self from the real person of the author, another mode of interpretation becomes possible. Because the lyrical ego speaks of wanting to praise its beloved "often in songs"; "But as I turn my gaze poetically, / (...) I leave everything when I look at you like that". This could mean that the lyrical ego gives up poetry in the face of the adored woman who “nurtures and heals” the speaker's 'half-savage mind'. Not so the author Eichendorff: He writes a poem and for that reason alone would not be identical with the lyrical self of the poem. To put it bluntly: If Eichendorff had done at that moment what the lyrical self says: “And I'll leave everything when I look at you like that”, he would not have written the poem.

Since one cannot ask the author himself, one should first separate the lyrical self from the author and view it as a  fictional figure that serves to contrast the figure of the poet with the (equally fictional) figure of the woman. This gives poetry a specific role and attitude. Nothing is said about Eichendorff's own behavior or about the real role of poetry. However, it can also be referred back to the historical author if one looks at his biography.

Meaning and criticism of the term in literary studies

The author-related, biographical interpretation of literature was particularly common in the idealistic literary studies of the 19th century and was also widespread in the 20th century; It was placed on a philosophical-theoretical basis, for example by Wilhelm Dilthey . In this reading, poems in particular (but also other genres of art) were primarily interpreted as an expression of an authentic, biographical experience of the author and an attempt was often made to reconstruct this with biographical facts without compromising the literary art character - metrics, inner self-reference, intertextual and genre-theoretical connections, etc. - Sufficient consideration has been given in the sense of self-labeling of fictionality (i.e. artificiality instead of authenticity).

From a cultural-historical and sociological perspective, this biographical text interpretation can be traced back to early modern European humanism , to social differentiation, individualization and subjectification. Author-centering, genius aesthetics, Schleiermacher's divinatory hermeneutics and post-classical epigonism should be named as exemplary consequences of this development in the reception of literature and thus as partial causes of the institutionalized biographical interpretation of literature.

Biographical interpretations of literature are not absurd per se, but they rarely do justice to them as an art form or as a cultural artefact. A systematic critique of the biographical interpretation of literature was first developed by the Russian formalists at the beginning of the 20th century. According to the structuralist view, literature in its peculiarity can only be grasped if one primarily looks at its artistic character. Art would therefore be art precisely because it sets itself apart from everyday biographical experience and transforms it formally. As a result of structuralism, literature is now understood as a potentially largely autonomous art form. Of course, elements from the life and in particular from the experience of the author can and will flow into a literary work; But neither should the author's more or less consciously chosen artistic character be underestimated, nor should the author's cultural imprinting and social extraneous determination, which neither this nor his work of art can completely undermine, and which therefore always help to shape the work independently of any author's intention.

literature

  • Wolfgang G. Müller: The lyrical self. Manifestations of genre-specific author subjectivity in English poetry. Winter, Heidelberg 1979, ISBN 3-533-02815-1 ( English Research 142), (At the same time: Mainz, Univ., Habil.-Schr.).
  • Bernhard Sorg: The lyrical self. Studies of German poems from Gryphius to Benn. Niemeyer, Tübingen 1984, ISBN 3-484-18080-3 ( Studies on German Literature 80), (At the same time: Bonn, Univ., Habil.-Schr.).
  • Mario Andreotti : The Structure of Modern Literature. New ways in text analysis. Introduction, epic and poetry. 2nd revised edition. Haupt, Bern et al. 1990, ISBN 3-258-04253-5 ( UTB for science - university paperbacks - modern German literature 1127).
  • Horst Joachim Frank: How do I interpret a poem? A methodical guide. 4th unchanged edition. Francke, Tübingen et al. 1998, ISBN 3-8252-1639-X ( UTB for science - university paperbacks - literary studies 1639).
  • Margret Karsch: “The nonetheless of every letter.” Hilde Domin's poems in the discourse on poetry after Auschwitz. transcript-Verlag, Bielefeld 2007, ISBN 978-3-89942-744-8 ( Lettre ), (also: Göttingen, Univ., Diss., 2006).
  • Dieter Burdorf: Introduction to poetry analysis  3., actual. and exp. Ed., Stuttgart 2015, pp. 167–215.
  • Kate Hamburger : The nature of the lyric self. In: Käte Hamburger: The logic of poetry. 2., revised. Aufl., Stuttgart 1968, pp. 217-232.
  • Matías Martínez: The lyric self. Defense of a controversial term. In: Heinrich Detering (Ed.): Authorship: Positions and Revisions. Stuttgart 2002, pp. 376-389.
  • Karl Pestalozzi: The Origin of the Lyric Self. Studies on the Motif of Elevation in Poetry. Berlin 1970.
  • Margarete Susman : The essence of modern German poetry . Edited by W. von Oettingen, Stuttgart 1910.
  • Oskar Walzel : “Fates of the lyric self” . In: The literary echo, a bi-monthly publication for friends of literature. Edited by Ernst Heilborn. 18. Volume 11, February 15, 1916, pp. 593–600.
  • Eva Müller-Zettelman: "Poetry and Narratology". In: Narrative theory transgeneric, intermedial, interdisciplinary. Edited by Vera Nünning & Ansgar Nünning. Trier 2002, pp. 129–153.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Cf. Matías Martínez: The lyrical self. Defense of a controversial term . In: Heinrich Detering (Ed.): Authorship: Positions and Revisions . Stuttgart 2002, p. 377 .
  2. ↑ Cf. Dieter Burdorf : Introduction to poetry analysis . 3rd, updated and exp. Edition Stuttgart 2015, p. 192 .
  3. ↑ Margarete Susman: The essence of modern German poetry. Ed .: W. von Oettingen. Stuttgart 1910, p. 18 .
  4. ↑ Margarete Susman: The essence of modern German poetry . Ed .: W. von Oettingen. Stuttgart 1910, p. 19-20 .
  5. ↑ cf. Dieter Burdorf: Introduction to poetry analysis . 3rd, updated and exp. Edition Stuttgart 2015, p. 189-190 .
  6. ↑ cf. Dieter Burdorf: Introduction to poetry analysis . 3rd, updated and exp. Edition Stuttgart 2015, p. 190 .
  7. ↑ cf. Oskar Walzel: Fates of the lyric self . In: Ernst Heilborn (Hrsg.): The literary echo, bi-monthly magazine for friends of literature. No. February 11 , 1916, p. 598 .
  8. ↑ cf. Kate Hamburger: The nature of the lyric self . In: Käte Hamburger (ed.): The logic of poetry . 2., revised. Stuttgart 1968, p. 217-232 .
  9. ^ Dieter Burdorf: Introduction to poetry analysis . 3rd, updated and expanded edition. Stuttgart 2015, p. 182-184 .
  10. ↑ Cf. Dieter Burdorf: Introduction to poetry analysis . 3rd, updated and expanded edition. Stuttgart 2015, p. 194-196 .
  11. ^ A b Dieter Burdorf: Introduction to poem analysis 3rd, updated and expanded edition, Stuttgart 2015, pp. 182–194.
  12. ^ Joseph von Eichendorff : To Luise . In: Wolfdietrich Rasch (Ed.): Joseph von Eichendorff: Works in one volume . Munich and Vienna 1977, p. 437 .