In an essay on Peter Weiss, W. G. Sebald remarked that 'the grotesque deformities of our inner lives have their background and origin in collective social history'. Weiss's works explore the relationships between writing and action, aesthetics and...
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In an essay on Peter Weiss, W. G. Sebald remarked that 'the grotesque deformities of our inner lives have their background and origin in collective social history'. Weiss's works explore the relationships between writing and action, aesthetics and politics. This short essay discusses some fragments of texts by Weiss, asking how subjects formed and (grotesquely) deformed by history can continue to resist or intervene to alter its course.
Is a 'history' of the lyric even conceivable? What would a 'lyric' temporality look like? With a focus on Rainer Maria Rilke's decision not to translate, but rather to rewrite Dante's "Vita nova" (1293–1295) in the first of his "Duineser Elegien"...
mehr
Is a 'history' of the lyric even conceivable? What would a 'lyric' temporality look like? With a focus on Rainer Maria Rilke's decision not to translate, but rather to rewrite Dante's "Vita nova" (1293–1295) in the first of his "Duineser Elegien" (1912), the essay deploys 'reversion' (as turning back, return, coming around again), alongside 're-citation', as a keyword that can unlock the transhistorical operations of the lyric as the re-enactment of selected gestures under different circumstances.
