james rolleston, time structures. a reading of poems by mörike, rilke and benn

7/22/2019 James Rolleston, Time Structures. A Reading of Poems by Mrike, Rilke and Benn.

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Time Structures: A Reading of Poems by Mrike, Rilke and Benn

Author(s): James RollestonSource: The German Quarterly, Vol. 53, No. 4 (Nov., 1980), pp. 403-417Published by: Wileyon behalf of the American Association of Teachers of GermanStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/404542.

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Time Structures:A Readingof Poemsby Morike, Rilke and BennJAMESROLLESTON

It is hardlya revelationto speak of the prominenceof time as anoriginating orcein modernpoetry.Sinceat leastFritzStrich'sbook of1922' we have been aware of the dominantsignificanceof historyandtemporality n the textureof romantic hinking;and the omnipresenceof the theme of melancholyand "Verganglichkeit"n 19th-centurypoetry, especiallyof the second rank, is a criticalcommonplace.Myarguments concernedwithneitherof thosesubjects,although t offerswaysof linking hem. WhatI wantto demonstrate,hroughexaminationof specifictexts, is the structural orce of the time-experience,he pos-sibilitythat through t a balance,a transformingmutuality,of self andworld can be achieved.Both self and world have a built-intendency owithdraw romeachother,to retreatwithintheirown systems: he lyrictext is fuelled by the imperativeneed to counteract his tendency,toachieve both the celebrationof world and an escape from the ever-threatening terilityof the self. WithHeinz SchlafferI see the moderntime-experience s essentiallypost-romantic; ven as they inauguratedtemporalityas the basic epistemologicalprinciple,the romanticsre-mainedtemperamentally ithin an older,moregeneralized osmology.2But already n Heine's "Still ist die Nacht,es ruhendie Gassen"(fromDie Heimkehr, 1824)we enter a world where the experienceof timedrawsthe humanmind inward o the detailsof otherwisecommonplaceemotions and ordinarydomesticsurroundings.The negativityof theexperienceseems overwhelming; he romantic beliefs in history and"Progressivitat" ollapseinto fixationon pastnessandloss, witha cul-minatingdisaster n the Doppelganger-experiencetself: manconfrontshis imagein the mirrorand the one element n his life that had seemedto link him withcommunityandmeaning,namely emporalcontinuity,has become a mockeryand an emptiness.The mirror-experienceauntsthe poem's speaker,transformingime into an hallucinationuprootingman froma stable world that derideshim.And yet it can only be withinthis seeminglynegativedimension hatany kind of mutual reinforcement f self and world can be imagined.Just hownarrow heapertures throughwhicha temporal elf can reacha temporalworld is conveyedby a juxtapositionof Eduard Morike's

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404 JAMESROLLESTONinfrequentpoetologicalremarks.In an 1832letter he writes: "Immerwerde ch michwohl . .. auf eigeneErfindungdes Stoffeszuriickgewie-sen sehen, da vom Vorhandenen selten etwas in meinen Kramtaugt. .. ."3 And in a fragment from the same year we read: "Es ist,um es miteinemWortzu sagen,einkrankhaftesBestreben,dieImagina-tion zum einzigen Organalles inneren Lebens zu erheben."4The selfis the sole sourceof experience;yet, as soon as the self is conceivedassingularand empirical, ts inadequacyas a structuralprinciplebecomesevident.The slippageof the epistemological Ich" of Fichteandthero-manticstowardsa purelyprivate,fragmenteduniversemust at all costsbe reversed.The task of the self is both to inventthe world and be in-ventedbythat world.Andamid all the forcesthatarepropelling elf andworldawayfrom eachother, the one precariousinkingfactor is time.

Die schOneBuche (1842)Eduard M6rike

Ganz verborgen im Wald kenn ich ein Plaitzchen, da stehetEine Buche, man sieht schOnerim Bilde sie nicht.Rein und glatt, in gediegenem Wuchs erhebt sie sich einzeln,Keiner der Nachbarn rtihrt ihr an den seidenen Schmuck.Rings, soweit sein Gezweig der stattliche Baum ausbreitet,

Grilnet der Rasen, das Aug still zu erquicken, umher;Gleich nach allen Seiten umzirkt er den Stamm in der Mitte;Kunstlos schuf die Natur selber dies liebliche Rund.Zartes Gebtisch umkrainzetes erst; hochstaimmigeBtiumeFolgend in dichtem Gedraing,wehren dem himmlischen Blau.Neben der dunkleren Fillle des Eichbaums wieget die BirkeIhr jungfrauliches Haupt schuichtern m goldenen Licht.Nur wo, verdeckt vom Felsen, der Ful3steigjaihsich hinabschlingt,Lasset die Hellung mich ahnen das offene Feld.- Als ich unlaingsteinsam, von neuen Gestalten des SommersAb dem Pfade gelockt, dort im Gebtisch mich verlor.Fiuhrt'ein freundlicher Geist, des Hains auflauschende Gottheit,Hier mich zum erstenmal, plotzlich, den Staunenden ein.Welch Entziicken Es war um die hohe Stunde des Mittags,Lautlos alles, es schwieg selber der Vogel im Laub.Und ich zauderte noch, auf den zierlichen Teppich zu treten;Festlich empfing er den Fuss, leise beschritt ich ihn nur.Jetzo, gelehnt an den Stamm (er tragt sein breite~GewOlbeNicht zu hoch), lie13 ch rundum die Augen erzehn,Wo den beschatteten Kreis die feurig strahlende Sonne,Fast gleich messend umher, salumtemit blendendem Rand.Aber ich stand und rtihrte mich nicht; daimonischerStille,UnergrtindlicherRuh lauschte mein innerer Sinn.Eingeschlossen mit dir in diesem sonnigen Zauber-Giirtel, o Einsamkeit, ftihlt ich und dachte nur dich

Manyof MOrike's reatestpoems are of courseexplicitlyconcernedwithtime;but I havechosen for discussiona text, "Die schOneBuche,"that appears more relaxed and stylized, with its fusion of precise detailand the rhythmic formalism of the traditional idyll." However, the word"Bild" evokes the mirror-dimension, the threat of the double, already



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TimeStructuresn Poems 405in the poem's second line: this term is a characteristic"marker"inMOrike,bringing n the artist'sperspectiveherewith deceptivecasual-ness. "Bild" names the precariousmeeting-point f self andworld:onthe one hand it brings into the foregroundthe elaboratemediatingprocesswhereby he beingof the treeis reconstructedn verbal magery.But on the other hand the phrase, "man sieht schonerim Bilde sienicht," reminds he reader hat our conceptionsof beautyarereflectedbackbyus onto theirnominalsource,nature tself. Nature'sprovocationof the aesthetic and man's urge for the dynamicsof organicprocesspursueeach other, yet the mutualpursuitcan only end, so it wouldseem, in the artifice of word and image. Morike'spoem is devotedtobreaking his viciouscircle,and the first step is to bringthe circle intobeingas a circleof perfection.Through he entireevocationof the treeand its magic circle, Morikekeeps the anthropomorphicmplicationsof his images clearly in front of the reader. "Rein," "Nachbarn,""stattlich,""dasAugstill zuerquicken,"andof course he centralpara-dox, "kunstlos:"thereis no line in whichwe are not remindedof theorganizinghumansensibility.And in one crucialrespect,the natureofthe treeitself, MOrike oes further han he needin aligninghis imagerywiththe humanrealm.For in spiteof or perhapsbecauseof the stylizedlanguage,the tree soundsvery like an artist. It is the accumulationofdetails that point in this direction.For the first four lines its isolationis evoked,but thereaftert does not seem isolatedat all: thereis no ten-sionin this, merely hesuggestionof ananalogywiththe artist's solationat the centerof a world of thingssummoninghim to responsibility.Thisimpressions heightenedbytheinactivityof the treefrom ine 5 onwards:the reader'sperspectivebecomesgraduallyalignedwith the tree's, theelementsof thecirclearedisplayedmovingoutwards rom thetree'scen-ter, and the details become richer the further we move from the treeitself. Thetreeseemsto observeand to organize,but to lackanyspecialqualitiesof its own that mightexplainits powers.Above all, it is ofmoderateheight. It is the task of other, "hochstammigeBaume," towardoff the sun. This phrase"wehrendem himmlischenBlau" comesas a gentle climaxto a series of verbs that give the only clue to thetree's mysteriouspower. After the opening, seeminglystatic words"kenn" and"sieht"we aregivennothingbut verbsof process.Evenasthe poet announces he regularity f a picture,heinitiates heprocessofbreakingthroughthe frame: "erhebt," "rUihrt,""ausbreitet,""gril-net," "schuf," "umkranzet,""folgend"-all theseverbs mplymotionor change, drawing he temporaldimension nto everydetail of the pic-ture. The tree's secret ies in its magicalcoordinationof manydifferenttime-rhythms.And in the very completionof the circle, with the verb"wehren,"thetextmovesbeyond t. The artist-tree as reached he limitof its reflectivepowersand opensitself to the poet-observer t the verypointwhere t seems to excludehim. Forthepoet is awareof the funda-mental source of energy and growth, the sun.The sun enters the poem gradually, its paradoxes carefully modulated:chaotic in itself, it is the source of all time-scales; impossible to look at,



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406 JAMESROLLESTONit yet definesall space. It is the poet's abilityto graspthese paradoxesreflectively hat finally enableshim to enter the tree's circle.The firsteffect of the sun, however,is to expelhim from it. The circleachieveslinguistic completionwith the phrase"im goldenen Licht," a phrasethat invokes the harmonious ight bathingthe perfect picture;and theword "Hellung" in the next couplet names the effect of the sun asthat whichsurrounds he picturewith openness,unmediated ight, andthruststhe poet into it with the suddensharpnessof the word "jah."The verb "wehren"has alreadyhintedat the sun's destructivepower;whathappensat the emptycenterof this poem, as the footpathplungesdownwards ndaway,is a doubleexilefor thepoet. He is bothirrelevantto nature'sown perfectionand, becauseof his intense nvolvementwiththe images of that perfection, confrontedwith a fundamentalforce,the sun, intent upon obliteratingall the artifices set up to establishhumantemporality."Distanz ist das Gesetz dieserDarstellung,"saysRenatevon Heyde-brand,8and the gulf betweenthe two halves of the poem, so carefullydisguisedby the stylizedmeter, is immense. With the changeof tense,the alreadyformalpoem seemsto cross the line into a new genre, theepic. These lines are full of story. Betweenthe "Fuf3steig"of line 13andthe "Pfad" of line 16 lies a compressed vocationof wholeepicsofhumanexperience:here s thesuggestionof medieval emptationn "ge-lockt," the Dantesqueexistentialcrisisof "im Gebtischmich verlor."Above all there is the move downwardand off-center, as "Ab demPfade" echoes "hinabschlingt."As the sun can obliteratehuman timefromoutside,so theinnerself can lose all senseof structure romwithin.And such loss of self is the veryoppositeof entryinto nature,it is thepathto madnessand death.Intermsof thepoem'stime-scale heperiodof loss is reallylargerthan the three lines in the middlesuggest.As Inotedearlier,from line 5 onwardswe beginto move outwards romthetree itself, as the tree claimsfor itself in evergreaterdetailthe role ofartist. There is thus a genuineepic retardationn the gradualreturnofthe poet from functionlessexile to the tree, finallyconsummatedn thephrase"Jetzo, gelehntan den Stamm." Thisjourney s only nominallyspatial:what the distance nherent n the tense-change llows us to per-ceive is thatthepoet, likethe treeandyetmostunlike t, is ableto regainhis role as poet only throughhisability o organizeand blend a multitudeof temporalrhythms.Thisrecovery akesplacefirstthrougha deploymentof the powersoflanguagerooted in traditionand myth. Whatseemedlike a limitationin the first part, the intrusion of linguisticcategorieson nature,nowbecomesa proudvirtueas the hints of epic loss are transformed ntoexplicitimagesof epic recovery.We know that the empiricalpath tothe tree-circle eads upward,but the languagetells us so symbolically,as the poet climbsfrom Inferno to Paradise: he Goddess ooks up, thepoet looks up at the sky and at the silent birds. And the festive upwardmotion takes place in a landscape now peopled with the figures of man'simagination, spirits and divinities both pantheistic and rococo. Most



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Time Structures in Poems 407important,the sun itself is drawninto this invocationof mythology:it is Pan's hour, "die hohe Stunde des Mittags." If the poet's firstachievement s the joyous openingup of the traditions mplicitin hislanguage,his mostimportant laimto theregaining f his title is astamerof the sun. As he steps up to the treetrunk,he also enters nto a sym-metricalalignmentwith thesun,now invisibleoverhead.At thismomentwe areremindedof the moderatesize of the tree, its humanscale-andthe sun itself is now unleashedas the agencybehindthis aestheticful-fillment. It is "feurig strahlend," "blendend," yet its effect, whenmediatedby the poet and tree now in perfectconsort, is "fast gleichmessend." The destructive orce has been overcome,and on this newlevel of totalitythe sun is no longera dangerto be fendedoff but thefundamental ourceof powerthat reinforces,as on a sundial,the tem-poralmeetingof man and nature.The poet's final postureis remarkable.Where the whole poem hashithertobeen characterized y processand movement,he now claimsentry, as it were, into the motionlessintensityof the tree's inner con-centricrings; after the poet's reflectivenessmposedthe dynamicsofhuman time onto the tree, the tree has now communicated ts self-contained stillnessto the poet. Only in theirachievedmeetingcan theworld be said to bring ts full playof forcesinto being.And as the poetbecomes one withthe tree, he explicitlyceasesto focus on it and entersupona new levelof openness.Onemustbe carefulnot to placetoo muchstresson the invocation o "Einsamkeit,"whichbelongs n thetraditionof the idyll;but for the firsttime a conceptualabstraction s admittedto the poem'slanguage,andone, moreover,whichrecalls he "einzeln"of line 3 and the "einsam" of line 15 at the precisemomentwhenpoetand tree have achievedcommunity.This makespossiblea broadening fthe very notion of community, as the poem's dialectic enables thespeaker o address"Einsamkeit" n the secondperson. Clearly, n thisword is concentrated he poem's eritire emporal interplay:"Einsam-keit" is not a stateof beingbut a processwith a beginningand an end:the beginning s the emancipationof self fromthe mirrorand fromthehalf-measures f existence, he end is the fullentry nto the world'screa-tive process,the attainmentof mutualityand balancebetweenself andworld. The evocationof a pastvisioncompletes hecircleof thepresentandpermits he poet to look onceagain n themirror, o look at himself"alone," and to see his mirrorfilled with the fruits of his own risk-taking, the rhythmicworld that has emergedfrom the chasm at thepoem'scenter.7Just as the range of experience n the poetic self seems extended,through heinterlocking hythmsof humanand natural ime,farbeyondthe limits of a 30-linepoem,so the actualeventsexpandtheirresonancethrougha structureof recurrenceand glimpse.The sealingoff of thetree-circle t the outset is followedby an abruptdistancingand changeof perspective, whereupon the circle is gradually reconstituted, by meansof very similar images subtly intensified. It is like an epic of memoryand forgetting within a barely existent narrative space; and this festive



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408 JAMESROLLESTONrestorationof equilibriums punctuatedby a seriesof glimpses,denotedby words like "jah" and "plotzlich," of time-dimensionsnot initiallypartof the recurrence-patterning,ut enrichingt as they are drawn n.The use of genre-effectsalso extends the poem's range. The poemreachesa conclusionthat could be calledquintessentiallyyrical,as theself faces the mirrorof isolationwithout terror.But to get to thatpointthe poem must pass throughan elaborateblend of othergenres,otherkinds of time. As the poet evokes the tree circle it becomes a theater,a coordinatedplayof forcesof which he can only be the spectator;andas the exiledspectatormovesto the centerof attention,the genreshiftsto epic and meter is deployedto conveythe tension of linear advance.The goal of the "story," of course, is reentry nto the theater,whichitself is transformednto a placeof lyric completion.The distensionandrecyclingof the time-dimension asbrought nto beinga genuinespatialcertainty.This is a world that is, in Rilke'sterminology,anchored nongoing "Verwandlung."

Todes-Erfahrung1907)RainerMariaRilke

Wirwissennichtsvon diesemHingehn,dasnicht mit uns teilt. Wirhaben keinenGrund,Bewunderungnd Liebeoder HassdemTod zu zeigen,denein MaskenmundtragischerKlagewunderlich ntstellt.Noch ist die Weltvoll Rollen,die wirspielen.Solangwirsorgen,ob wir auchgefielen,spieltauch derTod, obwohl er nichtgefallt.Doch als du gingst,da brach n dieseBthneein StreifenWirklichkeit urch enen Spalt,durchden du hingingst:GrtlnwirklicherGrlne,wirklicher onnenschein,wirklicherWald.Wirspielenweiter.Bangund schwerErlernteshersagendund Gebardendannundwannaufhebend;aber deinvon uns entferntes,ausunsermStOckentrUcktes aseinkannuns manchmaloberkommen,wieeinWissenvon jenerWirklichkeit ichniedersenkend,so da8 wireine Weilehingerissendas Lebenspielen,nichtan Beifalldenkend.

It mightseem that "Todes-Erfahrung"s a most improbablechoiceamong Rilke-poemsto illustrateany kind of mutualitybetween selfand world. It is a nervous, insecuretext in whichthe earlydeath of afriendforcesthe poetto puteverythinghehasachieved ntoquestion;weare farindeedfromthe magisterialprogressions f "die schoneBuche."And yet it is precisely under pressure like this that the intensity ofRilke's determination to make a world out of human time becomes mostapparent. For despite his esoteric language, Rilke's aesthetic goals are



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Time Structures in Poems 409fairlysteadily n focus and, as Jacob Steinerhas argued n the contextof language,8 o not changethat muchthroughouthis career: he thingsthat are invisible,emotions and ideas, are to be made visibleand thethingsthat arevisible, fromstatuesto flowers,are to be drawn nto theinvisiblepermanenceof language.The problemwith the schema, ofcourse, is the unpredictability f the self, its tendencyto break out ofthe craftsman'srole; and Rilke came increasinglyo see time, the dis-cordant and destructivecommon element of self, world and language,as boththe necessary roundon whicha poeticstructuremust be erectedand the fluid continuum nto which it must projectitself. Rilke's lan-guage is quite expliciton the need to release the inherenttemporalitywithin "die Dinge" in the courseof theirpoetic or sculpturalrealiza-tion: "EsgabkeinZurlAcktreteneiRodin,sonderneinimmerwthrendesNaheseinundGebeugtseinOiberas Werdende.Undheute stdieseEigen-artin ihmso starkgeworden,daBman fast sagenkOnnte,dasAussehenseinerDingesei ihmgleichgtfltig;o sehrerlebterihrSein, ihreWirklich-keit, ihre allseitige Loslosung vom Ungewissen . . . sie stehen nicht aufderErde,sie kreisenum sie."' As Rilkefuses the ideaof perfectclosurewith the mutual absorptionof self and world into a single creativeprocess,the analogywithMOrike'snterprise ecomesclear:at the veryheart of apparently taticperfection here is constantmotion, and onlythe humanexperienceof time and death can recognizeand respondtothe challengeof that ceaselessmovement. To evade the challenge s torisk an extinctionwhichin Rilke's work is almostthe oppositeof death.For Rilke,as for Morike,Heine'smirror-expeiience,he horrorof timesuspended, s ever-present.Rilkearticulatedhatexperiencehrough hefigureof the doll, in his 1914essayentitled"Puppen:""Ihrgegentiber,da sie uns anstarrte,erfuhrenwir zuerst (oder irr ich mich?) jenesHohle im Geftihl,jene Herzpause, n der einerverginge,wennihn dannnichtdie ganze, sanft weitergehendeNatur,wie ein Lebloses,Oiber b-grtindehintiberhotbe."'0Am I sayingthen that we arewitnessingan endlessreplayof the samemodernartisticimperatives?This is a difficulty with any concept oftradition, one that especiallyafflicts the theory of modernism:afterMallarm6,hetheoryimplies,there s little new to add, as poetsaresaidto crafttheir verbal oys fromword-playsandclever nversionsof tradi-tionalmotifs, seasonedwitha dash of hallucinatory ysteria. havelongfound thisimageof poetryunconvincing, productof the recent yrannyof France over modern Germanpoetics." And indeed I proposeto re-claimGottfriedBenn,anambivalentdenizenof themodernist amp,formy version of a modern tradition. A poetry that recognizesthat themodern self has no alternativebut to reinvent,rediscoveror reaffirmthe worldmay developcertainstructuralpatternsbut is otherwiseun-likelyto repeat tself. As therepetitions f historyand natureaccumulateand the possibilityof transcendenceontinues o recede,the elementsofself and world, while they cannot disappear altogether, can express them-selves on a scale ranging from almost total dominance to almost totaldisintegration. Interestingly, in the texts under discussion, it is Rilke



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410 JAMESROLLESTONrather han Bennwhose "self" comescloser o thepoleof disintegration.If one appliesto Rilke's text the structuralmodelof the self's trans-formations derivedfrom Morike, it does in a sense "work." A low-keyedopening eadsto an anguished ense of exile from a self-containedsanctum,here the mysteryof death; from stanza 3 onwardsthere is agradualand painfulreconstitutionof the self throughcontact with themystery, culminating n an illumination.But this sequence s basicallyscaffoldingfor a series of transformations, ll of thempartialand un-satisfying.A remarkable eatureof this probing,intimatepoem is thatthe word "ich" nowhereoccursin it. The self is implied by the first-person pluraland the second-person ingular,as if it is takingliterallythe word "Maskenmund"nline 4. Of deathonecanonlyspeak hroughmasks;but the very universality f death offers a complexopportunityto take its frightening ntimacy nto an experienceof community.Ini-tially the reversehappens:all masksslip. The moment of death under-mines all the linguisticgestures throughwhich living beings conven-tionally expressthemselves. The impersonalphilosophicalself of theopening s succeededby the self as actorin a futilemoralityplay. Ironi-callythe self can now claim a communitybetween ts own time-dimen-sion and thatof otherpeople:for deathmakes a mockeryof all humantemporalpatterning.And yet, verymuch as Morikewas able to rebuildhisexperience f timefromthegrovethat had denied t, so it is a particu-lar death thatbeginsthe restorationof some life to the humanpuppetson theirstage.Thereis no comfortin this new life: Rilke'slanguage nstanza 3 enlarges he alreadyvast distancesbetweenthe livingand thedead with its reiterationsof "gingst" and "wirklicher."The glimpsed"reality"is by definitionremote,at one with the ever-receding eathrealm.And yet this stanza does effect a transformationn the poem'stexture,all the morestrikingbecause here s no compromising f death'snegations.The firstthree words of the poem, "Wirwissennichts,"arenow modified: we do know something,we know that death has to dowith the intensificationof our own world, pure negation is in somesense identicalwithpureaffirmation.AndRilke s speakingnot of para-dise but of a temporalzone: "Grtine," "Sonnenschein,""Wald," allof the namedentities must be conceivedas involved with processandchange. In short, even as death mocks and negates human time, itopensonto the fullnessof theworld'stime,althoughonly for a momen-taryglimpseand only at an immensedistance.Immensebut not infinite;the powerof Rilke'spoem owes much tothe reversion n stanza 4 to the puppet stage:death cannotteachus tolive. And yet the texturehaschangedagain.Thecharacters n stageareuncertainandignorant,but theyareno longerfalse: the rolesthey playdo indeed come from outside, but they are strugglinghonestlyto fillthem, to relate their "gestures"to some kind of orderly time-scale,"dannund wann."Thismeansthat the gulf between he inadequacyofhumantime and the fullness of death's"Wirklichkeit"s not after allabsolute. The words "bang und schwer" imply that the actors are per-forming, however feebly, with some knowledge of death's presence;



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Time Structuresn Poems 411conversely the dead woman's existence is "entriickt" but not completelyother. The distance between death and life has generated a time scaleof its own, a zone of revelation in which man can after all touch theknowledge of his destiny. This time is given emblematic reality by theenjambement between the final,stanzas, and the exposed position of theword "Wissen" offers a last tentative response to the poem's openingline. There is no denying the awkward language of the final stanza: "sichniedersenkend" seems unfocused, "hingerissen" banal and "denkend"a clumsy note to end on. Yet it is possible without sophistry to justifythis awkwardness in terms of the poem's central images of acting, learn-ing and knowing. The open ending, the vision with its temporal limits,enables the text's speaker, still in the plural voice, to face outwardstowards the world, without the confidence but with some of the existen-tial achievement of MOrike's persona at his tree. The mirror of lifeno longer reflects back merely the annihilating image of empty humantime.

Looking at the text in the light of the formal categories derived fromMOrike'spoem, one finds patterns similar yet less seamlessly organized.Thus the relationship of glimpse and recurrence is virtually thematicin its importance. The first stanza, with its multiple negatives, is pre-cisely a denial of the glimpse: the distance, the journey of death isinvoked, but it generates no time-dimension, hence no valid emotion; asthe indifferent abstractions pile up, the language becomes lifeless and,in a careful symmetry with the enjambement linking the last two stanzas,the movement of the verse is just sufficient for'it to tumble over into thesecond stanza. Here is the recurrent world, the world without distance;the closure is not rhythmic but claustrophobic, the death-experience thatcould not be legitimately glimpsed is now omnipresent. At the same timethe poem is struggling to impose a timetable, a limit on the emptinessof human action: "Noch ist die Welt voll Rollen . . . solang wir sor-gen. . . ." The central stanza offers the decisive glimpse, recovered asit were from a past which the poem seeks to translate into meaning. Theparallel with Morike's shift to the past tense is suggestive: the mysteriesboth poets are confronting cannot be penetrated as enigmatic presentstates; human time must be deployed, the world from which man isexiled may be reentered only if it is reimagined as the final chapter ofhis story. With stanza four the circular world returns, and indeed theplay of life, so close to lifelessness, is reenacted yet again in the laststanza, this time of course in harmony with the glimpse, now becomepotent memory. It is important to note that nothing new, no super-natural vision occurs in the poem: Rilke has taken hold of the one tracethat death has left in the world, a moment of "Wirklichkeit" that existedonly in time, and surrounded it with the repetition of ordinary time in amanner so intense, so uncompromising, that a blending of time-scalesis finally "geleistet," in Rilkean language. The transformation can onlybe momentary, but it is now "manchmal," the hopelessness of recur-rence is breached. The word "spielen" occurs three times: initially it isstrictly theatrical, the playing of roles, then it is used without a qualifier,



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412 JAMESROLLESTONprobingly. Finally life itself is "played," as a child plays with it. Child-hood for Rilke is the source of death as terror, as absence of life; butchildhood regained through a confrontation with death's reality isperhaps the most precise Rilkean image for living in time. Certainly themoralistic elements in the poem, the awkward phrases about seekingapplause, suggest a prescriptive intent, analogous perhaps to the weightof meaning placed by Morike on the word "Einsamkeit." Preciselybecause these poems reach their own goals through the articulation of atime-dimension for which they must struggle, there is a powerful impetuswithin their language to project this achieved time into the world beyondthe poem.

Eingeengt1953)GottfriedBenn

Eingeengtn FtlhlenundGedankendeinerStunde,der du anbestimmt,wo so vieleGllickeTrauer ranken,einerStunde,welcheAbschiednimmt,Trauernur-die Sturm-undSiegeswogen,Niederlagen,Graber,KuBundKranz,Trauernur-die Heereabgezogen,sammeln ie sich wo-wer weil es ganz?Denkedann der HerzenwechselndTraumen,andereGotter,anderesBemlihn,denk derReiche,die Pagodensaumen,wo die feuerrotenSegelbllhn,denkeandres:wievom HimmelerbenNordundSliddurchFunkenund durchFlut,denkean dasgrosseMammutsterbenin den Tundren wischenEisundGlut,eingeengtvon FtlhlenundGedankenbleibt n dichein groBerStromgelegt,seineMelodie st ohneSchranken,trauerlosund leichtundselbstbewegt.

It is perhaps becoming clear what links these three disparate poems:it is the attempt to confront ultimate mysteries without flinching and toimagine the level of human time on which they can be approached. ForMOrike the mystery is self-contained nature, for Rilke the blankness ofdeath, for Benn the enigma of history. We have seen how Rilke andMOrikedeal with the terror of the mirror-experienceby reclaiming thepossibility of human identity from the temporal void: for them the re-constitution of a supportive mutuality vis-a-vis the world is coterminouswith the rebuilding of the "Ich," the restatement of a viable individualtime-scale. But Benn's mirror-experience is different. What confrontshim is not the isolation of self but the horror at the other extreme, name-ly an excess of connections, biological, social and intellectual, to otherhuman beings. The concept of uniqueness has lost its meaning, althougheveryone continues to behave as if it were still in force. The result is a



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Time Structures in Poems 413chaos of humanactivitywithout identity.The only context in whichBenn feels the word "Ich" can still be pronounced s that of the self-containedpoem, and his powerfulyearning or the immutable"order"of the poetic self led him to the endorsementof formalist modernismin "ProblemederLyrik."However,although his maybe consideredalow blow, one shouldnot forgetthat this verysameyearning or orderwithin the human confusion led him 20 yearsearlier,with equal elo-quence, to an endorsementof racialcollectivism.The actual evidenceof Benn'spoetry suggestsa moreconsistentand continuous ascinationwith history,with a kind of evolutionary hangefar below the surfaceof humanevents.Poems open up rifts in the earth of dailiness, inkingsurfacephenomena o the movement n the depthsof history.MarionAdams has illuminated he productive ension between the virtual de-terminismof Benn'sbiologicalpronouncements,educinghumanbeingsto a genetic dictatorshipof irresistibleand conflicting urges, and hisexemptionof aestheticform from all such determinism, ndeed fromany criteriawhatever,that might be derived from the contemporaryworld. She notes: "His primitivisms consistentwithhis discontinuousmetaphysics, incethe past surgesup only for briefmoments."12Oneisreminded of the momentaryglimpsesof the death-realmwhich, forRilke,sufficeto maintainat leasttheviable llusionof a human dentity.ButforBenntherecan beno such dentity,because heonlyvalid humantime-scale s totally inaccessible o the empty rhythmsof daily life. AsAdamssays: "The only socialrole that Benn wouldeveradmit for theartistwas specialconcentrationon the memoriesof the race."'"Does it makeanysense, then,to speakof a mutualityof self and worldin relationto Benn?The answer s yes, provided hat both sides of theequation are completelyrethought.Benn would like to broaden thesignificanceof poetic creationand communication, o establishan en-tirelynew time-scale,vertical nsteadof horizontal. On the surfaceofthe earth of humanaffairs there is the humanconsciousnesswith itsyearning o becomeself; and in the depthsof historythere is the onlyknowable ruth,a truththat has by definitionsomeconnectionwiththesurfaceworldbecause it existsthroughhumanaffairs, as an enigmaticconcentrationof them. There are no other substances,no transcen-dentals. Rilkefeels muchthe samewayabout the death-realm:t simplyhas to be possibleto reclaim t for life because t growswithinlife andconsists of nothingbut life. But for Benn the time-scale,wherein thelucid compressionsof historycould generatea new continuityof con-sciousness,has to be recognizedas not yet in existence.Forboth Morikeand Rilkethe creativeprocessis one of recovery,for Benn it must beone of invention; he invocationsof a fulfilledpastin hispoemsare self-consciouslyclose to cliche,building-blocksromthe historical epertoireto be reusedin the imaginingof a future.But the way forward s notone of irrationalism, ather it involves a tight interweaving f surfaceand depth, as they are presently understood. Thus the human self canperhaps be reinvented, but only if its collectivity, its historicity, its pro-visional evolutionary status are fully acknowledged: "Der Mensch ist



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414 JAMES ROLLESTONnicht ein Ende, nicht die Krone der SchOpfung, sondern ein Beginn ...das Tierreich ist iiberschritten, hinter sich gelassen, die Emanzipationdes Geistigen tastet sich in einen neu sich eroffnenden Raum."14 In thispassage the dry historical language shifts towards the spatial, as Bennstrives to imagine the emancipation from the aimless treadmill of lineartime. But the movement is not a mystical one, not an escape from time:the process invoked in the phrase "neu sich eroffnenden Raum" ex-presses the necessary synthesis of dimensions in a verbal gesture not soremote, after all, from Morike's entry into the tree-circle. Conversely,when Benn endeavors to articulate the way in which the buried truth ofhistory responds to poetic language, firmly spatial images gradually be-come temporal. In the following remarkable"Marginalie" we may inter-pret "geschichtliche Welt" as the movement in the depths of time, "nihi-listische Welt" as the frenzied activity of the surface and "Ausdrucks-welt" as the world of the poet's language, destined to become the"expression" of the newly imagined time-dimension: "Die Ausdrucks-welt steht zwischen der geschichtlichen und der nihilistischen als einegegen beide geistig erkampfte menschliche Oberwelt, ist also eine ArtNiemandsland, zuruckgelassenes Handeln und herausgelostes Gesicht.An Realitat ist sie das Konkreteste ... in der Dichtung, z.B., muf3manallein sein, in die Weite sehen, womoglich Ober Wasser, und Worteheranziehen, Worte, dicht von Sachverhalten, geschichtlich beschwerte,tragische Worte, real wie Lebewesen."15 These lines enact the drama ofhuman possibility: the singularity of humanness gradually becomesimaginable, carved out of time's geological layers by language, by wordswhich no weight of experience can crush into final inertia.As in the time-structures of MOrikeand Rilke, Benn is impelled toposit the self-expansion of poetic language beyond its own limits. Suchlanguage enters the human wasteland, "geschichtlich beschwert," andmakes it possible to imagine a reinvention of the concept of identitywithin the framework of the new, historically discontinuous time-scale.The phrase "herausgelostes Gesicht," is revealing here; the word "Ge-sicht" is almost a topos in later Benn, a play on the double meaning offace and vision suggesting that the ultimate product of the compressionof human time in the depths is a "Gesicht," a new and strange single-ness of being. The poem "Eingeengt" transfers this paradox to theimmediacy of consciousness. Precisely because the human being is con-stricted, compressed within the limited possibilities of a given historicalmoment, the potential for forging a unique identity, a "Gesicht," exists.The title recalls the atmosphere of Benn's Expressionist youth, for ex-ample Stadler's well-known "Form ist Wollust:"Formwillmichverschniirenndverengen,Doch chwillmeinSein nalleWeiten rangen.But release is just what Benn does not prescribe. Instead the compres-sion intensifies through the imperative, didactic, rigidly shaped stanzas,drawing more and more imagined experience into the fixity of a histori-cal existence; until finally the experience of history as such can be af-firmed and the stream of time into the depths of the human past opens



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Time Structures in Poems 415up beneaththe consciousness.One cannottalk here of an initialloss ofself, becausethe very possibilityof a self is at issue in the poem. Butstructuralsimilaritieswith the other two poems discussedare readilydiscerned.In the first two stanzas,the strippingdown of the speaker'sworld to a zero point is accomplished,preciselynot througha processof exclusionbut throughits antithesis,a remorseless nclusionin thevacuum of history understood superficially.We cannot escape the"events"of the modernworld,yet almostimmediatelyhe armiesthatseemed so permanentvanish from consciousness,seeminglywithouttrace. Theremainder f thepoemstrugglesupwards rom thisabyss,butnot through heimpositionof epic continuity,as inMorike,ortheatricalrecurrence,as in Rilke. Instead,Benn imposesthe paradoxof radicaldiscontinuity: nly through he sheddingof all illusionsof selfhood cana genuineself be imagined.Renatevon Heydebrand's hraseappliestoall three of these poems: "Distanz ist das GesetzdieserDarstellung;"but whereasboth Morikeand Rilke insist on distance n orderto recap-ture, at the limits of the imagination,a residualconnectedness,Bennnegatesall connectionsexcept "das Geistige." One could say that heradicalizesRilke'susageof "das Wissen:" ust becauseour only linktothese remoteepochsand geographiesof the pastis throughknowledge,they can become the basis of the experiment hat is the reinventionofthe modernself. Man has lost his center rrevocably,but he still has hisperipheries-and the mysteryof language,its traditionsand collectivememories.It is possibleto discerna structureof recurrence nd glimpsein thispoem,butagaintheprioritiesare inverted. nsteadof Morike'sseamlessweb or Rilke'salternation hereis rigidrepetition.For in Benn's worldthere s only recurrence, et recurrencetselfcan becomethe sourceof asavingglimpse,provided t is insistedon withoutsentimentaloosening.Thus the first stanza,veryclose to dailylife, is without hint of any di-mensionbut loss; the secondstanza,held within the flickering mmedi-acy of newsreel,also turns n on itself, butendsin a question.Thethirdstanza is exotic, effortful, "die feuerrotenSegel" are still close toschoolroomencyclopedias.But the imaginations freed,and the fourthstanzaroams o thelimitingconundrums f planetaryhistory.Theshapeof historyis unchanged,as is the shapeof Benn'sstanzas,the worldisnothingbut recurrence nd death. Butthroughthe magicof a liberatedlanguagerecurrence an andhas becomeglimpse.In the last stanzatheinfiniteweightof the past has become infinitelylight: the long-estab-lishedanalogyof poetryand music, the arts that exist only in time, isdeployed o suggest hat whathashithertobeen imited o thecategoryofdryknowledgecan becomethe fluidsubstanceof a newmodeof being.The concluding mageof the "Strom"is of coursea topos, a meta-phorfor life that almostevery poet has elaborated.Hereis Rilke'sver-sion, in a letterto Lou Salome of 8 August1903: "Ich teile mich immerwiederundflief3e useinander,-und A chtedochso gern neinemBettegehen und grol3 werden... wir sollen wie ein Strom sein und nicht inKanale treten und Wasser zu den Weiden f0ihren ... wir sollen uns



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416 JAMESROLLESTONzusammenhaltenund rauschen."" Like Benn, Rilke insists that thepoet's way into the worldcan only be through nsistenceon his auton-omy, throughthe compressionof inherited anguage, its releaseandrenewal.But unlike Benn, Rilke wants to reclaim all elementsof theimagefor the conceptof identity.The self is the river,the worldis itsbanks. The boundariesare fluid, the temporality f the riverof centralimportance:but the landscape s the same as in the older centuriesoftheWestern radition.ForBenn,the chaosof themodernhasdevastatedthelandscape, he banksbetween elf and worldarehopelesslybreached.But there is hope in the fact that the riverhas flooded the landscape:tcanobliteratewoundsand, moreover, t is stilla river.There s stilldirec-tion and current.The humanconsciousness an neveragainclaimit asan imagefor individualdentity,but whatis now possible s to tameitsshapelessness hroughan openness o its totality,to thedepthandmulti-plicityof the humanpast. Thenit can be "in dichgelegt." Indeed t isalwayspresent, the verb is "bleibt." But the time-scalegeneratedbythe rigorof the "Ausdruckswelt" ivesaccess to the river'scurrent,asMorike'snarrativeof discoveryopensthe charmedcircleof the tree.Time is no longera given, a passivebackground:t has becomebothman's properelementand his essentialtool in the struggleagainstthedisintegration f experience.For, whentime's perennialmasksof his-toryand languageare seized and displacedby poeticspeaking, t yieldstheonlypossibilitymaginable f reconstitutinghesupportivemutualityof self andworld.Duke University

'Fritz Strich, Deutsche Klassik und Romantik; oder Vollendung und Unendlichkeit(Munich: Beimeyer, 1922).2 "Der Weg zu einem totalen, 'objektiven' Erfassen der Welt war dem romantischen Ichtrotz der Abwendung vom christlichen Dogma wie vom aufklarerischen Rationalismusnicht versperrt, vielmehr schien er leichter gehbar als je zuvor . " Heinz Schlaffer,Lyrik im Realismus (Bonn: Bouvier, 1966), p. 10.SMrike, letter to Mahrlen, May 21, 1932; quoted by Gerhard Storz, Eduard MOrike(Stuttgart: Ernst Klett, 1967), p. 19.SMrike, fragment from an unfinished novel; quoted by Storz, p. 222.Dagmar Barnouw's very thorough reading stresses the traditional element, the move-ment from the closure of the idyll to the closure of the "Dinggedicht." She assumes thestability of the poetic self as a giver of homage. Entziickte Anschauung: Sprache undRealitit in der Lyrik Eduard Merikes (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 1971), pp. 137-49.Renate von Heydebrand, EduardMirikes Gedichtwerk(Stuttgart: Metzler, 1972), p. 39.Christiaan Hart Nibbrig's reading of the conclusion illuminates its underlying tension,the specifically temporal danger of the gaze into the mirror. But his "existential" lan-guage seems almost too highly charged: "Das Spannungsverhaltnis von Ich undWelt ist im poetischen Jetzt aufgehoben. Allein dessen FOille roht zugleich auch wiederin die Leere weltloser, in sich selbst gefangener, sich selbst bespiegelnder Innerlichkeitumzuschlagen. Diese mogliche Konsequenz ist spilrbar in dem offenen, stehenden Ge-dichtschlu3." Verlorene Unmittelbarkeit: Zeiterfahrung und Zeitgestaltung bei EduardMOrike(Bonn: Bouvier, 1973), p. 299.

8 Jacob Steiner, "Die Thematik des Worts im dichterischen Werk Rilkes," in Rilke inneuer Sicht, ed. by Kate Hamburger (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1971), pp. 173-195.



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TimeStructuresn Poems 417O Rilke, letter to Lou Andreas-Salom6, August 8, 1903, in Briefe, ed. by Karl Altheim(Wiesbaden: Insel-Verlag, 1950), vol. 1, pp. 56-7.

10 Rilke, "Puppen" in Sdmtliche Werke,ed. by Ernst Zinn, vol. 6 (Frankfurt a.M.: Insel-Verlag, 1966), p. 1069.1 "Fundamental Neues bringt die Lyrik des 20. Jahrhunderts nicht mehr, so qualitatvollauch einige ihrer Dichter sind." Hugo Friedrich, Die Struktur der modernen Lyrik(Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1956), p. 140.

12 Marion Adams, Gottfried Benn's Critique of Substance (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1969),p. 106.13 Ibid., p. 105.14 Gottfried Benn, "Der Radardenker," in Werke,Band 2: Prosa und Szenen (Wiesbaden:Limes, 1958), p. 273.1"Benn, "Marginalien," in Werke, Band 1: Essays und Aufsdtze, pp. 391-2.6"Rilke, Briefe, vol. 1, p. 60.

The Heidelberg Festival, comprising a series of orchestral and operatic performancesin the castle, has invited the Eastman Philharmonia and its conductor David Effron to beits resident orchestra. The Eastman Philharmonia is the senior orchestra of the EastmanSchool of Music of the University of Rochester. The performances to take place betweenJuly 26 and August 31, 1981, are part of the second annual Heidelberg Castle Festival.

Oskar Kokoschka, the great Austrian painter, graphic artist, scenic designer, and authorof pioneering dramatic works, who acquired worldwide renown as one of the "monoliths"of classical modern art, died in his house in Villeneuve on the shore of Lake Geneva(Switzerland) on February 22, 1980, at the age of 93.

Professor Gerhard Croll, the head of the Institute of Musicology at the University ofSalzburg, has recently discovered a previously unknown part of the score to "The Abduc-tion from the Seraglio" by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.The composition, the existence of which was suspected on the basis of some con-temporary sources, consists of 28 bars and Croll calls it "March of the Janizaries Duringthe Entry of Selim Bassa." It is set in c-major for nine brass and woodwinds and two drums(one German, one Turkish).The march, if put in the designated sequence, closes a gap which, from the point ofdramaturgical development, has been inexplicable.The composition will be published by Baerenreiter-Verlag during 1980. It has beenagreed upon that the music will receive its official premiere during the opening ceremonyof the 1980 Salzburg Festival.

james rolleston, time structures. a reading of poems by mörike, rilke and benn

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