The Time and Space of Stimmung: Poetic Negotiations of Modernity in Hölderlin and Rilke

Ultimately, the significance of this undertaking lies in the way in which it recasts the concept of Stimmung , positioning it on an axis of time and space and treats moods and atmospheres not as the mere byproducts of texts, but as integral parts of their inner workings. Comparing Hölderlin and Rilke allows one to focus on two distinct paradigms for the treatment of Stimmung in poetry. Although it would obviously be going too far to suggest that each of these paradigms is typical of the dominant theories of Stimmung around 1800 and 1900, respectively, it is nevertheless the case that both poets are in many ways representative of the eras in which they lived and wrote. Thus, one might say that each of these paradigms is, if not typical, certainly one response to a changed (and changing) experience of reality.Bachelor of Art