Филологический класс (Mar 2022)
“Transcendental Homelessness” in Western Modernist Sonnets
Abstract
The article deals with the fundamental existential topos of modernist poetry – “transcendental homelessness” (“transzendentale Obdachlosigkeit” is a term coined by G. Lukács). The concept of transcendental homelessness goes back to the ideas of Kant, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche in Europe and to transcendentalism in America (Emerson, Thoreau). The idea of transcendental homelessness in relation to modernist poetry means transcendental abandonment, insecurity of man by God and society and is manifested both in European poetry and in the literature of the two Americas. A comparison of a number of texts reveals not only their intertextuality, but also a lively dialogue between the texts and the authors (Hoddis, Lichtenstein, Klemm). The topos under study receives its culminating expression in the poems of the “end of the world” (Hoddis, Klemm, McLeish, etc.), based on Spengler’s ideas about the “Untergang des Abendlandes” and Nietzsche’s nihilism. German expressionists most vividly expressed the motif of the “end of the world” as a continuation of the mythological plot of the “Gotterdämmerung”, captured by K. Pinthus in the anthology “Menschheitsdämmerung” (1919/20). The topos finds its logical conclusion in epitaph sonnets (Ungaretti, Vallejo, Desnos, etc.). In poetological sonnets (Unamuno, Becher, Jimenez, Machado, etc.), poets attempt to get out of the situation of transcendental homelessness by appealing to the creative potential of language, by turning to the poetic tradition, and glorifying national poets. The sonnet, as a form most consistently supporting European poetic traditions, turned out to be the most acceptable poetic form for expressing the idea of the possibility of a dialogue between cultures and the acquisition of a language ark.
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