Slovo a Smysl (Jul 2017)
Zemětřesení v textu a otřesení smyslu: literatura 19. století jako hermeneutický problém // A Textual Earthquake and Meaning Shaken: 19th-Century Literature as a Hermeneutic Problem
Abstract
With the real earthquake in Lisboa, 1755, as well as the revolutionary ones in France and the shocks of the Napoleonic wars, the model of a temporally linear development of modernity, with ‘Progress’ as its universal goal, was shaken; and beyond the impact on Enlightenment rationality and philosophy of reason, it affected all assumed meaning of history, knowledge, and apparent certainties. This ‘state of crisis’ induced Heinrich von Kleist first to his novella The Earthquake in Chile (Das Erdbeben in Chili, 1806/1807) and then to suicide, whereas F. D. E. Schleiermacher responded with his theory of modern hermeneutics as a synthesis of the individual and the general. Building on Hana Šmahelová’s V síti dějin literatury národního obrození (2011), the paper focuses on the model of temporalisation of historical processes and in particular the ‘event of national reawakening’ as part of the ‘project of modernization’.
