Orpheus Looks Back

But I have always suspected that these lines express something more intimately personal, something that has to do not merely with the man, but with the poet and his poetry, maybe even with poetry as such. When we have forgotten the lines of a poem, do we not ask: does it go-wie geht es? A poem's identity is bound up with the way it moves, and that is how we remember it. Like Goethe's, Mbrike's was an eminently wandernder Genius, suggesting moving shapes to his inner ear and articulating his meanings in and through the finest nuances of sounds in progression. No German poet has in my opinion more sensitively explored the expressive possibilities of movement made audible; and to our appreciation of this aspect of Mbrike's genius the following reflections would make some small contribution

Aesthetics · Art · Epistemology · Literature · Meaning (existential) · Movement (music) · Poetry · German Literature and Culture Studies · Literature and Cultural Memory · Philosophy