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Misha Gordin: Inspiration
Head
Research Associates
Dr. Roberto Sanchiño Martínez / Hans Stauffacher, M.A. /
Cornelia Temesvári, M.A. / Dr. Beatrice Trînca
Student Assistants
Objective
Beginning with the philosophical aesthetics of the 18th century, aesthetic experience has been understood primarily as the experience of art by non-artists. In consequence, reflections on art shifted their emphasis from artist to receiver. At the same time, a tradition that defined the production of art itself as a form of reception faded from view – a tradition that had been continuously effective ever since ancient Greek religion and philosophy and that has by no means vanished from modernity. This leads to the main question of the project: How was the traditional conception of art production as a form of art reception reconfigured in modernity, and which were the consequences of this reconfiguration for the concept of ‘aesthetic experience’? This question would seem to presuppose an attenuation of the religiously based conception of art as creation. The degree to which this is the case is being explored by the project, with its orientation toward the aesthetics of the religious, on the basis of investigations of modern and pre-modern literary, philosophical and mystical texts. From this task emerges the concentration on two guiding concepts: first, the traditional concept of the genesis of art via inspiration, and second, the concept of subversion that has been applied to the process of artistic production only recently and circumscribes the undermining or even destruction of traditional prescriptions. Two interdependent hypotheses will be examined here: 1) that in the aesthetics of reception, notions of inspiration operate primarily within a Christian pattern, and 2) that in the aesthetics of production, self-referential definitions of inspiration attempt to subversively undermine this pattern.
Subproject 1: ‘Poeta Creator’ As ‘Poeta Doctus’. Transformations of Inspiration in Modernity
(Prof. Dr. Renate Schlesier)
The aim of this project is better to understand the transformations which the concept of inspiration has undergone in the modern era. The basic assumption is that many modernist authors conceived of themselves as both ‘poeta creator’ and ‘poeta doctus’; and that they subverted traditional ideas of inspiration. The central question is how such ways of dealing with inspiration relate to a poetic process, frequently considered characteristic of modernism, which brings together poetic creation with reflections about poetic language and/or poetic production. Proust, for whom this poetic process is particularly instable, forever an experiment, is of major interest here. His work will serve as test case in the analysis of the connections, within creative processes, between ecstatic experiences of dissolution of boundaries of self and time and the play with enigma and mystery, on one hand, and claims to truth, regularity and scientific objectivity, on the other.
Subproject 2: Productive subjectivity. Concepts of artistic genius in idealist and post-idealist German philosophy
(Hans Stauffacher, M.A.)
Beginning with Fichte the notion of a self-setting productive subjectivity becomes a central philosophical figure of thought and – following the shift from Kantian aesthetics to a philosophy of art which focuses on an aesthetics of production – concepts of genius acquire a central role for philosophy. Based on this observation the subproject examines theories of artistic creation in 19th century German philosophy that appropriate 18th century concepts of genius, which are in close dialogue with ideas of inspiration derived from Platonic and Christian thought, and conceptualise artistic creation as a process that is at the same time poetic and philosophical. The analysis is guided by the following questions: which connections can be detected between models of artistic creation which are based on concepts of genius and reflections on philosophy as construction, production, creative act or poetic creation? What is the relation between such models of artistic creation and traditional concepts of inspiration? Do these concepts of genius have any potential for subversion vis-à-vis idealist aspirations to a universal rational system? And if so, how is it deployed?
Subproject 3: Clerical Concepts of Inspiration and Authorship. On Current Questions in Medieval Studies
(Dr. Beatrice Trînca)
The objective of this subproject is twofold. First, it seeks to provide a systematic reappraisal of approaches to medieval conceptualisations of processes of literary creation that have been developed within medieval studies since the 19th century. Second, it aims to offer fresh examinations of examples of the poetical mystique courtoise of the High and Late Middle Ages against the background of recent debates in the field of the aesthetics of production. Within the wider framework of the relation between aesthetic and religious experience which the project C7 examines, the significance of erotic-aesthetic experience for mystical ideas of inspiration and for subversive transformations (perhaps modernist avant la lettre) of clerical concepts of inspiration within the mystical tradition are of particular interest.
Subproject 4: Subversive poetics of creation. Cabbalistic figurations of aesthetic production in contemporary literature and literary theory
(Cornelia Temesvári, M.A.)
Since the middle of the 20th century, Jewish cabbala has become of renewed academic and popular interest. While the cabbala, under the auspices of Christianity, had provided models for describing aesthetic configurations already in the early Romantic period, lately the cabbala has become subject to further re-interpretations which have aimed at coming to terms with the aesthetics of creative processes. Against this background, the project examines the subversive potential of cabbalistic figurations in the aesthetics of production of contemporary US-American authors. The examination focuses on two aspects. The first concerns the relation between art and religion and in particular the transformations of cabbalistic concepts of cosmogony, hermeneutics and experience for poetological purposes: How are poetic processes and concepts of authorship re-casted along thematic paradigms central to the cabbala? In which way are Platonic and Christian models of inspiration integrated, subverted, and re-formulated within these processes of re-casting? The second aspect concerns, in the realm of aesthetic reflexion, the recourse to mystical counter-traditions and its relation to the normative world of the religious and/or the secular. In this context the relationship between the religious and the literary canon and the relevance of subversive aspects of transgression will be discussed.
