Atmosphere, Mood, Stimmung: On a Hidden Potential of Literature by Butler Erik Gumbrecht Hans

Author:Butler, Erik, Gumbrecht, Hans
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 2011-08-14T16:00:00+00:00

Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog. Caspar David Friedrich © akg-images

Meadows Near Greifswald. Caspar David Friedrich © akg-images

Before the middle of the twentieth century, such images of the Sublime would never have been associated with the concept of Stimmung, as obvious as it may now be for us to do so. Until then, a component of harmony was thought indispensable for this dimension to exist, and harmony is incompatible with the Sublime. Friedrich worked with a wide range of Stimmungen in the sense the term acquired only later; he did so, that is, in a way that was ahead of the thinking and concepts of his times. When we look at Friedrich’s paintings, the observers they present hold open sites of imagination; from here, we can experience manifold forms of physical contact.

In contrast to what is “represented” in texts and images from earlier times—a level of experience that often requires explication and translation into the terms of our own present—Stimmungen from the past can strike us directly and without mediation, provided that we are open for them. Stimmungen are capable of leaping across the boundaries of hermeneutic interpretation, so to speak. If one approaches Friedrich’s hometown today, on the freeway from the south, there is a point that corresponds exactly to the geometric position of the observer looking at the painting Meadows Near Greifswald. There, at the proper time of day, the sunlight meets our eyes in exactly the same way that, once in the early nineteenth century, it must have met the eyes of Caspar David Friedrich.

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