Lyrisches Gespür. Vom geheimen Sensorium moderner Poesie by Burkhard Meyer-Sickendiek (review)

In his expansive book Lyrisches Gespür, author Burkhard Meyer-Sickendiek sets out to demonstrate a continuity between the romantic concept of atmospheric poetry and the poetry of modernity and post-modernity—despite the rejection of such a continuity in much of the seminal scholarship on this topic in recent decades (see the discussion 102-106). To come straight to the point, Meyer-Sickendiek's argument is striking and for the most part original and convincing, but his book comes with some weaknesses. The author traces the semantic field of "Gespür" (intuition and sense) in poetry and employs this field to bridge the gap between what Emil Staiger conceived of and Hugo Friedrich despised as "Stimmungslyrik." "Spüren" is central to Meyer-Sickendiek's thesis in two respects: as a word and hence metaphor used increasingly in poetry from the late 18^th century on, and as cornerstone for his conceptual framework. In this latter instance, "Spüren" as both gut feelings (54-56) and the sensing of atmospheres is expanded into a complex concept against the backdrop of Hermann Schmitz's "New Phenomenology," on whose analysis of affect and atmosphere Meyer-Sickendieck already built his 2005 book "Affektpoetik." Additionally, Meyer-Sickendiek draws on psychological and neuroscientific concepts, such as "intuitive" and "tacit knowledge" (among others he adapts concepts by Damasio and Polanyi 49-72), and "background emotions" (76-82), as well as on Charles S. Peirce's notion of "abduction" (64-67).

Meyer-Sickendiek's main concern is a reconsideration of poetological concepts. In this regard the conceptual integration of abduction is central to his argument, since he conceives of it as a bridge between a poet's experience and the actual poem: "Lyrisches Gespür," he defines, "begreifen wir als eine Abduktion leiblicher Erfahrung in rhythmisierter Sprache" (38, italics in original). This definition goes back to Schmitz's suggestion to conceptualize the subject first of all as a corporeal affection of a conscious body in space. In order not to fall back on traditional ideas such as "Erlebnislyrik," Meyer-Sickendiek maintains that it is not an exceptional event that triggers poetic production but a "situation," in Schmitz's sense a wholeness that is corporeally experienced but not yet unfolded in an intentional reaction or understanding (39; see Schmitz, Der unerschöpfliche Gegenstand, Bonn 1990, 65). The poem, thus, results from an abduction as a means of translation between "situation" and sometimes hermetic, sometimes explicative textualization. Meyer-Sickendiek suggests replacing the term "Erlebnislyrik" with "Situationslyrik" (91-118) in order to distinguish it conceptually from traditional understandings of poetry after Wilhelm Dilthey (14).

The instructive introduction to the volume and its conceptual framework (13-118) is followed by an extensive portion devoted to proving the argument in concrete analyses of texts from the early Enlightenment poet Barthold Heinrich Brockes to such contemporary poets as Lutz Seiler, Albert Ostermaier, and Ann Cotton. In five distinct sections, each with several subchapters, Meyer-Sickendiek casts light on various aspects of "Lyrisches Gespür": the magic (119-212), corporeal or existential (212-306), the social (307-378), the atmospheric (379-483), and the sense of time (483-549). This is not the place to evaluate the analyses and interpretations in detail; not all analyses seem to flesh out the thesis as laid out in the introductory chapter and the conceptual remarks that start every section. The reflection on E. Geibels "Blauer Himmel" (188-189), for instance, is more a critique of epigonic poetry than a convincing example of the meaning of "sensing the sky," as the chapter is titled (186-197). Equally sparse in respect to the argument are the analyses of poems by Jünger (206-208), Hilbig (242-243), Zuckmayer (271-272), Sachs (299-300), and Seiler (480-481). Meyer-Sickendiek's interpretations are particularly strong, on the other hand, when he does tie them in with the terminology developed in the conceptual sections of the...