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Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Poland (Oficyna Naukowa)
Suddenness / Plötzlichkeit. Zum Augenblick des ästhetischen Scheins
On the Moment of Aesthetic Appearance
»Suddenness or epiphany – an expression of discontinuity and rupture – resists aesthetic integration. This argument is the centrepiece of Bohrer's collection of essays […]. The study examines a romantic and modernist literary phenomenon and traces its textual appearance in the works of early German Romantics – Schlegel, Schleiermacher and Kleist – through Nietzsche to such modernists as Proust, Joyce, Musil and Benjamin. Although Bohrer...
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»Suddenness or epiphany – an expression of discontinuity and rupture – resists aesthetic integration. This argument is the centrepiece of Bohrer's collection of essays […]. The study examines a romantic and modernist literary phenomenon and traces its textual appearance in the works of early German Romantics – Schlegel, Schleiermacher and Kleist – through Nietzsche to such modernists as Proust, Joyce, Musil and Benjamin. Although Bohrer discusses the influence of the French poststructuralists Foucault and Derrida, by concentrating on the ›incommensurability‹ of fictional language, he ultimately develops his arguments from the literary texts themselves. As he concludes this study, Bohrer states that ›suddenness‹ transcends history and yet is tied to it, especially to the processes of acceleration typical of modernization since the industrial revolution.« (book description of the English edition published by Columbia UP)
1981, 261 pages
Persons
Karl Heinz Bohrer
Author
Karl Heinz Bohrer, born in Cologne in 1932, was a literary critic, publisher, scientist and creator of numerous works focusing on the central ideas of Momentanism and »suddenness«. He worked as a secondary school teacher in Germany, England and the USA. In 2007, he was awarded the Heinrich Mann Prize and received the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 2014. Karl Heinz Bohrer died in London on August 4, 2021.
Karl Heinz Bohrer
Author
Karl Heinz Bohrer, born in Cologne in 1932, was a literary critic, publisher, scientist and creator of numerous works focusing on the central...
© Isolde Ohlbaum
OTHER PUBLICATIONS
Latest first
Year of Publication: 2021
Karl Heinz BohrerYear of Publication: 2021
The Things That Happen
The »thirteen everyday fantasies«, with which Karl Heinz Bohrer moves on to shorter, modest forms after his scientific study of hate, are not so mundane: they show the handwriting of a restless intellectual who, in the concentrated form of short prose, provides information about selected sensitivities, preferences, empathisations, disturbances, even antipathies of a long life. Bohrer...
Year of Publication: 2019
Karl Heinz BohrerYear of Publication: 2019
Speaking with Daggers
Particularly in recent times, the term »hate« has made a career in public importance. In the journalistic and socio-historical critique of the reaction to the refugee crisis prevalent in Germany and Europe it moved to the forefront of the discourse alongside terms like »identity« and »racism«.
But Karl Heinz Bohrer’s study in twelve chapters searches for something entirely...
Year of Publication: 2017
Karl Heinz BohrerYear of Publication: 2017
Now
Karl Heinz Bohrer is one of Germany’s most pugnacious intellectuals. The steadfast expectation that the banal present will turn into the fantastical now – this is what drives Karl Heinz Bohrer’s autobiographical, adventure-filled story. Spanning more than five decades and unfolding through nine chapters, his story plays out in various locales: in European cities like London and Paris, at...
Year of Publication: 2015
Karl Heinz BohrerYear of Publication: 2015
The Appearance of Dionysus
Has Dionysus only become Dionysian in the course of modernity? Dionysus, son of Zeus, god of ecstasy, has been ascribed many characteristics. But only one of them discerns him from all the other gods: his sudden »appearance«, that mysterious eventfulness that is connected to his entrance and which was already thematised in the Greek texts. In his new book, Karl Heinz Bohrer explores the...