This study explores how language is thematized in a selection of literary texts written in Swedish and German by Peter Weiss between 1946 and 1960. The textual interpretations seek to establish how Weiss’s literary work forms a multifaceted reflection on language and its cultural, historical and material preconditions. The various literary conceptualizations of language in Weiss’s texts are shown to be intimately linked to historical processes, where early postwar Germany plays a crucial role as a contextual framework. The study demonstrates how the texts explore an acoustic dimension of language, where non-articulatory sounds and noises oscillate between two poles: they either pose a threat to the narrator, or form a promise of a future emancipatory linguistic expression beyond a territorializing and violent language. Furthermore, the study argues that the sounds and noises permeating Weiss’s literary work form a soundtrack of past violence haunting the present. Finally, this soundtrack is shown to undermine a German postwar literary discourse that postulates a historical break after the Second World War (Stunde Null) as well as a new German literary language cleansed of Nazi contamination (Kahlschlag).
The study draws its theoretical framework mainly from research concerned with mono- and multilingualism in literature, as well as from intermedial studies examining the interaction between literary texts and other artistic media such as the visual arts and music.
The material examined in the study consists of six short stories in Swedish published between 1946 and 1953 in the literary journals 40-tal, Prisma and All världens berättare; the prose manuscript “Der Vogelfreie” (1947), later published as Der Fremde. Erzählung (1980); as well as the “micro novel” Der Schatten des Körpers des Kutschers (1960). Aside from these literary texts, Weiss’s documentary film Enligt lag (1957) and his feature film Hägringen (1959) are also analyzed.
Der vorliegende Beitrag untersucht den Lyrikband notes for soloists (2009) der transnationalen Lyrikerin Cia Rinne mit einem besonderen Schwerpunkt auf der Frage der literarischen Vielsprachigkeit und der Intermedialität des Textes. Mit Ausgangspunkt in Naoki Sakais Verständnis von Übersetzung als bordering (Sakai 2009) wird die Rolle des Lesers von notes for soloists als Erzeuger sprachlicher Grenzen hervorgehoben. Hierbei funktioniert Rinnes mehrsprachiger und intermedialer Text als eine Art Partitur, die Leser verschiedener Sprachkompetenz auf unterschiedliche Weise realisieren. Es wird veranschaulicht, wie die Dynamik zwischen dem gedruckten Text und den verschiedenen artikulatorischen Möglichkeiten des Textes die Leser in eine Sphäre zwischen Sonorität und sprachlicher Artikulation versetzt; eine Sphäre, die normalerweise kleinen Kindern, die noch keine Sprache beherrschen, vorbehalten ist. Dabei wird die Kontingenz sprachlicher Grenzen ins Auge gefasst, zugleich werden jedoch auch mögliche Verbindungen zwischen verschiedenen für die Leser unbekannten bzw. bekannten Sprachen vorgeführt.
The article proposes a new multimodal approach to literary multilingualism, with special attention devoted to how readers with different language skills partake in making literary multilingualism happen. It presents a critical assessment of previous scholarship on literary multilingualism, which we claim is characterized by monolingual assumptions and a problematic division between mono- and multilingual literature. As a continuation of the theoretical argument, multimodal readings of three contemporary poets Cia Rinne, Caroline Bergvall and Ralf Andtbacka are presented. Instances of contemporary multilingual poetry, the article concludes, can help us to critically scrutinize notions of clear-cut linguistic borders, as well as to study the intricate dynamics between the acoustic and visual aspects of literary multilingualism.