The Poetics of Synaesthesia in Rilke and Handke

Les Caltvedt

This essay explores definitions of synaesthesia to illustrate the com-

ponents of sight/sound imagery in Rilke and Handke. Rilke's poetry is
rich in intersensory images, as several scholars have pointed out.' Previ-
ous studies of perception in Handke have stressed the eye, treating him as
an Augenmensch, to the neglect of the ear?
The young Handke was critical of Rilke's style. In an interview after
the publication of Die Stunde der wahren Empfindung (1975), which
exhibits multiple (and much studied^) parallels with Rilke's Aufzeich-
nungen des Malte Laurids Brigge, he distinguished his writing from
Rilke's, which is "eine exklusive Wortkunst, die sich so schlingelt und
kruselt, da sie als poetische Sprache gleich erkennbar ist'"^ This study
examines intersensory images in Rilke's poetry as they illuminate
Rilkean elements in Handke, who subsequently studied Czanne, Rilke's
ideal painter (cf Die Lehre der Mont Sainte Victoire, 1980) and who
developed his own "poetic language, " rich in musical and visual inter-
textuality, and able to transform "brute, external reality into the "Weltin-
nenraum" of human consciousness."^
Defining synaesthesia may seem a straightforward task. Erhard
Siebold, for example, called it a powerful impression on the emotion or
senses which leads to ^correspondences or equivalents of sensations
[which] enable the poet to combine the power of several sense impres-
sions into one collective impression, and translate one sense impression
into the terms of another sense."^ Beyond that, "synaesthesia . . . compels
other senses to vibrate simultaneously" (581). As Hadermann has pointed
out, however, synaesthesia defmitions constitute a veritable genre of
scholarly writing whose compilation would refiect the history of
aesthetics since prehistoric times. He calls the phenomenon "[ein]
Vorlufer des logischen Denkens" and "Bestandteil der Ursprache" (54).^
The renaissance and baroque eras took great interest in it, in connection
with the technological notion of architecture as musical harmony,
scientific speculation about the music of the spheres, and "das in
Schwingung befmdliches Universum" (Hadermann 66, 68). Significantly,
this concept of vibration or pulse has been a component of defmitions
since the baroque era.
 54 MODERN AUSTRL^N LITERATURE

Romantic synaesthesia sought to unify the arts through the unifying

of the senses. E.T.A. Hoffinann's Kreisleriana, for example, stresses
Romantic inwardness:

So wie . . . Hren ein Sehen von innen ist, wo wird dem Musiker
das Sehen ein Hren von innen, nmlich zum innersten
Bewutsein der Musik, die, mit seinem Geiste gleichmig
vibrierend, aus allem ertnt, was sein Auge erfat (HofBnann,

Baudelaire spoke of the "perptuelle vibration" of all things^ and his

imagery gave acoustic qualities to flowers, such as the rose which is
capable of speech: ^1a fleur, langage splendid ou charmant, mais absolu-
ment nigmatique."' Signiflcantly, the age of Symbolism also marked a
further shift in the discussion of the senses toward science and tech-
nology. From the late nineteenth century to current Postmodern dis-
course, sight/sound synaesthesia has linked technology to the human
body. Hehnholtz attributed unity among the senses to a single and
unifled form of energy as the common source of all physical sensations."
He was explicit about the body's indifference to the sources of its
experience and of its capacity for multiple connections with other
agencies and machines.'^ ITiis notion flnds its way to Scriabin, and from
him to Schnberg and Kandinsky. A colleague of Hehnholtz, Dubois-
Reymond "seriously pursued the possibility of electrically cross-con-
necting nerves, enabling the eye to see sounds and the ear to hear
colors.'^^^ The theosophists, contemporaries of Hehnholtz, speculated on
a possible electrical basis for the vibration given off by thoughts and
feelings. For the cubist painter (and theosophist) Wassily Kandinsky,
"the vibration of the air (sound) and of light (color) surely form the
foundation of this physical afFmity [between sound and color],"''* and
synaesthesia is a " . . . harmony between the senses, whereby a given
strong impulse not only causes the sense actually stimulated to respond,
but compels other senses to vibrate simultaneously."'^ Signiflcantly, this
primarily graphic artist connected intersensory perception to the spoken
word, as the poet-critic Baudelaire had done: "Just as each spoken word
(tree, heaven, man) awakens an inner vibration so does every object
represented . . ."(67). According to Merleau-Ponty, it is the painter who
"recaptures and converts into visible objects what would, without him.
 Poetics of Synaesthesia in Rilke and Handke 55

remain walled up in the separate life of each consciousness: the vibration

of appearances which is the cradle of things."'^ This notion that the
synaesthetic artist releases "walled-up" vibrations approaches Susan
Buck-Morss's postmodernist definition, based on the body, whose
"leaky" nervous system allows messages to seep across boundaries.
Whereas the blood circulation system is closed, nerves are "open to the
world."'^ What she calls the "synaesthetic system" is a "sense-conscious-
ness . . . wherein external sense-perceptions come together with internal
images of memory and anticipation'' (12-13).
Krauss examines the body as a technological system, in which the
life of nervous tissue is "the alternating pulse of stimulation and ener-
vation, the complex feedback relays of^ retension and protension."'^
Whereas modernism saw beat as an interloper from the realm of the audi-
tory, the postmodernist beat "is not understood to be structurally distinct
from vision but to be at work from deep inside it" (63).
Since each analysis of intersensory perception redefines the term and
links artistic synaesthesia to imagery, the present method defines the
most elemental context of both sight and sound, emptiness, and proceeds
in steps toward defining the synaesthesia peculiar to Rilke and Handke.
Emptiness forms the context of sense impressions: the space where
vibration becomes sound and the plane where visual images originate.
According to Lao Tzu, "A vessel is useful only through its emptiness. It
is the space opened in a wall that serves as a window. Thus it is the non-
existent in things which make them serviceable."'^ Early on, Kandinsky
saw in the emptiness of an unpainted surface ." . . this pure canvas which
itself is as beautiful as a painting. And then comes the willful brush
which first here, then there, gradually conquers it. . ."^ It is this "beauty
of emptiness" which forms the vessel for intersensory imagery in Rilke
and Handke.
Rilke's "empty canvas" is many-faceted, ranging from the "radical
deficiency of human longing"'^' to the darkness of sound chambers:
"Jedes Leere, jeder Zwischenraum dunkler Stunden .. . / wird zur
Muschel, dran die Fuge / drhnen wird."" The first Duino Elegy closes
with an allusion to the legend of Linos, the origin of music in the wake of
his death, and the emptiness it created: ." . . das Leere in jene / Schwing-
ung geriet, die uns jetzt hinreit und trstet/ und hilft."^^ In a letter he
called the empty spaces one of the "grandes questions de l'Art, de tous
les arts," the silence between notes in music "un vide trop 'vrai,'" and the
56 MODERN AUSTRL\N LITERATURE

emptiness surrounding a poem one of its necessary components."'^ In all

these passages, emptiness is a kind of catalyst: vibrating in music, giving
space to art, and punctuating the words of poetry.
It is perhaps an exaggeration to call emptiness "Handke's muse,'"'
however, it is true that Handke refers to Leere in every major prose work,
often in such strong terms as "Leere, mein Leitsatz. Leere, meine
Geliebte."^^ Among the allusions, many are as cryptically synaesthetic as
this: "Wenn du horchst, kannst du vor Leere die Sonne ghnen hren" "^
(148). Klaus Bonn has found several references to the white surface that
precedes art ("[die] unbeschriebenen Bltter weien Papiers, [die] noch
unbefleckten Leinwand auf der Staffelei" (96) which refer specifically to
canvas, paralleling Kandinsky's remarks about the empty canvas in
describing white paper before narration has begun. Klaus Bonn describes
the "Fruchtstand der Leere" as a kind of power, bundled up and pre-
served in Handkean formulations such as this: "Die Leere offenhalten:
das wre die hchste Kunst.""^ Emptiness is found in nature as well, as
for example the cow paths on a mountain slope, seen as "Antwort
genug," response enough to the poet's "fruitful emptiness."^^ Handkean
prose is replete with examples of the notion of emptiness as "Sirmbild der
Inspiration" (97). At the beginning of Der Chinese des Schmerzes,
Handke calls "leere Form" another word for narrating itself, and like
Kandinsky's empty canvas, which is filled with brush strokes, "[d]ie
Leere bevlkerte sich mit Gestalten (12)."^^
When emptiness becomes a sound chamber, the everyday world pro-
duces music: in this same novel, a tennis building "tnte von Ball-
wechsehi, Zurufen und Laufschritten" (49) as did a storm sewer in the
rain: "Das Regenrauschen wurde rhythmisiert von einem vibraphonhn-
lichen Klingen tief unter der Strae, das durch die kreisrunden ff-
nungen der Abfluplatte kam" (195). Likewise, a hollow street sign post
sounds a chord "wie bei einer Flte" when wind blows across two holes
in it,^^ and gasoline barrels make a sound when wanned by the sun.^"
Vibration inside empty chambers can become synaesthetic. All
matter, whether hollow or not, vibrates, including light. For Kandinsky
". . . vibration of the air (sound) and of light (color) surely form the
foundation of [synaesthesia].""'^ Merleau-Ponty describes synaesthesia in
terms of vibration also: "When I say that I see a sound, I mean that I echo
the vibration of the sound with my whole sensory being, and particularly
 Poetics of Synaesthesia in Rilke and Handke 57

with that sector of myself which is susceptible to colors."^"^

Rilke consistently turned to imagery of vibrating, trembling, and
ringing to describe artistic expression, and called on the poet himself to
be the one who vibrates - "das klingende Glas." Significantly, this is fol-
lowed by a statement of his consciousness of the emptiness at the bottom
of poetic vibration: "Sei - und wisse zugleich des Nicht-Seins Beding-
ung, / den unendlichen Grund deiner innigen Schwingung . . . /'^^
Acoustic Space consists of three-dimensional images animated by
sound. The Romantic painter Philipp Otto Runge was able to make
"happy tones hop out ft-om the depth of flowers: thus [emanates] the
joyous life from the fingers of an artist."^^ Rilke's similar conceit
describes a flower's capability to recognize the observer, with an ^'atten-
tion that is almost audible." Another poem from the same cycle, "Jour
d't," describes the ''soft agonies" of roses shedding their petals (112f).
The sound of Handke's flowers and trees comes from bees.
In Nachmittag eines Schriftstellers, flowers with bees hidden inside
are described as "ein Sirren," and a tree is described as *Von Bienen
brausend" (39). Larger acoustic spaces, such as a dog kennel {Chinese)
becomes a cacophony of barking sounds that frightens birds, causing
them to change course and fly straight up; the barking is described as
musical pieces played backwards (222). This unusual imagery is
developed to the utmost in a passage in Langsame Heimkehr, which
features a room full of seismographs: "Eine Maschine empfing stndig
die Tonwellen aus dem Erdinnem, die in dem Apparat ein fernes Drh-
nen ergaben, und in dem Gedrhn pochte ein sehr heller, fast singender
Klang" (131). This room, "an almost singing" place, which records the
sounds of the earth's interior, mediates between the reader and the earth
itself as a sphere containing acoustic space.
Spaces inside a tiny flower, a house or the interior of the planet be-
come acoustically charged. In the case of children's cries, the process is
reversed, with sound becoming space. Rilke called children's cries
"Keile des Kreischens" - "wedges of cries" driven into "Zwischenrume
/dieses, des Weltraums."^* In Chinese, Handke's protagonist awakes,
goes to the window, and focuses gradually on a sound: "Ein Todesschrei
. . . einen Schrei; ein Geschrei; ein Schreien. Jemand schreit. Nein, nicht
jemand: ein Kind schreit" (75). This cry grows until the "Zwischen-
rume" - spaces between the buildings becomes part of one huge
"Schreiloch" (76).
In this same novel, acoustic space combines a cello with a house
 58 MODERN AUSTRIAN LITERATURE

foundation. As the protagonist approaches a house where he is invited to

play cards, cello music is issuing from the house, and soon the cello
strings' vibrations are perceived as a ^tnendes Fundament" (115); the
house - sound chamber for the cello - has a musical "bass" underneath
it. Handke follows with a link between this freezing of time to the
mythological origin of poetry:

Die Tne des Cello verlangsamten das Zeitma: fast jeder, der
drauen vorbeiging, blieb stehen, um zu hren; und auch den
Spielern im Haus stockte im Lauschen manchmal die Bewegung
. . . als kmen den Zuhrern die Dinge, kurz oder lang, wieder
zum Stehen, wie, nach der Legende, durch die Stimme des
Orpheus . . . (115).

When the music ceases, a wine bottle is uncorked, providing a percussive

period to the "sentence" of the extended acoustic image. The phone
rings, signaling the beginning of another "musical piece" of reality, the
prosaic mode of everyday life. But during the cello's resonating, its
sound "slows things down" to the point of stasis. The "foundation of
sound" makes the whole house resonate.
Soft sounds are visual experiences. In the early poem cycle
"Traumgekrnt," the Rilkean poet claims to be able to hear tales told by
a fountain, "und dann ein leises Apfelfallen / ins hohe, regungslose
Gras."^^ Even quieter is the image of music as "Atem der Statuen. Viel-
leicht: /Stille der Bilder .. ."("An die Musik").^ In one of his French
prose poems, "Rustic Chapel," Rilke attributes the silence of a white
chapel to the visitors who, "kneeling down, frightened themselves with
their own noise.""^^ According to RiethmUer, "Rilkes Neigung galt stets
eher dem Leisen, das ihm laut erschien" and "Privation von Klang: das
Schweigen.'"*^
Handke calls forth the beauty of a Hibiscus fiower by describing the
fiower's fall from its stem, after having been knocked off by vibration in
water pipes - "mit einem sehr weichen Gerusch" {Chinese, 193). In
another work, the last autumn leaves "fall to the ground with a crash"
almost vertically, due to the heavy frost on them {Nachmittag eines
Schriftstellers, 17). The process of snow muffling sound is juxtaposed
with other acoustic and visual stimuli to create a single sensation of
sight/sound at the very end of the novel Falsche Bewegung (1975), after
 Poetics of Synaesthesia in Rilke and Handke 59

Wilhelm photographs a stranger in front of the Zugspitze:

Die Zugspitze im Schnee. Gleichzeitig ein anschwellendes

Sturmgerusch. Eine weie Schnee wachte gegen den grauen
Himmel, lange. Das Sturmgerusch. Ein Schreibmaschinenge-
rusch dazwischen, das immer strker wird (81).

At the close of the journal Die Geschichte des Bleistifts, the last sounds
of the day are made by the train in the snowy night, and the falling of the
pencil onto the table. "Dann die Stille, und der im Garten fallende Schnee
als Sehenswrdigkeit" (117). In addition to the linking of snow to the act
of writing, the writer leads us from the soft sounds in the snow to the
silence of the snow falling after the last sounds; this juxtaposition of
snow as sound chamber with snow as something silently visual binds the
two sensations together."^^ In Handke's novel Die Abwesenheit (1987),
the sound of butterfly wings touching the sand evokes visual beauty
(123). The "sound of a mountain lake freezing," an odd image in
Chinese, is almost purely visual, and recalls Rilke's description of music
as "stilhiess of pictures'X195f). For both authors, whiteness (snow and
chapel) produces a beautiful silence; additionally for Rilke, the music in
the consciousness of the observer of statues gives them breath ("Atem
der Statuen) - i.e., not only does music give them the dimension of time,
it brings them to life. Indeed, in an early poem, God is described as "der
Leiseste von allen, die durch die leisen Huser gehen.""^^ In another, the
poet is asked to be a quiet listener: "Vor lauter Lauschen und Staunen sei
still, du mein tieftiefstes Leben.""^^ As Handke would later do, Rilke con-
templates the "noise" of eyelids closing: "Hrst du, Geliebte, ich schliee
die Lider, / und auch das ist Gerusch bis zu dir . . . .""^^ It is the softness
of the sound that brings it closer to the realm of the eye. In each example,
the soft sound enhances a visual image and effects a stasis from a moving
image, and sensitizes the reader/listener to the loudness of soft sounds. In
this and the following topic, the ear, reveal most dramatically Rilkean
sensibilities in Handke's prose.
The ear is an image for both authors. For Rilke both fountain and
gong function as ears. This exotic instrument becomes a "hearing
sound": " . . . Klang, / der, wie ein tieferes Ohr, / uns, scheinbar Hrende,
hrt."'*^ The gong's sound is "nicht mehr fr Ohren" which has been in-
terpreted as ''ein Verstummen, um etwas, das zu leise fr unser Gehr ist
 60 MODERN AUSTRIAN LITERATURE

und das im visuellen Bereich der Nacht als Privation des Lichts
entspricht mit der Folge, da Farben nicht mehr unterschieden werden
und am Ende die Sichtbarkeit selber erlischt . . ."^* Thus the loss of the
sound becomes a kind of intensification, and the reversal (the ear-shaped
gong "hearing" us) distinguishes between normal human hearing as a
mere illusion and hearing as a synaesthetic image. In one of the sonnets,
the basin of a fountain becomes an ear into which water "speaks":

Dies ist das schlafend hingelegte Ohr, das Marmorohr, in das du

immer sprichst. Ein Ohr der Erde. Nur mit sich allein redet sie
also ...''

The "marble ear" image is both synaesthetic and a reversal as in the gong
poem: the receiver of sound also amplifies and projects the sound back,
so the earth "speaks to itself as long as there is no human intervention.
When someone puts a pitcher under the falling water, the "conversation"
with the marble basin is interrupted: "So scheint es ihr, da du sie
unterbrichst."
Handke's ear image in Die Abwesenheit is a puddle which partially
fills a cavity under an uprooted tree stump. "Dies hatte die Gestalt eines
menschlichen Ohrs, und die Gerusche wurden davon, statt verschluckt,
verstrkt wiedergegeben" (223). Here again, the "ear" actually ftinctions!
Of course, like Rilke's gong and marble basin, it is a visual image - the
up-ended tree, the cavity, and refiective water in this cavity. For both
authors, the ear-shaped object intends to call the reader's attention to "a
deeper ear," a poetic hearing which includes vision.
In tracing the evolution of thought from the archaic and pre-scientific
stage to the rational, Kofka points out that to pre-literate humankind,
"each thing says what it is and what he ought to do with it: a fruit says,
'Eat me;' water says, 'Drink me;' thunder says. Tear me '" How-
ever, man gradually forgot the language of the stones and birds.^^ This
archaic thought pattern of things "speaking" occurs in Rilke's "Persian
Heliotrope," which contrasts the "loud" rose with the ^Vhispering helio-
trope," and in the tenth Dunio Elegy, advertising addresses the poet in the
form of." . .werben, trommeln und plrren. . . . Oh aber gleich darber
hinaus, /hinter der letzten Planke, beklebt mit Plakaten des "Todlos,"
jenes bitteren Biers, das den Trinkenden s scheint..."" Advertising is
a voice in Handke's Chinese also. Sorger reacts to text which is '1oo
loud," a political poster mounted on two sticks, by throwing it into the
 Poetics of Synaesthesia in Rilke and Handke 61

water, and yelling "Ruhe!" at the poster (67). As he looks at his work, he
sees the up-ended poster as a humanoid (with face, text - its voice - and
two "legs") which has "spoken." In Nachmittag eines Schriftstellers he
describes the effect of a newspaper strike in New York: when the New
York Times returns to the stands, he hears the 'Vasp buzzing" left behind
by the journalists' written opinions, with the culture section being the
loudest (34f). In Die Abwesenheit, military gravestone inscriptions seem
to give off sounds. In addition to the names of the dead, each marker
proclaims through majuscule letters "present:" "ANWESEND, in
schwarzen Lettern von welchen es durch das riesige Gefallenen-Gelnde
flimmert und aus lautlosen Kehlen zu schallen scheint" (124). Text is
alive, and speaks to the poet the way the objects speak to the pre-literate.
Here again, an intense visual experience can become an auditory one as
well, poeticizing factual information, and bringing, as text at least, the
dead back to life.
The synaesthetic reader. We have seen how Rilkean sensibilities in-
form aspects of Handke's sense-linking imagery - emptiness, vibration,
acoustic space, soft sounds, and intersensory juxtapositions. Both authors
employ these aspects to educate the reader to synaesthetic reading and to
a non-linear intertextual weaving together of disparate elements.
The most basic element of literary synaesthesia, emptiness, is tied to
a fusing of the senses in Langsame Heimkehr. The scientist Sorger
contemplates the Alaskan landscape, and the "wiederentdeckte Lem-
freude" this contemplation can give him. This leads to a vision of a world
(like rural Alaska) where there is no humanity, "nur noch die mchtig
pulsende und vom eigenen Puls erzitternde Alldurchsichtigkeit" (64).
This image is a reduction of the signs of life to the barest minimum
which can easily be associated with a deity at the moment of creation,
"shaking with [His] pulse."
Let us revisit the most basic of the synaesthetic "signs of life" -
vibration - to expand our working defmition of aesthetic synaesthesia.
According to Levarie, sensory vibration (sight or sound) can be ex-
pressed in a range of frequencies, of which we can perceive only those in
a narrow range. X-rays, for example, are higher than our hearing (but
enable vision), and the colors of the spectrum have frequencies above
those of all sounds. Vibrations can also be too slow to hear, (e.g. a
swing's motion). Thus, if too fast for humans, vibration becomes in-
audible and visible, and if too slow, it also becomes inaudible and/or
visible.^^ Of chief interest here are the threshold of sound as it becomes a
 62 MODERN AUSTRDys LITERATURE

visible frequency, and visual expression as vibration or pulse. Both Rilke

and Handke stretch the limits of imagery into these realms - to "frequen-
cies" beyond the audible - and the complex of topics involving soft
sounds and "loud" images evoke intersensory and therefore heightened
perception in the reader. Indeed, if vibration is a form of pulse or
rhythmic beat, we can carry the abstraction a step ftirther, to Rosalind
Krauss's notion that in nervous tissue, life is ^the alternating pulse of
stimulation and enervation."^^ The primeval beat contained within vision
manifests itself as aesthetic animism in Handke; the journal Das Gewicht
der Welt, for example, calls forth this elemental kind of seeing: "Die
Halbschlafbilder, zu denen man gelangt, wenn es einem glckt, innerhalb
der geschlossenen Augen noch eiimial die Augen zu schlieen: dann
leben sogar die Steine!" (93).
Synaesthesia is a kind of animism. If synaesthesia is a prehistoric
phenomenon, "Bestandteil der Ursprache" (Hadermann), and also a
manifestation of the electrical technology of the nervous system (Buck-
Morss), then it can be asserted that the images of Rilke and Handke not
only link the senses of sight and sound, but they also link the postmodern
consciousness to the archaic sensibilities of animism.
This final link leads to the threshold of the vast topic of religion.
Aural and visual perception play a role in both archaic and postmodern
spirituality: According to Schaffer, the sound of God, as voice or vibra-
tion, is older than images of God; for early humans the sense of hearing
was more vital than sight, for it revealed sources of food and alerted them
to danger.^"* The postmodern theologian David Ray Griffin uses the term
panexperientialism to attribute feeling and intrinsic value to all living
things.^^ Whereas archaic animism held that all things have souls (35),
postmodern animism's world consists of "momentary units of partially
self-creative perceptual experiences," with creativity itself as "the ulti-
mate experience" (78).
The phenomenon of literary synaesthesia exemplifies this creative
animism. While Rilke's Orpheus is able to activate inanimate nature with
his song,^^ the components of Handke's synaesthetic animism contain a
(postmodern) spiritual dimension - from emptiness (Lao Tzu), to tlie
panexperientialism of living nature (e.g., flowers or birds), to the
synaesthetic reader as "partially self-creative" perceiver.

Elmhurst College
 Poetics of Synaesthesia in Rilke and Handke 63

Notes

1. Cf especially Elaine E. Boney, Rainer Maria Rilke: Duinesian

Elegies. Univ. North Carolina Studies 81 (1975); Ulrich Fllebom, Das
Strukturproblem der spten Lyrik Rilkes. Voruntersuchung zu einem his-
torischen Rilke-Verstndnis (Heidelberg: Winter, 1960); Rdiger Gmer,
"\ . .Und Musik berstieg uns . . .' Zu Rilkes Deutung der Musik. "
Bltter der Rilke-Gesellschaft. 10 (1983) pp . 50-67; Romano Guardini,
Rainer Maria Rilkes Deutung des Daseins. Eine Interpretation. Munich:
Ksel, 1953; Charles Hohmann, Thomas Pynchon's Gravity *s Rainbow.
A Study of Its Conceptual Structure and of Rilke 's Influence (Bern: Lang,
1986); Ernst Leisi, Rilkes Sonette an Orpheus. Interpretation, Kom-
mentar, Glossar (Tbingen: Gunter Narr, 1987); and Albrecht Rieth-
mUer, "Rilkes Gedicht 'Gong.' An den Grenzen von Musik und
Sprache." Dichtung und Musik: Kaleidoskop ihrer Beziehungen, ed.
Gnther Schnitzler (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1979).
2. Margaret Eifier calls the protagonist of Langsame Heimkehr
"durch seine visuellen Krfte bedingt," and the verb "schauen" the most
significant word of the work. Die subjektivistische Romanform seit ihren
Anfngen in der Frhromantik: Ihre Existenzialitt und Anti-Narrativik
am Beispiel von Rilke, Benn, und Handke (Tbingen: Niemeyer, 1985),
p. 114. Egila Lex devotes a dissertation chapter to "das Leuchten der
Dinge." Peter Handke und die Unschuld des Sehens. Diss. U. Zrich.
2nd ed. (Zrich: Paedia Media, 1985) pp. 100-105. cf also Ingeborg
Hoesterey, "Mit Czanne auf der Hochebene des Philosophen. Der
visuelle und der philosophische Intertext in Handkes Die Lehre der
Sainte-Victoire.'^'' Verschlungene Schriftzeichen - Intertextualitt von
Literatur und Kunst der Moderne/Postmoderne. (Frankfurt: Athenum,
1988) pp. 101-129; and Gerhard Melzer, "'Lebendigkeit: ein Blick
gengt.'Zur Phnomenologie des Schauens bei Peter Handke." Peter
Handke: Arbeit am Glck, eds. Melzer & Tkel. (Knigstein: Athenum,
1985).
3. Comparison studies by Cornelia Blasberg, "'Niemandes Sohn?
Literarische Spuren in Peter Handke's Erzhlung, Die Stunde der wahren
Empfindung.'' Potica 23 (1991) 3-4 pp. 513-535; Manfred Durzak,
Peter Handke und die deutsche Gegenwartsliteratur: Narziss auf
Abwegen (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1982); Beatrice von Matt-Albrecht,
"Peter Handke: Die Stunde der wahren Empfindung.^' Universitas 30
 64 MODERN AUSTRDW LITERATURE

(1975), pp. 919-930; Dieter Saahnann, "Subjektivitt und gesellschaft-

liches Engagement: Rainer Maria Rilkes Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte
Laurids Brigge und Peter Handkes Stunde der wahren Empfindung.''
Deutsche Vierteljahresschrift fr Literaturwissenschafi und Geistesge-
schichte 57 (Sept., 1983) 3 pp. 498-519; Ulrich Wesche, "Peter Handke
und Frankreich." German Studies Review 8 (1985) 2 pp. 263 - 279;
Jrgen Wolf, Visualitt, Form und Mythos in Peter Handkes Prosa
(Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1991) all deal with these two works.
4. Heinz Ludwig Arnold, Als Schriftsteller leben: Gesprche mit
Peter Handke, Franz Xavier Kroetz, Gerhard Zwerenz, Walter Jens,
Peter Ruehmkorf und Gnter Grass. (Reinbeck bei Hamburg: Rowohlt,
1979), p. 30.
5. Thomas F. Barry, '"Sehnsucht nach einem Bezugssystem': The
Existential Aestheticism of Peter Handke's Recent Fiction.^' Neo-
philologus 68 (1984) pp. 264f
6. Erika Erhard-Siebold, "Harmony of the Senses in English,
German, and French Romanticism," PMLA, vol.7, No.2 (1932), p. 584.
7. Paul Hadermann, "Synesthesie: Stand der Forschung und Be-
griffsbestimmung." Literatur und bildende Kunst. Ein Handbuch, ed.
Uh-ich Weisstein (Berlin: Schmidt, 1992), p. 54.
8. E. T. A. Hofnann, ''Kreisleriana." Gesammelte Werke vol. 1
(Zrich, 1946) pp. 419f
9. Charles Baudelaire, "On Color." The Salon of 1946. in The Mirror
of Art. Critical Studies By Baudelaire, trans. Jonathan Mayne (Garden
City, NY: Doubleday, 1956), p. 45.
10. Jean Pommier, La Mystique de Baudelaire (Genve: Slatkine,
1967), p. 74.
11. Hadermann, p. 71.
12. Jonathan Crary, "Modernizing Vision." Vision and Visuality. ed.
Hal Foster (Seattle: Bay Press, 1988), p. 4If.
13. Crary, p. 41.
14. Wassily Kandinsky, "Concrete Art." Kandinsky: Complete
Writings in Art, eds. Kenneth C. Lindsay and Peter Vergo, vol. 2
(Boston: Hall, 1982), p. 81.
15. "Concerning the Spiritual in Art." Kandinsky: Complete Writings
in Art, eds. Kenneth C. Lindsay and Peter Vergo, vol. 1 (Boston: Hall,
1982), p. 67.
16. "Cezanne's Doubt." Sense and Non-Sense, trans. Hubert L.
 Poetics of Synaesthesia in Rilke and Handke 65

Dreyfus and Patricia Allen Dreyfus (Evanston: Northwestern UP, 1964),

p. 17f
17. Susan Buck-Morss, "Aesthetics and Anaesthetics: Walter Benja-
min's Artwork Essay Reconsidered." October 62 (Fall, 1992), p. 13.
18. Rosalind Krauss, "The Im/Pulse to See." Vision and Visuality.
ed. Hal Foster (Seattle, 1988), p. 62.
19. Lao Tzu. The Canon of Reason and Virtue. (Chicago: Open
Court, 1913) (qtd. in Paul Overy, Kandinsky: The Language of the Eye.
NY, Washington, D.C.: Praeger, 1969. p. 106).
20."Reminiscences." Modern Artists on Art. ed. Robert Herbert (NJ:
Prentice Hall, 1964), p. 35.
21. Robert Hass, "Looking for Rilke." The Selected Poetry of Rainer
Maria Rilke, ed. and trans. Stephen Mitchell (NY: Random House,
1982), p. xvi.
22. Gedichte: 796-/92 (Wiesbaden:Insel, 1953), p. 537f
23. Gesammelte Werke, vol. 3 (Leipzig: Insel) 1927), p. 263.
24. "Brief an Sophy Giauque." Rainer Maria Rilke ber Dichtung
und Kunst, ed. Hartmut Engelhardt (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp,
1974), p. 272.
25. Jrgen Egyptien, "Die Heilkraft der Sprache: Peter Handkes
"Die Wiederholung im Kontext seiner Erzhltheorie." Text und Kritik,
110 (1989), p. 48.
26. Nachmittag eines Schriftstellers (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1989), p.
61. All Handke citations are from Suhrkamp editions.
27.Die Hornissen {\966\ p. 148.
28. Klaus Bonn, Die Idee der Wiederholung in Peter Handkes
Schriften. Diss. U Mainz, 1993 (Wrzburg: Knigshausen & Neumann,
1994), p. 96f
29.Phantasien der Wiederholung {\9S3), p. 28.
30.(1983), pp. l l f
31. Geschichte des Bleistifts (1985), p. 362f
32.Langsame Heimkehr {1919), 1984), p. 72.
33. "Concerning the Spiritual in Art," p. 67.
34. Phenomenology of Perception. Trans. Colin Smith (London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul; NY: Humanities, 1962), p. 234.
35.Sonnette an Orpheus , 13, in: Gesammelte Werke, vol. 3 (Leip-
zig: Insel, 1927), p. 356.
36. "Gesprche ber die Analogie der Farben und Tne." Hinter-
lassene Schriften, \o\. 1 (Hamburg: Perthes, 1840-41), p. 188.
66 MODERN AUSTRLVN LITERATURE

37. "Fleur pensive." The Migration of Powers, (bilingual French/

English ed.) trans. A. Poulin, Jr. (Port Townsend, Wash.: Greywood,
1984), p. 165.
38. Sonnette an Orpheus II, 26 in Gesammelte Werke vol. 3, p. 371.
39. No. 14 in Gesammelte Werke vol. 1, p. 122.
40. "An die Musik," in: Gesammelte Werke, vol. 3, p. 472.
41. The Migration of Powers, p. 7.
42. Albrecht Riethmller, "Rilkes Gedicht Gong.' An den Grenzen
von Musik und Sprache." Dichtung und Musik: Kaleidoskop ihrer Bezie-
hungen, ed. Gnther Schnitzler (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1979), p. 213.
43. Arnold Schnberg, in a letter to Kandinsky, described hearing
the "the singing snow with its thousand voices, or the Allegretto of the
bare branches . . ." Jelena Hahl-Koch, ed. Arnold Schnberg-Wassily
Kandinsky: Letters, Pictures & Documents, trans. J. C. Crawford
(London, Boston: Faber & Faber, 1984), p. 149.
44. Das Stundenbuch I: "Das Buch vom mnchischen Leben," in:
Gesammelte Werke vol. 2, p. 205.
45. Frhe Gedichte in Gesammelte Werke vol.l, p. 271.
46. "Die Stille, ' Buch der Bilder I, 1, in: Gesammelte Werke vol. 2,
p.21.
47. "Gong," in: The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, ed.
Stephen Mitchell (NY: Random House, 1982), p. 282.
48. Riethmller, p. 211.
49. Sonnette an Orpheus 2,15, in: Gesammelte Werke vol. 2, p. 358.
50. Kurt KofQca, Principals of Gestalt Psychology. NY: Harcourt
Brace, 1963 (qtd. in Overy, p. 52).
51. In: Gesammelte Werke vol. 3, p. 303f
52. Siegmund Levarie, "Noise." Critical Inquiry. 4 (Autumn, 1977),
1 p. 26.
53. "The Im/Pulse to See." Vision and Visuality. ed. Hal Foster
(Seattle, 1988), p. 62.
54. R. Murray Schaffer, Our Sonic Environment and the
SoundScape: the Tuning of the World (Rochester, VT: Destiny, 1977,
1994), p. 10.
55. David Ray Griffin, God and Religion in the Postmodern Worlds
Essays in Postmodern Theology (Albany: SUNY P, 1989), p. 5.
56. Frank Wood, Rainer Maria Rilke: The Ring of Forms. (NY:
Octagon, 1970), p.82.
Copyright of Modern Austrian Literature is the property of Modern Austrian Literature and its content may not
be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written
permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.