Poetic Rhythm around 1800

This dissertation project started from the discussion on meter and rhythm that took place in the 18th century. With Klopstock’s Messias (1751–1773), a work composed in hexameters, the use of ancient meter in modern art becomes increasingly prominent. What starts out as a mere technical problem, the (im)possibility of a ‘German hexameter’ (Klopstock), soon stands at the center of far-reaching questions that determine the 18th century discourse on aesthetics. The problem of meter separates different definitions of art forms (concerning, for example, the relation between poetry and music) as well as the intraliterary definitions of genre (between poetry and prose). Then, classicist poetry is also faced with the question of the historicity of meter and rhythm (Rousseau, G. Hermann, J.H. Voss). This is crossed by an anthropological understanding of rhythm in which rhythmical forms are derived from the movement of the human body (A. W. Schlegel, Sulzer, K. Ph. Moritz). Finally, around 1800, the versification also leads to changing conceptions of time and its various forms (Hölderlin, Schelling).

This dissertation project explored this complex discourse by looking at the poetic meter and analyzing poetic and poetological texts by contemporary authors (Klopstock, Goethe, Hölderlin, Novalis). Thus, next to the historical focus on 1800 that receives little attention in the research on rhythm, the project focused specifically on poetry. A reading that brought together such poetological texts with poetic ones was meant to avoid the problematic vagueness of the notion of rhythm and instead highlight the figuration of the question of rhythm in its diversity. In its formulations, topics included the organicity of form (Klopstock), the ethical validity of the meter (Hölderlin), or the ‘Takt’ as a social form (Goethe). Based on the reading of versified texts, the work discussed various conceptions of meter as well as the methodological question: how can and should we read versified texts—or, in a broader sense: rhythmical forms?