GER 407/507 Fall 2020 Prof. Kenneth Calhoon

Landscape in Literature, Art and Cinema Description. An iconic episode in German literature turns on the problem of landscape. In a letter to his confidant Wilhelm, Goethe’s Werther describes the recent encounter with a certain Lotte, soon to become the object of the young hero’s storied passion. At the invitation of a common acquaintance, he has accompanied her to a country dance, which is interrupted by a sudden thunderstorm. Werther, whose emotions the storm complements, is entranced by the young woman, who manages to distract the frightened celebrants with a parlor game. As the storm finally abates (thunder still rolling in the distance), the two find themselves at a window gazing out over the rain-drenched scene. Overcome by sentiment, Lotte takes Werther’s hand and, eyes moist, exclaims “Klopstock!,” invoking the poet whose popular ode “Die Frühlingsfeier” (1759) summons a landscape redolent with spring and blessed by rainfall. (J. G. von Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther [1774], volume one, letter of June 16th). Beyond serving as a kind erotic currency that passes between Lotte and Werther, Klopstock’s poem is itself a window that opens up within Goethe’s novel. A text framed within a text, it is an instance of the mirroring that, in twentieth-century modernism, often became the object of explicit irony. The Belgian Surrealist René Magritte, for example, often used window casements, mirrors, and paintings themselves to challenge the traditional conception of easel paintings as windows onto the natural-physical world. This same conception was already being undercut in the later eighteenth century, as illustrated by the episode just described: Werther and Lotte look out through a window onto a natural scene, which Klopstock’s ode, and the long tradition it represents, has prepared them to see. This tradition extends back into the seventeenth century, when “landscape” emerged as an artistic genre in which the natural setting became an object in its own right and not merely a backdrop to religious or mythological drama. The name generally identified with this development is Claude Lorraine (1600-1682), the popularity of whose paintings led to the invention of the “Claude glass,” a burnished and slightly convex lens that would endow the natural prospect with the tone and contour typical of Claude’s canvases. Four hundred years later, our phone cameras are provided with a “vignetting” tool that achieves the very same effect. Likewise, when we move our viewfinders vertically or horizontally to accommodate the “rule of thirds”—a principle most familiar nowadays to students of cinema—we reinforce compositional practices worked out over several centuries and across various media. This intermedial arc will afford us a context within which to position the more localized role of Landschaft in German literature, art, and eventually film. Goethe’s Werther will provide a platform from which to launch an examination of landscape as it figures into works, both verbal and visual, from the Romantic period through the twentieth century. Authors studied may include Friedrich Hölderlin, Novalis, Joseph von Eichendorff, Annette von Droste-Hülshoff, Adalbert Stifter, Theodor Fontane, Anna Seghers, Sarah Kirsch, Peter Handke, and Maria Luise Kaschnitz, Wim Wenders. Supplemental readings by Georg Simmel, Martin Heidegger, and others. Particular

René Magritte, The Human Condition (1933)

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attention will be paid to Caspar David Friedrich, whose unique land- and seascapes (e. g., his Monk by the Sea, 1809-10) not only represent a break with the “framed viewing” (Rahmenschau) of the Enlightenment but also, upon his “rediscovery” in 1906, exercised considerable influence over German cinema as well as art. His importance for film can be traced from Expressionist cinematography of the 1920s to the works of New-Wave cinéaste Werner Herzog (Heart of Glass, Woyzeck, The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser). Moreover, Friedrich’s practice of furnishing his paintings with a

Rückenfigur (a person seen from the back) has become a commonplace in the cinema generally—a framing adapted to interludes in which individuals search their souls, weigh decisions, nurse memories, or contemplate roads not taken. Goals. The word romantisch first appears in Goethe’s Werther, where it refers to a landscape such as those encountered in “romances” (hence the word) like Cervantes’ Don Quixote. The crux of this seminar is to familiarize participants with the legacy of the key shift in German cultural life that Romanticism, broadly defined, represents. Landscape provides a particular window onto this development; its importance lies in part in its role in the new national orientation that came with Romanticism, i. e., the novel interest in deutsche Landschaft apparent in Friedrich’s paintings and much of the literature of this period. Our efforts will be focused on reading/analyzing texts and images with an eye to landscape and its kindred topographical components, including “nature,” “world,” “forest,” “field,” “horizon,” “wilderness,” “garden,” “park,” and “paradise.” At the heart of our discussion will be aesthetics and the inherently aesthetic character of our experience of the world around us—our Umwelt. Format. I fully expect to conduct this seminar remotely. This may not seem optimal, but the course I conducted via Zoom this spring worked out quite well, I believe, and there may even be certain advantages to the remote format. My plan would be to hold our two weekly meetings (Tuesdays and Thursdays 4:15 – 5:45) synchronously. Readings will be in German. Language ability in courses at this level often varies among participants. Our approach to readings will be intensive rather than extensive, the focus being on shorter passages closely analyzed. I will try to lead discussions in German to the extent that proves possible. I will expect students to attend regularly, have their assignments prepared and their cameras on. I hope we can also meet in person at least once, perhaps for a socially-distanced stroll among the trees of the UO landscape.

C. D. Friedrich, The Monk by the Sea (1809-1810)

Heart of Glass, 1976, directed by Werner Herzog

“In jene Ferne verliert sich unser Weg.” (Novalis, Heinrich von Ofterdingen, 1800)

“Der Wald steht schwarz und schweiget” (Matthias Claudius, “Der Mond ist aufge-gangen,” 1779)