“... une apparition surnaturelle”: Window-motif and framing strategies in Mörike and Proust
During the first half of the 19th century, the window emerged as a striking motif in art and literature. At the turn of the 20th century, framings and borders became essential once again. This article discusses the window-motif as a pattern of imagination, which seems particularly significant for au...
Sábháilte in:
| Foilsithe in: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/trans, |
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| Príomhchruthaitheoir: | |
| Formáid: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Teanga: | Anglais |
| Foilsithe / Cruthaithe: |
TRANS-
2014
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| Rochtain ar líne: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Achoimre: | During the first half of the 19th century, the window emerged as a striking motif in art and literature. At the turn of the 20th century, framings and borders became essential once again. This article discusses the window-motif as a pattern of imagination, which seems particularly significant for authors between two ages – Mörike between the Napoleonic era and the Restauration in Germany, and Proust between 1900 and the First World War in France. Framing, or window-making, can be considered as a nostalgic gesture in periods of transition. It preserves the past in an area of idealization and constructs the hereafter despite its actual concealment – such as drawing a quasi-transcendental frame around the object. This article illustrates the evocation of real windows, but also explores their function as a textual strategy. Two of Mörike’s object poems, An einem Wintermorgen, vor Sonnenaufgang and Mein Fluß, exemplify the figural code being superimposed on the literal meaning to open up a view to a mysterious world. In Proust, the window-motif is correlated with the poetics of the mémoire involontaire. Time is treasured in objects, which grants a vision of the fulfilled past, but first and foremost seems to be regained in atmospheric moments created by syntactical structures – “between the words,” as evidenced in Du côté de chez Swann and referring to the defigurating dynamics of Proustian irony. |
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