Stern und Kosmos
Astrale Konstellationen in der Lyrik um 1900
[Stars and the Cosmos: Astral Constellations in Poetry around 1900]

At the turn of the 20th century, stars, constellations, and the cosmos were omnipresent. In architecture, painting, photography, music, fashion, literature, and science, gazing at the sky led to reflections on social conditions, as well as questions of representation, perception, and knowledge. Above all, however, poetry, with its formal constellations and astral motifs, addresses the social, epistemological, and aesthetic issues of the time.

Sophie-C. Hartisch examines poems by Stéphane Mallarmé, Rainer Maria Rilke, Alfred Wolfenstein, Georg Heym, Else Lasker-Schüler, Stefan George, Theodor Däubler, and Georg Trakl. She juxtaposes these poems with philosophical, scientific, and astrological texts that reveal an astral dispositif of the turn of the century through their interplay. Walter Benjamin’s dialectical image refers to the spirit of an epoch that manifests itself in typical forms of expression. The philosophical-aesthetic writings and lyrical works examined in this book are symptomatic of the thesis that astral fascination is one of these forms for the early 20th century. Stars and the cosmos become a temporal signature of modernity. By combining poetry analysis, the history of science, and media culture, Stars and the and Cosmos makes a substantial contribution to research on the history of knowledge, literature, and culture at the turn of the century. It also opens up new perspectives on the interplay of knowledge, perception, and poetic form during a time of profound epistemological and social change. (Publisher’s blurb)