Subliminale Modernität: Selbstreflexive strukturen in E.T.A Hofmanns Prinzessin Brambilla

Abstract

Is self-reflexivity, as is often maintained, a structural characteristic of literary modernity? To what extent does self-reflexivity provide a specifically modern as well as qualitative criterion which helps to distinguish between aesthetically experimental texts and less advanced ones? Proceeding from a problematization of the concept of modernity, I explore these questions with reference to E.T.H. Hofmann's Prinzessin Brambilla. Labelled a, Capriccio,' the narrative unfolds as an arabesque, in which subjectivity and textuality constitute each other, so that personal as well as semantic identity appear to be multiple. Just as the mythic, mirror brightness' of the well Udar releases from the constraint of being identical with oneself by transfiguring the "I" into a reflexive medium of alterity which is sensually perceivable, so the narrative dynamics of the text lead one to produce a reading of it as a figuration of transgression. The thematic analysis leads to a transgression of self-reflexivity, which--on the level of form--is made comprehensible as a narratological transgression. The pluralisation of the I, which is narratively staged through the mirroring of the main character in others, corresponds also with the theatrical self-image of the actor. All in all it is evident that Hoffmann's narrating en abmie organizes a dimension of the aesthetics of the text as well as of its reception, in which the literary dissolution of the Self gives way to reflexions of reading devoid of a subject. The innovative aspect of this study is the insight it provides into the dynamics of transgression inherent to the binarity of self-reflexivity. Only a poetologically transgressive self-reflexivity qualifies it to be a distinguishing criterion of literary modernity. In taking the aesthetic structures of subjectivity to the threshhold of their deconstitution, this poetically configured subliminality conveys a specifically modern sense of crisis.