Poetics of Breathing

Stefanie Heine

Description

Breathing and its rhythms—liminal, syncopal, and usually inconspicuous—have become a core poetic compositional principle in modern literature. Examining moments when breath's punctuations, cessations, inhalations, or exhalations operate at the limits of meaningful speech, Stefanie Heine explores how literary texts reflect their own mediality, production, and reception in alluding to and incorporating pneumatic rhythms, respiratory sound, and silent pauses.. Through close readings of works by a series of pairs—Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg; Robert Musil and Virginia Woolf; Samuel Beckett and Sylvia Plath; and Paul Celan and Herta Müller—Poetics of Breathing suggests that each offers a different conception of literary or poetic breath as a precondition of writing. Presenting a challenge to historical and contemporary discourses that tie breath to the transcendent and the natural, Heine traces a decoupling of breath from its traditional association with life, and asks what literature might lie beyond.
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Preface

1. Movements of Syncopnea

2. Composed on the Breath: Authentic Voice, Embodiment, Innovation (Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg)

3. Generative Caesurae: Mediality, Rhythm, Affect (Robert Musil, Virginia Woolf )

4. Impossible Expiration: Reduction, Inanimate Voices, Persisting Bodies (Samuel Beckett, Sylvia Plath)

5. Breath at Point Zero: Trauma, Commemoration, Haunting (Paul Celan, Herta Müller)

6. Pneumatic Gender Dynamics, Queering Breath

Notes
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• Literary theory
• Comparative literature

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 01 mai 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438483597
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Poetics of Breathing
SERIES EDITORS
David E. Johnson, Comparative Literature, University at Buffalo
Scott Michaelsen, English, Michigan State University
SERIES ADVISORY BOARD
Nahum D. Chandler, African American Studies, University of California, Irvine
Rebecca Comay, Philosophy and Comparative Literature, University of Toronto
Marc Crépon, Philosophy, École Normale Supérieure, Paris
Jonathan Culler, Comparative Literature, Cornell University
Johanna Drucker, Design Media Arts and Information Studies, University of California, Los Angeles
Christopher Fynsk, Modern Thought, Aberdeen University
Rodolphe Gasché, Comparative Literature, University at Buffalo
Martin Hägglund, Comparative Literature, Yale University
Carol Jacobs, German and Comparative Literature, Yale University
Peggy Kamuf, French and Comparative Literature, University of Southern California
David Marriott, History of Consciousness, University of California, Santa Cruz
Steven Miller, English, University at Buffalo
Alberto Moreiras, Hispanic Studies, Texas A M University
Patrick O’Donnell, English, Michigan State University
Pablo Oyarzún, Teoría del Arte, Universidad de Chile
Scott Cutler Shershow, English, University of California, Davis
Henry Sussman, German and Comparative Literature, Yale University
Samuel Weber, Comparative Literature, Northwestern University
Ewa Ziarek, Comparative Literature, University at Buffalo
Poetics of Breathing
Modern Literature’s Syncope
Stefanie Heine
Cover image: Jayne Wilton, Drawing Breath (Child’s Breath) . Breath and light on sensitized paper. © Jayne Wilton. Used with permission.
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2021 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Name: Heine, Stephanie, author.
Title: Poetics of breathing : modern literature’s syncope / Stephanie Heine.
Description: Albany : State University of New York Press, 2021. | Series: SUNY series, literature … in theory | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020032402 | ISBN 9781438483573 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438483597 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Respiration in literature. | Rhythm in literature. | Literary style. | Respiration.
Classification: LCC PN56.R465 H45 2021 | DDC 809/.933561—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020032402
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
As though to breathe were life!
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “Ulysses”
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Preface
1 Movements of Syncopnea
2 Composed on the Breath: Authentic Voice, Embodiment, Innovation (Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg)
3 Generative Caesurae: Mediality, Rhythm, Affect (Robert Musil, Virginia Woolf)
4 Impossible Expiration: Reduction, Inanimate Voices, Persisting Bodies (Samuel Beckett, Sylvia Plath)
5 Breath at Point Zero: Trauma, Commemoration, Haunting (Paul Celan, Herta Müller)
6 Pneumatic Gender Dynamics, Queering Breath
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Illustrations
Figure 2.1 Allen Ginsberg, Fall of America and “Iron Horse” (draft).
Figure 2.2 Allen Ginsburg, “Iron Horse” (tape composition, reading, draft, and printed version in comparison).
Figure 2.3 Allen Ginsberg, Fall of America and “Iron Horse” (draft).
Figure 2.4 Allen Ginsberg, Fall of America and “Iron Horse” (draft).
Figure 2.5 Allen Ginsberg, “Iron Horse” (draft).
Figure 2.6 Allen Ginsberg, Fall of America and “Iron Horse” (draft).
Figure 2.7 Allen Ginsberg, Fall of America and “Iron Horse” (draft).
Figure 2.8 Allen Ginsberg, “Iron Horse” (draft).
Figure 3.1 Robert Musil, Klagenfurter Ausgabe , V/3/62, March 27– November 1937.
Figure 3.2 Robert Musil, Klagenfurter Ausgabe , V/3/45, August– December 1938.
Figure 3.3 Robert Musil, Klagenfurter Ausgabe , III/6/60, mid-1934– August 1935, author’s translation.
Figure 4.1 Samuel Beckett, Malone meurt , MS-HRC-SB-7-4, 44r.
Figure 4.2 Beckett, The Unnamable , MS-HRC-SB-5-10, 109r.
Figure 4.3 Sylvia Plath, “Tulips” (prosody).
Figure 4.4 Sylvia Plath, “Tulips” (meter).
Figure 5.1 Paul Celan, “Ricercar” (draft).
Figure 5.2 Paul Celan, “Ricercar” (draft).
Acknowledgments
W orking on literary breath teaches a lesson: all our writing is, to some extent, écriture soufflée (a concept that is, of course, itself stolen). Everything we write is inspired, taken from somewhere or someone else; we do not own the words we use, and our concepts, thoughts, and readings are, to a certain extent, always owed to others. This book is a work of inspiration and conspiration.
I am deeply indebted to Charles de Roche, John Paul Ricco, and Sandro Zanetti, who have shaped my writing, reading, and thinking over years. Without their ongoing support, encouragement, and engagement with the project on all levels, Poetics of Breathing would not have been possible.
For their inexhaustible help with the manuscript in its final stages I owe more than thanks to Brian Alkire—a “match struck unexpectedly in the dark”—who greatly improved the book’s style, continually enhances my writing, and came up with its subtitle, and Philippe P. Haensler, who contributed a significant number of ideas and helped me to fine-tune my language and arguments.
I am grateful to the many attentive readers and listeners who made significant contributions to individual chapters and the book as a whole; above all, Felix Christen, Thomas Fries, Spencer Hawkins, Torsten Jenkel, Selmin Kara, Monika Kasper, Michael Krimper, Victor Li, Kristina Mendicino, Sergej Rickenbacher, Arthur Rose, Fabian Schwitter, Cory Stockwell, Rahel Villinger, and Martina Wernli.
The Department of Comparative Literature in Zürich has consistently been an intellectual home: I am grateful for having been part of this academic community. I owe a great deal to my friends and colleagues at the University of Zürich and Toronto, and I have benefited tremendously from the exchanges and collaborations with members of the team at the Life of Breath research project at Durham University. The productive feedback at numerous workshops and conferences was invaluable for the book’s development. I thank the Swiss National Foundation (SNF) for the fellowship at the University of Toronto and the university’s Centre for Comparative Literature for hosting me.
My research benefited greatly from the help offered by the staff at the archives I visited; my special thanks go to Melissa Watterworth Batt at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, Joshua McKeon at the Berg Collection, and Tim Noakes at the Special Collections, Stanford University.
An earlier version of a part of the subchapter “Ebb and Flow: Breathing and Composition” was originally published in my coedited book, Reading Breath in Literature (2019). An earlier version of a part of the subchapter “ ‘animi velut respirant’: Rhythm” was originally published as “ ‘animi velut respirant’: Rhythm and Breathing Pauses in Ancient Rhetoric, Virginia Woolf, and Robert Musil” in Comparative Literature , vol. 69, no. 4, pp. 355–369; copyright 2017, University of Oregon; all rights reserved; republished by permission of the copyright holder and the present publisher, Duke University Press.
For their kind permission to reproduce or cite archival material I thank the following:
The Estate of Samuel Beckett, c/o Rosica Colin Ltd., London, for excerpts and images from Samuel Beckett’s “The Unnamable,” “Malone Dies,” and “Souffle.”
Bertrand Badiou and Suhrkamp Verlag for excerpts from Paul Celan, Die Gedichte aus dem Nachlaß , edited by Bertrand Badiou, Jean-Claude Rambach, and Barbara Wiedemann, comments from Barbara Wiedemann and Bertrand Badiou; copyright Suhrkamp Verlag Frankfurt am Main, 1997; all rights reserved.
The Wylie Agency and the Allen Ginsberg Estate for excerpts from the Allen Ginsberg Papers by Allen Ginsberg; copyright Allen Ginsberg, used by permission of the Wylie Agency LLC.
The Wylie Agency and the Jack Kerouac Estate for excerpts from the Jack Kerouac Papers by Jack Kerouac; copyright by Jack Kerouac, used by permission of the Wylie Agency LLC.
Österreichische Nationalbibliothek for manuscript excerpts from Robert Musil, Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften .
The Estate of Charles Olson and the Charles Olson Research Collection, Archives and Special Collections, University of Connecticut, for excerpts of unpublished manuscripts by the poet Charles Olson. Works by Charles Olson published during his lifetime are copyright the Estate of Charles Olson; previously unpublished works are copyright the University of Connecticut; used with permission.
The Society of Authors as the Literary Representative of the Estate of Virginia Woolf for excerpts by Virginia Woolf.
My editor at SUNY Press, Rebecca Colesworthy, has been a wonderful collaborator and support: her belief in the book project and efforts in the process of realizing it have been invaluable. I would also like to express my g