Judith Ryan

Harvard University, Germanic Languages and Literatures, Emerita

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Interests: German, English, and French literature, especially poetry and the novel, from 1770 to the present. Special interests include aestheticism and symbolism, modernism and the avant-garde, contemporary literature, colonialism and postcolonialism. Classical modernism of the twentieth century, especially with respect to Rilke, Kafka, Musil, and Broch, is a key focus of her work. Another crucial emphasis lies in contemporary writers such as Patrick Süskind, Berhard Schlink, Christoph Ransmayr, and W.G. Sebald. Her book, The Novel After Theory (2012), explores the critical responses of recent writers to French poststructuralist theory. Among her most recent scholarly contributions are an essay on “Time, Space, and Sacred-Secular Configurations in Modern Poetry” (2018), “Herrmann Broch’s Massenwahnprojekt and Its Relevance for Our Time” (2019) and “Zwischen Zeilen und Zeiten. Museales Erzählen in den Prosafiktionen W.G. Sebalds” (to appear in May, 2020).

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Papers by Judith Ryan

Mallarmé und die Mardistes: Meister und Jünger in einer säkularen Zeit

Germanic Languages and LiteraturesLiterature and Comparative Literatur

Rilke in Transition: An Exploration of His Earliest Poetry

Modern Language Quarterly, 1971

“Pfeile mit Widerhaken”: On the Aphorisms in Goethe’s <i>Wahlverwandtschaften</i> and <i>Wanderjahre</i>

Goethe Yearbook, 2009

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Rilke, Modernism and Poetic Tradition

Rilke's earliest poetry is scarcely known to modern readers. Yet his beginnings not only reveal h... more Rilke's earliest poetry is scarcely known to modern readers. Yet his beginnings not only reveal his conscious shaping of a poetic career, they show him absorbing and adapting multiple aspects of the culture around him. He had a good sense of the niches in which a beginning poet could lodge his work, from fashionable Viennese magazines to the souvenir shelf of Prague bookstores. From his emergence as a child prodigy, he situated himself within the framework of a progressively conceived 'feminine aesthetics' -today we would speak of an androgynous gender ideal -that was widely fashionable at the time and that continued to resonate throughout his works. His first volume of poems articulates a crisis of marginality common to artistic self-stylisation at the turn of the century. Far from being derivative, Rilke's early verses are in fact an attempt to disengage himself from the clutch of German poetic tradition. By giving his neo-Romanticism a slightly critical edge and thus underscoring his half-affectionate, half-alienated depictions of conventional scenes, Rilke implicitly declares his readiness to embark on a new kind of poetry. Throughout his development, Rilke follows the cultural interests of his day. His almost seismographic response to fashion in every sense of the word lies at the heart of his early self-styling. He worked hard to attune his projects to current demand and 'package' his works to ensure their success. In the early years of the century, when his cousins discontinued the stipend he had been receiving from the inheritance of his uncle Jaroslav, he was entirely dependent upon what he earned through his writing. Only later, once he was under the wings of a distinguished publishing house, Insel, did he have more financial leeway in the form of advances for work in progress. By then he had also cultivated friendships with rich or well-to-do people who subsidised his   Rilke, Modernism and Poetic Tradition

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Your Life Jacket is under Your Skin." Reflections on German Poetry of the Seventies

The German Quarterly, May 1, 1982

In his afterword to the third Jahrbuch fiir Lyrik, Giinter Kunert describes the poems submitted i... more In his afterword to the third Jahrbuch fiir Lyrik, Giinter Kunert describes the poems submitted in 1980 as "frostelnde Gedichte" whose wintry images, unlike those of the traditional lyric, are symptoms not of an individual tragedy, but of "ein gesellschaftliches Ereignis," signs of a pervasive sense of alienation in a manipulated society.' The pain articulated in these poems springs from the recognition that in the "Megamaschinen" of modern life individuals have become phantoms of themselves, with a resultant loss of spontaneity experienced as a "kleines Sterben."2 As a parallel example to the anthologized poems, Kunert cites Nicolas Born's last novel, Die Flilschung, and its depiction of the "Fremdbestimmtheit des Ichs, das, selbst unter Lebensgefahr, nicht wieder zur Ursprunglichkeit findet."3 Taking up this thought, a reviewer writes: "Immer scharfer versuchen die Autoren in ihren Texten dieses Fremdbestimmtsein zu fassen, selten nur noch bleiben sie im Privaten, in Selbstmitleid und Resignation stecken.'"4 What has happened, then, to the "new subjectivism," which even as recently as 1979 seemed to have reached new heights? Has it simply disappeared, more suddenly even than it came? Was the much proclaimed "Tendenzwende" merely a flash in the pan?5 It is perhaps understandable that the poets' response to the generally bad press they received in the last years of the seventies (a phenomenon to which I will return in a moment) should be a new turning to the individual as a social, rather than a private being. Alongside what Kunert sees as a concern about the "manipulations" of modern society (hardly new, when one recalls the typical motifs of the late fifties and early sixties), a dominant theme of the more recent anthologies has been the fear of ecological disaster. "Die Grutnen," as the environmentalists are popularly called, have added a special urgency to the once-taboo "Gesprach utber Baume"6--one poet, for example, whose earlier volumes included the rather self-pitying title Blaue Flecken calls his newest book of poems Schwere Erde, Rauch.7 What might, only a year or two before, have seemed like a renewal of the perennial "nature lyric," has taken on a more polemical tone. In spite of this shift of emphasis, however, I would claim that there is more continuity here than at first meets the eye. The "new subjectivism"

[1991] Skinside Inside: The National Literature Major versus Comparative Literature

Profession, Dec 1, 2012

marginally?through the occasional telling anecdote, the question answered during or after class, ... more marginally?through the occasional telling anecdote, the question answered during or after class, a contrastive pointer or two?is part of another problem that has often seemed so deep-rooted that we are inclined to view it as inevitable: the schism between native speakers and non native speakers that has dogged almost every department, every graduate program at one time or another. Now, however, a new kind of problem has emerged, and we would be wise to deal with it before it gets out of hand. This is the rift indicated in my title: the national foreign literature versus comparative literature. We have all encountered this division on the faculty level: teachers with interests in comparative literature are often seen as distracting from the national literature cause, while those who identify more closely with the national literature are regarded as too stodgy and unsophisticated by their com paratist colleagues. Anyone who wants to deal successfully with intraand interdepartmen tal politics must be ready to turn the fur side inside or the fur side

Du, der ichs nicht sage...": Lyrisches und sachliches Sagen in Rilkes Gedichten 1906-1911

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Baudelaire and Autonomous Art — Reply

Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, 1994

Hermann Broch's Massenwahnprojekt and Its Relevance for Our Times

Cultures of Forgery

Cultures of Forgery, 2013

List of Figures Preface PART ONE: Forging Nations 1. Forging Truth in Medieval England 2. Forging... more List of Figures Preface PART ONE: Forging Nations 1. Forging Truth in Medieval England 2. Forging a Past: The Sybilline Books and the Making of Rome 3. Forging Czechs: The Reinvention of National Identity in Bohemian Lands 4. Eclectic Fabrication: St. Petersburg and the Problem of Imperial Architectural Style 5. Forging Catalonia, or The Blankness of Dali PART TWO: Forging Selves 6. The Art of Forging Music and Musicians 7. Jean-Etienne Liotard's Envelopes of Self 8. Wrestling with Representation: Reforging Images of the Artist in the Russian Avant-garde 9. After the "Death of the Author": The Fabrication of Helen Demidenko 10. Facts and Writing: Problems of Memory in Recent Memoirs 11. The Fascination of a Fake: The Hitler Diaries

Time, Space, and Sacred-Secular Configurations in Modern European Poetry

Deleted Journal, Dec 20, 2018

Syncretic religions are often the result of cultural overlap, either between proximate geographic... more Syncretic religions are often the result of cultural overlap, either between proximate geographical areas or because one culture comes to dominate another. Sometimes, however, a writer or a group of writers deliberately sets out to create a new form of syncretic belief. In Germany around 1800, a small cluster of thinkers and poets conceived a new experiment: what they envisaged was to be a fresh way of making abstract ideas more palatable to a broader audience. A two-page document written in Hegel's handwriting, but incorporating ideas of at least two other fellow students, Hölderlin and Schelling, urged that idealist philosophy might be enlivened by mythology, with its long poetic tradition. I adduce two poems from the period, Schiller's 'Der Spaziergang' (1795) and Hölderlin's 'Mnemosyne' (1803), to serve as examples of the syncretism espoused in that document. The special syncretic character of such poems stands out against the 'greater Romantic lyrics' in other European languages, as in the case of texts by Wordsworth and Lamartine, which do not employ mythological allusions. Nonetheless, in the mid-nineteenth century, we find Nerval making his texts a crucible for an eclectic combination of beliefs; and in the aftermath of World War II, Johannes Bobrowski develops a new kind of syncretism in which ancient Slavic divinities from Latvia and Lithuania seem to exist beneath natural landscape formations. In conclusion, the paper turns to a reading of Seamus Heaney's poem 'The Tollund Man in Springtime' (2005/06), in which anthropological empathy becomes a vehicle that brings an over-2000-year-old culture into a palimpsestic relation with the present day. A sibylline remark in the anonymous and untitled text subsequently designated as 'Das älteste Systemprogramm des deutschen Idealismus' ('The Oldest Systematic Program of German Idealism') 1 may give some insight into the strange mixture of polytheism, Christianity, and pantheism that, in varying 1 Franz Rosenzweig, who first published this text, gave it this rather hyperbolic title, although its disjointed form can scarcely be called systematic.

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Rilke’s Duino Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus

Cambridge University Press eBooks, Mar 12, 2015

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Time, Space, and Sacred-Secular Configurations in Modern European Poetry

The Sacred in the Secular in European Literature. MHRA Working Papers in the Humanities, 2018

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The Cambridge introduction to German poetry

Choice Reviews Online, Jul 23, 2013

Preface Acknowledgments 1. Exploring the poem 2. Poetic roles in early song-lyrics 3. Devotional ... more Preface Acknowledgments 1. Exploring the poem 2. Poetic roles in early song-lyrics 3. Devotional poetry 4. The rhetoric of passion 5. Classical Antiquity and modern experience 6. Romantic poetry and the problem of lyric unity 7. The self and the senses 8. Modernism and difficulty 9. Poetry after Auschwitz 10. The strain of political poetry Working on the text Writing up your close reading German metrics Index.

'Ägyptische Erinnerungen' : Zur Frage des Fragmentarischen in Rilkes später Lyrik.

Nach Duino: Studien zu Rainer Maria Rilkes späten Gedichten. Ed. Karen Leeder & Robert Vilain. Göttingen: Wallstein., 2010

Zur Frage des Fragmentarischen in Rilkes spiiter Lyrik Im Unterschied zu den Friihromamikern enrw... more Zur Frage des Fragmentarischen in Rilkes spiiter Lyrik Im Unterschied zu den Friihromamikern enrwickelce Rilke kein philosophisches Programm des Fragments. Anhand der Arbeit Rodins kam er jedoch in den Jahren 1907/08 zu einem ersten Versriindnis des Fragmentarischen. In seinem Buch iiber Rodin erklarc er, wie die verschiedenen Fliichen einer Skulptur zusammenarbeiten, um auch bei•einem scheinbaren Fragment die Wirkung einer Ganzheit zu erzielen. Von den Figuren ohne Arme schreibr Rilke: »Man steht var ihnen als vor etwas Ganzem, Vollendetem, das keine Erg3.nzung zuliilst.((1 Wenner im zweitcn Teil der Neuen Gedichte (1908) eine fragmentarische Skulptur wie den »archaischen Torso Apollos<(zum Thema nimmc, zeigt er, wie die fehlenden KOrperteile dur~h die angedeutete Bewegung des Torsos suggeriert werden. So erhalr die Statue eine Ganzheit, die, wie Peter Horst Neumann es zutreffend formulierr, niche als »Erganzung«, sondern. als »Verdichrung« erscheint. 2 Anders verhiilt es sich dagegen im Roman Malte Laurids Brigge (1910), der aus fragmentarischen »Aufzeichnungen« zusammengesetzt wird. Hier fungieren die einzelnen Teile als lndiz filr den Mangel an Zusammenhang in der GroBsradterfahrung des Protagonisten. Wahrend der Schaffenskrise nach dem Abschluil seiner Arbeic am Roman scheint Rilke zunehmend Angst vor dem Fragmentarischen zu haben. Das Wort Fragment Kommt jedoch in dieser Zeit kaum vor. Erst in der spateren Schaffensphase verwendet Rilke den Begriff im Zusammenhang mic seiner eigenen Oichtung. So schickc er zum Beispiel im April 1918 eine Gruppe von »Anfangen und Fragmencen aus dem Umkreis der Elegien« an Anton Kippenberg: fiir den Fall, dail er die Duineser Elegien nicht vollenden konnte, sollcen diese Texte gleichsam als Ersatz daflir verOffentlicht werden. Im Februar 1922 stellc er eine Gruppe von Gedichten in einem mic dem Wore »Fragmentarisches« versehenen Umschlag zusammen.3 Diese Gedichte sind jedoch keineswegs fragmentarisch: darumer befinden sich wichcige Gedichte aus den Jahren 1912-1914-beispielsweise »Die spanische Trilogie« (KA II, 42-44), »An den Engel« (KA II, 46), »Du im Voraus / verlorne Geliebte« (KA II, 89-Auguste Rodin, Erster Teil, KA 1V, 421. 2 Rllkes »ArchaYscherTorso Apollos(, in der Geschichte des modernen Fragmentarismus, in: Fragment und Totalit1ic, hrsg. v. Lucien Dallenbach und Christiaan L. Hart-Nibbrig, Frankfurt am Main 1984, S. 267. 3 KA II, 6n. 1 79 JUDITH RYAN 90) und »Die GroBe Nachr« (KA II, 91). 4 Filr diese Textgruppe faBte Rilke zu verschiedenen Zeitpunkten verschiedene Verwendungen ins Auge. Als er im Februar 1922 die Duineser Elegien vollendere, filrchtete er, daB der Elegienband zu schmal ausfallen wi.irde: er dachte also an einen evencuellen zweiten Teil der E!egien, der aus den im Umschlag enthaltenen Gedichten bestehen sollre.' In Wirklichkeit sind die meisten dieser Texte nur in dem Sinne »fragmentarisch«, als sie noch nicht in einen Gedichtzyklus aufgenommen worden sind. In dieser Hinsichc sind Rilkes Erwagungen zum Schicksal der))Gegen-Strophen« auf-schluBreich. Als Rilke diesen, ursprilnglich als Funfte E!egie konzipierren, Text durch die Saltimbanques-Elegie ersetzt, kamen ihm die •>)Gegen-Scrophen« als nicht mehr dem Elegienzyklus zugehOrig vor. • Das Gedicht, behauptet er, »wird wahrscheinlich nicht als Elegie gelten, sondern als 'eine Art >Zwischenstiick(, oder es wird unter den Zweiten Theil des Buches, ins >Fragmemarische< versetzt werden, wo es auch in guter Gesellschafc ware.« 6 In den Elegienband kam das Konvolut >>Fragmentarisches« jedoch letzten Endes nicht.

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The Durs Grünbein Debacle and his poem "Die Voliere der Malerei"

Interkulturelle Dialoge: Exil und Gegenwartsliteratur, Europa- und Kunst-Diskurse, 2023

Explores reasons for Raddatz' negative view of Grünbein using an analysis of the latter's poem "D... more

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Zwischen Zeilen und Zeiten. Museales Erzählen in den Prosafiktionen W.G. Sebalds

Museales Erzählen: Dinge, Räume, Narrative. ed. Johanna Stapelfeldt, Ulrike Vedder, and Klaus Wiehl. Wilhelm Fink., 2020

“Fertigungs-/halle”: Paul Celan on Aktualität

In, Christine Ivanovic and Klaus Weissenberger, eds., Lifelines. Paul Celan’s Poetry and Poetic After 100/50 Years (Würzburg: Könighausen & Neumann, 2022

To set the stage for a discussion of how the German word Aktualität differs from its English cogn... more

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Rilke, Modernism and Poetic Tradition: Notes

Hermann Broch's Massenwahnprojekt and its Relevance for our Times

A Companion to the Works of Hermann Broch, Eds. Graham Bartram, Sarah McGaughey, and Galin Tihanov, 2019

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Judith Ryan

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