Poetics of Breathing: Modern Literature's Syncope (SUNY series, Literature . . . in Theory)

A comparative study of breath and breathing as a core poetic and compositional principle in modern literature. 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. Stefanie Heine is Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature in the Department of Arts and Cultural Studies at the University of Copenhagen. Her previous books include Reading Breath in Literature (coauthored with Arthur Rose, Naya Tsentourou, Corinne Saunders, and Peter Garrett). Contents List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Preface 1 Movements of Syncopnea Breath and Liminality Anaximenes: Breath, Air, Soul, Wind Inside and Outside Life and Death, Animate and Inanimate Breath as a Generative, Formative, and Constitutive Principle Air and Pneuma as Primary Substances Imaginations of a Primordial Wholeness of Breathing Breath and Language Prelinguistic Breathing Breath and the Development of Speech Breath, Voice, Rhythm Inspiration Transactual Relationality and Interdependence Prospect 2 Composed on the Breath: Authentic Voice, Embodiment, Innovation (Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg) Ebb and Flow: Breathing and Composition Ancient Origins of the Breath-Stop Ginsberg and Quintilian Kerouac and Aristotle Smoke, Tapes, Typewriters: Respirational Writing Scenes “Dynamo’d smoke-cathedrals”: Ginsberg’s Recorded Breath “Rasping Smoke in a Dry Throat”: Kerouac’s Typewriter Fantasies Anxiety—Ecstasy: Inspiration “I don’t inhale”: Kerouac’s Repression “Scored in Broken Breaths”: Ginsberg’s “Power” of Inspirational Weakness A Silent Propellant: Charles Olson 3 Generative Caesurae: Mediality, Rhythm, Affect (Robert Musil, Virginia Woolf ) “Animi velut respirant”: Rhythm Flow and Segmentation The Breathing Pause in Ancient Rhetoric Revisited Text-Internal Generative Caesurae Formative Rhythm in Musil’s and Woolf’s Writing Process Respiratory Composition “Through the Middle”: Respiratory Mediality Mediality and Invisibility Mediation, Representation, Processual Figurative Language Mediating Textual Airs Beyond the Other Condition Affect Journey to Italy: “It was their breathing” Opened and Allied Forms 4 Impossible Expiration: Reduction, Inanimate Voices, Persisting Bodies (Samuel Beckett, Sylvia Plath) Beckett: “Dull with breath. Endless breath. Endless ending breath” “L’air qui respire à travers mon cahier” “I’m the partition” “Stuffed full of these groans that choke” “With breath in his nostrils, it only remains for him to suffocate” Plath: “And still the lungs won’t fill” “My god the iron lung” “The vivid tulips eat my oxygen” Cold Breath “Blown askew”: Ecstatic Breath, Shattered Selves, Pneumatic Potentiality Gendering 5 Breath at Point Zero: Trauma, Commemoration, Haunting (Paul Celan, Herta Müller) Celan: “Pneumatisch berührbar” “Es verschlägt ihm—und auch uns—den Atem und das Wort”: Breath in Celan’s Notes, Essays, and Speeches Backgrounds of Celan’s Poetics of Breathing Outline 1: Continuous Breathroutes Outline 2: Interrupted Breathroutes Inspiration—Conspiration Breath in Celan’s Poetry and Translations “Das Glas der Ewigkeit—behaucht: Mein Atem, meine Wärme drauf”: Celan’s Mandelstam Translation Outline 3: The Pneumatically Touchable Poem I “Hauchschrift, Handschrift”: “Ricercar” Preliminarity Repetition, Variation, Citation Handwritten Breath-Seas Outline 4: The Pneumatically Touchable Poem II Müller: “Die Atemschaukel überschlägt sich” Breath-Rifts: The Production of Atemschaukel Phobic Animation: Poetic Implications of Breathing Words Between Balance and Delirium: Movements of “Atemschaukel” in the Novel “Dinge, die ohne zu leben untot sind”: Haunting the Readers Trauma, Breath, Loss Respiratory Gender-Turns 6 Pneumatic Gender Dynamics, Queering Breath Breath and Intersectionality Respirational écriture féminine Breathing à travers “To conclude—I announce what comes after me” Notes Bibliography Index 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. -- From back cover 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 Mller- 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. 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.