Consolation - An Unrecognized Emotion

Although consolation is one of the classic religious subjects it plays no role in the current debate about religious emotions. One reason for this neglect could be that this debate is mostly based on classical emotions such as joy and fear, love and hope, and that consolation is not understood as an emotion. This paper tries to show that consolation in fact can and should be seen as an emotion. After naming and refuting some reasons that speak against taking consolation to be an emotion, I will explain how consolation can be positively conceptualized as an emotion within a recent theory of emotions. It will be decisive to see that the experience of consolation can be understood not only hedonistically-qualitatively, but also intentionally. This structural conception allows for a differentiated description of various types of consolation as an emotion, also, in the tradition of William James, of a secular as well as a religious form of consolation

Mahler within Mahler: allusion as quotation, self-reference, and metareference

The music of Gustav Mahler (1860–1911) is ideal as a focus for discussion of the role of self-quotation within musical works. Although self-quotation is not in a technical sense the same thing as a narrow usage of self-reference, these two terms converge in the case of Mahler, through his creation of a semiotic ‘idiolect’ or vocabulary of musical signs which define his works as a single system. This contribution traces a progress from self-quotation, through a more semiotically potent kind of self-reference, to a situation in Mahler’s last completed symphony in which one can speak of metareference within the musical text. Mahler quotes constantly and copiously from other composers and his own works throughout his oeuvre. The most thoroughgoing examination of this habit to date is a 1997 article by Henry Louis de La Grange, whose observations are summarised and discussed here. The concern of this contribution is to focus on Mahler’s self-quotations, and to investigate whether these are a special case, in semiotic terms, and whether their use develops over time. The most straightforward case, in terms of sign functioning, is provided by Mahler’s First Symphony and its quotation of his own song, “Gieng heut’ Morgens über’s Feld”. This is a use of quotation to incorporate the suppressed text of the poem within the semiotic economy of the symphonic narrative. A more tangential and allusive technique is seen in the Fifth Symphony, where the relationship to pre-existing songs and their texts is more distant, and their function within the symphony is indirect and subtle, whilst remaining undeniable. Finally, the present contribution discusses the closing bars of the Ninth Symphony, hearing in them a Proustian representation of the operation of memory through Mahler’s use of fragmented units, which are self-referential within the Mahlerian idiolect. This way of composing attains a modernist, metareferential form of signification

Friedrich Rückert und die deutsche Mevlana-Rezeption

The article shows that Heinrich Rückert is one of the most interesting voices within the corpus of texts showing German encounters with Islam in the 19th century. While actual reflections on the European and American relation to Islam are largely influenced by a point of view stressing a “Clash of Civilisations” (Samuel Huntington), especially after 9/11, Rückert's occupation with the texts and poems of Mevlana Rumi shows that the humanistic and poetic implications of Rumi’s work helped Rückert to find a poetic language that placed itself in the tradition of Goethes’s “West-östlicher Divan” and a German pantheism that is to be seen in the context of the “Spinoza renaissance” at the beginning of the 19th century. Islamic culture is in Rückert’s work a part of the heritage of mankind and of a humanism that goes far beyond the limits of eurocentrism

THE INFLUENCE OF HAFIZ ON WESTERN POETRY

This article examines the influence of the Persian mystic poet Hafi z on western poets. Interest in Hafiz started in England in the eighteenth century with the translations of Sir William Jones. In the nineteenth century, the German translation of Baron von HammerPurgstall inspired Goethe to create his masterpiece Westöstliche Divan (West-Eastern Divan). The poetry of Hafiz evoked such passion in Goethe that he referred to him as ‘Saint Hafiz’ and ‘Celestial Friend’. Inspired by Westöstliche Divan, a number of German poets including Rückert and Platen composed volumes of poetry on the model of ghazal, the popular poetic form perfected by Hafi z in Persian literature. Prominent among the German thinkers influenced and fascinated by Hafiz was Friedrich Nietzsche who repeatedly mentioned him in his works. The influence of Hafiz stretched to America in 1838 when Ralph Waldo Emerson read Goethe’s West-Eastern Divan. In Hafiz, Emerson found a man who derived pleasure in the very elements which others found mean. Under the influence of Hafiz’s Saki-nameh or the Book of Wine, he created his finest poem Bacchus which, according to Harold Bloom, set the terms for the dialectic of American poetry

Disrupting the Binary, Reclaiming the Narrative: The Representation of the Eastern Other in Shirin Neshat's Turbulent and Rapture and Emily Jacir's Memorial...

This art history thesis examines the early video work of Iranian-born artist Shirin Neshat’s and a seminal installation work by Palestinian artist Emily Jacir. I argue that Neshat and Jacir employ two distinct processes of representing the ‘Eastern other’ for primarily American and European audiences: Neshat’s is a dialectic one, using a system of hyperaestheticized divisive binaries that dialectically break down into a network of ambiguities, while Jacir takes a factographic approach that is unequivocally political and pedagogical in everything from its deadpan materiality to its title. These two processes, I argue, are not merely formal decisions, but are tailored specifically to the sociopolitical circumstances of Iran and Palestine, respectively. The thesis is broken into three sections examining the means of these approaches. My first chapter provides an indepth visual analysis of all three works and examines the way in which their aesthetic approaches construct their processes of representation. My second chapter discusses Neshat and Jacir’s use of the body, and the way in which their works’ immersive viewer experiences make the spectator’s body a site that questions the boundaries enacted by the East-West binary. Crucially, this chapter examines the ways in which Jacir’s tent piece begins to operate dialectically—though still in a very different mode from Neshat’s videos—by using Western bodies to invoke the presence of Palestinian bodies within the tent. The third chapter looks at the two women and their oeuvres as products of two very different exiles, and examines the ethics of the appropriation of the exilic condition for the Western gaze. This final chapter and the conclusion ultimately attempt to provide a critical stance on Neshat and Jacir’s relative success of their objectives

Lernen durch Scheitern beim Einsatz von Bio-Lebensmitteln in der Außer-Haus-Verpflegung

The increasing importance of the eating-out sector has to be seen as a driver for the continued growth of the organic food market. Focusing on unsuccessful use of organic products this project analyses potentially useful information that could be deployed for strategic recommendations. There were 26 qualitative case studies conducted. Using guidelines, different histories or the establishment of organic food offers were explored. Additionally thirteen experts in the organic eating-out sector were surveyed. Beside descriptive findings concerning the communal feeding sector and the individual feeding sector a comparison analysis uncovered that decisions are department-specific within the respective organizations of eating-out. Critical success factors for organic offers concern not only the clientele, but also product quality, supply, certification constraints as well as the support of the superior organizational purpose. The problems are driven by external impulses, which are differently received by the departments of the organization however. This was a result of insufficient reflection on the purpose for using organic food products, the organization’s objectives as well as the necessary resource demands. With the help of structural recommendations, the process of introducing organic products can be based on strategic and focused planning in regard to purpose and means considering the reflection about made deci-sions