Despite its predominantly maritime subjects, the work of the German-speaking Luxembourgish poet Jean Krier presents itself from its debut (“Breton Islands,” 1994) as a deconstruction of classical nature poetry. Jean Krier’s poems thus stand in a tradition that goes back to Schiller and extends to the aesthetic theory of Theodor W. Adorno in ratifying the state of man’s separation from nature. Krier’s aesthetic procedure is based on the deconstruction of linguistic material that is subjected to states of play (mots-valises, homophonies, polyphonies, word lists, etc.). His poetry thus becomes a modern form of literary criticism in which disparate flotsam and junk-language reflect each other.

Loreley, a natural-born femme fatale from German mythology, has inspired poets since Romanticism. From a contemporary perspective, however, this character has simply lost her magical qualities and, at the same time, been transformed into a gatekeeper and an advocate for nature under threat in the Anthropocene. This article concerns the poetics surrounding Loreley – including the use of irony, role report, metamorphosis, and inspiration – in Franz Josef Czernin’s sonnet, „nach loreley“, Ulla Hahn’s „Ars poetica“ and „Meine Loreley“, Uwe Kolbe’s „Halle-Lureley“, and Peter Rühmkorf’s „Hochseil“. Loreley’s broken modernity does not only re veal her own abused nature. She is also promoted to a postmodern ‚Zudichterin‘ (Ernst Robert Curtius), reading the book of nature through semiotics rather than in terms of originality and creation.

This article investigates the relation between nature, ethics, and poetics in the work of Paul Celan, using „Engführung“ [“Stretto”] as a starting point. The readings from Celan’s library testify to his careful rethinking of what “reality” means. Applying the terminology and research of geology, physics, and, in particular, quantum mechanics, opens up an interpretative horizon for Celan’s poetry that can be configured according to the laws of entanglement as well as the form of a multidimensional ‚Raumgitter‘. The human and ethical elements of intentionality and being-in-the-world are not obliterated but rather subordinated to the natural itself. Celan goes beyond the idea of a subject-observer of the world-as-object and offers us a perspective in which language, as well as humanity and intentionality (poetic and otherwise), is merely one cosmic manifestation – part of nature itself. Language, like nature, shows different and changing states of being. It can be metamorphic but also sedimentary; conglomerate but also fluid like the elements present in nature. It is not a metaphorical analogy but a changing material state. It is non-local, dynamic, and provisional, like the relationality of quantum aggregations. Writing ‚nach der Natur‘ is, for Celan, who makes the knowledge and vocabulary of the natural sciences his own, to recover this metamorphic, provisional dimension of language – inside and outside time, probabilistic, invisible at a macroscopic level. By writing in and as nature in this way, poetry resists the destruction of what “happened” [geschehen] at the camps in the most devastating way.

Am 22. und 23. Oktober 2019 fand an der Universität Bergamo ein “Convegno internazionale” über „Europäische Naturlyrik nach 1945“ mit Forscher:innen aus Italien und Deutschland statt. Bei freundlichem Herbstwetter wurden „Gespräche über Bäume“ unternommen, die von Brechts bekanntem Vers über Celans Naturlyrik bis zur Legitimation eines solchen „Gesprächs“ reichten. Der Horizont der Diskussion wurde komparatistisch ausgezogen und erstreckte sich auf die französische, die luxemburgische, die englische, die italienische und die deutsche Naturdichtung. Angesichts der Ideenfülle der Beiträge entschieden sich die Initiator:innen der Tagung dazu, die Beiträge auf zwei Bände zu verteilen: auf einen Themenband über Bäume in der zeitgenössischen Naturlyrik1 und den vorliegenden Band, in den die über das Baum-Motiv hinauswachsenden Beiträge der Tagung Eingang gefunden haben. Die Konferenz sowie die beiden daraus hervorgegangenen Bände sind ein Ergebnis der Zusammenarbeit von Amelia Valtolina (Bergamo) und Michael Braun (Berlin) mit der an der Universität Trier angesiedelten DFG-Kolleg-Forschungsgruppe 2603 „Russischsprachige Lyrik in Transition. Poetische Formen des Umgangs mit Grenzen der Gattung, Sprache, Kultur und Gesellschaft zwischen Europa, Asien und Amerika“. Die Vorträge dieser Konferenz nahmen das Wechselspiel von Geschichte und Natur im poetischen Wort, die Dialektik von Romantisierung und Dämonisierung der Natur sowie die Doppelfunktion von Modernekritik und Zivilisationsmüdigkeit im Naturgedicht in den Blick. Es ging um die Fort- oder Neuschreibung von Traditionen und Genres sowie um die Poetik und Ästhetik des Naturgedichts im kulturellen und historischen Wandel. Entsprechend rückt der Titel des vorliegenden Bandes das immer wieder in der Diskussion unter den Vortra genden hervorgehobene Transitorische des Naturbegriffes ins Zentrum.

Nicolaus Cusanus presents a subtle theory of alterity. We will show why Cusanus does not consistently assign humans a position superior to other living beings, even when strong anthropocentric arguments seem to be present. Kazuhiko Yamaki (2017: 280), e.g., has recently pointed out that the attribution of a privileged position to humans in the world already fails logically, because the complicatio-explicatio scheme applies to all creatures. I would like to follow up on Yamaki’s argument that Cusanus at this point is rather concerned with describing a specific relationship between God and the creatures or the world. If this argument is extended to the question of humans and animals in Cusanus as a whole, the way in which these relations are to be figured becomes the focus of consideration. Just as Cusanus, in cosmology and anthropology, examines the perspectivity of knowledge and the decentralization of the Earth (as a noble star among other stars) without falling into pure perspectivism or decentralism, so traits of this reflective and (figuratively) ‘living’ thinking must also apply to the description of the relationship of living beings to one another or in relation to their Creator.

This article argues that Nicholas of Cusa, in contrast to the scholastic tradition and in consensus with the humanists of his time, develops a high esteem for Artes Me chanicae, placing it on an equal level with Artes Liberales. A close reading of the relevant passages in Cusa’s work reveals that although his early philosophical writings present the old scholastic position, in the Idiota-writings (1450), he shifts his stance toward the Artes Mechanicae and significantly elevates it. Influenced by his encounter with the Italian humanists in Rome, he maintains this approach throughout his late works and late sermons. This positive reweighting of Artes Mechanicae is consistent with Cusanus’ view of the immanence of God and leads him to revaluate his world view.

The concept of art is a lens through which one can explore the thought of Nicho las of Cusa. He uses this notion throughout his work in order to address the pro ductive dynamism of the divine mind as well as the human mind. With a focus on the human arts as likenesses of the divine art, this paper studies the relationship between the art of the word and the illiterate manual arts. Firstly, we examine the ars coniecturalis as a human art form that Cusanus presents for the first time in extenso in “De coniecturis”. Secondly, we address the power of the art of the word through the production of its most precious form, the spoken word. Thirdly, and finally, we inquire into the power of the manual arts through the example of the idiota’s making of wooden spoons in the “De mente” in order to show the relationship between this art and the art of the word.

Alongside the relationship between philosophy and painting, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, a speculative interest emerged in the concept of three-dimensional vision in Cusa, Jan van Eyck, Marsilio Ficino, and Giorgione da Castelfranco. The visio circularis theme becomes a central metaphor for a new way of thinking and seeing the world, which culminates in Leonardo da Vinci’s studies on perspective. In this context, the mirror forms a dominant theme in the development of the studies and applications of perspective, which becomes increasingly sensitive to sculptural relief.

“Art and Technology in Nicholas of Cusa” discusses a basic assumption of the Central European ‘Weltanschauung’ since the early modern period. The two terms and their relationship to each other represent formative parameters that extend up to the present, in the so-called Anthropocene. An exemplary relevance of these terms can be found in Nicholas of Cusa. It comes to light in the development of art and technique between Cusanus and Leonardo da Vinci (G. Cuzzo). In Cusa’s philosophy, conjectural thinking forms the systematic core of this approach (C. D'Amico and J. González Rios). This thinking points in two directions, in that art and thought in Cusanus’ reception of Neoplatonism and its independent appropriation lead to scientia aenigmatica , which at the same time manifests itself in technical images. (W.C. Schneider). Thereby, the liberal and the mechanical arts experience the same high esteem (K. Yamaki). For Nicholas, technology proves to be a form of expression of the “viva imago Dei” and its creative art; thus, Cusa characterizes two different forms of consciousness: the reflexive self-consciousness of science and technology as well as the creative consciousness of spiritual self-development (H. Schwaetzer). Cusa applied this concept also to humans and animals, and hence to nature in general (K. Zeyer).  The present volume not only contributes to research on Cusanus but also provides a specimen for comparative studies of different forms of consciousness.

This essay applies a Cultural Studies-approach to the multi-facetted relationship between poetry and advertisement as it emerged in the first half of the 20th century in the United States and as it became visible on billboards by the roadside. Somewhat paradoxically, public poetry in advertising appeared all across the United States (predominantly along highways in rural areas) around the time that much of modernist American poetry was being declared a highly elitist and urban centric affair in the orbit of new criticism-scholarship at universities. My first case study addresses the iconic Burma-Shave Billboard Poetry Campaign (1929-1963) and its long-lasting influence on American (popular) culture – in literature, music, visual art. Prior to this campaign as well as on the heels of it, billboards and billboard poetry were taken up to a minor extent in poetry circles and literary criticism (where they continued to be mostly viewed with disdain) and to a larger extent by conceptual artists who used billboard aesthetics, slogans, and short (poetic) texts in installations mimicking and critiquing consumer culture. One of the most aesthetically innovative recent ‘returns’ of billboard poetry, however, is the one employed intra-diegetically in the Hollywood film “Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing, Missouri” (2017), my second case study. Here, the writing on the billboard-walls make those aspects explicit that have been submerged in the earlier rhymes by the roadside: While the playful, optimistic lines of advertisement imply, time and again, a happy white middle-class American family with a sober and well-shaved patriarch behind the wheel and thus gloss over the disavowed underside of mobility, the film makes the latent manifest and points to systemic / structural violence, such as a pervasive American rape ‘culture’ which is linked to the car and the mobility it offers. The film uses the billboard and its inscription as foil and as catalyst to address and to protest this and other forms of violence and thus presents an activist intervention in order to ask for more than merely poetic justice.