Erik Wallrup: "Tracing Flowers and Mountains in the German Lied"

Erik Wallrup, Södertörns högskola: "Tracing Flowers and Mountains in the German Lied"

Abstract
I will discuss the relation between song and nature with examples from the German lied. Central to the discussion are the German concept of Gespür (‘tracing’, ‘sensing’), which implicates the gentle grasping of a scene or an object of nature, and the concept of ‘situation’. Both concepts have been elaborated by the philosopher Hermann Schmitz and by the literary scholar Burkhard Meyer-Sickendiek on whose work I draw theoretically.