The Improviser’s Disorder: Spontaneity, Sickness, and Social Deviance in Late Romanticism

Abstract

Poetic improvisation––the spontaneous composition of verses in a performative context–– is usually associated with wit, sociability, and playful interaction between poet and audience. However, during the first half of the nineteenth century there is a tendency to represent the improviser as a social deviant, who may be ill or insane; at best, he is regarded as unstable, unreliable, manipulative, and intent on personal profit. Suggesting that the rhapsode in Plato’s Ion may be a Classical forerunner of these negative portrayals of Romantic improvvisatori, this paper examines autobiographical and fictional representations of improvising poets in English, German, and Russian nineteenth‐century texts.

Notes

[1] Cf. the epoch‐making Prolegomena ad Homerum (1795) by Friedrich August Wolf (109), archaeologist Karl August Böttiger writing in the Neuer Teutscher Merkur (October 1801, 103) to recommend that a historical‐psychological study of poetic improvisation be carried out on the basis of Plato’s Ion, or Joseph Forsyth’s travel account Remarks on Antiquities, Arts, and Letters during an Excursion in Italy, in the Years 1802 and 1803 (1: 61–62), among many others.

[2] All translations from German and French, unless otherwise indicated, are my own.

[3] Cf. the improvisational party‐game in which Wilhelm and his actor friends engage while on a boating expedition in book 2 chapter 9 of Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre; also, in book 3 chapter 8 of the earlier version of the novel, published as Wilhelm Meisters theatralische Sendung, the acting troupe decides to perform an extemporaneous skit in which each actor adopts the role of a character within Germany society. Der junge Tischlermeister features several disastrous episodes of improvisation, including an amateur performance of Götz von Berlichingen that goes badly wrong when one of the actors spontaneously departs from the rehearsed script.

[4] Once secure in his new job as a teacher of modern languages, Wolff went on to publish prolifically on the theme of poetic improvisation; his works include Erzählungen des deutschen Improvisators (1827), Gedichte von dem deutschen Improvisator (1827), and the novel Vittorio oder Bekenntnisse eines römischen Improvisatore (1828), republished as Camilla: Seitenstück zu Fiormona oder Briefe aus Italien (1832).