The Ethos of Poetry: Listening to Poetic and Schizophrenic Expressions of Alienation and Otherness

ABSTRACT

In the Letter of Humanism, Heidegger reinterprets the Greek notion of ethos as designating the way in which human beings dwell in the world through a “unifying” language. Through various down strokes in the autobiographical and psychopathological literature on schizophrenia as well as in literary texts and literary criticism, this paper, experimental in its effort, argues that the language productions of schizophrenia and poetry, each in its own way, seem to fall outside this unification of a language in common. Furthermore, it argues that this “falling outside” is related to radical experiences of “alienation” and “otherness,” which call for an alteration of conventional language. However, whereas poetry appears to open new linguistic possibilities, schizophrenia runs the risk of reducing language to the silence of incomprehensible “nonsense.” The paper ends with the suggestion that a poetic employment of language may hold a double potential with regard to the understanding and possible treatment of schizophrenia spectrum disorders.

KEYWORDS:

• Ethics
• Language
• Poetry
• Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorders
• Alienation
• Otherness

Notes

1 Foucault, History of Madness, xxviii.

2 Foucault, History of Madness, 497.

3 Heidegger, Brief über den Humanismus, 354; from now on referred to as BUH and page number in the text. All translations of German texts are my own.

4 Aristotle, Aristotle’s Eudemian Ethics, 2.1220a-b.

5 Homer, The Odyssey, 14.411; and Homer, Homeri Opera in Five Volumes, 6.511.

6 Herodotus, 7.125; and Hesiod. The Homeric Hymns and Homerica, 525. For an elaborated account on the history and etymology of “ethics,” see Scott, The Question of Ethics.

7 Heidegger, Erläuterungen zu Hölderlin’s Dichtung, 37–38.

8 Heidegger, Grundbegriffe er Metaphysik, 263.

9 Heidegger, Erläuterungen zu Hölderlin’s Dichtung, 38.

10 Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, 161.

11 Heidegger, Erläuterungen zu Hölderlin’s Dichtung, 39.

12 Heidegger, Einführung in die Metaphysik, 40.

13 Jakobson and Lübbe-Grothues, “The Language of Schizophrenia”, 139. “Posthumous” diagnosis are always problematic and there has been much discussion regarding Hölderlin’s breakdown and the “proper” diagnosis of his mental state following 1805. Yet, on the basis of his writing and various accounts from doctors, friends and acquaintances who saw Hölderlin in this period many agree that Hölderlin at least shows prominent signs of a disorder that falls within the schizophrenic spectrum. On this topic, see for instance Laplanche, Hölderlin and the Question of the Father.

14 Jakobson and Lübbe-Grothues, “The Language of Schizophrenia”, 142. “Scardanelli” was one of the names that Hölderlin gave to himself after he disavowed his family given name and in the course of the alterations of his poetic language. Although only fragments have been preserved of Hölderlin’s poems of the final years it is presumed that he began signing them “Scardanelli” from around 1841 about two years before his death. As Jakobson notices, many of the letters from his family name Hölderlin recurs in Scardanelli albeit in a different order, that is, “rdnelli” instead of “lderlin.”

15 Deleuze, Essays Critical and Clinical, lv.

16 Deleuze, Essays Critical and Clinical, lv–lvi.

17 A group of phenomenologially oriented psychiatrists and psychologists have developed semi-structured interviews (EASE And EAWE) designed specifically to approach a better understanding of the nature of these experiences. See, Parnas et al. “EASE”; and Sass et al. “EAWE”.

18 On the nature of self-relation in schizophrenia, see Parnas and Handest, “Phenomenology of Anomalous Self-Experience”.

19 Kraepelin, Psychiatrie.

20 Jaspers, Allgemeine Psychopathologie, 156.

21 Bleuler, Dementia Praecox oder Gruppe der Schizophrenien, 256.

22 Bleuler, Dementia Praecox oder Gruppe der Schizophrenien, 158.

23 Jaspers, Allgemeine Psychopathologie, 53.

24 Sechehaye, Autobiography of a Schizophrenic Girl, 120–21.

25 Sechehaye, Autobiography of a Schizophrenic Girl, 56.

26 Jakobson and Lübbe-Grothues, “The Language of Schizophrenia”, 144.

27 Pienkos and Sass, “Language”, 87.

28 Schreber, Memoirs of My Nervous Illness, 119.

29 Stanghellini, “A Case Study in Semantic Deconstruction”, 80; and Pienkos and Sass, “Language”, 85.

30 See for instance, Kraepelin, Psychiatrie, 415–31; and Bleuler, Dementia Praecox oder Gruppe der Schizophrenien, 121–32. More recently, the DSM-5 does not give language disturbances any privileged position in schizophrenia spectrum disorders but mentions “disorganized thinking and speech” as one of the key signatures for the diagnosis. Cf. American Psychiatric Association, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 87f.

31 Celan, “Der Meridian”, 192. Henceforth cited as MER with page numbers in the text.

32 Hölderlin, 1802–1803. Gesänge; Die Trauerspiele des Sophokles, 161.

33 Lacan, “The Instance of the Letter in the Unconscious”, 413/495.

34 Hölderlin, Sämtliche Werke, Briefe und Dokumente, Vol. 10, p. 156.

35 Blanchot, The Step Not Beyond, 118.

36 Foucault, The Order of Things, xix.

37 Foucault, The Order of Things, xix.

38 Lacoue-Labarthe, Poetry as Experience, 49.

39 Cf. Blanchot, The Space of Literature, 37.

40 Lacoue-Labarthe, Poetry as Experience, 54.

41 Heidegger, Vorträge und Aufsätze, 204.

42 Blankenburg, Der Verlust der natürlichen Selbstverständlichkeit.

43 Fuchs and Micali, Wolfgang Blankenburg, 80.

44 Laing, The Divided Self, 39ff.

45 Regarding the tendency of hyperreflexivity within schizophrenia spectrum disorders, see Sass, Madness and Modernism, 8ff.

46 Artaud, Selected Writings, 108.

47 Lacan, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book III, 77–78. Henceforth cited as PSY with page numbers.

48 On the notion of a “language that speaks all by itself,” see my paper “On a Language that Does Not Cease Speaking”.

49 Lacan, “On a Question Prior to Any Possible Treatment of Psychosis”, 481.

50 Rosenbaum and Sonne, “Det er et bånd der taler”, 91. On this distinction between a language that is capable of interrupting itself and a language that is not, see again my forthcoming paper “On a Language that Does Not Cease Speaking”.

51 Deleuze, Essays Critical and Clinical, 5.

52 Deleuze, Essays Critical and Clinical, 11.

53 Foucault, History of Madness, 537.