BREATHING AS EVENT IN POETRY

Abstract

The paper explores the interrelations and tensions between breathing, voice, and language, along with their effects on poetry’s performative aspects and reception. It emphasizes the twofold connection between breathing and language: On the one hand, breathing displays various physiological substructures of language, and, on the other hand, it is always a linguistic phenomenon formed by language. It outlines the contexts of anthropological and philosophical theories about breathing, and from there approaches some key concepts of poetic theory. The paper discusses the theoretical framework of the lyric and applies it to a poem by Ágnes Nemes Nagy, it focuses on the poetic principles of breath and breathing in modern poetry and lyric theory as effects of poetical events. The main question hereby is as follows: How can linguistic and bodily (im)materiality become a genuine textual event in literature (in poetry) and which kind of framework does it presuppose to achieve the characteristics of event also regarding repeatability? Since breathing owns a spiritual or kairotic meaning (cf. “Atemwende” in Paul Celan), it can be allegorized also as an event between history and a dimension beyond historical time — perhaps as an allegory of the
literary event as well?