This past spring I attended an enlightening seminar on Alien Worlds in Medieval Literature led by Niklaus Largier at UC Berkeley. Among the heterogeneous texts we read were Wolfram’s Parzival, Mandeville’s travels, Herzog Ernst, and selections of Dante’s Inferno. In exploring these texts, the course was concerned with the ways in which alternative space, be it imaginary, abject, or religious, is created for the reader. We had many talks about visions, and many talks about heterotopias. I often found my mind wandering back to Schulz’s concept of the Word and marveling at the connections between his work and artistic aim and that of the medieval sacred text. What follows is an excerpt from a paper in which I synthesize the work of Schulz and Martin Buber’s 1909 collection of visionary texts entitled Ekstatische Konfessionen (Ecstatic Confessions) in order to explore the connection between bodily sensation (ultimately utilizing Michel Serres’ concept of a “mingled body” to describe the visionary body) and visionary experience. Continue reading
A Sensory Vision of the Word: Bruno Schulz, Martin Buber, and The Ecstatic Body
22 Friday Jun 2012
Posted Modernisms, Mysticism, sensory perception
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