Rhythmus (Rhythm)

The lexeme Rhythmus has a long history of its own. In the context of Goethe’s thought, it needs to be approached via both his theoretical discussions of the term and his handling of rhythm in his literary work. Goethe conceives of rhythm in terms of its materiality, and its major philosophical opportunity is the intense connection that it offers between subject and object. Goethe’s attitude to meter—that is, rhythm organized for the purposes of poetic production—was ambivalent: although he mastered any number of different verse forms, he remained suspicious of poetic rhythms that were too metronomic. The creative tension of rhythm is an implicit theme in various works and is explored through two examples in this entry: the poem “Der Musensohn” (1774/1800; The Son of the Muses) and the character Mignon from the novel Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (1795–1796; Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship).

Remembering John Polkinghorne: a vision of one world, and one culture

A personal recollection of gratitude reports on the way that the writings of John Polkinghorne inspired and guided the author’s own thinking in science and theology since meeting him as a graduate student. Themes of both agreement and disagreement are selected from the many to be found in Polkinghorne’s corpus. Closer attention is paid to two of his books, Science and Christian Belief and Faith, Science and Understanding. A running theme is the creative tension of a ‘bottom-up thinker’, one of whose salient and influential arguments was that of ‘top-down causation’. Although there is disagreement over Polkinghorne’s exegesis of divine character in Job, thinking the argument through did bear fruit.

Sororidad e interseccionalidad. A propósito de Roma=Sorority and intersectionality. Regarding Roma

<p><strong>Resumen </strong></p><p>El presente artículo presenta una discusión teórica entre los conceptos de sororidad e interseccionalidad tomando como excusa la obra cinematográfica Roma (2018) del director mexicano Alfonso Cuarón. Ambos conceptos resultan de especial importancia para los estudios de género actuales. Al mismo tiempo se hace la pregunta sobre la pertinencia de la confrontación de ambos y se busca desde la tensión creativa que generan nuevas vías para su comprensión. Palabras clave: sororidad; interseccionalidad; Roma; clases sociales: feminismo.</p><p><strong>Abstract </strong></p><p>The following article presents a theoretical discussion between the concepts of sorority and intersectionality regarding the film Roma (2018) by Mexican director Alfonso Cuarón. Both concepts are of special interest when we talk about contemporary gender studies. Moreover, the relevance of this confrontation relays on the creative tension between them and how it generates new ways for understanding sorority and intersectionality nowadays. </p>

John Zizioulas’ concept of the person: a critical appraisal

Much of John Zizioulas’ treatment of the human being as a person revolves around four crucial concepts: being, otherness, ontology, and freedom. Our critical appraisal of Zizioulas’ concept of human personhood emphasizes the importance of creative tension between (ontological) freedom and contingency as understood within the frame of reference of the human being’s intrinsic contingency as a finite, created being. According to this concept, the other (another distinct embodied personhood) is neither an object nor competition but rather a gift for one’s self who reminds me of one’s limitedness, dependence, and deep relatedness. Thus, the other helps the human self realize his/her potential in a mutual sharing of love. We examine Zizioulas’ critical stance to the modern notion that ‘otherness is necessary for freedom to exist’ against the background of his treatment of ‘otherness’ and ‘nature,’ as well as ‘otherness’ and ‘new being,’ ‘Logos,’ and ‘new nature.’ Finally, we lay out Zizioulas’ mature ontology of human personhood as a profound albeit mystical account of what it means to be human in our fragmented age.

THE LION IN MEDIEVAL WESTERN EUROPE: TOWARD AN INTERPRETIVE HISTORY

Several scholars have studied meanings attributed to the lion in the western European Middle Ages, but their accounts have tended to be partial and fragmentary. A balanced, coherent interpretive history of the medieval lion has yet to be written. This article seeks to promote and initiate the process of composing such a history by briefly reviewing previous research, by proposing a thematic and chronological framework on which work on the lion might reliably be based, and by itself discussing numerous textual examples, not least from German, Latin, and French literature. The five categories of lion symbolism covered are, respectively, the threatening lion, the Christian lion, the noble lion, the sinful lion, and the clement lion. These meanings are shown successively to have constituted regnant fashions that at various times profoundly shaped people's understanding of the lion; but it is demonstrated also that they existed alongside, and in a state of creative tension with, a “ground bass” of lion meanings that changed relatively little. Lions nearly always, for example, represented important, imposing things and people (for example, kings); and the New Testament's polarized presentation of the lion as either Christ or the devil proved enormously influential both throughout and beyond the Middle Ages. As such any cultural history of the lion — and indeed of many other natural phenomena — must be continually sensitive to the co-existence and interaction of tradition and innovation, stability and dynamism.

Between Postdramatic Text and Dramatic Drama: Recent German-Language Playwriting by Lukas Bärfuss and Katja Brunner

Since 2000 there has been a boom in playwriting in the German-speaking world. This is shaped by a creative tension between two forms of theatre-texts. On the one hand the postdramatic text that exists in a theatre marked by a parataxis of all theatrical elements, as outlined by Hans-Thies Lehmann and Gerda Poschmann; on the other, the ‘dramatic drama’ as identified by Birgit Haas that engages with dramatic representation whilst still questioning the reality being represented on the stage. In this contribution I explore these strands of contemporary playwriting in two texts written since 2000: Lukas Bärfuss’ Die sexuellen Neurosen unserer Eltern (2003) and Katja Brunner’s von den beinen zu kurz (2012). My analysis examines how both playwrights question dramatic conventions of form and character and the implications this has for audience efforts to discern meaning in the plays.

‘Fixé par les cris des hirondelles au vol géométrique du désir’ (Picasso, 7 June 1936)

Between 1935 and 1939, Picasso wrote nearly 350 prose poems, mainly in French, revealing, according to André Breton, his ‘besoin d’expression totale’, driven, according to Tristan Tzara, by his “‘imagination torrentielle’. This chapter seeks to explore and appreciate the creative tension in Picasso’s prose poems between irrepressibly inventive improvisation and a complementary tendency to connect and orchestrate, through the use of multifarious patterns and serial permutations. These formal qualities reveal and emphasise the writer’s personal and political desires and preoccupations. Threads of symmetry and anaphora in Picasso’s literary manuscripts, sometimes extending from one text into others over long periods of time, invite comparison with similarly continuous lines of graphic experimentation in his sketchbooks, confirming the intergeneric persistence and consistency of his creative impulses and strategies.