Parallelism in Büchner's Leonce und Lena: A Tragicomedy of Tautology

Parallelism in Bchner's Leonce und Lena: A Tragicomedy of TautologyAuthor(s): Peter M. MusolfSource: The German Quarterly, Vol. 59, No. 2 (Spring, 1986), pp. 216-227Published by: Wiley on behalf of the American Association of Teachers of GermanStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/407419 .Accessed: 11/04/2014 13:26

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PETER M. MUSOLF Princeton University

Parallelism in Biichner's Leonce und Lena: A Tragicomedy of Tautology

The work of Georg Biichner (1813-1837) is especially marked by its concern for rhetoric and style. The concern is evident in the political pamphlet of 1834, Der Hessische Landbote. It reappears in the highly self-conscious language of Btichner's comedy of 1836, Leonce und Lena. The comedy demonstrates at various levels an acute awareness of the particular intricacies of its language. Roman Jakobson would characterize this drama as possessing to a high degree what he terms "poeticity,"'I that is, in Leonce und Lena the poetic function, that part of the communicative message concerned with the form the message takes as opposed to its content, etc., is predominant to an unusually great extent. This self-conscious text is particularly receptive to the strategy of literary analysis that Jakobson introduced in his seminal structuralist statement "Linguistics and Poetics.'"2

In this essay Jakobson offers a definition of artistic language based upon a sophisticated notion of repetition. Central to an understanding of this theory is the "principle of equivalence. " To grasp this concept we must be acquainted with Jakobson's "two basic modes of arrangement" used in verbal behavior: "selection" and "combination."

If "child" is the topic of [a] message, the speaker selects one among the extant, more or less similar, nouns like child, kid, youngster, tot, all of them equivalent in a certain re- spect, and then, to comment on this topic, he may select one of the semantically cognate verbs- sleeps, dozes, nods, naps. Both chosen words combine in the speech chain. The selection is produced on the basis of equivalence, similarity and dissimilarity, synonymy and antonymy, while the combination, the build-up of the sequence, is based on contiguity. -

The principle of equivalence designates, then, a state of affairs, in which elements (for example, the cognates of "child") are in some sense com-

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MUSOLF: Biichner's Leonce und Lena 217

parable. They can be "equated" with one another, hence the term "equivalence." This principle is active whenever a speaker partakes in the process of selecting the words that will comprise a sentence, before he actually combines the words into a sequence. Once the combination is performed in nonartistic verbal activity, the principle of equivalence is no longer decisive. The combination occurs according to rules of syntax, and one reads the nonartistic sequence following the order imposed by these rules. Relation- ships between words or syllables such as assonance or rhyme, which would be determined regardless of the rules of the combination, are of secondary importance. The combination is dominated by its contiguous nature in which the equation or comparison of elements is less relevant.

Not so with poetic language. "The poetic function projects the principle of equivalence from the axis of selection into the axis of combination" (p. 27, Jakobson's italics). It is by means of the transference of the principle of equivalence into the axis of combination that the manifold elements of verbal art gain relevance. Their import lies in the vast variety of relationships, correlations and interconnections which only gain significance once equivalence becomes the constitutive device of a sequence.4 Jakobson's comments on Poe underline this point:

In a sequence in which similarity is superimposed on contiguity [i.e., where the principle of equivalence is projected from the axis of selection into the axis of combination], two similar phonemic sequences near to each other are prone to assume a paronomastic function. Words similar in sound are drawn together in meaning.5

Consider the alliteration in the first line of an imaginary poem which reads: "buy baked beans." The alliteration lends added significance to this line. Were this same line to occur in a grocery list, where the presence of like sounds is not an important factor, the alliteration would be irrelevant. Jakob- son rightly suggests that the transference of the principle of equivalence from the axis of selection into the axis of combination is an "indispensable feature" of poetry (p. 27).

Jakobson and Gerard Manley Hopkins use the term "parallelism" as a com- prehensive designation for all the varieties of equivalence that we encounter in verbal art.6 Hopkins comments:

... there are practically only these two kinds of comparison in poetry, comparison for likeness' sake, to which belong metaphor, simile, and things of that kind, and comparison for unlikeness' sake, to which belong antithesis, contrast, and so on. Now there is a convenient word which gives us the common principle for both these kinds of comparison- Parallelism.7

The subdivision of parallelism dubbed "comparison for likeness' sake" is characterized by the presence of repeated elements, whereas it is the lack


218 THE GERMAN QUARTERLY Spring 1986

of repetition, i.e., contrast, which is the predominant characteristic of parallelisms of unlikeness. It will most likely occur to the reader that "contrast" has its repetitive characteristics, too, and so it is not wrong to question why they are distinguished, for depending on the degree of contrast between parallel elements a good bit of repetition may be involved. Let us consider, for example, two consecutive lines of poetry whose respective final words are "beans" and "deans." Here the words do possess some common elements, i.e., a similarity in sound, despite the semantic contrast they display. How- ever, it is wise to hold the categories "repetition" and "contrast" apart, for there exist contrasts so great that no repetition whatsoever is involved between their components. This is the case with antithesis. When we encounter the antithetical terms "town" and "country" within, for example, a poem, we compare the elements of the antithesis, that is, we "parallel" them despite the fact that an explicit repetition of elements between the terms is absent." As long as we assume we are dealing with a piece of verbal art, where the principle of equivalence has been transferred from the axis of selection into the axis of combination, we are justified in equating or comparing elements of a particular sequence with one another even where repetition between elements is lacking.9 In fact, it is only through this process of comparison that we can determine a lack of repetition, moreover establish the presence of an antithesis. So radical a dissimilarity as antithesis can only be formally recognized if one acknowledges the effect of the principle of equivalence in bringing the antithetical elements into an equation.'" It is important to recall how Jakobson explains the mode of selection, of which the principle of equivalence and, by analogy, parallelism is the key characteristic. "The selection is produced on the basis of equivalence, similarity and dissimilarity, synonymy and antonymy

.... .11"" Just as parallels of repetition

guide our understanding of a literary text, so too do "parallels of unlikeness," that is, parallels of dissimilarity or antonymy.1"

Jakobson has demonstrated the value of the idea of parallelism for practical literary criticism in his numerous analyses of the poetry of various national languages. As a practical critic he was concerned primarily with poetry, but as a theorist he often spoke in terms of "verbal art," which is to say, he limited neither his theorizing nor the application of his theory to poetry alone nor solely to artistic language:

Any attempt to reduce the sphere of the poetic function to poetry or to confine poetry to the poetic function would be a delusive oversimplification. The poetic function is not the sole function of verbal art but only its dominant, determining function, whereas in all other verbal activities it acts as a subsidiary, accessory constituent. This function, by promoting the palpability of signs, deepens the fundamental dichotomy of signs and objects. Hence, when dealing with the poetic function, linguistics cannot limit itself to the field of poetry. '"



Jakobson's theory can be beneficial when applied outside poetry. The validity of the application of the Jakobsonian concept of parallelism to Btich- ner's work has been shown.14 It is particularly the figure of antithesis, a parallel of extreme dissimilarity (such as "rationality" vs. "unreason") that informs the present reading of Leonce und Lena. Roland Barthes has de- scribed the figure of antithesis as "the battle between two plenitudes set ritually face to face like two fully armed warriors .... ."5 Bichner's Leonce und Lena presents the reader with a variety of parallels of dissimilarity. In Buichner, however, these antithetical constructions are of an unusual nature, for upon closer examination the reader discovers the constituent elements of these oppositions are interchangeable. They are "paradoxical antitheses" unproductive of conflict, oppositions whose members, according to conventions of logic external to the drama, should generate a conflict in their clash, but which, following the drama's own conventions, produce no conflict whatsoever. Instead they appear entirely compatible. They are far from being Barthes' warriors; rather, the image is that of a single shadow boxer in feigned competition with the opposed image of himself- a most equal op- ponent.

Leonce und Lena is characterized by the pervasive theme of "Langeweile." The paradoxical antithesis is one means by which this thematic notion is produced. The world of Leonce und Lena is thoroughly permeated with examples of such paradoxical antitheses whose constituent elements, when synthesized, provoke no discord. The conflation of the opposed constituents of such an antithesis always produces (paradoxically) just another tedious encounter with unvarying homogeneity. The paradoxical antithesis generates "Langeweile" (not for the reader, of course) through its inability to produce any lasting differentiation. I use "thoroughly permeated" because paradoxical antitheses are present in Btichner's text at nearly every level of structure, from the minimal linguistic level of vowels and phoneme structure ultimately to a question of genre. By locating paradoxical antitheses at various levels of structure within the play we may see how the thematic presence of "Langeweile" can be substantiated with a sound structural grounding.

The paradoxical antithesis assumes its most minimalistic form in an instance in the drama's first scene. We are interested here in Valerio's use of the word "Fleig" in his song (107,10 and 108,7). '6 Fleig is a dialectal variant of the more common New High German variant Fliege. The paradoxical antithesis in this case is composed of the orthographically reversed diphthongs "ei" and "ie." This antithesis is paradoxical because its elements, "ei" and "ie, " are interchangeable within the context in which we find them (in the song). Whether one pair of vowels or its opposite is used, it makes no difference on a semantic level. Here "ei" is both opposed to and interchangeable with "ie." Valerio's snatch of song occurs not once, but twice within the drama's important opening scene and thus draws more attention than usual to itself. In its second occurrence it occupies the conspicuous



position of closing the scene. Moreover, it is fitting that this example should spring from Valerio's mouth, to whose character words, indeed vowels, are of vital importance. Leonce characterizes this punster as being the offspring of the very linguistic elements that are manipulated in his song: "Mensch, du bist nichts als ein schlechtes Wortspiel. Du hast weder Vater noch Mutter, sondern die ffinf Vokale haben dich miteinander erzeugt" (115,28-30).

Lotman points to the phonological level as "die unterste Strukturebene des poetischen Textes."17 Lotman is, of course, interested in sound and meaning while my interest here is in orthography and meaning. But we are both working at the same structural level, that of a grapheme/phoneme, and the observations Lotman makes are useful to my concern:

Es ist offensichtlich, da38 kein fiir sich genommener Laut der poetischen Rede irgendeine selbstindige Bedeutung hat. Die Sinnerfiilltheit des Lautes in der Poesie ergibt sich nicht aus seiner spezifischen Natur, sondern wird de- duktiv vermutet. Der Apparat der Wiederholungen hebt in der Poesie (und iiberhaupt im kiinstlerischen Text) diesen oder jenen Laut heraus, wihrend er ihn in einer alltfig- lichen Mitteilung nicht heraushebt. (p. 161)

In other words, on identifying a specific phoneme the reader attempts to deduce its significance from the context in which he finds it. It is a special but not inessential feature of the case at hand that the reader supplies one half of the antithesis, the New High German variant. The reader's attempt to resolve the antithesis he notices in Valerio's song is foiled by the paradoxical nature of the antithesis. What the reader perceives as an opposition is, within the context of the song, an example of complete interchangeability. The example indicates that no specific meaning is associated with the antithesis of "ei" and "ie" and that it is in fact perceived as an antithesis only according to the logic of a grammar external to the drama. 18 The reader is tempted by the "abnormal" usage Fleig into attempting to deduce the significance of the antithesis, but his machinations only show him that he has been examining a diphthong and its reflection in a mirror and that he cannot differentiate between the mirrored image and that which is being reflected.

The drama constitutes on the interpretive plane of Gesellschaftskritik a critique of idealist philosophy and more generally, of reason. Reason must be applied to the Fleig-Flieg example in order to recognize and examine the antithesis, yet this endeavor is undermined, because the Fleig-Flieg example also exists in the world external to the drama, the world of the reader. This fact makes the criticism of the conventions of reason even more acute, because it illustrates an instance of the inapplicability of conventions of reason in the "actual, " external realm (as opposed to the dramatic realm), a realm in which the virtues of logic are praised ironically in a language which itself, as we now recognize, does not obey the rules of that logic.



The Fleig-Flieg example provides us with a clear model of the paradoxical antithesis, a model which recurs on various structural levels in the drama. A paradoxical antithesis at the level of sentence syntax appears in the exchange between King Peter and his Kammerdiener in 1,2:

Erster Kammerdiener: Als Eure Majestat diesen Knopf in Ihr Schnupftuch zu knfipfen geruhten, so wollten Sie ... Peter: Nun?

Erster Kammerdiener: Sich an Etwas erinnern. Peter: Eine verwickelte Antwort! - Ei! Nun an was meint

Er? Zweiter Kammerdiener: Eure Majestlit wollten sich an Et-

was erinnern, als Sie diesen Knopf in Ihr Schnupftuch zu knuipfen geruhten. (108,25-32)

The antithesis in this example is seen in the difference in the order of clauses between the statement of the first chamberlain and that of the second. The order of clauses in the second chamberlain's utterance is the reverse or antithesis of that of the first. Yet here we encounter, as in the case of the Fleig-Flieg example, an opposition whose members are, paradoxically, simultaneously antithetical and interchangeable. For on the semantic level it makes no difference what order the clauses take. The antithesis dissolves. There is no conflict.

This exchange, which occurs in the scene that directly follows Valerio's scene-closing ditty, demonstrates upon the level of syntax the inconsistencies King Peter perceives between idealist philosophical theories, i.e., notions of reason and order, and the practical evidence provided by his servants, here in their speech. This situation is highly distressing for Peter: "Die Kategorien sind in der schtindlichsten Verwirrung .... Mein ganzes Sy- stem ist ruinirt" (108,19-22). Peter hints in the last line of this scene that our focus upon language is correct, for language contributes to his confusion and causes him embarrassment: "Ich bin immer so in Verlegenheit, wenn ich 6ffentlich sprechen soill" (109,5-6).

The critique of reason we recognize in the first two examples of the paradoxical antithesis is more plainly evident in the following case. Here we move to a textual level of greater magnitude, that of the individual character. Within the constellation of King Peter's court the role of the jester falls to Valerio. But Valerio is a rational fool and herein lies the paradoxical antithesis, for the fool and the rational man coexist peaceably in the same person. This quality of Valerio's character is established early in the drama in 1,1 through the combination of his foppish, drunken behavior with his cutting wit. The lines spoken in this scene by Valerio, the sober drunk: "Ein Narr! Ein Narr! Wer will mir seine Narrheit gegen meine Vernunft verhandeln? Ha! ich bin Alexander der Grol3e!" (107,15-17), emphasize the presence of these antithetical elements in his character. His lines are striking because of the discord (as perceived by the reader) between the drunkenness and the claim to rationality. Striking as well is Valerio, the Staatsminister of



the drama's conclusion, who in his role as sage advisor promises to decree the laws of folly (134,9-17). Such a figure of course is no creation of Biichner's. The wise fool is a common motif of literature, and in Valerio we recognize a traditional means of criticizing the reason of the wise, by letting the wise, rational man appear a fool.

My remarks concerning Valerio's song in 1,1 apply as well to Valerio's character here. He is as he speaks. Much as his song defies reason, so too does his mode of being as an anthropomorphized paradoxical antithesis. The idiosyncracy of Valerio's character disturbs King Peter, the seeker of sym- metry and logic: "Der Mensch [Valerio] bringt mich in Confusion, zur Despe- ration. Ich bin in der gr68ten Verwirrung" (131, 1-2). Leonce, on the other hand, Valerio's &lve and master, idolizes this duplex figure and soulmate: "Komm an meine Brust! Bist du einer von den G6ttlichen" (etc.) (108,1-2).

Under the influence of Valerio, Prince Leonce comes to personify the paradoxical antithesis as well. Yet in Leonce, who lacks Valerio's humor, the result is an uncaring, suicidal melancholy. The presence of a paradoxical antithesis at the thematic or "conceptual level" of the text helps us to trace this development in Leonce. At the outset of the drama we see Leonce occupying himself (sich beschtiftigen) with idleness (MiiJ3iggang). These two terms, "Beschtiftigung" and "Miil3iggang," constitute the paradoxical antithesis. "Ich habe alle Hinde voll zu thun," laments Leonce, as he considers the tasks that stand before him: spitting on a stone and throwing sand in the air. "[I]ch weif mir vor Arbeit nicht zu helfen" (105, 9-10). Leonce questions the terms somewhat: "Bin ich ein Miil3iggainger? Habe ich keine Be- schliftigung?" (105,26-27), wherein we see him already tending indepen- dently toward an equation of these opposites. Once Valerio comes on the scene the terms become fully synonymous: "ich [Valerio] habe die groBe Beschtiftigung, muil3ig zu gehen ..." (107,32-33).

Valerio's lines are restated in the Rosettaszene, in which we see how firmly Leonce has come to embrace Valerio's Weltanschauung:

Leonce: Ach, Rosetta, ich habe die entsetzliche Arbeit ... Rosetta: Nun? Leonce: Nichts zu thun... Rosetta: Als zu lieben? Leonce: Freilich Arbeit! Rosetta beleidigt: L e o n c e! Leonce: Oder Beschiftigung. Rosetta: Oder Miifiggang. Leonce: Du hast Recht wie immer. (110,10-18)

To clarify the developing hierarchy of textual levels, I must emphasize that "Miil3iggang" and "Beschfiftigung" represent interchangeability at more than just the lexical level. The terms represent a major concept within the context of the drama and rightfully take their place at a level which is approximate to the magnitude of "character" or, as we shall see in the next example, "symbol."



Also in the Rosettaszene we encounter, through Leonce, the antithetical opposition of weij3e Rosen and rote Rosen:

Sieh zu den Fenstern meiner Augen hinein. Siehst du, wie sch6n todt das arme Ding ist? Siehst du die zwei weiBen Rosen auf seinen Wangen und die zwei rothen auf seiner Brust? (111,27-30)

That the two sorts of roses can be read symbolically is obvious enough. The white roses correspond to death and the red roses, of course, to passion. And herein lies the antithesis between inanimate, passionless death and the vitality and passion of life. These symbols coexist within Leonce, literally in his head, producing, however, no disparity, no antithetical conflict. The antithetical elements are compatible, which we recognize in Leonce's morbid line: "Adio, adio meine Liebe, ich will deine Leiche lieben" (111,18).

Another example of the paradoxical antithesis on the symbolic level can be seen in Lena's garland of rosemary: "jetzt bin ich eingekleidet und habe Rosmarin im Haar" (117,20-21). Rosemary possesses a double symbolic function, as Hochzeitskranz and Totenkriinzlein.19 Lena, like Valerio and Leonce, embodies paradox. She celebrates life and death simultaneously. We need only recall her song: "Auf dem Kirchhof will ich liegen / Wie ein Kindlein in der Wiegen .. ." (117,22-23). Congruencies between the characters Valerio, Leonce, and Lena are also noted at the drama's conclusion by Valerio, who with his talent for differentiation and confusion remarks, "daB ... die zwei weltberfihmten Automaten angekommen sind und daB ich vielleicht der dritte und merkwfirdigste von beiden bin ..." (131, 4-6).

The presence of interchangeable scenes in Leonce und Lena is not opposed to the generally "open form" of Biichner's dramatic oeuvre, "' and it is possible to speak of interchangeability at the level of scene within Act One and within Act Two (but not between them). Although one is hard pressed to locate an example of paradoxical antithesis at this level, it is rewarding nonetheless to dwell on scenic interchangeability for a moment. Leonce und Lena is a drama characterized largely by its preoccupation with language and its notice- able lack of action.21 The delineation of action requires a specific ordering of scenes, evidence for which we find in Act Three. Here, the comedy's most significant action takes place. In III,1 the motivation for the return to court by the travellers is established; Leonce wishes to marry and Valerio desires to become Staatsminister 111,2 is the necessary preparation for the royal wedding and in III, 3 the marriage then takes place. Even here, however, the sense of logical continuity between scenes is disturbed by the chance nature of the wedding. The members of the court are initially under the impression that the Prince and Princess are being wed "in effigie" (132,7). Only after the ceremony is over do they discover that the genuine Leonce and Lena have been wed. In contrast, Act One is most notably bereft of sequential plot development. Because there is no need to establish contiguity between scenes in Act One, the scenes become interchangeable.22 One



might object that the relationship between Valerio and Leonce must be established in I,1 before Valerio could be found emerging from underneath a table in Leonce's personal quarters in 1,3. I would argue that Valerio's entrance in 1,1 is an equally unmotivated, "miraculous" appearance from the void, as it were, as is his entrance in the act's third scene.23 The nature of action in Act II is again problematical. Indeed, a journey is undertaken and a romance is begun and developed, but the lilliputian dimensions of Popo and neighboring "empires" make the journey a rather dubious, perhaps imaginary venture, and the romance follows upon the unmotivated, chance meeting of our renegade couple. This situation recalls the dilemma faced by Peter in the conversation with his servants discussed above: wherever we search for order in this world, we are struck by its arbitrariness.

There is a gap within the range of textual levels upon which paradoxical antitheses have been found. It occurs at a plane of central importance for a dramatic text: the act. At this level it was not possible to find evidence of antithesis or interchangeability. On the contrary, the dramatic structure of Leonce und Lena is very dependent on the specific order and individuality of its three acts despite the arbitrary nature of the individual scenic arrange- ments. Leonce's dissatisfaction and melancholy must be established in Act One in order to motivate the journey and acquaintance with Lena in Act Two. The wedding in Act Three is contingent on the presence of the newly formed couple. In Leonce und Lena we find a drama not yet willing to depart entirely from tradition. The highly distortive effect the presence of paradoxical antithesis would have had at this level is avoided.

In many ways the paradoxical antitheses outlined above have the nature of tautology about them, whereby I would emphasize the rhetorical rather than analytical sense of tautology: "vice d'elocution par lequel on redit toujours la meme chose."24 The elements of the antitheses have exhibited their interchangeability, and this interchangeability is such a redite. It is within this sense of tautology that the aura of boredom, Langeweile, which so distinctively casts its pall upon the drama, finds its origin. Barthes ob- serves how tautology "distrusts" and "rejects" language. He writes: "Now any refusal of language is a death. Tautology creates a dead, a motionless world. ""2 It is a world of tautology that Buichner's characters inhabit. Leonce's vision of a timeless and artifically sustained utopia at the conclusion of the drama reemphasizes this image of a "dead world" (134,1-8).

A paradoxical antithesis is a member of both the subcategories of parallelism discussed above, "repetition" and "contrast." The extreme form of repetition (identity) leads to tautology and its consequences have been men- tioned. The extreme form of contrast (antithesis) has been demonstrated to exist simultaneously with identity in Leonce und Lena and it too is tautolog- ical in nature. The act of recognizing antithesis, however, has consistently fallen to the reader, and the coexistence of antithesis and identity has consistently been objected to by the reader's logic, a logic external to the drama.



The text's criticism of logic (and of idealist philosophy) is largely carried out by the words of King Peter. The way, however, in which the paradoxical antitheses foil any application of the reader's logic succeeds in making the criticism of logical practice keener and more solidly, if subtly, supported.

We may extend the hierarchy of textual levels even further, to the level of genre. It is possible to ask whether tragedy and comedy are the poles of a paradoxical antithesis in the case of Leonce und Lena. The drama's comic elements ride at the surface, that is, Leonce's pathos heightened to ridiculousness, Valerio's incessant word games, the figure of King Peter, etc. However, a tragedy curiously grounded in a lack of conflict runs simultaneously alongside this comedy. In this tragedy humans are transformed into robots, language cannot be trusted, a populace is reduced to playthings and paradise becomes an airless bubble of boredom. Comedy and tragedy are opposites that peaceably coexist.

The concept may be taken yet a step further: since my approach to the analysis of Leonce und Lena follows a methodology developed primarily with reference to poetry, one may maintain that, for the purposes of a Jakobsonian reading, the "opposition" of poetry and drama in Biichner's Leonce und Lena is also one which can be reduced to interchangeability. An approach based on the concept of parallelism, in all its range from identity to antithesis, can be applied within either genre.26

We have detected in Leonce und Lena a high degree of rhetorical self-con- sciousness which extends from the most fundamental level of the play's language to broad questions of genre. The poetic function, the central term in Jakobson, is indeed the predominant one here and Btichner's text displays clearly those aspects of a literary text that interest Jakobson. But in addition to the deepening of our understanding of the play generated by the "friend- ship" of Bichner and Jakobson, this affinity produces another important result, which might inform further thought on Bichner's work as well as the work of those he influenced. It allows us to glimpse the workings in the play of a particular awareness that we could term Bichner's rhetorical imagination. The pervasive presence of paradoxical antitheses in Leonce und Lena should lead us to seek evidence of it or of other aspects of Bichner's acute rhetorical awareness elsewhere in his writings. Similarly, charting the presence of such aspects of his rhetorical imagination in the drama of German Expressionism or of the Theater of the Absurd, which were influenced strongly by Biichner, would strengthen our understanding of the poetics of these dramatic schools.27

Notes

' Roman Jakobson, "What is Poetry?" in Selected Writings (The Hague: Mouton, 1981), III, 750. 'Jakobson introduces his well-known six-part model of human verbal communication in "Lin- guistics and Poetics," Selected Writings (The Hague: Mouton, 1981), III, 18-51. All references



to the poetic function in my paper refer directly to this function as proposed by Jakobson in the explanation of his model.

3 Jakobson, p. 27 (italics mine). 4Jakobson implies that within verbal art the principle of equivalence is active on a broad scale.

Equivalence obtains not just between "more or less similar" cognates, but also between different types of words altogether. Thus we can determine an equivalence of sound between the noun "tot" and the verb "nod."

5Jakobson, p. 43. 6 For Jakobson, parallelism is the "general ..., fundamental problem of poetry" (Jakobson,

p. 39). 7 Gerard Manley Hopkins, The Journals and Papers, ed. Humphry House (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1959), p. 106. Elsewhere Hopkins notes: "The artificial part of poetry, perhaps

we shall be right to say all artifice, reduces itself to the principle of parallelism. The structure of poetry is that of continuous parallelism, ranging from the technical so-called Parallelisms of Hebrew poetry and the antiphons of Church music up to the intricacy of Greek or Italian or English verse" (Hopkins, p. 84). Elsewhere in the Journals and Papers Hopkins writes more expansively of his notion of parallelism. Cf. p. 85 and pp. 104-14. 8 I have emphasized the literary context in which my examples appear. This is not to deny that "repetition," "contrast," or "antithesis" exist outside the context of poetic language. Indeed, they do occur outside verbal art, yet in accordance with Jakobson's delineation of the six factors and six functions of language, they are then subordinate to concerns other than the form of the message, such as the referential function, etc. Within verbal art, where the poetic function is "the dominant, determining function," "repetition," "contrast" and "antithesis" are of central importance. Cf. Jakobson, p. 25.

SWe must note that Jakobson's notion of equivalence is more far-reaching than Hopkins' usage of "parallelism." Hopkins is most interested in particular "emphas[es] of structure" (Hopkins, p. 85), whereas Jakobson seems to imply that all elements of poetic language are, in principle, subject to equation. Comparing the two theorists, then, we might understand Hopkins' parallelism in Jakobson's terms as "marked equivalence." It would seem that an overt structural parallel, such as the final words of two consecutive lines of poetry, would need be present for Hopkins to mark the presence of a parallelism. For Jakobson, an overt structural parallel would point out even more insistently the operation of the principle of equivalence.

1o The reader might well inquire: "don't we see and use antitheses in our everyday language, a nonartistic verbal activity, where, following Jakobson, the principle of equivalence has not been transferred into the axis of combination?" This question must be answered "yes," but Jakobson would likely explain this contradiction in terms of his idea of poetic latency in nonartistic verbal activity (cf. Jakobson, pp. 27-28), whereby the poetic function is still active, but is not predominant in the hierarchy of the six language functions.

" Jakobson, p. 27 (italics mine). Jakobson's use of "equivalence" as, in this case, a term to describe what appears to be an inequivalence is at times perplexing. What this term indicates, however, is that the elements that form the antithesis have an equal value as elements within a sequence and can therefore be "equated," that is, treated as comparable.

12 Some theorists are content to use "repetition" where I prefer "parallelism." Lotman and Miller, for example, appear to understand "contrast" as a subtype of "repetition," while I see "contrast" as equal in status to "repetition, " both terms being subordinate to "parallelism. " Cf. Jurij M. Lotman, Die Struktur literarischer Texte (Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1972), and J. Hillis Miller, Fiction and Repetition: Seven English Novels (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard Univ. Press, 1982). Jakobson's (and Hopkins') term "parallelism" seems much better suited to spanning the range between the extreme form of repetition (identity) and the extreme form of contrast (antithesis).

13 Jakobson, p. 25. '4 Rosmarie Zeller, "Das Prinzip der Aquivalenz bei Biichner: Untersuchungen zur Komposition

von Dantons Tod und Leonce und Lena, " Sprachkunst, 5 (1974), 211-30. Zeller's is the only study of Biichner I know that pursues this method of inquiry. Zeller tends in her analysis to undervalue the significance of antithesis and strong contrast. Her understanding and application of the principle of equivalence relies too heavily on the purely repetitive aspect of equivalence, a limitation in the theories of Lotman and Miller noted above (note 12). Zeller



calls on Lotman many times for support in her article and has apparently adopted Lotman's understanding of repetition. 15 Roland Barthes, SIZ (New York: Hill and Wang, 1974), p. 27.

16 The following edition will be cited: Georg Biichner: Saimtliche Werke und Briefe, ed. Werner R. Lehmann, Vol. 1 (Hamburg: Christian Wegner, 1967). Page and line numbers will be given in the text.

17 Lotman, p. 161. '" The opposition of "ei" and "ie" is often a means of differentiation in German. Compare, for

example, wir bleiben and wir blieben. 19 Cf. Walter Hinderer, Biichner-Kommentar zum dichterischen Werk (Munich: Winkler, 1977),

pp. 143-44. 1 Cf. Volker Klotz, Geschlossene und offene Form im Drama (Munich: Carl Hanser, 1960). 21 This aspect of the drama was pointed out as early as 1838 by Gutzkow, who noted "dasselbe

lyrische Ubergewicht der Worte fiber die Handlung" when comparing Leonce und Lena to Clemens Brentano's Ponce de Leon. Cited in Hinderer, p. 130.

22 I would in no way imply thereby that the scenes have been ordered randomly. There is an order to them; that is, some aesthetic considerations may have been made in ordering them, but I do assert that a concern for "logical connection" in terms of plot development was not a major concern in deciding scenic order within Act One.

23 For a discussion of Lena's similarly unusual entrance in 1,4 cf. Jfirgen Schr6der, Georg Biichners "Leonce und Lena": Eine verkehrte Komiidie (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 1966), p. 67.

24 Heinrich Lausberg, Handbuch der literarischen Rhetorik: Eine Grundlegung der Literaturwis- senschaft (Munich: Max Hueber, 1973), Registerband, p. 951.

2" Roland Barthes, Mythologies (New York: Hill and Wang, 1980), p. 153. 2 Miller demonstrates the viability of a similar approach to prose. Miller, Fiction andRepetition. 27 Cf. Walter Sokel, The Writer in Extremis: Expressionism in Twentieth-Century German Liter-

ature (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1959), pp. 55 and 62 as well as Martin Esslin, The Theatre of the Absurd (Garden City, New York: Anchor Books, 1969), pp. 291-93.


Article Contentsp. 216p. 217p. 218p. 219p. 220p. 221p. 222p. 223p. 224p. 225p. 226p. 227

Issue Table of ContentsThe German Quarterly, Vol. 59, No. 2 (Spring, 1986), pp. 187-356+i-xxiiFront MatterAccessibility, Audience and Ideology: On Editing Old Yiddish Texts [pp. 187-202]A Genre in Crisis: The "'Volksbuch'" [pp. 203-215]Parallelism in Bchner's Leonce und Lena: A Tragicomedy of Tautology [pp. 216-227]Die Rede des Unbewuten als Komdie: Hofmannsthals Lustspiel "Der Schwierige" [pp. 228-251]The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum: The Reception of a German Best-Seller in the USA [pp. 252-269]Documentation: Ingeborg DrewitzEin Gesprch mit Jutta Arend-Bernstein [pp. 270-278]

Review EssayReview: Hans Magnus Enzensberger: Ein neuer Klassiker? [pp. 279-289]

Book ReviewsLiterary Theory and CollectionsReview: untitled [pp. 290-291]Review: untitled [pp. 291-293]Review: untitled [p. 293]Review: untitled [pp. 294-295]

LinguisticsReview: untitled [pp. 295-296]

Older LiteratureReview: untitled [pp. 297-298]Review: untitled [pp. 298-299]Review: untitled [pp. 299-300]Review: untitled [pp. 300-302]Review: untitled [pp. 302-304]Review: untitled [pp. 304-307]

Modern LiteratureReview: untitled [pp. 307-309]Review: untitled [pp. 309-311]Review: untitled [pp. 311-312]Review: untitled [pp. 312-314]Review: untitled [pp. 314-315]Review: untitled [pp. 315-317]Review: untitled [pp. 317-318]Review: untitled [p. 319]Review: untitled [pp. 320-321]Review: untitled [pp. 321-322]Review: untitled [pp. 322-323]Review: untitled [pp. 323-325]Review: untitled [pp. 325-326]Review: untitled [pp. 326-328]Review: untitled [pp. 328-329]Review: untitled [pp. 330-332]Review: untitled [pp. 332-333]Review: untitled [pp. 333-335]Review: untitled [pp. 335-337]

Cultural and Social HistoryReview: untitled [pp. 337-338]Review: untitled [pp. 338-340]Review: untitled [pp. 340-341]Review: untitled [pp. 341-343]Review: untitled [pp. 343-344]

Notes in Brief [pp. 345-347]AATG Minutes [pp. 348-356]Back Matter [pp. i-xxii]

Documents

Parallelism in Büchner's Leonce und Lena: A Tragicomedy of Tautology