Gesamtkunstwerk Dresden: Official Urban Discourse and Durs Grünbein's Poetic Critique1

• Published in: The German quarterly Vol. 80; no. 4; pp. 492 - 510
• Main Author: GOEBEL, ROLF J.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford, UK Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01.10.2007; American Association of Teachers of German, Inc
• Subjects: Aesthetic Education; German literature; Greek language; Grunbein, Durs; Ideology; Imagination; Literary Genres; Memorials & monuments; Memory; Nationalism; Poetry; Poets; Self Actualization; Social Systems; Topography; Urban areas; Urban Culture; Vision; War; World War II; Dresden Germany; Germany
• ISSN: 0016-8831; 1756-1183
• DOI: 10.1111/j.1756-1183.2007.tb00087.x

The composer's redemptive vision of the monumental future work of art is predicated on a world in ruins and a history of decay, ranging from the dissolution of the Athenian State, of Greek tragedy, and of the Grand Opera, to evocations of heroic downfall, mythic sacrifice, and death (Faszination 291-97).\n Grünbein, then, shares with official Dresden a vision of the future inscribed in the evanescence and ruination of architectural space, but substitutes the city's trust in the redemptive promises of historical reconstruction by a more skeptical view.