Summary
This essay examines the only book published by the late Harald Kaas. His collection of short stories Uhren und Meere (1979), dealing with depictions of psycho-pathological states of mind, gained Kaas a short-lived notoriety as he himself was a certified schizophrenic possessing first-hand experience of psychiatric treatment. This essay sets out to investigate whether or to what extent the stories in Uhren und Meere can be understood as a document of the language of madness. It concludes that despite the biographical dimension of his schizophrenic experience, Kaas’s texts fail to voice an as it were unadulterated language of madness. However, when read in conjunction with his quasipoetological interview statements, it is possible to determine the very nature of madness as a collapse of a logical system of language. Meaning that language cannot actively be used to express madness, while at the same time madness can express itself in a language that we necessarily fail to understand. The language of madness manifests itself as the madness of language.
Similar content being viewed by others
Literatur
Anz, Thomas: Gesund oder krank? Medizin, Moral und Ästhetik in der deutschen Gegenwartsliteratur, Stuttgart 1989.
Benjamin, Walter: Gesammelte Schriften. Rolf Tiedemann/Hermann Schweppenhäuser (Hgg.), Frankfurt a. M. 1982.
Bleuler, Manfred: »Ursache und Wesen der schizophrenen Geistesstörungen«, in: Deutsche Medizinische Wochenschrift 89 (1964).
Celan, Paul: Gesammelte Werke in fünf Bänden. Bd. 1. Gedichte I, Frankfurt a. M. 1983.
Foucault, Michel: Schriften zur Literatur, Frankfurt a. M. 1988.
Foucault, Michel: Wahnsinn und Gesellschaft. Eine Geschichte des Wahns im Zeitalter der Vernunft, Frankfurt a. M. 1969.
Fricke, Hannes: ›Niemand wird lesen, was ich hier schreibe‹. Über den Niemand in der Literatur, Göttingen 1998.
Kaas, Harald: Uhren und Meere, München 1979.
Keitel, Evelyne: Psychopathographien. Die Vermittlung psychotischer Phänomene durch Literatur, Heidelberg 1987.
Kleist, Heinrich von: Sämtliche Werke und Briefe. Helmut Sembdner (Hg.), München 91993.
Navratil, Leo: Gugging 1946–1986. Bd. 1. Art brut und Psychiatrie, Wien 1997.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Schütte, U. Die Sprache des Wahnsinns. Z Literaturwiss Linguistik 36, 146–157 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03379644
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03379644