Wieviel Pathos verträgt die Lyrik?

Zum Verhältnis von Kunst, Publikum und Epoche bei Stefan Zweig

Abstract

This article follows Stefan Zweig's path from poetry to epic forms from the perspective of a genre constraint which was specific for his epoch. If it’s possible, as the young Zweig claims, that every art is dependent on its epoch because there is a “mysterious dependence between demand and production”, then the task of literary sociology lies in the attempt to unravel this mystery. For Zweig, this takes place in two steps: The first step outlines Zweig's position within the literary field at the turn of the century and shows the astonishing self-reflexivity with which the author followed the literary developments and internal literary debates of his time and attempted to position himself accordingly. The second step categorizes his turning away from poetry while at the same time turning to a specific form of prose as an act of a deliberate decision against l'art pour l'art and as an opening towards popular literature.