«Jede unserer Seelen lebt nur einen Augenblick». Erzählperspektive, Wahrnehmung und Animalität in Hofmannsthals «Reitergeschichte»

Abstract

This article argues for a new understanding of Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s Reitergeschichte from 1899 through integrating the story’s animals as the perceiving pre-consciousness into its narrative voice. Through Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s pre-reflective apparatus of percep­tion that intimately links animals and humans through their shared «past that has never been present», this article offers a phenomenological reading of animality in the narrative. Within the context of Jacques Derrida’s The Animal That Therefore I Am, this article examines the attribution of logos beyond the traditional human-animal dichotomy.