«Wenn sich nach dem Werther die Leute totschießen, so ist das Buch gut; wenn sie auf andere schießen, besser». L’arte come pratica di costruzione del futuro in Ludwig Rubiner

Abstract

Both as essay writer and poet Ludwig Rubiner (1881-1920) focuses on art as a revolution­ary practice. He conceives critical understanding of reality as a first step in a radical change of social conditions, which can be seen as the result of an artist’s specific attitude in evoking new worlds. This implies that only a non-realistic art can be politically successful, because it refers to a future horizon without restricting itself to describing the political situation of the time. In this paper, I analyze Rubiner’s strongly utopic art concept involving some typical categories of expressionistic literature like “Geist”, “Gemeinschaft”, “Katastrophe”.