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Suddenness: On the Moment of Aesthetic Appearance
Suddenness or epiphany - an expression of discontinuity and rupture - resists aesthetic integration. This argument is the centrepiece of Bohrer's collection of essays, the first English translation of his work. The study examines a romantic and modernist literary phenomenon and traces its textual appearance in the works of early German Romantics - Schlegel, Schleiermacher and Kleist - through Nietzsche to such modernists as Proust, Joyce, Musil and Benjamin. Although Bohrer discusses the influence of the French poststructuralists Foucault and Derrida, by concentrating on the "incommensurability" of fictional language, he ultimately develops his arguments from the literary texts themselves. As he concludes this study, Bohrer states that "suddenness" transcends history and yet is tied to it, especially to the processes of acceleration typical of modernization since the industrial revolution.
268 pages, Hardcover
First published May 1, 1994
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November 24, 2025I've had a strange history with this book. I bought it years ago-ten, perhaps? -read a few pages and put it aside as a maybe. A week ago I pick it up to possibly discard it, and read it through rather happily, happily in the sense that it pulled me through with stimulating moments. However, from the start it irritated me and irritate me it continues to do. And this from its very first sentence:
To what extent can the boundary between the aesthetic and the non aesthetic phenomenon be represented by means of the temporal modality of"suddenness". Suddenness is understood here as an expression and a sign of discontinuity and nonidentity, as whatever resists aesthetic integration.
And yet,
'From its beginning, the concept"suddenly" has been implicated in an aesthetics of a New Methodology that was discovered by the early romantic school, was conceptual formulated by Nietzsche, and passed on in a divinatory way by the French surrealist and Walter Benjamin.'
So is suddenness a barrier between the aesthetic and the non-aesthetic, or is it a part of a different aesthetic, running from at least the clash between the romantics and the classic tradition.
One further quote which furthered my confusion: 'Suddenness characterizes not simply the certainty of aesthetic perception but also the contingency of the elements of fictional language.
So suddenness doesn't seem like much of a barrier to the aesthetic in this announcement . It does, however, clarify, his intent. It is aesthetic perception we are talking about here (at least sometimes) and not the aesthetic product. But then how does Bohrer analyze the elements of suddenness in the writers he discusses if suddenness is not somehow there in the product. What are these artists doing if not trying to burst the old aesthetic of continuity by trying to enfold acknowledgment of discontinuity into their entire artistic product? But I am getting ahead of myself somewhat; I need to retreat amid all this confusion and admit that I was still motivated to to read on, proceeding under the impression that while suddenness has a history, the use of this concept is emphasized in what Bohrer would describe as the modern era in literature, its most achieved writers showing a particular interest in it. I believe that Bohrer would not disagree with that somewhat tempered characterization.
Bohrer's principal interest in this work is arriving at a discussion of what he calls the representative authors of the late 19th and early 20th centuries- Marcel Prout, James Joyce, Robert Musil and Walter Benjamin, the latter being the main reason, I'm sure, that I ever possessed this book. It is he that I am primarily interested in, and I admit that Bohrer broadened the context in which I read Benjamin. At the same time, Benjamin provides a good introduction to the fiction writers. If there is one sure thing to be said about Benjamin, it is that he wants to cure his readers of the 19th century belief in a necessary line of historical development to a progressive end. In fact, for Benjamin, that 19th century belief is not so much believed, certainly it is not lived, rather it is induced; it is a phantasmagoria. Rational thinking, dependent on a future tied to the past in determinate ways, only cements that fantasy. There has to be another way of thinking about time that doesn't simply accept the trajectory of a steady line to the tragedies of the present age. Our only resource to time outside of history is'the notion of a present which is not a transition, but in which time stands still and has come to a stop.' (Theses on the Philosophy of History)
For Bohrer, all his representative writers are fighting the constrictions of historical time. He analyzes certain ideal features of their alternative experiencing of time, as they attempt to communicate it in their fictional works. I present the following as sincerely extrapolated from Bohrer, though ridiculously reductive:
1) It is an involuntary thought. This is important as it can't be by way of rational thought, which is
based in striding toward efficient ends in the future.
2) It is a sudden memory, reconnecting the present to the past, really reiterating it.
3) It is a happy past, often set in some beautiful space
4) It shows the corruption of their ideology-driven present.
Obviously I'm taking the short road to the literary epiphany, surely the most famous example being Proust's madeleine moment, a moment so compelling that it seems to dictate much of Bohrer's contentions on the subject of alternative time. While Bohrer is interested in aesthetic theory and not too prone to filling in historical context, what he does provide amplifies the ideal type provided above. There is the loss of utopian hope in the public, social world after the failures of the Paris Communes of 1871, jingoistic nationalism, 1st World War and prominently for Benjamin, the Second, making utopian hope fall back on individual salvation. The use of the personal, ecstatic moment transcends a debased social reality Moreover, none of these authors were possible without developments in philosophy (Nietzsche most prominently, the theorist of suddenness, Husserl, etc.) and psychology (Freud, Ernst Mach) making the conventional world less rational, reliable, and perhaps actual. The epiphany needed a cadre of elitist educated writers (all of above) who were concerned and cared about the influences above.
The ideal type outlined above sounds a lot like the dialectical image with which Benjamin hoped, in the Arcades Project, to rid his readers of the phantasmagoria of 19th century historicism and provide, instead, another kind of utopian thinking. Of course, in one important way, he was different-he had political, social ambitions beyond his own, personal salvation. Thus his desire to cultivate echoing resemblances not only to his own childhood , but to all ruined, battered, or just forgotten persons and people. In sifting through the debris of the 19th century, he hoped to actualize the latent hopes found there in the present, in much the same way that Proust actualized his past into his present, finding consolation there. Horkheimer accused Benjamin of wanting to the revive the dead and perhaps he thought he could, in those moments when an image from the past became alive again with a sudden rush of recognition.
What Bohrer seems to neglect, a subject of which Benjamin was very aware, is that suddenness in and of itself can describe not only the means of transcending debased historical time, but also the source of much of the debasement. The sudden onslaught of sound in an automated world, of possible collision from all direction in the big city, disruptions to every intention -these were the conditions that helped numb the people of the modern era to possible public fantasies and led these writers to develop a means of transcending it. The official narrative of the 19th and 20th centuries was that modernism was all good, industrialization was all good, big city life is all good, and this because technology is inevitably making life easier. Benjamin was intent on reminding his readers that this was a fantasy-is this your lived experience if you stop for a moment in the rush to the future?Suddennesss is everywhere in the modern era; it is not just a release from the official creed of steady improvement, it is also the burden we carry since we left the comforts, and certainly the discomforts, of traditional life.
To what extent can the boundary between the aesthetic and the non aesthetic phenomenon be represented by means of the temporal modality of"suddenness". Suddenness is understood here as an expression and a sign of discontinuity and nonidentity, as whatever resists aesthetic integration.
And yet,
'From its beginning, the concept"suddenly" has been implicated in an aesthetics of a New Methodology that was discovered by the early romantic school, was conceptual formulated by Nietzsche, and passed on in a divinatory way by the French surrealist and Walter Benjamin.'
So is suddenness a barrier between the aesthetic and the non-aesthetic, or is it a part of a different aesthetic, running from at least the clash between the romantics and the classic tradition.
One further quote which furthered my confusion: 'Suddenness characterizes not simply the certainty of aesthetic perception but also the contingency of the elements of fictional language.
So suddenness doesn't seem like much of a barrier to the aesthetic in this announcement . It does, however, clarify, his intent. It is aesthetic perception we are talking about here (at least sometimes) and not the aesthetic product. But then how does Bohrer analyze the elements of suddenness in the writers he discusses if suddenness is not somehow there in the product. What are these artists doing if not trying to burst the old aesthetic of continuity by trying to enfold acknowledgment of discontinuity into their entire artistic product? But I am getting ahead of myself somewhat; I need to retreat amid all this confusion and admit that I was still motivated to to read on, proceeding under the impression that while suddenness has a history, the use of this concept is emphasized in what Bohrer would describe as the modern era in literature, its most achieved writers showing a particular interest in it. I believe that Bohrer would not disagree with that somewhat tempered characterization.
Bohrer's principal interest in this work is arriving at a discussion of what he calls the representative authors of the late 19th and early 20th centuries- Marcel Prout, James Joyce, Robert Musil and Walter Benjamin, the latter being the main reason, I'm sure, that I ever possessed this book. It is he that I am primarily interested in, and I admit that Bohrer broadened the context in which I read Benjamin. At the same time, Benjamin provides a good introduction to the fiction writers. If there is one sure thing to be said about Benjamin, it is that he wants to cure his readers of the 19th century belief in a necessary line of historical development to a progressive end. In fact, for Benjamin, that 19th century belief is not so much believed, certainly it is not lived, rather it is induced; it is a phantasmagoria. Rational thinking, dependent on a future tied to the past in determinate ways, only cements that fantasy. There has to be another way of thinking about time that doesn't simply accept the trajectory of a steady line to the tragedies of the present age. Our only resource to time outside of history is'the notion of a present which is not a transition, but in which time stands still and has come to a stop.' (Theses on the Philosophy of History)
For Bohrer, all his representative writers are fighting the constrictions of historical time. He analyzes certain ideal features of their alternative experiencing of time, as they attempt to communicate it in their fictional works. I present the following as sincerely extrapolated from Bohrer, though ridiculously reductive:
1) It is an involuntary thought. This is important as it can't be by way of rational thought, which is
based in striding toward efficient ends in the future.
2) It is a sudden memory, reconnecting the present to the past, really reiterating it.
3) It is a happy past, often set in some beautiful space
4) It shows the corruption of their ideology-driven present.
Obviously I'm taking the short road to the literary epiphany, surely the most famous example being Proust's madeleine moment, a moment so compelling that it seems to dictate much of Bohrer's contentions on the subject of alternative time. While Bohrer is interested in aesthetic theory and not too prone to filling in historical context, what he does provide amplifies the ideal type provided above. There is the loss of utopian hope in the public, social world after the failures of the Paris Communes of 1871, jingoistic nationalism, 1st World War and prominently for Benjamin, the Second, making utopian hope fall back on individual salvation. The use of the personal, ecstatic moment transcends a debased social reality Moreover, none of these authors were possible without developments in philosophy (Nietzsche most prominently, the theorist of suddenness, Husserl, etc.) and psychology (Freud, Ernst Mach) making the conventional world less rational, reliable, and perhaps actual. The epiphany needed a cadre of elitist educated writers (all of above) who were concerned and cared about the influences above.
The ideal type outlined above sounds a lot like the dialectical image with which Benjamin hoped, in the Arcades Project, to rid his readers of the phantasmagoria of 19th century historicism and provide, instead, another kind of utopian thinking. Of course, in one important way, he was different-he had political, social ambitions beyond his own, personal salvation. Thus his desire to cultivate echoing resemblances not only to his own childhood , but to all ruined, battered, or just forgotten persons and people. In sifting through the debris of the 19th century, he hoped to actualize the latent hopes found there in the present, in much the same way that Proust actualized his past into his present, finding consolation there. Horkheimer accused Benjamin of wanting to the revive the dead and perhaps he thought he could, in those moments when an image from the past became alive again with a sudden rush of recognition.
What Bohrer seems to neglect, a subject of which Benjamin was very aware, is that suddenness in and of itself can describe not only the means of transcending debased historical time, but also the source of much of the debasement. The sudden onslaught of sound in an automated world, of possible collision from all direction in the big city, disruptions to every intention -these were the conditions that helped numb the people of the modern era to possible public fantasies and led these writers to develop a means of transcending it. The official narrative of the 19th and 20th centuries was that modernism was all good, industrialization was all good, big city life is all good, and this because technology is inevitably making life easier. Benjamin was intent on reminding his readers that this was a fantasy-is this your lived experience if you stop for a moment in the rush to the future?Suddennesss is everywhere in the modern era; it is not just a release from the official creed of steady improvement, it is also the burden we carry since we left the comforts, and certainly the discomforts, of traditional life.
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