APOKALYPTISCHE KRISE IN NIKOLAUS LENAUS VERSEPOS DIE ALBIGENSER
APOCALYPTIC CRISIS IN NIKOLAUS LENAU'S EPIC POEM DIE ALBIGENSER

Summary/Abstract: Nikolaus Lenau’s (1802–1850) Die Albigenser (1842) is one of the most important German-language political poems. The Albigensiansis a religious epic poem dealing with the history of the Middle Ages. The culmination of this period comes in the crisis of the Crusades and the persecution of heretics. In the research to date, Lenau's Albigensians have been portrayed as those devoted to the worship of the spirit. In its rejection of the physical, this dualistic heresy had incalculable social consequences. One of these consequences was the overthrow of an established order, which Lenau himself shows as unjust in his epic poem. The rites of the Albigensians are not only religious but primarily political acts. The defense and explanation of the Albigensian doctrine represents a rebellion against the Catholic Church of the time, seen as morally degenerate and in the service of a detested monarchical power. The Cathars and their fate allow Lenau to express his own revolt aptly. In the famous final verses, the revolutionary line is drawn from the Albigensians through Hus and Luther to the "stormers of the Bastille, and so on". Thus, the political accusation points beyond the historical events of the crisis into one's own present and even into the future (Deutsche Dichter 430–431). In this paper, Lenau is shown to transcend the religious, political, and social planes to form a commonly accepted universal idea. This article will address the idea that Lenau describes a time of crisis, to emphasize that with crises of this and/or a similar kind, a general upheaval of society and culture arises. The helplessness, defenselessness, and isolation of a group and/or an individual leads to a general dependency. Lenau depicts such a lack of freedom apocalyptically. The reaction to the existing reality and the consequence of crisis is the state of inner and outer dependence of the individual and the group, which is what first leads to the realization that independence and progress are in danger, which then leads to an apocalyptic vision of the future. Lenau's Albigensian poetry belongs to the tradition of German apocalyptic literature. And not only that, but in his epic poem the ideas are also represented that will only appear later in contemporary literature. In the previous investigations, it is emphasized that Lenau in The Albigensians refuses any kind of false reconciliation; he tries to cling to the possibility of a better life without forcibly extorting meaning from the catastrophes of history. The individual poetic images of the Albigensians, thirtytwo in all, are conceived as fragments that, when put together, result in an image of an apocalyptic landscape of doom and crisis, in which only fields of corpses and rubble still have any meaning. The Albigensians are fragmentary, they oppose the appearance of a meaningful totality (Schmidt-Bergmann 145– 146). In his chapters, Lenau describes the bloody crimes of the crusade armies, the destruction of the entire Provençal culture, as in the chapter "Béziers", in which Lenau denounces the catastrophe of the burning of the city of Béziers (1209) and the murder of over thirty thousand people. In the chapter "A Battlefield" man seems to have been created to endure all imaginable suffering without meaning. In the hymn "The Rosary" Lenau describes how the survivors of a battle are blinded: "Only one eye is spared / so that he can be a guide for the others." (375) And then they were tied together to form a rosary. Between these depictions of the suffering groups, of the fields of corpses and rubble, there are lyrical episodes in which the suffering of individuals is described, such as that of "Jacques" who went mad and took the material from the dead on the battlefield for a huge "death gown" (384) collected for the "Antichrist" (384), the fate of Count Foix, the suffering of the "Girl of Lavour" and the bitter lament of an old man in the penultimate part of the The Albigensians. In the chapter "Die Höhle" Lenau presented the essential elements of the heretical doctrine, which represents the rebellion against supposedly incontrovertible truths and authorities. On the other hand, silence is the last consequence of the extreme crisis, as in the song "Zwei Troubadour". The life story of the troubadour Fulco, who became "The Church's sleuth and hound. [ ...]" (346), shows another specific way of relating to this apocalyptic crisis. If such apocalyptic visions as Lenau's visions in The Albigensian poem are an expression of crisis awareness, then in literature since the Middle Ages crisis awareness has reigned without interruption to the present day (Jablkowska 85– 101). In the 19th century, in which Lenau was active, and especially in the late 19th century, according to Klaus Vondung, crisis awareness is presented as an apocalypse and that does not end in the 19th century. The visions of doom in literature are uninterrupted, fearful but also hopeful apocalyptic imaginations and predictions, about the expressionist literature of the 'twilight of humanity' and the emergence of the 'new man', about the apocalyptic interpretations of the First World War, the cultural pessimism or the apocalyptic utopias of the 1920s, via the apocalypse in the activism of National Socialism, the interpretations of the apocalypse of the Second World War after 1945, which merged almost seamlessly into the forewarning of the apocalyptic annihilation of a nuclear war, to the current forecasts or literary anticipations of the total destruction of the earth through nuclear war or through the spread of environmental destruction (251). The literature of the 20th century and the art and literature of the 21st century often depict the end-time theme. The pandemic reality at the time of writing this paper could be added to this. The apocalypse is experiencing a kind of heyday in contemporary literature. This opinion also emphasizes the idea that the interest in apocalyptic, which for centuries has been a typical phenomenon of world culture and especially of German-speaking culture, is still strongly present in literature because the threat of the annihilation of humanity cannot be overlooked. That is why Lenau's portrayal of the apocalyptic crisis in The Albigensians is so interesting and timely. The origin of Lenau's apocalyptic visions has moved away from the JudeoChristian framework. Lenau places the plot of his 19th-century epic poem in the Middle Ages in order to use the term apocalypse independently of the religious interpretation. His vision of the end carries the symbolism of an experience of the reality of the Habsburg monarchy, the Imperial-Royal Monarchy, which is inherently dualistic and expresses the tension of its time. This dualism, presented as the Albigensian dualism, is a split between deficiency and perfection. This split shows irony par excellence, because Lenau qualitatively interprets the scene, the characters, the values, the imagery and symbolism, the polarization that exists between the old and the new: the old is deficient, full of death, misery and pain; the new world should bring perfection, happiness, joy, and life, but it does not. The polarity should be moral: the old is corrupt and brings evil; the new world should be pure and good, but it is not. For that matter, in the chapters "Fulco" and "Two Troubadours" in The Albigensians, two examples of the crisis behavior of an individual and a group are explained to show that Lenau in the 19th century stands in the tradition of apocalyptic crisis poetry, but also predicts total catastrophe, which is present in modern German apocalyptic literature and art and the role of the artist in such crisis situations. The crises in The Albigensians of Lenau can be defined as decision crises, as crisis of ignorance and uncertainty that ends with a certain way of making decisions. The crisis of agony shows the characters' immersion in the situation that presents itself as problematic to the character itself, and draws the character's attention to detail, his resistance to previous ways of experiencing the character's reality itself. On an emotional level, a character is described as the one affected by a crisis on a subjective level and whose despair leads to anger and downfall. On an objective level, there is a distancing from the situation, and that distancing can take various forms: flight, insanity, rejection, suicide, siding with the aggressor, etc. Lenau's work also shows the accumulation of crisis situations that are planned, foreseeable, but also completely unexpected: these are situations that arise from an unexpected event, a painful state of mind or a conflict that causes an altered state of mind of the protagonists. These can also be obstacles on the way to imaginary goals or in overcoming events that the characters are facing. Journal of Language and Literary Studies 71 It is also noted that the problems faced by a group, or an individual cannot be solved with the usual ways of solving that the characters are used to, since the situations are of an extreme nature. Then there is a narrowing of the possibilities of experiencing the reality around the characters, there are changes in the value system or a decrease in the ability to act and solve problems. After that, the experiences, norms, goals, and values are questioned, but also the experience of the situations that the characters encounter. The result is the emergence of doubt, the emergence of uncertainty, a sense of apocalyptic threat, pressure, urgency, but also the feeling that the solution is necessary, and the outcome of that solution has implications for the future (three dots in the final chapter, etc.) The characters struggle with uneasiness. A way out of a crisis is sought, which ultimately leads 1. to a complete retreat and distancing, 2. to a mobilization of the remaining forces to find a solution to the situation, 3. to the development of hitherto unknown abilities to overcome the crisis, and 4. to collapse or utter helplessness and powerlessness. It seems that Lenau's Apocalypse could not be considered as a work of art depicting a picture of the two-world scheme, but as a Antiutopia describing a catastrophic social situation (Jablkowska 85–101). Lenau describes how the usual social structures could perish when a hitherto unrecognized crisis breaks into human life. In the 20th and 21st centuries, the same development of tradition could be recognized as illustrated by Lenau. In Lenau's work one could see an opportunity for the future, namely in the story of the second troubadour, whereby Lenau wants to show that art is the one that warns that one must finally put an end to the old state of consciousness of mankind: the permanent feeling of impending doom should finally have an end. This new mood, this new self-confidence, which also exists in our epoch, was described very appropriately by Lenau. Lenau's depictions of the three troubadours are examples of the different attitudes of poets and their poetry towards the crisis and its consequences for art and society: First, when art and culture choose sides, the side the art is on gets destructive weapons into their hands, while in times of crisis disputes among poets lead to the silence or death of art in general. There is a weakening of culture and the weakening of the artist or art and culture in general leads to a general weakening of society. The reaction of artists and art to the crisis is a sign of their internal and external dependence on the state of society, and only the liberation of artists from the influence of the crisis reality of society could lead to their progress and independence, and thus to progress in society in general. However, a strong social criticism can be read from Lenau's work, that the society of his time has not reached this level of knowledge and the question remains open whether this is the case with today's society or whether such situations can ever be solved, making thus Lenau's crisis poetry to an apocalyptic Crisis poetry. It seems that Lenau's poetry dispenses with optimism about the future, which means that hope should be dispensed with because of this end-time feeling, but this is not the case. Lenau shows that there is hope. The artwork itself is proof of its existence. That there is a work of art at all, and that a work of art is created is the hope per se. In this horizon of expectations between literature and art, aesthetic and artistic representation of the end times and the political and social seriousness and seriousness of the problem in the reality of the Habsburg monarchy, one must read Lenau's apocalyptic crisis work and offer possibilities of interpretation that are ahead of the current aestheticization of the apocalypse. Here, one must also pose the formal question of the genre. Is an epic poem a suitable form for Lenau's visions of the End and crisis, regardless of whether Lenau welcomed the fall of humanity or whether he wanted to warn of its downfall? It seems that one format does not prevail here. Poems, dramas, novels, and stories as well as philosophical treatises are written about it, which make the visions of the end very present (Stadelmeier, 362). So, it seems that an epic poem is a suitable form for the doomsday theme in the description of the crisis, which also gives the apocalypse a new aesthetic face in literature.

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