Elisabeth Strowick

“Dumpfe Dauer”: Langeweile und Atmosphärisches bei Fontane und Stifter

Erich Auerbach emphasizes duration as a feature of the Realism of everyday life. With “dull duration,” the “expanded state,” a figure of temporal containment is inherent in Realist representation. If Auerbachs characterizing of “dull duration” participates, on the one hand, in a discourse on boredom, Realist stagings of duration and/or temporal containment also extend to an atmosphere that goes beyond this mood. The article addresses the poetological and epistemological use of boredom and the atmospheric in texts by Fontane and Stifter. States of duration as staged by Fontane and Stifter—according to the thesis—are places for examining modes of perception and representation, by means of which Realist literature fundamentally conceives of reality as perceived reality. The real produced by means of duration is thus encountered in different forms: as a specter, nuance, aggregate, or spell.