Das Auge in der Hand. Lessings brave Enkelkinder oder Über die Grenzen des taktilen Diskurses
Seeing with your hands. Lessing’s well-behaved grandchildren or on the limits of the tactile discourse

Summary/Abstract: The comparative paper attempts to answer the question of the largely lacking tactile discourse in world literature in such a way that anthropological and cultural-historical aspects are considered at the same time. These explain not so much the already indisputable primacy of the eye in literature, but rather its consequences for the reduced literary productivity of the near sense. Referring to texts by Rilke, Jandl, Celan or Henry Bachau, one can verify that the blindness motif contributes to a somewhat credible, yet still rudimental emergence of a tactile discourse. However, these are but mere exceptions in the vast realm of world literature, just like Goethe’s synaesthetic exercises in the fifth Roman Elegy are: no poetics of hands, but rather an accidental encounter of erotic gesture and lyrical reasoning.

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