Johan Huizinga and Leo Spitzer: the notion of “Stimmung” revisited
Johan Huizinga and Leo Spitzer: the notion of “Stimmung” revisited

Summary/Abstract: Huizinga was a readers’ writer, and as such part of a long tradition. As a writer, he was a member of a relatively small philological circle, consisting of the readers in the most important languages of Ancient Europe, and in this way the re-creators of the ancient unity of the Latinitas from which colloquial Latin had originated. These readers were forced to acknowledge that that which had once split into different languages was now disintegrating further as a result of specialization. One of the most important branches of this family was Romanic philologyin Germany, with Friedrich Christian Dietz and Leopold von Ranke as its founding fathers. It blossomed at the beginning of the 20th century with scholars such as Vossler, Curtius, Spitzerand Auerbach. In my contribution I will concentrate on Leo Spitzer. I will focus on four things he had in common with Huizinga: an assumption, an experience, an analysis and a tool. Their assumption was that culture was defined by harmony, by the unity and inseparability of the hearts and minds of its participants. This unity gave a culture its metaphysical aura; it was a musical harmony of the individual soul with the cosmos. They believed that this harmony once existed and it was their common experience that had been radically disturbed.

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