Reflections on the Individual Character of the Text Inspired by Leo Spitzer's Analyses

Abstract

This paper considers the problem of the individual character of the literary text in the sense of uniqueness and impossibility to repeat the inner experience which generated the text. The starting point is the psychostilistic of Leo Spitzer which strives to go beyond the form and to achieve the psychic reality that generated it. This conception rests on Dilthey’s hermeneutic which takes the self-identification with the poet, the transposition into his inner experience to be the purpose of the analysis. The authors take a critical stand to this position because of a number of reasons. The most important one is that even if that transposition into another man was possible (which they deny) then it would give us at best the conscious psychic reality of the poet but not his „unconscious real insufficiency“ which is the real force behind his work.