Mood - bodily expression - language: A configuration in fin de siecle Vienna

This dissertation examines the concept of "mood" (Stimmung) in the several discourses prominent in fin-de-siecle Vienna. In these discourses, mood is thought as providing experiential access to the unity between self and world. This thought, however, leads to a paradoxical result: moods united the body, the spirit, and the physical world, but no sooner was this unity grasped than it dissolved into manifold possibilities of unification.; The structure and function of moods in fin-de-siecle discourse is analyzed with reference to two exemplary bodies of work: the scientific and philosophical writings of Ernst Mach and the poetological writings and artistic prose of Hugo von Hofmannsthal. In the work of both writers, moods function as unifying experiences that escape any conventional conception or discursive determination. Rather, moods dissolve the schemata of sense-making and hint at a unity beyond what can be said or perceived. Therefore, the central issue for Mach and Hofmannsthal is not the structure of this basic unity, but the question of its representation. And this depends on figurative, especially metaphorical, language. While both authors attempt to keep the possibilities of representation within limits by focusing on the aspect of unity and the reduction of complexity, this very attempt increasingly turns into its opposite. The monism both writers advocate slides paradoxically into a pluralism embracing multiple variants of the unifying experience. This plurality can only be grasped through a configuration of moods, the body (felt experiences), and poetic language.; The dissertation's first chapter provides an introduction to the notion of "mood" in discourses ranging from psychology to aesthetics and the history of science. In the second chapter, I discuss the philosophical treatment of moods in the works of Friedrich Nietzsche, Wilhelm Dilthey, Martin Heidegger, and Otto Friedrich Bollnow. The third chapter focuses on Ernst Mach's works, with particular attention to Mach's use of language. The final two chapters are devoted to Hofmannsthal's works, first to his theoretical writings, then to an in-depth analysis of exemplary prose works from his early years.