Historical consciousness and poetics of the absurd. Ilse Aichinger’s Zu keiner Stunde (1957)

Abstract

Since her early work, Aichinger metaphorically resorts to an inverted polarity between beginning and end, whereby the eschatological tension serves as the main generative principle for a literary form conceived to happen “im Angesicht des Endes”. The collection of dialogues and scenes Zu keiner Stunde (1957) marks a shift in perspective: the ‘dischronic’ configuration of time appears to be based on an absence of eschaton, which reveals significant analogies with the “negative eternity” observed by Adorno in Beckettian theatre during the same years. So far, Zu keiner Stunde has been mostly neglected by literary research: the present study aims not only to identify the aesthetic strategies that allow this work to be ascribed to the dramaturgy of the absurd, but also to understand such a philosophical-literary category as a reflection of the crisis of historical consciousness during postwar era.