Rhetoric and the Creation of Space

The Utterance in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's "Wandrers Nachtlied II" and Rainer Maria Rilke's "Herbst"

Abstract

This article attempts to make sense of the speaker in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s «Wandrers Nachtlied II» and Rainer Maria Rilke’s «Herbst». It starts from the observation that the utterance in both poems combines a rhetorical function with a space-creating function, and that both functions participate in the poem’s organization as a communicative act in decisive ways. My conclusion is that the expectations romantic poems arouse in us, those of the sensitive lyrical subject and the sublime nature, are contradicted by the way in which the act of utterance is designed in these two poems, both of which are closely related precisely to the Romantic era.