Demons of Passion: Ritual and Boundlessness in Adalbert Stifter

The arousal of the impression of the ritualistic in the reader through the many narrative texts of Stifter, and a feature which has often been observed in the critical literature on Stifter, has inspired a multi-disciplinary analysis of Stifteresque narrative work. The experience of boundless passion in the texts of Stifter is juxtaposed with the need for control and restraint. The imminent threat of disorder, contrasting with a ritualistically orchestrated effort for order when confronted with the passions incited by chaos, which corresponds to the formulated principle of world preservation in the opening words to the "Bunte Steine" and was solely capable of guaranteeing "happiness" - for ever more - in a social as well as an individual sense. The portrayal of this striving for order on a textual level corresponds at the level of the narrative itself to the desire for a "narrative order", which should also be capable of introducing the reader - as if in an "initiation" - to the symbolic order of literary discourse and of allowing him/ her to experience this order for themselves in the practice of reading. The project of Stifter correlates the realistic knowledge of the compulsion of man, in order to oppose the destructive forces lurking "like a tiger" within him, the imminent threat of the experience of contingency and destruction, through a ritualistically orchestrated craving for order and somehow to "invoke" some purpose, meaning, solidarity and moral responsibility. This endeavour, which proves to be not only a narrative - but also a life project, should be analysed with the help of findings from the field of "ritual studies" and be productively used as a contribution to an aesthetics of action.