Time and Lyric Poetry (Collections): A ‘Narrative-Diachronic’ Approach

Abstract

The essay addresses the problem of time in lyric poetry and proposes a narrative understanding of the lyric genre. I argue that temporality belongs to the lyric discourse as part of its transtextual structure as a result of the lyric’s organization in the book form. This transtextual structure gives lyric poetry a narrative framework and a specific type of temporality, the diachronic time, which contrasts with the temporality of the single poem, the synchronic time. By focusing on the relationships between opener and closure poems, I propose a narrative-diachronic model in order to reposition the temporality of lyric poetry in the book form. By dealing with Paul Celan’s second book of poems, Von Schwelle zu Schwelle (1955), the analysis will finally show how diachronic time corresponds to the narrative structure of the collection, and how time and the narrative are deeply linked in lyric poetry by means of the book form.