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The Edge of the Page: Alfred Polgar, the Feuilleton, and the Poetics of the Small Form
Author(s) -
McBride Patrizia
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
the german quarterly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.11
H-Index - 10
eISSN - 1756-1183
pISSN - 0016-8831
DOI - 10.1111/gequ.12120
Subject(s) - nazism , rhetoric , journalism , literature , style (visual arts) , poetics , art history , art , history , media studies , sociology , philosophy , german , poetry , theology , archaeology
This essay examines Alfred Polgar's engagement with the literary miniature by situating it within the phenomenal growth of commercial journalism in Weimar Germany and the Austrian Republic. Drawing on reflections on the small form developed by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Walter Benjamin, and Theodor W. Adorno, this paper reconstructs Polgar's practice of engaged writing, which enjoins an ornamental style and imagistic rhetoric forged in the tradition of the Denkbild to mobilize readers to take a stance on contemporary events. Polgar's embrace of ornamental writing granted him special insight into its perils, placing him in a singular position to respond to the falsehoods of National Socialism in the 1930s. In his eyes, a media environment controlled by totalitarian rule made it impossible to combat the Nazis' mendacity by simply calling out their lies or insisting on separating factual from fake reporting. One should rather turn the ornament against itself with parodic writing that was unafraid of stepping into the mucky arena of blatantly deceitful communication.