menuPaper: Büchner’s Lenz: An early study in schizophrenia
07 November, 2003
A red herring
Georg Büchner’s short story Lenz deals with the historical Lenz’ dramatic three weeks stay at Oberlin’s in the Alsace, in particular with the outbreak of what is nowadays taken to be a schizophrenic psychosis. A few days after Oberlin had sent Lenz back to Strasbourg, he wrote down an account of how Lenz gradually became so mad and dangerous that he could no longer stay. The following summary of the main episodes of Lenz’ visit is based on that account.
Lenz arrives at Oberlin’s house in Waldersbach in the Alsace on the 20th of January 1778. They have a common friend, Kaufmann, who has announced Lenz’ arrival, but they do not know each other. Lenz is received warm-heartedly and is housed in the school building, opposite the road. At night, loud noises are heard outside. Lenz has been running in and out of the schoolhouse the better part of the night and has eventually jumped into the water trough several times. The schoolmaster and his wife are very upset, but Oberlin takes it quite calmly and remembers that Lenz’ friend Kaufmann also likes cold baths. (This is up in the mountains, in the middle of the winter.) He friendly asks Lenz to go to bed again and to take his baths less loudly in the future.
The next day, Lenz asks if he can preach in the village chapel the following Sunday. Oberlin is a country vicar and the weekly sermon is the part of his work that causes him the most trouble. So he gladly accepts Lenz’ offer. In the meantime, Kaufmann has arrived and makes inquiries concerning Lenz; later Oberlin observes him talking with Lenz separately. To Oberlin all this seems worrying and he decides to make further inquiries. He accompanies Kaufmann on a journey to Switzerland, and when he comes back he is fully informed concerning Lenz. His wife tells him that while he has been away, Lenz has tried to wake up a dead child called Friederike, and also that he intentionally neglects his sore foot, which has consequently become much worse. Oberlin tells Lenz that there is nothing as rewarding as the life of a country vicar and he admonishes him to comply with his father’s wish to come back and finish his theological studies; Oberlin is sure that Lenz’ tormented heart will not come to rest before he does, since God sees to it that his commandments – in particular Honour thy Father and thy Mother ? is observed strictly.
Next, Lenz asks Oberlin how that woman fares, whose fate weighs so heavily upon his shoulders. Oberlin is willing to give him any information he wants, but Lenz has to tell him whom it is that he is talking about. Lenz is unable to speak, but mutters incoherently that he has killed her, and his own mother as well. Only slowly does he calm down. Oberlin has brought back a bundle of twigs as a present for Lenz, and in the evening Lenz asks if Oberlin can please flog him. Oberlin kisses him on his mouth for an answer and tells him that his sins cannot be atoned for by flogging; but if he prays, Jesus will forgive him.
That night, Lenz chases about again, cries out the name of his beloved Friederike, jumps into the water trough, runs into the house, then back again into the water trough and so on for hours, until eventually he stays in his room. The maids can hear him whining all night like a bagpipe.
The following morning, just when Oberlin is about to leave for some business, Lenz walks up to him. He cuts a sorrow figure: head down and smeared with ashes, clothes torn, and his left arm hanging awkwardly from his shoulder: he has apparently thrown himself out of the window, and now he wants Oberlin to pull his wrenched arm straight again. Oberlin does, and then he writes for the schoolmaster in the next village to come and keep an eye on Lenz while he himself is away. The schoolmaster promptly arrives, and he and Lenz get along very well together. They visit the grave of the child Lenz tried to awake; Lenz kneels down, kisses the grave and prays in great confusion. Before they leave, he tears off a part of the wreath as a memento. On their way back, it seems as if he finally realises why the schoolmaster keeps him company; suddenly he turns around and runs back to the village where they came from. When the schoolmaster searches for him there, he meets two hawkers who tell him that a stranger, who claimed to be a murder but could impossibly be one, had on his own request been tied up in a house. The schoolmaster unties Lenz and brings him back to Waldersbach where he calms down gradually.
The next day, Lenz comes up to Oberlin and tells him that his beloved Friederike is dead. When Oberlin asks him how he can be so sure, he answers: ‘Hieroglyphs! Hieroglyphs!’ The day passes without any further incidents; but in the evening a loud: Smack! is heard from the yard. A maid as white as a sheet and trembling all over bursts in and tells Oberlin’s wife that Lenz has thrown himself out of the window. Oberlin immediately sends for two men to guard him, and then takes him to his room while he tries to soothe him. Oberlin has now been deceived enough by Lenz, and now Lenz has to be deceived by him. But before the men arrive, Lenz manages to grab a pair of scissors and presses them firmly against his chest. Oberlin’s wife cries out in a dreadful voice: ‘God, he wants to stab himself!’ (975) He is calmed down by Oberlin and then puts down the scissors. Since all his earlier efforts to keep Lenz from his suicide attempts have been inconsequential, Oberlin now tries a different tack: ‘You came to us as a stranger, we did not know you at all; we had heard your name once or twice before we met you, that is all; we received you with love, my wife looked after your foot with great patience and you reward us so poorly, and give us one fright after another.’ (976) Lenz gets heavily upset, jumps up, wants to beg Oberlin’s wife pardon, but by now she is so frightened of him that she quickly retreats into the next room and locks the door. Now Lenz moans pitifully that he has killed her, and the child she is expecting as well. Oberlin comforts him and by the time the schoolmaster arrives, Lenz is again lively and takes part in the conversation as if nothing has happened.
Oberlin convinces Lenz that when he is overtaken by melancholy, he is no longer his own master, therefore, Oberlin has sent for two men to keep an eye on him during the night lest he takes his own life. When the melancholy is gone, Lenz shows an acute understanding and an exceptionally warm heart, but under its sway, he suffers terrible. It pierces Oberlin to the heart when he, with Lenz’ at his side, goes through the consequence of the new doctrines that Lenz has adopted, and the consequences of his disobedience to his father, his unsettled life, his aimless idling and his frequent association with women. ‘It was horrible to me’, Oberlin writes, ‘and I experienced a kind of terror I have never experienced before, when he, on his knees, trembling all over, his hand in my hand, his head in my lap, his pale face, dripping with cold sweat hidden in my dressing-gown, did not so much confess, but was rather unable to hold back his tormented conscience and unfulfilled longings.’(977)
The last night at Oberlin’s, two men sleep in Lenz’ room. When he realises that all his attempts to escape are in vain, he starts banging his head against the wall. The guards stamp their feet on the floor, everybody wakes up, frightened and confused. Oberlin hastens upstairs, persuades Lenz to stop his headbanging and tells the guards to let him loose. Before daybreak, Oberlin has his horses harnessed to his cart and everything prepared for Lenz’ departure. He then tells Lenz that for his own good he shall be taken to Strasbourg where he can get much better treatment. Lenz seems to acquiesce, he thanks everybody for their patience and kindness, asks them to forgive him and then bids them farewell so movingly that they all weep their eyes out.
This is, essentially, the story Oberlin wrote down a few days later in order to justify himself for sending back Lenz to Strasbourg. He is well aware of the fact that different readers will judge him differently, depending on their temperament and the general impression they have got of the whole affair. But, so he continues, this is inevitable. Any impression has to be distorted, since it is necessarily based on incomplete and inaccurate information. First, and most obvious, he had to make a selection among the facts and has consequently left out infinitely many links necessary for the reader to make a trustworthy judgement about the real events, and secondly, the events he has chosen to describe are inevitably described inaccurately, since a single glance or a certain tone of voice are more revealing than all describable acts taken together.
Now, Oberlin’s claim that a narrative necessarily causes false impressions, brings me to the main question of my paper and our conference: might not a novelist, due to his more independent relationship to the real events, be better equipped to give a faithful and true description overall of a process such as the one Lenz went through, than is a writer of non-fiction who is bound up by more narrowly defined truth claims? Well, the proof of the pudding is in the reading; so let’s take a look at Büchner’s short story and see if there is anything in it for a doctor.
As an early study in schizophrenia, Lenz is unparallelled. The term ‘schizophrenia’ was introduced by the Swiss psychiatrist Bleuler in 1911 to denote forms of ‘split mind’-phenomena which had first been described in the psychiatric literature sixty years after Lenz, in 1896, by the German psychiatrist Kraepelin under the general (and misleading) heading ‘dementia praecox’. Schizophrenia is derived from the Greek schizein: to fall apart; and phrènè: diaphragm, once considered to be the seat of the soul. (Ras et al., 121) The diagnostic criteria for schizophrenia as given in the DSM-IV nowadays, can all be found in Lenz: the cognitive delusions and the perceptual ? particularly auditive ? hallucinations, the weakly associated or incoherent speech, the catatonic behaviour and the flat or blunt affect. The latter is is often reported to be one of the most horrible aspects of schizophrenia and the most common reason for schizophrenics to commit suicide. Another reaction is self-inflicted intense physical pain, just to feel something (Cutting & Charlish: 31) Anhedonia is also common; but during the onset of illness patients may experience intense emotions such as terror, anxiety or exhilaration in response to the content of their delusions. (Frangou & Murray, 3) The world is perceived differently; details often stand out, detached from the background. According to the French psychiatrist Minkowski a morbid preoccupation with geometry is characteristic, but it is no longer considered to be a diagnostic criterion. (Cutting & Charlish: 27)
1. Lenz’ sense-perceptions are indeed distorted, and his most frequent hallucinations are indeed auditive; here are two examples: ‘He hardly dares to draw his breath, the bending of his feet booms as thunder beneath him’ (226); ‘it was as if the man talked in terrifying ’ (239) ‘Don’t you hear anything,’ he asks Oberlin, ‘don’t you hear the terrible voice that cries out on the whole horizon and is usually called ‘silence?’ (249) But he also has tactile hallucinations: during a walk in the mountains, a rainbow appears around his shadow, and it is as if something touches his brow, and speaks to him (230); ‘Now, another being, godly, trembling lips bowed over him and sucked his own lips.’ (231); he feels an acute physical pain in his left arm, the arm with which he used to hold her’ (240). He also has troubles with distinguishing dreams from waking life perceptions: ‘everything around him seems to vanish, like a shadow, a dream, the world disappears under his eyes’ (227); ‘It was as if he alone existed, as if the world was only there in his fantasy, as if nothing except he himself really existed,’ (248)
Right at the beginning of the story, it is apparent that Lenz’ space- and time experiences are distorted; he is puzzled that it takes him so long just to walk down a slope, or to arrive at a distant point; he should be able to overcome any distance with just a few steps (225); ‘the world is so narrow, it is as if my hands bump into the skies’ (240); ‘the landscape frightened him, it was so narrow that he feared to bump into everything.’ (245) He also has a peculiar geometrical perception of the landscape: ‘Slowly he began to feel at ease, the monotonous enormous surface and lines, which sometimes seemed to speak to him with a booming voice, were hidden’ (230) ‘He crisscrossed the mountains in different directions, large surfaces spread out in the valley, not much forest, nothing but imposing lines and further away the smoking plane’ (237). Sometimes he only perceives details in isolation: ‘Also there appeared points, skeletons of shacks, planks covered with straw, in a grave black colour.’(228) Both the geometrical preoccupation and the fixation on isolated details are typical of schizophrenia. (Cutting & Charlish: 27)
2. Lenz’ wrestling with the problem whether Good or Evil is in power is also very typical of a schizophrenic psychosis (Haugsgjerd: 136). He tries to wake a dead child, and when he fails, he first curses God: ‘it was, as if he could clench his fist against the heavens and grab hold of God and drag him through the clouds; as if he could crush the world with his teeth and spit it out in the Creator’s face’ (242). When Oberlin reproaches him for his profanation, he becomes very upset and believes he is doomed forever, because he has denied God; now he believes that he is the wandering Jew, even Satan himself (243, 248); then he accuses himself of having killed Friederike, his mother, and even Oberlin’s wife and the child she bears. He cannot understand why God tolerates so much suffering in the world: ‘If I were almighty,’ he says to Oberlin, ‘if I were, and I could not bear the suffering, then I would save, save, save’ (249).
3. Lenz also manifests the characteristic way of talking incoherently, often repeating the last words. While speaking, he was sometimes ‘in the grip of an indescribable fear he had lost the end of his sentence; then he thought he had to hold on to the last word and repeat it (247): ‘Hieroglyphs! Hieroglyphs! (246) and ‘He hurried through his life in a fury and then he said: consequent, consequent; when somebody else spoke: inconsequent, inconsequent’. (248); he often speaks ‘in a terrified hurry’, or ‘in broken sentences.’ (241) The same goes for his way of moving: ‘He fell silent and paced up and down the room; then he began again: You see, I have to go; God, you are the only person I can stay with and still, ? still, I have to go, to her – but I cannot, I may not. He was agitated and went away.’(240) ‘Now he walked slowly and complained about weakness in his limbs, then suddenly he dashed off with desperate swiftness.’ (245) But his periods of jerky movements are succeeded by periods in which he is totally paralysed, unable to move at all. Here is one example out of many possible: Lenz lies naked on his bed, Oberlin wants to cover him up with a blanket, but Lenz cannot bear it: ‘everything felt so heavy, so heavy he did not think he was able to walk, now at last he even notices how heavy the very air is’ (249). The word ‘Starrsinn’ which is probably best translated as ‘catatonic stupor’,is one of the most frequently used descriptions of Lenz.
4. The most impressive feature of Büchner’s story, however, is the depiction of Lenz’ gradual depersonalisation: he has an increasing sense of not being in charge of his own doings; it is as if he himself does not really act, but is rather acted upon. Parallel to this experience, his sense of self vanishes, until eventually he becomes mentally blank and indifferent. I shall give some examples of both. Right from the beginning, Lenz has a sense that he is being driven by forces outside himself: ‘It was, as if something followed him, as if something terrible were to catch him, something men cannot bear, as if Madness on horseback was at his heels’ (226); ‘an unspeakable fear took hold of him; he could not find himself any longer, a dark instinct drove him to save himself, he bumped into stones, scratched himself with his fingernails; with the pain, his consciousness gradually returned’ (228) ‘now he felt a relentless force tossing and tumbling him towards the abyss’ (239); ‘The emptier, colder and more dead like he felt, the stronger the urge to kindle the emotional ashes within him’ (241); ‘he stood at an abyss, into which a insane desire kept forcing him to look.’ (242); ‘the world which he had wanted to benefit, was torn apart, he felt neither hatred, nor fear, nor hope; a terrible emptiness together with a racking agitation to fill it up.’ (246); ‘when he thought about a stranger, or imagined someone vividly, it was as if he himself became that person, he got all mixed up’ (247). And here is a particularly dramatic one: ‘Once he sat beneath Oberlin, the cat laid opposite from him on a chair, suddenly he began to stare, he fixed his eyes on the cat, then slid down the chair, the cat did the same, she was under the spell of his eyes, terrified, her hairs on end, then they flew at each other, both spitting, until at last, Oberlin’s wife got up to part them.’ (247). Here is the last quote, which sums up the process nicely: ‘Then he fell into a terrifying state in-between sleep and wake; he bumped into something ghastly, horror seized him, he got up, dripping with sweat, and only slowly did he regain himself. Then he had to take up the simplest things to calm down. Actually it was not he himself who did, it was a powerful vital urge within him; it was as if he was double and the one part tried to save the other; (248). The cold baths, the intentional neglect of his wound, the head banging, and his repeated flings out of the window in Büchner’s story are not so much suicide attempts as attempts to feel alive: ‘The half-hearted efforts to take his own life which he continued to make, were not wholly serious, they were less an expression of a death-wish – for him death would not bring rest anyway – than an attempt, in moments of dreadful anxiety or dullness bordering on nothingness, to become one with himself again by physical pain. (249) His efforts are of no avail, however; on the last page he is accompanied back to Strasbourg, in a state of what would now be called a catatonic stupor.
So to judge by the DSM-IV criteria, Büchner has given an astonishingly accurate description ? well before Kraepelin’s and possibly the first ever ? of schizophrenia; but this is still not enough for our purposes. Perhaps Büchner’s Lenz was once a uniquely accurate description of a schizophrenic psychosis, but it is not so any longer; the most that could be claimed for Lenz nowadays, is that it merits a place among other case studies in the DSM. We have to be realistic; if a psychiatrist is looking for accurately described pathological processes in fiction, he will be disappointed most of the time; and if he is looking for new symptoms, he will very rarely find them there. (Irle) But if Lenz, which at first sight fulfils all the conditions for a work of fiction to be used in the medical curriculum, proves to be of no more than pure historical interest, then it seems as if we are forced to conclude that all literature is unfit for medical consumption, or harmless at best.
2 A fresh start
But let’s not give up so easily. So far, I have summed up the symptoms relevant for Lenz’ illness that I have found in Büchner’s story, but nowhere have I made any reference to the fact that Büchner’s narrative is, in contrast to Oberlin’s, a piece of fiction. So let’s ask once again, what is so special about fiction? What, in other words, can a fictitious narrative contribute to the curriculum that a medical case study such as those that can be found in for instance the DSM cannot?
One obvious aim of medical case studies in general is to make certain syndrome patterns explicit; they are not intended to be realistic descriptions of persons, but of illnesses. In my opinion, such descriptions have two possible drawbacks. The one is that they contain all the relevant and only the relevant elements pertaining to a specific illness; the pattern is already isolated for the medical student, the knowledge is handed down to him cut and dried. To recognise the same pattern in real life, where it is mixed with an indeterminate number of other features, requires different capacities, such as an acute perception and a schooled judgement. You can compare a standard medical case study to the standard format of a school maths problem: even before you have read the problem, you know that the information given is sufficient to solve it and that if you have not used all the information, your solution will be wrong. Some students are very good at solving this kind of problems, but very poor in applying the theoretical concepts to real life. A second drawback of medical case studies is that doctors might get focused on illnesses and technicalities rather than on persons right from the start of their education. (Hoofdakker, 73ff)
In contrast to medical case studies, literary fiction tends to focus on characters, particularly on characters embedded in social settings. They are therefore a lot more complex than simple, one-dimensional medical cases, and consequently they are more difficult to read; they appeal to more cognitive and emotional faculties than do the case studies. But this is an advantage rather than a drawback: just as we have to interpret stories in order to understand fictitious characters, we have to interpret actions to understand real-life agents. And the method of interpretation is roughly the same: we understand paper characters, just as we understand flesh-and-blood persons, by charitably imagining ourselves in their shoes: unless you have very strong evidence to the contrary, you assume that those you are dealing with are rational beings, capable of setting their own goals and finding the means to attain them. In a modest way, we apply this method when engaging in even the most everyday encounters with other people. For instance, in a game of chess: when considering your next move, you ask yourself what your opponent’s answer will probably be to that move. And if you are a sensible chess player, you reckon with your opponent’s best answer, not with all his bad ones. Some people are good at this kind of identification, and some are not. If reading literature has anything to contribute to the education of doctors, I believe it is this: to train imaginative role-taking and thereby to put doctors-to-be in a better position to understand what it is like to have a certain illness ? how it is to see the world from their patients’ perspective ? and consequently, to enable them to treat their patients better.
This is, as far as I can see, quite uncontroversial; anyway, many others have made more or less the same claim. (Nussbaum, Sacks) But just how is fiction, as opposed to non-fiction, supposed to make its readers better in imaginative role taking? Before I go on and try to substantiate my claim in some detail, I must modify it. Art does not have one, unique goal; more particularly, not all fiction aims at presenting realistic characters that readers can identify with emotionally. Only if we know what the goal of a particular work of art is, can we evaluate if and how it might contribute to the education of doctors. Back therefore, to Lenz and the two questions that have to be addressed in this investigation: first, is it Büchner’s aim to put us, the readers, in a better position to understand Lenz ‘from within’ so to speak, and secondly, if this is indeed what he aims at, what literary means does he use to bring it about?
(i) As it happens, Lenz contains an extensive dialogue on the function of art – yet another reason to take a closer look at this particular work; that is by the way, the third cheers for Lenz. Büchner lets Lenz defend a kind of realism as opposed to idealistic conceptions of art. Idealism according to Lenz, betrays conceit and contempt. Conceit because God has made the world as it should be, and it is not our business to better him; contempt because even the humblest of the humble is worthy of our attention. We, artists, should not ask ourselves whether art is beautiful or ugly; the one and only criterion for art is life, possible existence. We should try to immerse ourselves in the life of the loweliest and to render it in all its convulsions. Lenz also explains how this is to be attained: One has to love mankind, our shared common humanity consisting in our identical embodied vulnerabilities, to be able to fully understand an individual. Lenz has a mystically tinged philosophy about a faculty he calls ‘Elementarsinn’ which enables those who possess it to become almost one with all of nature, from stones, water and trees to animals and their fellow men. In his opinion, only simple people and artistic geniuses possess this faculty. It can be encountered in Goethe to some extent, but only in Shakespeare has it reached perfection.
(ii) One of the biggest problems for people suffering from a schizophrenic psychosis is to describe the world they are experiencing. (Cutting & Charlish, 16). It would take an extraordinary command of language to explain to others an inner world to which they have no access and for which there is no commonly shared vocabulary. The first-hand accounts I have read, were indeed very poor, flat, and unexpressive. (Cutting & Charlish: 12-32) Several psychiatrists have also despaired about the possibility of describing a psychotic experience from without, because where all normal sense and sensibility is cancelled, and the continuity of thinking and experiencing is lost, the kind of role-taking I described is thought to be impossible. (Irle: 17ff)
But I believe that Lenz is a very fine counterexample to this general claim and that Büchner has succeeded in ‘throwing a skimming light in the savage chaos of Lenz’ soul.’ (239) But rather than some romantic ‘Elementarsinn’, Büchner possesses two more mundane characteristics which enable him to identify emotionally with Lenz and to render his inner life in all its convulsions: he has first-hand experience of a similar crisis himself; several passages in Lenz have direct parallells in Büchner’s private letters (Hasselbach, 18f); and secondly, he does have an extraordinary command of language. So let’s finally investigate the literary means Büchner uses to mimic and express Lenz’ mental state. I shall distinguish four linguistic levels.
Vocabulary
Often ‘Es’ is used as subject in a sentence instead of ‘Lenz’, suggesting a force beyond his control, which deprives him of his agency. Here are a few examples: ‘It was, as if something followed him, as if something terrible were to catch him, something men cannot bear, as if Madness on horseback was at his heels’ (226); ‘he behaved towards himself as towards a sick child, he managed to get rid of certain thoughts, of some powerful feelings, only at the cost of great anxiety, then It forced them on him again with endless power’ (237); ‘The world had been transparant to him, now he felt a relentless force tossing and tumbling him towards the abyss’ (239); ‘What he did, he did consciously, but all the same an inner instinct drove him.’ (246f).
Also frequent is the phrase: it was as if; ‘es war ihm als’, which mirrors Lenz’ gradual loss of his sense of reality.
The repetition of a certain word or phrase has an intensifying function, in the first eight, very short sentences, ‘grau’ occurs three times (225). Wordrepetition is also a compositional device; Büchner uses several words as leitmotive: revealing are the terms connotating rest and movement.
Verbs describing movements in nature mirror agitation in Lenz; already in the first passage we find: throw, wake, jump, galop, cut, drive and climb.
Grammar
Typically, clauses in a sentence are juxtaposed asyndetically (parataxis), in a hurried, restless way. Subordination of one clause to another by a conjunction such as ‘if’, ‘because’, ‘although’ (hypotaxis) is very rare. The effect is very direct, events are taken as they are, as matter-of-fact. But at the same time, the omitting of reasons and causes has a disconcerting effect; events become unconnected, inexplicable, senseless. Many sentences lack a verb, or have an incomplete verbform, and sometimes the subject is omitted as well. This adds to the staccato effect that the coordination of subclauses already has.
Taken together, these constructions characterise the archetypical Lenz-sentence: a short main clause, followed by a chain of incomplete, subordinate clauses without attributive adjunct. I would like to quote just one sentence in extenso, to give you an impression:
Er ging hinauf, es war kalt oben, eine weite Stube, leer, ein hohes Bett im Hintergrund, er stellte das Licht auf den Tisch, und ging auf und ab, er besann sich wieder auf den Tag, wie er hergekommen, wo er war, das Zimmer im Pfarrhause mit seinen Lichtern und lieben Gesichtern, es war ihm wie ein Schatten, ein Traum, und es wurde ihm leer, wieder wie auf dem Berg, aber er konnte es mit nichts ausfüllen, das Licht war erloschen, die Finsternis erschlang Alles; eine unnennbare Angst erfaßte ihn, er sprang auf, er lief durchs Zimmer, die Treppe hinunter, vor’s Haus; aber umsonst, Alles Finster, nichts, er war sich selbst ein Traum, einzelne Gedanken huschten auf, er hielt sie fest, es war ihm als müsse er immer ‘Vater Unser’ sagen; er konnte sich nicht mehr finden, ein dunkler Instinkt trieb ihn, sich zu retten, er stieß an die Steine, er riß sich mit den Nägeln, der Schmerz fing an, er stürtzte sich in den Brunnstein, aber das Wasser war nicht tief, er patschte darin. (227f)
Composition
The antithesis is a favourite of Büchner’s. Understandingly so, because in Lenz it is used to mirror Lenz’ rapid changes of mood and his catatonic movements.
Compared eith Oberlin’s account, Büchner’s story contains long descriptions of the landscape. They are not inserted for their own sake, rather they function as projections of Lenz’ mental states. T.S. Eliot termed such descriptions ‘objective correlate’ which he defined as: ‘a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events, which shall be the formula of that particular emotion, such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked.’ (T.S. Elliot, quoted in Hasselbach, 101) It is the way to express moods in modern art; Büchner’s landscapes made his colleague Gutzkow exclaim: ‘Welche Naturschilderungen, welche Seelenmalerei!’
Perspective
The prime difference between Oberlin’s account and Büchner’s story, is the perspective. Oberlin writes in the I-form, and insofar we get to know anything about Lenz, it is confined to his doings and sayings as filtered by Oberlin’s perceptions and interpretations. Büchner’s story is told by an omniscient narrator, anyway a narrator who knows what goes on in Lenz’ mind. It is from his perspective the story is told,at least in the beginning.
Büchner makes use of the so called, at least in Dutch so called ‘semi-direct speech’, in German ‘erlebte Rede’. It is a familiar grammatical construction to render the inner life of literary characters. It forces you to consider the events through their eyes. I don’t know how this construction is called in English, nor am I able to translate it, so I give my examples in German: Am Himmel zogen graue Wolken, aber Alles so dicht, und dann dampfte der Nebel herauf und strich schwer und feucht durch das Gesträuch, so träg, so plump.’ (225) ‘Er sprach, er sang, er rezitierte Stellen aus Shakespeare, er griff nach Allem, was sein Blut sonst hatte rascher fließen machen, er versuchte Alles, aber kalt, kalt.’ (229) ‘Er verzweifelte an sich selbst, dann warf er sich nieder, er rang die Hände, er rührte Alles in sich auf; aber tot! tot!’ (241)
To sum up: parts of Lenz are written as an almost clinical account by an analytically schooled doctor, and other parts by a romantic poet in an agitated, nervous style which both expresses and mirrors Lenz’ chaotic inner life, just as Büchner intended it to do.
3 Conclusion
So at last I have found a noble task for literature in the medical curriculum ? it looks as if it can make doctors more empathetic ? but can it live up to what it promises? Is a well-read doctor a good doctor? Or is she, other things equal, at least a better doctor than she would have been had she not read Coma, The Magic Mountain, The Boys from Brazil, The Plague, Brave New World, Middlemarch, The Death of Ivan Illitch and Love in Ruins? I don’t have the foggiest, but I do know how to get an inkling: take 100 medical students, split them in two groups that score roughly the same on Mehrabian & Epstein’s Questionare Measure of Emotional Empathy, stuff the Beaufort Rotterdam Course in Literature and Medicine down the throat of one group and then evaluate the scores of both groups on the empathy-scale half a year later. That will at least give you something to go on; but pending such an experiment, I don’t think we have anything to loose if we would introduce a literature course as an experiment or a pilot study. Several studies have showed that doctors get less empathetic, a less humanistic attitude during their education (Holm, 11). Whatever other skills we want our doctors to have, most of us, I believe, wants them to be undertanding and empathetic; and with good reason: empathetic doctors are better doctors, other things being equal. So our little experiment might well be worth trying.
Literature
Büchner, G. (2002) Sämtliche Werke, Briefe und Dokumente. Herausgegeben von Henri Poschmann. Insel Verlag, Frankfurt am Main.
Cutting, J & Charlish, A. (1995) Schizophrenia – Understanding and coping with the illness. Harper Collins, UK.
Diagnostische Criteria van de DSM-IV (1995) Swets & Zeitlinge, Lisse.
Frangou, S. & Murray, R.M. (1997) Schizophrenia. Martin Dunitz, London.
Hasselbach, K. (1988) Lenz. Oldenbourg, München.
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