Jennifer Anna Gosetti-Ferencei, author of “The Ecstatic Quotidian: Phenomenological Sightings in Modern Art and Literature” and Katja Brunkhorst, author of “Verwandt/Verwandelt. Nietzsche’s Presence in Rilke”, discuss their recent work on philosophy and poetry in Nietzsche and Rilke.
Moderator: Mark Daniel Cohen

In Ecstatic Sonnets: Philosophy and Poetry in Rilke and Nietzsche, Jennifer Anna Gosetti-Ferencei and Katja Brunkhorst will explore various aspects of Rainer Maria Rilke’s poetological methods, which show a remarkable relationship to philosophy and an ecstatic relation to the world.

Brunkhorst’s momentous discovery of Rilke’s personal copy of Thus Spoke Zarathustra is one of the central forces in the creation of her book, Verwandt-Verwandelt. Nietzsche’s Presence in Rilke. It was like a Rosetta stone that yielded empirical data and confirmed an influence Rilke had deliberately concealed, both validating and opening up new theories about his writing methods and about specific poems and their dialogic relation with Nietzsche’s texts.

Gosetti-Ferencei’s second theoretical work, The Ecstatic Quotidian: Phenomenological Sightings in Modern Art and Literature, is concerned with quotidian experience not only in modern art, but in modern literature and philosophy. In the book, Gosetti-Ferencei examines how modern art, literature, and philosophy produce ecstatic forms of reflection on the structure of the everyday world. Is ecstasy, we are provoked to ask, a subjective experience? Is it something that is created? Or is it something that is latent in the world itself?

In Rilke, who professed to be as open as an anemone, and in his poetry, perhaps there are responses to these questions. We invite you to meditate on and engage in a dialogue about these questions with Brunkhorst and Gosetti-Ferencei. Join us for Ecstatic Sonnets and celebrate the release of their new books, the crossing of philosophy, poetry, and ecstasy and their transfiguration in art.

The evening will be moderated by renowned art critic Mark Daniel Cohen, a freelance author who writes on painting, sculpture, literature, and philosophy and both writes and translates poetry.

Date: Friday, March 28

Time: 7 – 10 PM

Place: NYU’s Deutsches Haus, 42 Washington Mews, at University Place

Katja Brunkhorst (ex-ENS, Paris, and University of London; freelance writer and musician)

Jennifer Anna Gosetti-Ferencei is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Fordham University and Clarendon Scholar at Oxford University.

Mark Daniel Cohen is editor of Hyperion: On the Future of Aesthetics and assistant dean of the Media and Communications Division of the European Graduate School.

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