Muße in relation to literature
To me the idea of Muße is inextricably linked to literature. Partly because I was taught how Goethe, Schiller, Hölderlin and Schlegel were fighting the speeding up of time by trying to establish Muße as an ideal state of being.[1] They were battling modernity and with it the idea of progess.
Ulrich Schnabel points out that a society that is based on progress also means rapid change, hence trying to stay in control of your own time when everything around is points towards acceleration is an exhausting battle.[2]
Even though Muße is not situated within work or leisure, we can still bring it with us through our approach towards work and leisure. Michael Ende shows how this can be done in his great novel Momo. I frequently quote from it, when I see that students get overwhelmed by the huge tasks they set themselves:
“You see, Momo,’ he [Beppo Roadsweeper] told her one day, ‘it’s like this. Sometimes, when you’ve a very long street ahead of you, you think how terribly long it is and feel sure you’ll never get it swept.’
He gazed silently into space before continuing. ‘And then you start to hurry,’ he went on. ‘You work faster and faster, and every time you look up there seems to be just as much left to sweep as before, and you try even harder, and you panic, and in the end you’re out of breath and have to stop – and still the street stretches away in front of you. That’s not the way to do it.’
He pondered a while. Then he said, ‘You must never think of the whole street at once, understand? You must only concentrate on the next step, the next breath, the next stroke of the broom, and the next, and the next. Nothing else.’
Again he paused for thought before adding, ‘That way you enjoy your work, which is important, because then you make a good job of it. And that’s how it ought to be.’
There was another long silence. At last he went on, ‘And all at once, before you know it, you find you’ve swept the whole street clean, bit by bit. What’s more, you aren’t out of breath.’ He nodded to himself. ‘That’s important, too,’ he concluded.”[3]
It refers back to the inner calmness that Muße really is as well as the ability to take your time. But it becomes harder to do a good job and not be out of breath. Instead we hurry and panic and muddle through, so we can quickly do the next task.
This acceleration of time is not a new problem, yet we still have not found a solution or we are not willing to listen to the solutions that were out there for years.
Friedrich Hölderlin wrote his poem Muße in around 1796.[4] He already spoke of the urge to see one’s life of belonging to and being part of nature. In 1911 W.H. Davies lamented his famous lines ‘We have no time to stand and stare’ in his poem Leisure.[5] Needless to say that he was another one that had to make do with the word leisure rather than using Muße, especially since Muße itself has something poetic.
Writers have always battled with the poles of doing vs not doing. Of being non-productive in the writerly sense, while still being writers in their being. Not producing content at all times is a good thing. It is not realistic to be productive at all times, but also not necessary. We can take your time. As Kate Angus points realises:
I understand my process as a field—sometimes I am harvesting and sometimes I must let the field lie fallow or seed it with other experiences so new growth can germinate. Even when I’m not writing in the denotative sense of inscribing words on the page, I’m still writing in a larger sense, as I am doing the necessary work of building up a storehouse of experiences, images, and ideas I will articulate later.[6]
Writing, art and creativity needs Muße and time. It is the industry that require speed and production. But we should remember that good work does not necessarily comes from hard work. The best ideas come to us easily.
And in the same way, the essence of knowledge does not consist in the effort for which it calls, but in grasping existing things and in unveiling reality. Moreover, just as the highest form of virtue knows nothing of “difficulty”, so too the highest form of knowledge comes to man like a gift – the sudden illumination, a stroke of genius, true contemplation; it comes effortlessly and without trouble.[7]
And in order to create the condition for the sudden illumination, we need Muße or otherwise we end up too busy to notice any strokes of genius.
[1] Peter Philipp Riedl, Die Kunst der Muße. Über ein Ideal in der Literatur um 1800, Publications of the English Goethe Society, (2011) 80:1, pp.18-37
[2] Ulrich Schnabel, Muße: Vom Glück des Nichtstuns, (München: Karl Blessing Verlag, 2010), p.178
[3] Michael Ende, Momo, Quote from Good Reads, <https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/747827-you-see-momo-he-beppo-roadsweeper-told-her-one-day> [Accessed 12 May 2021]
[4] Friedrich Hölderlin, Muße, Textlog, < https://www.textlog.de/17797.html> [Accessed 12 May 2021]
[5] W.H. Davies, Leisure, Poetry by Heart, https://www.poetrybyheart.org.uk/poems/leisure/ [Accessed 12 May 2021]
[6] Kate Angus, Maybe the Secret to Writing is Not Writing? Literary Hub, (2019) <https://lithub.com/maybe-the-secret-to-writing-is-not-writing> [Accessed 25 April 2021]
[7] Josef Pieper, Leisure as the basis of culture / The Philosophical Act, (Random House, 1963) Kindle
Ebook, p.34