Das Zwitschern der Vögel im: (nichtnationalen) Wald

Nature seems to be everything: real and imagined, immediate matter and trope, raptor and victim simultaneously. Its lingustic and literary manifestations have been the subject of (Anglo-American) nature writing for about a hundred and fifty years. But what could “nature writing” mean applied to German literature, and how can the term be adapted to writing the Anthropocene? This chapter examines exemplary concepts of nature from medieval German epic poetry and from periods of early colonial endeavours. Any conceptualisation of nature implicitly shapes (and expresses) our ways of understanding Homo sapiens. Humans manage neither to escape from themselves nor to encounter “original” nature. The essay introduces the term Natur-Schreiben in order to express this impasse. Natur-Schreiben means to engage in a process of mutual translation. The chapter searches for positions in between the binary opposition of nature and culture, tackling several of the blind spots of this supposed dichotomy (attitude, reciprocity, responsibility, damaged world). The genre boundaries of literature are questioned and crossed.