Bodies of Pain

Suffering in the Works of Hartmann von Aue

Scott E. Pincikowski

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781136715884
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: History of Art

This study provides a much needed re-evaluation of the role of pain and suffering in Hartmann von Aue. By critically and carefully combining traditional philology with modern theoretical analysis, drawing on theorists such as Mary Douglas, Michele Foucault, Norbert Elias and Elaine Scarry, the author shows how the 'body' is symbolically structured in Hartmann's work to create a distinctly medieval signification system of pain. This system is analysed through an examination of the physical body and social body of the court, and the harmonious and refined image of courtly society as depicted in Hartmann's work where it is shown that the very ideological system that informs courtly life causes suffering in both the physical and social bodies.

BODIES OF PAIN

CHAPTER ONE

The Body in Pain

Was ist das für eine Streitfrage: Ist es der Körper, der Schmerzen fühlt?—Wie ist sie zu entscheiden? Wie macht es sich geltend, daß es nicht der Körper ist?—Nun, etwa so: Wenn einer in der Hand Schmerzen hat, so sagt’s die Hand nicht (außer sie schreibt’s), und man spricht nicht der Hand Trost zu, sondern dem Leidenden; man sieht ihm in die Augen.

[What sort of issue is: Is it the body that feels pain?—How is it to be decided? What makes it plausible to say that it is not the body?—Well, something like this: if someone has a pain in his hand, then the hand does not say so (unless it writes it) and one does not comfort the hand, but the sufferer: one looks into his face.]

—Ludwig Wittgenstein¹

I. HARTMANN VON AUE AND THE BODY IN PAIN

Next to Wolfram von Eschenbach, Hartmann von Aue is arguably the most important German poet of the High Middle Ages. Hartmann’s greatest achievement was to introduce the Arthurian romance to Germany. In addition to Erec (one fragment), Hartmann wrote another courtly epic, Iwein (fifteen complete and seventeen fragmented manuscripts); a legend narrative, the Arme Heinrich, “Poor Henrich” (three complete and four fragmented manuscripts); a Saint’s life, Gregorius (six complete and five fragmented manuscripts); a didactic treatise on love, the Klage, “the Lament” (one manuscript); not to mention eighteen courtly love poems, some of which thematically deal with the crusades. This wide range in genre, written in a relatively short period of time, between circa 1185 and circa 1205, demonstrates that Hartmann was also one of the most productive, innovative, and versatile poets of his time. A literate ministerialis learned in French and Latin, Hartmann drew upon Chrétien de Troyes’ work, and unknown French, Latin, and possibly Norwegian and Dutch poets for the inspiration of his courtly epics. But Hartmann did not simply translate his sources; he was a master of diuten, or the interpretation and artistic transformation of a preexisting tale. In fact, Gottfried von Straßburg praises Hartmann for his extraordinary ability to capture the essence of a tale and tell it clearly in his renowned literary excursus in Tristan und Isolt:²

Hartman der Ouwære,

ahî wie der diu mære

beide ûzen unde innen

mit worten unt mit sinnen

durchverwet unt durchzieret!

wie er mit rede figiert

der âventiure meine!

wie lûter unt wie reine

sîn kristallîniu wörtelîn

beidiu sint und iemer müezen sîn! (4621–30)

[Ah, Hartmann von Aue, how he adorns and colors his tales with words and meanings, both outside and in! How he captures the meaning of adventure with words! How clear and pure his crystal words both are and ever must be! (my translation)]

It is not only this passage that attests to Hartmann’s influence upon medieval German literature, but so too does the reception of his texts by contemporaries and later poets alike. Just a few examples that demonstrate the tremendous impression that Hartmann made on medieval culture are the translation of Gregorius and the Arme Heinrich into Latin, the Gesta Gregorii peccatoris from Arnold von Lübeck in the twelfth century and the Henricus pauper in the later Middle Ages, the prose Von sant Gregoro auf dem stain in the fourteenth, Ulrich Füetrer’s shortened Iban in his Buch der Abendteuer in the fifteenth century, and the frescos of the Iwein in the South Tyrolean castles of Rodeneck and Runkelstein (near Bozen) and in the so-called “Hessenhof” in Schmalkaden (Thuringia).

Surprisingly, even though Hartmann’s works were well received in the High to late Middle Ages, it has been only recently that scholarship has focused its attention upon Hartmann. Even so, an expansive amount of Hartmann scholarship has been compiled in the last twenty years. And with each shift of emphasis in research, Hartmann’s works find relevancy. This observation holds true for the current emphasis upon body studies. When considering the bodily experience of pain and suffering in the works of Hartmann von Aue, one quickly realizes that this is a central topic that has long been overlooked. This is the case even though more attention is being paid to the significance of pain and suffering in the Middle Ages. These studies, which will be briefly summarized in this chapter, have demonstrated that pain was often considered a positive force, specifically in regards to its religious context and the role that the expressive body in pain played in medieval ascetic practices. Furthermore, these studies have been especially fruitful in revealing gender differences in the medieval experience of pain. But there is an important missing piece in the complex medieval “puzzle of pain” that is currently being assembled—a complete analysis of the secular context of pain and its pronounced bodily presence in the courtly epics of the twelfth century. Hartmann scholarship that has touched upon certain aspects of pain includes semantic studies of the word field that surrounds leit, “suffering,” the relationship of pain to joy, the causes of pain and suffering, both physical and metaphysical, medieval medicinal practices, the social meaning of illness, the psychology of suffering, healing of wounds, and the function of the idealization and fictionalization of violence.³

While these earlier studies on pain and suffering in Hartmann have greatly contributed to the greater understanding of courtly literature, they often de-emphasize or actually overlook the physicality of pain. In contrast, this study analyzes the most immediate locus of pain and suffering, the physical body. By analyzing bodily motifs of pain, it will be observed that pain is a social construct that is shaped by the prevailing cultural norms of the medieval social body. This study will demonstrate that pain is a ubiquitous and enigmatic force at the court that is fundamental to courtly existence. In addition, it will make evident that pain and suffering not only surround and shape courtly culture, but also have a profound impact upon the construction and deconstruction of the body and self of the courtly individual. The effect of pain upon the courtly individual’s body/self will be observed along gender lines, as the infliction, experience, and expression of pain are already clearly differentiated in this manner in medieval culture. To demonstrate these points, the rich complexity of both the modern and medieval understanding of pain and suffering will be discussed in the following section. This discussion will provide a definition of pain and suffering and will also place the analysis of the body in pain in Hartmann within its historical context.

II. PAIN IN CONTEMPORARY THEORY

Two bodily issues central to this study, which are greatly influenced by social-cultural attitudes, are pain and pain behavior. It is therefore necessary to turn to the phenomena of pain and suffering and discuss them in closer detail. The following section will demonstrate that pain is not simply a physiological or a psychological phenomenon; rather, it is a combination of these factors in addition to social and cultural forces. Key to this endeavor is to define pain, its relationship to suffering, and most importantly its cultural and historical significance to the High Middle Ages. However, when approaching a definition of pain, it immediately becomes apparent that such an undertaking is difficult because pain is such a multifaceted issue. And for some, because pain is so difficult to define, it remains an enigma and is readily suppressed, leaving others to deal with its consequences.

Today, the medical community has been given almost sole responsibility for understanding the meaning of pain. Instead of trying to comprehend pain in its totality, medicine has mostly reduced it to either a physiological or psychological phenomenon, what David B. Morris has termed “the Myth of Two Pains.”⁴ In addition to this dualistic view of pain, medicine has also attempted to remove it from the human experience (Morris 1993, 22–23). As Morris points out, the terminology found in the titles of the medical textbooks that give the best technical overview of the phenomenon of pain suggest that the medical community considers pain to be a “challenge” to be overcome, a “puzzle” to be solved, a “conquest” to be won, and lastly it symbolizes a “triumph” when it is conquered (Morris 1993, 23).⁵ The vast “pain-killing” industry, with its wide variety of over-the-counter and prescribed analgesics and anesthetics and the explosive issue of assisted suicide and euthanasia, reflect this attitude. Because the body in pain has been placed into the hands of science and therefore has been secularized,⁶ pain and suffering have come to be viewed almost solely as phenomena that negate meaning and destroy lives.

Even though pain is often viewed in a negative light, pain specialists generally agree that there are three positive functions of pain. First, pain acts as a warning sign, indicating that something is wrong with the body or that the individual is in danger. This warning sign motivates the individual to take action and prevent further injury (Gibson, 194). Second, pain that hinders further injury also teaches the sufferer to anticipate and avoid similar situations in the future (Melzack and Wall, 11). A case in point for the importance of the first two purposes of pain is the recorded instances of individuals who could not experience pain because of physiological or neurological dysfunctions. In most cases these individuals either met early and tragic deaths or experienced great bodily harm because of their inability to experience physical pain (Morris 1993, 12–14). Thus, pain is essential to human survival, an idea interestingly first formulated by Descartes. Lastly, pain caused by “diseases or serious injuries set[s] limits on activity and enforce[s] inactivity and rest, which are often essential for the body’s natural recuperative and disease-fighting mechanisms to ensure recovery and survival” (Melzack and Wall, 11–12).

Beyond these three accepted functions of pain, however, there is little consensus in the medical community as to what pain really is. In the Challenge of Pain, Melzack and Wall demonstrate how modern definitions of pain reflect how little is understood about it, a situation that provided them the impetus to set out and create guidelines to analyze pain (44–46). In the process they revolutionized the modern understanding of pain with the “Gate Control Theory.” This theory expanded upon the Cartesian notion that pain stimuli send messages up the spinal column to a single pain center in the brain. They improved upon this model by positing that the body possesses multiple pain centers that influence the physiology of pain. Cognitive factors such as past pain experiences stored in the individual’s memory, sensory input from throughout the body (not just the injured body part or organ), as well as emotion influence the opening and closing of “spinal gates,” which regulate pain messages traveling along the nervous system and are located on the dorsal horns of the spinal cord. Instead of a simple cause and effect explanation of pain that describes a one-way motion of pain messages to the brain, Melzack and Wall observe a two-way motion of ascending and descending pain messages that affect the degree of pain experienced by the sufferer. With this innovation, the understanding of pain is no longer limited to physical stimulus and physiology, but rather pain becomes a multicausal experience. This change in emphasis is important because this supports the present study’s position that pain is in part an acculturated and social phenomenon.

One area that demonstrates that pain is a social construct is the role that environment plays in both the experience and expression of pain. Where and how an individual exhibits pain behavior is learned at an early age. For example, the degree and nature of a hurt child’s reaction is dependent upon how her parents react or if her parents are even present. In fact, a child that has fallen down will often look to see if his parents sympathetically respond to his situation before crying. Furthermore, children will sometimes feign duress in order to receive attention from their parents. They have been acculturated in pain behavior, and although children may not be aware of it, they have been at once taught how to verbalize pain and to manipulate through the expression of suffering. Similarly, the contrast between pain in battle and pain in civilian surgery demonstrates the influence of environment. David Bakan has shown that a soldier is less likely to express openly pain caused by a wound suffered in battle, whereas a civilian is more likely to verbalize his distress caused by surgery and demand analgesics.⁷ One explanation for this difference is that the soldier has been indoctrinated into the “grin-and-bear-it” culture of warfare and has become desensitized to pain out of the need for self-preservation. Another explanation is that because the soldier has been surrounded by the constant threat of death, when injury occurs and the soldier is removed from the battlefield, the sensation of pain becomes associated with life. The feelings of relief that he experiences actually override the sensation of pain because the threat of death has been significantly reduced. In contrast, for the civilian who normally does not deal with pain on a daily basis, the sensation of pain becomes synonymous with the threat of death, which causes the individual great anxiety.

Another area in which pain and suffering can clearly be observed as a social construct is gender. The social body determines what kind and what degree of pain is suitable for a man or a woman. Basically, the social body administrates discipline and oversees what is appropriate pain behavior for its members. The expression, “no pain, no gain,” which describes but is not limited to participants of sports, shows that pain holds a positive and motivational position in society. But the meaning and standards that society ascribes to physical pain remain differentiated and situational. The long exclusion of women from physically demanding and dangerous labor and sports or the recent debate concerning women and the death penalty reflect how society creates engendered attitudes towards pain. In addition, suffering and pain behavior are engendered. One only needs to draw from the contemporary experience to make this observation. The phrases “be a man,” or “take it like a man” when a man suffers are just two examples. It is also generally accepted that women are more open and expressive when experiencing pain, whereas men are expected to bear their pain stoically. And yet, the fact remains that pain, and more specifically the physical appearance of pain, is not an engendered phenomenon. One cannot differentiate between the reaction and performance of a male’s nervous system and the female’s when free nerve endings send and receive “pain messages” to and from the brain through “spinal gate” mechanisms. What is engendered by the phenomenon of pain, though, is how pain is inflicted.

The engendered experience of pain points to the fact that one must often make the decision whether to keep one’s pain private or make it public. The decision to share one’s pain with others depends upon several factors. Does the pain warrant or necessitate verbalization or other pain behavior? Will the sufferer gain or lose as a result of this behavior? And how do previous life experiences influence the individual’s outlook on pai...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• Chapter One The Body in Pain
• Chapter Two es tete im an dem lîbe wê: The Physical Body in Pain in Hartmann von Aue
• Chapter Three mîn vleisch ist sô unreine: The Male Body in Pain in Gregorius and the Arme Heinrich
• Chapter Four vil wîplîchen si dô leit: The Female Body in Pain
• Chapter Five ouwê, diz volc ist starke unvrô: The Social Body and Pain in Hartmann von Aue’s Works
• Conclusion nâch disem ellende. / hie hât diz liet ein ende
• Appendix A
• Appendix B
• Bibliography
• Index