Die Natur als zivilisationskritische Projektionsfläche im essayistischen Werk Carl Dallagos

Carl Dallago’s essay oeuvre aims to reduce to one single measure an antithesis particularly diffuse in the intellectual debate of the fin de siècle, described as “soul v life” or “culture v civilisation”. The author intended that this measure be rooted in a lively and empathetic relationship between the individual and nature. Aspiring to this state of unity the individual would have to address the fundamental problem of all the “Lebensphilosophie” of the early twentieth century: how to relate the experience of the primitive and the natural, if this experience happens beyond any logico-rational definition or verbalisation? Dallago tries to get around this contradiction by presenting his essays as reports of a direct conversation with nature, in which he limits himself to record without the superimposition of any rational mediation, thus inviting the reader to suspend the normal conventions of literary communication. Since his rigid and tortuous writing style prevents him from realising such a solution at a stylistic level, Dallago relies on a mis-en-scène with a primitivist flavour, centred on the recurrent figure of a traveller, who, disgusted by the mores of urban civilisation, seeks regeneration in contact with nature and in a renunciation of any possible form of intentionality, hoping to make himself into merely one thing among many.