Irdische und himmlische Tänze: Körper, Kunst und Religion in Gottfried Kellers „Tanzlegendchen“

[Machine translation] The core of Keller's Dance Legend (1872) is the story of the young Musa, who, at the request of the biblical King David, renounces her passion for dancing and dedicates herself to repentance in order to participate in the round of the Blessed in the Hereafter. Despite the points of contact with the content, Keller gives his source — Kosegarten's collection of legends from 1804 — new meanings that are rooted in the body and dance concept of Christianity and reflect the complex relationship between art and religion., The career of Musa, from the initial agreement between praying and dancing to the total abandonment of the earthly in favor of the heavenly, corresponds to the most important stages in Western dance history, from the animated body and the cultic function of dance in first Christianity to the ideal of elevation and the weightlessness of romantic ballet. Cultural-historical and religious content also enrich the artistic dimension, as Musa's “Body as a Place of Punishment” (Foucault) and Heaven prove to be a staged dance company. , At the end of the text, Keller adds an important episode: The nine muses, who are allowed to stay temporarily in heaven on holidays, sing a hymn of praise for Musa's Ascension; however, it awakens in the Blessed a longing for the secular (see Schopenhauer's reflections on the connection of word and music) and therefore causes the eternal banishment of the patron goddesses of the arts to hell., The replacement of the main character Musa by the muses (plural) and the transition from the wordlessness of dance to vocal music show that the Swiss poet's gaze finally extends beyond dance into the general artistic dimension. Just like Musa's anti-body and dance-hostile asceticism, the expulsion of Zeus's daughters from paradise testifies to the negative attitude of Christianity on this side, which Keller sees as an suppression of natural forces and portrays as an anti-art orientation in dance legend.