«Gleich dem edlen Ritter von der Mancha»: Hugo Balls und Emmy Hennings’ Auseinandersetzung mit dem «Ritter von der traurigen Gestalt»

My paper will deal with the interweaving of (auto)biography, aesthetics and politics along with its poetological implications in Hugo Ball’s and Emmy Hennings’ reception of Don Quijote. The two authors repeatedly address the ambivalence of Cervantes’ hero in two regards: by showing as the perception and creation process of an alternative world through the literary medium determines the hero’s failure in the real word; by questioning the objective dimension of reality whose solidity and coherence do not seem to stand up to Don Quijote’s conduct, which is instead inspired by noble ideals. Like the hidalgo, Ball’s saints and ascetics as well as Hennings’ picaresque heroins embody an utopian antiheroism which firmly opposes the set of values of the German society and culture with its Prussian-Style nationalism