ABSTRACT
Reading lyric poetry is a most complex language task, full of surprises. The restriction of lyric speech enhances the signifi cance of every single word, demanding from readers qualities like intellectual alertness and emotional depth, which are the basic prerequisites of empathic perception. In this chapter, I analyze contemporary lyric poems that promote empathy not only with animals, but also with persons who have “exceptional empathy” or are “highly sensitive”—people who have a deeply empathic relation to the world that is often ignored or misunderstood. My work here focuses on three particular poems by German-language writers: Sepp Mall’s “Resurrection of the Animals” (2012), Thomas Kling’s “Actaeon 4” (1999), and Friederike Mayröcker’s “my hysteria is the addiction to being loved is the fear of no longer being able to write is the fear of having to die” (2008)—the reader will fi nd translations appended to this chapter for reference.
