Shared Experience – Shared Consolation? Fictional Perspective-Taking and Existential Stances in Literature

Abstract

This paper suggests some ways in which the concerns of existential psychotherapy may be combined with the practice of poetry therapy. It emphasizes the capacity of literature for inducing perspective-taking, i.e. the reader’s opportunity of experiencing the ongoing here and now of a fictional character, including the speaker of a poem. It goes on to show this process in action in four poems exemplifying, respectively, four different attitudes to the existential question of meaning and purpose in life: transcendental-optimistic (Erik Gustaf Geijer’s »Natthimmelen« / »The Night Sky«); transcendental-pessimistic (A.E. Housman’s »The Laws of God«); immanent-optimistic (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s »A Hymn to the Night«); and immanent-pessimistic (Tennyson’s »Oh Yet We Trust«). Whatever the stance of the poems, the reader grappling with existential questions may take the perspective of the speakers of the poems, thereby finding solace in a shared experience of the human condition.