«Traum» e «Gesicht» in Giorni e opere di Stefan George

Days and Deeds (Tage und Taten) embodies an ambivalence that is typical for the practice of putting the modern Poetic Self in relation to its present form. This contribution aims to analyse this unique short prose collection by Stefan George in the general framework of the vision devices which are peculiar to German Moderne and their perceptive paradigms, with particular reference to oneiric symbolism and physiognomy. This allows to reconsider the question of the modernity of George’s poetics with regard to the shaping of perception and its distortions. The key concepts that here lead to the understanding of the collection as a whole are Traum, i.e. dream, and Gesicht, which in George’s poetic idiom means “face”, “vision” and also “view”.