Katharina Ludwig

A Rhapsody is a form of epic poetry. The term Rhapsody is derived from the Greek rhapsōidein (ῥαψῳδεῖν) meaning to “sew songs [together]”. It illustrates how the oral epic poet, or “rhapsode” would build a repertoire of diverse myth, tales and jokes to include in the content of the epic poem.

By the 16th century it came to be used in Europe as a designation not only for epic poems, but also other literary forms, such as collections of miscellaneous writings and, later, any extravagant expression of sentiment or feeling. Just as in music it can be regarded as a one-movement work that is episodic yet integrated, free-flowing in structure, featuring a range of highly contrasted moods, colour and tonality. An air of spontaneous inspiration and a sense of improvisation make it freer in form than a set of variations. The work gathers itself around the terminology of the rhapsody. It consists of three parts that loosely combine science fiction, feminist theory and anthropology to imagine a setting of interlinked cosmologies, myth and histories. Through these three forms the characters of the Woundlickers, mythological beings, collectors of pain and trauma, but also translators and distributors of oral history especially of silenced accounts are introduced.